Dark Magus Returns

Chapter 1593: The Underside Fights Dirty

Nearly all of the enemy mages had poured through the breaches at the top, their descent turning the upper sections of the cavernous Underside into a swirling vortex of dust and conflict. The forces, streaming in from the five different entry points, were now fanning out, attacking anything and anyone they could find, aggressively clearing a path toward the empty heart of the defense, the Dark Guild base.

The Dark Guild members, however, were nowhere to be seen.

They had disappeared. They were swiftly flooding out from their headquarters, dispersing into the winding, chaotic cityscape of the Underside. Harvey knew the weakness of the enemy’s power. The highly concentrated Light Beam and devastating teamwork from the Cerberus mages had only worked because the Dark Guild was clumped together in one location. By spreading out, forcing the enemy to break formation and fight in isolated units, the threat was neutralized. The enemy knew that if they attempted to unleash that massive, city-destroying beam again, the resulting friendly fire would cripple their own forces.

The ground battle was underway. The forces from the Dark Guild, now integrated with the many willing local mages, were engaged in brutal, close-quarters fighting against the invaders. The raw numbers on both sides seemed relatively balanced now that the Dark Guild had decentralized, but the sheer power differential was immediately apparent.

The Underside mages were casting basic, simple spells, mostly straightforward wind cuts and raw fireballs, the core magic learned by the population. But as these spells erupted from their palms, they were unnaturally gigantic attacks, propelled by enormous, near-limitless stores of raw mana, a clear sign of the training Raze had implemented.

Despite the size and ferocity of the spells, the enemy’s attacks would often be eaten up as they connected. The Underside fighters noticed that even when they managed to team up and pull off coordinated strikes that successfully hit their targets, the enemy mages either wore powerfully enhanced clothing that rendered the damage negligible, or, far more chillingly, they simply felt no pain at all.

The enemy mages continued to fight through gashes, burns, and breaks. The resilience was horrifying. This terrifying imbalance was a direct result of the Grand Magus’s corporate machine. He was not just sending soldiers; he was sending engineered weapons, funneling all of his illegal equipment and destructive performance-enhancing substances to boost his foot soldiers’ power and resilience far beyond normal limits.

Raze watched the chaos erupt, a wave of bitter self-reproach washing over him. The situation echoed the high-stakes battles he had fought in Pagna against huge, resource-rich Clans. He knew what was needed. He should have spent the time creating strength-boosting pills for everyone, or handed out specialized, arcane equipment to his allies. But everything had happened too fast. The betrayal, the mobilization, the unexpected swiftness of the war, he never anticipated a war of this magnitude to break out here. His complex traps were the only preparedness he’d managed to set up, and now the defenders were paying for his lack of foresight.

The one thing the people of the Underside possessed that the pristine surface mages did not was a superior, intimate knowledge of the terrain. The surface of Alterian was dominated by smooth, organized roads, towering, sterile buildings, and large, open fields perfect for predictable mage battles. The Underside was the opposite: a filthy, dark, twisting labyrinth. It featured endless twists and turns, random, half-buried structures, and secret tunnels dug into the ground that the surface dwellers had never dreamed of. It wasn’t just a place to hide; it was a weapon.

The mages fighting on the ground leveraged this knowledge immediately.

One of the Underside mages, standing at a junction of decaying tunnels, flung both of his hands forward, and large gusts of powerful, focused wind erupted. It was a forceful, concussive push that slammed an enemy mage backward, sending him careening until he crashed violently into a huge heap of metallic scrap, decaying machinery, and sharp debris.

The wind was a non-lethal attack, just enough to disorient, so the enemy mage was shaking off the blow, his face already healing, readying himself to retaliate. Before he could raise his wand, the surrounding garbage pile shook, hissed, and broke apart.

Emerging right through the filth and broken refuse were three dark figures, clearly non-magic users, their skin covered in dirt and old blood, each one holding crudely sharpened pieces of rebar and broken glass. They were the Underside’s hidden army. They immediately lunged, moving with brutal speed and zero finesse, stabbing the dazed mage in the neck, the leg, and several other vulnerable places with their primitive weapons.

These were the citizens who had no magical ability, but had agreed to fight. They used the terrain of the buildings they occupied, and the dark, hidden areas others didn’t know existed. Some had created makeshift Molotov cocktails, bottles filled with flammable refuse, to throw at enemies when they were backed into a specific corner. They were doing anything and everything to win.

The irony was not lost on the surviving citizens. The mages attacking them were playing dirty, using illegal performance-enhancing substances. The Underside people were responding in kind, descending into necessary, desperate brutality.

In some areas, there were even those who had made makeshift projectiles, slingshots or repurposed launchers, shooting tiny, lethal packages at the descending mages. And what was inside these small projectiles was the ultimate weapon: other illegal substances, drugs and unstable chemicals that had been discarded by the surface and fallen into the Underside over the years. Since these enemy mages were already juiced up to the maximum on corporate boosters, a minor chemical imbalance, a tiny dose of an opposing, illegal compound, in their body caused them to lose control instantly. Their veins bulged, their eyes rolled back, and they would practically explode internally, or their hearts would simply stop working, causing them to collapse immediately in a grotesque, terrifying fashion.

The enemy’s greatest strength, their enhanced resilience, was quickly turning into a lethal weakness that could be used against them.

All of the defenders were now left to their own devices, forced to fight localized, desperate battles, because Raze’s trusted core, the elite Pagna warriors, had quickly spread across the defensive areas to meet the greatest threat: the five Masked Cerebus members.

Dame, Beatrix, Safa, and Liam were all faced with four of the terrifying masked elites, immediately engaging in duels that would test their skills to the absolute limit. Meanwhile, the fifth and final masked member was heading straight for the abandoned Dark Guild base.

**

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