Daybreak’s Fall

As Silvia is weakened after channeling a huge amount of her mana to activate the weakening arrays, she is running with heavy breaths toward her party members.

Kaboom!

Vax'taya's hand suddenly exploded after catching an arrow from behind him.

Stix, who launched the attack, gasped in surprise.

"You blocked my fastest attack, just like that huh?"

He calmly assessed his position as he sent the rest of his skills towards Vax'taya to buy time for his other members to finish their individual tasks.

Especially for Lurk who is in charge of locating the gate and aiding Silvia in closing it.

Skill: Crescent Wind!

Skill: Piercing Arrow!

Skill: Rain of Lunaria!

Skill: Moonlight Punishment!

Vax'taya was alerted by the Lunarian skills used by this puny human. He got no choice but to dodge some of them, rather than receiving them like earlier.

Arrows imbued with lunar magic rained down on his skin, wounding him on his arms and some found their mark on his legs.

Seeing a window to attack, Veil finally popped out of the shadows to send spear attacks toward the Gaia commander.

Summon: Shadow Spear!

Thrust. Thrust. Stab!

As the shadow attacks appear after the arrows, Vax'taya struggled to deflect the attacks, wounding him even more.

Bleeding all over, Vax'taya screeched and sent a breath attack on the sky.

Vuwooooom!

It shattered the weakening array and all the rampant mana weakening him disappeared.

He can now fight in his full strength without this annoying barrier interrupting his evil magic.

Skill: Flame of Annihilation!

Vax'taya immediately casted his strongest attack.

Eruptions of greenish lava exploded one after another from the ground. It looks very similar to the Crownwell incident.

Stix losing hope, still made reflexive dodges and repositioned from a higher area.

Lurk also found the gate in which he marked by a skill and dashed out to fetch Silvia.

Skill: Magic Tracking!

[...]

Boom! Vuagg! Vieeeekk!

Vile energy spread from the areas where an eruption would occur. Corrupting the plants and melting more buildings.

Vax'taya is hellbent on destroying Plevo now that some humans interrupted his plans and even killed his troops.

"You shall feel the consequences of interrupting me!" Vax'taya bellowed.

Veil tried creating a new skill in her mind, where she will make use of her shadow skills to gain flight.

Skill: Shadow's Wings!

She barely made a momentum from her half-complete skill, shadows wrapping her boots to launch her upwards.

She then launched more attacks to cut Vax'taya's wings.

Zoom. Swing!

Vax'taya disappeared and reappeared before Stix who is still in the midst of firing Lunarian arrows.

Stix, sensing danger, cast his last skill to amplify all the damage he has done with his Lunarian arrows.

Sure-kill Skill: Lunar Rend!

All the wounds dealt by Stix's arrows have opened wide with blood gushing out, Vax'taya could only scream in pain.

"What… did… you… DO?!"

Rage flaring up even fiercer, Vax'taya sent his massive claws towards Stix's head.

Splatter. Plop.

Stix's lifeless body slowly dropped down like a puppet getting its strings cut off.

"NOOO!" Veil hurriedly shouted.

She then sends multiple shadow slashes towards the enemy.

Skill: Dark Slash!

Vax'taya's aura is spiking up and down while recovering from Stix's final retaliation. He also summoned forth a massive evil aura to call more reinforcements from the gate.

"???!!!"

Noticing something amiss, Vax'taya used his sensory skill to check the gate's energy.

Innate Skill: Perception Sonar!

With his evil energy acting as a wave to scan the whole city for the gate, he instantly understood that the gate has been closed by the missing enemies.

Crush!

The floor cracked below Vax'taya's feet. His muscles ballooning and his body are doubling in size.

Taboo Skill: Blood Sacrifice!

As Vax'taya bled even more and seemingly grows weaker, in turn, he was able to absorb the tainted energy from his troops' corpses.

Taboo Skill: Forced Transformation!

By sacrificing his own life force, he let more excess evil energy from the atmosphere to grow his aura even more wildly.

Veil sensed the changes and prepared to use her flight skill again.

Skill: Shadow's Wings!

This time, the shadows wrapping her boots are more efficient, seemingly getting more "alive" it allowed her to gain flight via her boots acting as a boost for her movement.

She then engaged with Vax'taya in an aerial one versus one combat.

Boom. Boom. Thud. Crack. Rumble. Swing. Woosh. Vuuoom.

Explosions causing vibrations in the earth can be heard from the East of the ruined city.

With Silvia and Lurk successfully closing the gate, they hurried to help their teammates.

[...]

When they arrived, they are shocked at what they saw, corpses litter the ground, and while they scan the vicinity, Lurk noticed their party members' corpses as well.

Lurk shed tears of regret and rage.

Silvia plopped down in great depression.

Daybreak just lost almost every member with just the two of them remaining.

How would they continue hunting down monsters and going on adventures throughout the world?

How would they save the humanity and eventually become Heroes?

The dreams are no more.

Daybreak is over this day onwards.

While Lurk is observing Veil and Vax'taya's fight from below, he continued laying down traps that would be part of his final plan before stopping his Adventurer life.

Delayed-Activation Skill: Magic Trap!

Silvia then recovered her usual calm and collected self, she proceeded to amplify Lurk's magic traps and when activated later on, it will flood the area with holy mana to weaken Vax'taya's evil energy.

Skill: Holy Devour!

Silvia then sent signals to Veil's mind.

Innate Skill: Telekinesis!

"Veil, we prepared traps along the main road! Lure Vax'taya along them and make sure to not be caught within the rampant mana!"

"Mhm." Veil nodded.

Vax'taya then sent breath attacks one after another, filling the skies with flaming green orbs.

Skill: Skull Rain!

He made this anti-air mines to reduce Veil's mobility, as she is outmaneuvering him.

Veil then glided down the main road to lure Vax'taya.

"You are not getting away from me human!" Vax'taya growled as he made chase.

Vuuuooom!

Sensing Vax'taya's energy coming closer and closer, Lurk nervously gulped down dry saliva.

He must absolutely not fail here. No! Not today!

If they did not stop Vax'taya today, they will never get a second chance. Vax'taya is a commander-grade warrior of the Gaias. As Silvia hypothesized, Vax'taya and his troops are one of the advance parties to scout the planet and make initial bases for the real invasion.

However, this squadron is the only one with a commander-grade warrior leading a scout party among the first five that has already reached this realm.

While the other scout parties are getting culled down in numbers by other Adventurer teams and subjugation squads made by various governments, Plevo suffered the most due to the strength of this particular party.

[...]

Kabooom!

The first trap nearest to Vax'taya has been activated by Lurk. An explosion followed by a flood of holy mana devoured Vax'taya's entire body.

Uwarrrg. Krieeek… Pant.

The holy mana seared Vax'taya's skin, and his body is slowly reverting to his base form.

'Success!', Lurk inwardly celebrated.

Veil then made use of the enemy's pause and launched fierce attacks.

Skill: Shadow Dance!

As she blended with the ground's shadows, she danced around Vax'taya, causing slash wounds one after another.

Swing. Swing. Swing. Swing. Swing.

She did not stop only after her 15th slash.

Pant. Pant.

Her constant combat state has been putting a toll on her stamina and concentration. Anymore fierce battle will cause her to collapse.

'It seems like I should avoid using my newly-learnt skills for now', Veil muttered to herself.

Vax'taya reverted back to his base form and fell down on one knee.

Vuwoorkkk!

He vomited even more blood as his visions get blurry.

Silvia, watching the situation unfold, finished her incantations.

Double Casting!

Skill: Glacial Pierce!

Skill: Infernal Call!

As both fire and ice attacks created a perfect balance of storm onto Vax'taya, Lurk shifted his pre-placed magic traps and aimed it towards Vax'taya.

Tweaking the magic circuits a little bit is a simple work for Lurk, who is the assassin of Daybreak.

After modifying his magic traps and changing its firing direction, he sent a signal to his two allies for his attack.

If they accidentally get caught with the rampant holy mana from the traps, they will suffer from a mind down.

Absorbing normal mana gives a relaxing feeling to a person, however, when it is a holy mana, it will be extremely unbearable for normal beings, even for Adventurers who are blessed with stronger bodies and souls.

Holy mana is exactly what it entails: mana of higher creatures, such as Angels residing within the highest realm, God's Realm.

Mind down is one of the side effects of absorbing too much mana higher than one's affinity for it.

A perfectly healthy person would collapse when suffering from a mind down.

As Vax'taya's gradually weakening aura gets trapped within the vicious ice and fire storm, Lurk then cut off all the magic circuits of his traps.

Vwiiim. KABOOM!

Every single trap, with their magic circuits cut off fired explosions and released all the holy mana from Silvia's skill.

As the center of all the holy mana gushing out of the traps' aftereffects, Vax'taya's body slowly cracked.

With the duration of the ice and fire storm fading out, it revealed more of the aftermath.

Only Vax'taya's head and body remained, all his limbs, wings and tail have been destroyed from receiving the full brunt of the attacks.

[...]

Sensing no danger, the three slowly approached Vax'taya's body planted in the ground.

"It is over for you now." Lurk unhurriedly said to his dying enemy.

"…"

Vax'taya slowly panned his head towards Lurk, with cold glint in his eyes.

"Y-you think it…s ov-eeeer?" Vax'taya flashed an evil grin.

"I am… ju-just… the beginning… o-oofff your… demise!"

As Vax'taya finished his words, his body disintegrated into ashes.

All the energy he absorbed becomes a dark orb, which is a familiar one for Veil.

Sensing it, she covered her right eye to activate her left one's ability to sense the dark powers.

Absorb.

As she finished gesturing her hands towards the orb, the strands of dark energy flowed into the cursed marks, working similarly to magic circuits that received the energy.

Only the tainted evil energy is left within the orb, in which Silvia volunteered to destroy with her holy skills.

Skill: Penitence!

As the beam of holy mana brushed through the dark orb, all the evil energy from the ruined city dissipated, albeit very slowly.

As of today, the city of Plevo has been destroyed, in turn; the strongest advance party of the Gaias has been repelled.