The tear in space grew, slicing across ocean and carving through stormy clouds. It silenced relentless hurricane, splitting the waves below in two. Caught in this transcendental slash, Omicron's colossal parasite shrieked in agony.
Edgar, sensing the monster's vulnerability, transformed himself into a living spearhead. He defied physics and kicked off from the mesosphere’s thin air. The Communicator plummeted like a meteor. Friction ignited his descent, turning him into a hypersonic comet of extinction.
Boom! The sound shook the planet to its core.
Omicron's crust buckled under the impact. Edgar's burning form seared Alpha's putrid flesh, shattering the fragmented continental storm. The devastation heralded the first clear skies in eons.
That should have been a killing blow. It wasn't.
Moments before impact, the behemoth had sensed the danger. Using its immense brainpower, Alpha folded space itself. Edgar's strike, precise as it may be, missed by mere meters – enough to wound, but not to kill.
Before the Communicator lay a mountain of bleeding, festering flesh. Undead mass muscle covered by decay and crusted with rotting barnacles. Sunlight, brought by the storm he broke, shone down on the stage. Curtains of salt water draped around them, suspended by the anomaly's subconscious will.
Edgar, moments ago a force of nature, now struggled to raise his sword amidst stenches of corpses and salt. The strain of his godlike attack left him seeing double. His breath came in ragged gasps as Alpha loomed over him.
Though scattered by his initial strike, its minions were already reassembling, intent on eliminating the threat to their master.
The curtain of falling water erupted as Frogmen leapt into view. Their vanguard, bulky and armored, had withstood Edgar's "Alpha Strike" with their defensive biology.
Behind them, a comical armada of diverse Frogmen twisted through the air. Some brandished poisoned pipes and nunchucks, while others sported suicidal adaptations or wielded impractical helicopters blade of a sword.
Edgar couldn't help but quip, "What a clown brigade. But we didn't expect this to be easy, did we?"
As if summoned by his words, space itself cracked open with a thunderous "crash!" Through the Rift Lines marched Edgar's own army, led by Varashad and flanked by Ice Dragons. The sturdy creatures, built like living fortresses, formed a protective barricade around the exhausted Pioneer.
"Everyone's assembled," Varashad announced, positioning himself behind a white steed. "Unleash the Sonic Lance!"
The man raised their weapons - sticks modified with cracked jadeite crystals and Fairy-Woods enchantments. With a deafening roar, they unleashed sonic currents Machin and Baldwin had labored over night to craft. Based on Edgar's own Siren Eagle, those concentrated sound waves punched through Frogmen like an unstoppable lance, shredding flesh from bone.
The First Mate barked more orders: "Focus on suicide bombers and ranged attackers! Let the Dragons handle melee!" His face twisted into a terrified scowl. "And whatever you do, don't turn that thing back on us!"
Edgar Shin, still shaky, struggled to his feet. He stabbed his sword into the mud for support, drew his Siren Eagle, and stood alongside the men buying him time to recover.
There, the first military company of Omicron made its stand around their sovereign. Historians would later fail to capture the glory in sculptures and paintings. Ten torrents of sound waves eviscerated Alpha's spawn. Men screamed bloody defiance at monsters. Ice Dragons, their hides resistant to acid barrages, ripped apart towering amphibians with mighty jaws. The legendary Bravo fought as if he'd consumed fear itself. He let loose a bloodcurdling scream while dual-wielding a proto-Sonic Lance and Phosphorus cannon to fiery effect.
This moment, more than any other, would define Omicron's future civilization. The Stand Under Alpha would become a planetary pride of their history book; the day the first Storm Slayers held battle lines against the dark for their Lord.
Stories would later tell of Edgar Shin's eight consecutive headshots. He even intercepted a poisonous spit mid-air before taking out the shooter in a single breath. He might have done more, but the Rift Stingray fractured the air, opening another Rift Line.
This time, the Nest came to play.
From the far side of Alpha's rotting mass emerged new allies: azure-winged beasts from Leviathan Nest. Omicron Dragons and countless winged serpents, drawn by the trans-dimensional disturbance, swooped in to invade Alpha's territory.
Many amphibious drones could only gape as apex predators descended upon them. Dragons effortlessly chomped through Frogmen like fish. Packs of winged snakes tore into other units like malevolent otters. Despite their numbers, Alpha's forces were falling steadily to the dragons and Edgar's crew. Some of the cleverer dragons even began launching acidic potshots at the colossal mound of flesh itself.
As tides turned, Alpha sensed a need to act. Its plundered intellect grasped the enemies' plan: buy time for the sovereign to recover. With this realization, the necrotic horror unleashed its vast array of powers.
Lightning crackled from the behemoth, arcing down to strike swarms of winged serpents.
Edgar immediately caught on. "Everybody scatter!" he shouted. "We're going for Plan C." He motioned to the familiar hovering in the distance. "Rift-Rift, buddy, call for evacuation!"
The stingray-like being swooped into a Rift Line, off to summon the friends it had made just yesterday.
As they waited for transport, Edgar and co turned to face Alpha's full repertoire. The rotting hill squirmed. Something pulsed beneath its skin before bursting forth in a shower thicker than curd. From that disturbed mound erupted nightmarish menageries: triangular heads of Sea Leviathans, shelled skulls of Omicron Dragons, writhing tentacles of the Kraken.
These monstrous appendages went to work, snatching Omicron Dragons out of the air. Some breathed fire upon Edgar and his crew, scattering their formation.
The Communicator reacted swiftly, shooting down tentacles from the sky and batting away an Omicron Dragon's head with his sword. From a corner of his eye, he caught sight of their ambivalent allies being torn apart by three grotesque imitations of Sea Leviathans. In exchange, one acid jet nicked Alpha. That defiant trade elicited a screech and more lightning.
Peppered beneath raining salvo of bolts, the crew scattered to stay alive. Bravo howled toward the sky as Edgar, Varashad, and the others laid down covering fire.
A Sea Leviathan's zombified head spewed flames at the resistance, downing one Fae. He tumbled on his injured leg, but his fellow brother caught him by the shoulder.
"Hold on," Edgar moved to his injured men, shielding them with a pinpoint shot from his sonic handgun. "They're coming soon!" He gazed at the sky with great expectation.
And right on cue, Thessa’s pet swooped back into material space, following it were their cavalry: the Sky Titans.
Meanwhile, in the surrounding water, wild Sea Leviathans, their nemesis the Island Whales, and stingrays formed a barrier. They stopped the recalled Frogmen from reaching their originator's besieged body. Informed that their survival was at stake, more Omicron creatures flew from the Rift Lines to stop Alpha at all costs.
As the battle raged, fruits of yesterday's desperate diplomacy became evident. Intelligent vertebrates under the exosphere, long oppressed by Alpha's dominion over the lower orbit, had struck a deal with the planet. Now united against their common enemy, they joined the fray with renewed purpose.
Sea Leviathans and Omicron Dragons, though too primitive for such a contract, sensed the danger through the planet's call. Alpha's victory meant their doom. With their future at stake, Omicron's various life forms called truce to overthrow their parasitic overlord.
Colossal tails flipped swarms of Frogmen flying over the horizon; water sprouted upward in a rainbow. Meanwhile, oceanic serpents barricaded the waters with their bodies, halting the amphibious clones' attempt to swim back to their leader. Bladed weapons clashed uselessly against these Leviathans' skin. These offenders never got a say before being swept away by whales or dragged to the depths by countless furious sea lives.
Frantic to break the siege, suicide-bombing units exploded in clouds of noxious toxin. Alas, miniature sunfish worked tirelessly, refreshing the ecosystem with their sweetened enzymes and purifying the sea.
With their temporary allies isolating Alpha, the Omicron Dragons went all-in on an air assault. The parasite screamed and retaliated by spawning endless undead limbs, peppering the air with fireballs and unleashing psychic attacks that dropped draconic predators cold.
Yet those Dragons persevered, proving their title as apex hunters of Leviathan Nest. They tanked through various phenomena, from fire to beam of light, using their natural bioelectric fields. As members were torn to pieces, the survivors' rage only intensified. One particularly furious Omicron Dragon, on the verge of death, dive-bombed its corpse at Alpha with a final, defiant spit in its eyes.
But the most valuable players were the Sky Titans. One member descended to the seabed, allowing the Pioneer's forces to evacuate onto its back while the remaining segmented behemoths rained lightning from above. A select few among the squad began encircling their target, a cunning scheme taking shape in their minds.
Desperate and cut off from its minor bodies, Alpha focused its energy. It prepared to perform the same colossal attack that once snipe-crossed The First Rogue. As a prelude, it stretched a psychic net across the water, stirring the vast ocean into another raging storm.
But as it prepared to strike, its mind blanked out. A quick observation revealed why: Edgar's first cut had severely injured it, and even sheer Wizardry could not ignore the subsequent comet strike. Despite its vast mental resources, Alpha's mystical powers had been severely diminished by such continent-crushing force. The relentless attacks from myriad flying beasts only worsened its condition.
Enraged and fearing for its life, it reached deeper into its arsenal and did something no one imagined it could do: it opened its eyes.
The congregation of living corpses shuddered. Thousands of slits emerged across its flesh, cracking open to reveal spoiled eyeballs soured with green veins. Some aerial attackers made a fatal mistake of glancing directly into this eldritch vision. Infected by Alpha's maddening command, they turned on their allies.
Edgar noticed one Sky Titan, driven mad, ramming towards them. "Everyone hold on," he shouted as their ride collided to another behemoth in an impactful crunch. Few men yelped, barely saved from falling into the bloodstained sea.
In the sky, chaos engulfed the atmosphere. Allies turned on each other, raining blood into the brine beneath. As if that wasn't enough, the Rift Lines bringing reinforcements began to close.
Smelling fragrance of wood behind him, Edgar Shin turned to see Magister Eleanor emerging from the Rift Lines that soon crumbled away.
"Eleanor?" He asked, grappling onto a crackling carapace of the Sky Titan. "Are you okay? What's happening?" He gestured widely at the rapidly disappearing Rift Lines, their route for reinforcement vanishing.
"Thessa's overheated." She stumbled atop the shuddering Sky Titan that had successfully disengaged from its insane comrade. "You're not getting any more backup."
"But didn't you share your spell-slot with her?" he recalled their plan, feeling his body cooling back to its original temperature. "She shouldn't be running out so soon."
Eleanor produced the Elvaine's Blood. "She's been opening gateways across the entire planet. Yes, our Ritual Wizardry allows her to use my reserve, but her brain must process each cast. It was only a matter of time until she overheated." She slipped on the ring. "Don't worry, I'm here to pick up the slack."
Fueled by flames, shadows unleashed. Eleanor surfed on the planet's electromagnetic field, drifting from their Sky Titan, a collective of ions and electrons fluttering around her sleeve. Instinctively, her hand slipped into a meditative seal.
Her focus sharpened. Plasma stirred and coagulated. In the sky above, a sun formed. Through glares lit with burning hell, the Magister lifted her arms high, preparing to bring the star's torch upon a horror from the ocean depths.
Sensing the impending power contest, flying beasts fell back from the showdown's epicenter. Edgar, however, did not retreat. He knew he needed to stay a little longer, as strength slowly reignited in his arteries.
From the open blue, Magister Eleanor channeled the might of a century-old monster. She hurled the scorching stars upon the thousand-eyed abhorrence.
The grotesque horror detected the danger. Too injured for complex spatial distortion, it contested Eleanor with raw power, reversing gravity to return the miniature sun to its sender.
Overwhelmed in raw power for the first time, Eleanor smirked and deployed a technique kept under her cape. Born from others' insults about her reliance on power, she had constructed this move to force detractors to eat their words.
With vast control, she twisted her attack into a bundle and exploded it into fifty different strands traveling at quadruple speed.
Alpha's gravity manipulation, subject to the original sun, lost effect immediately upon the split. Inexperienced in magical duels, the horror was caught unaware and unable to react. Countless scorching licks of stellar flares swept across its decomposed skin and eyes, burning them ashen black. In pain, it elicited agonizing psychic cries.
Torched black and on the verge of death, it roared in mental waves that trembled the air. Cracks emerged from the blackened mound, and to declare its will to live, it punched through its charcoal shell.
Wet and sloppy, the monster leaked rancid fluid. Textured like a sloping, pale chunk of molten cream, a fangless dragon emerged. It opened its black maw to unveil more minuscule wiry limbs, each long neck ending in goopy ringed eyes. Bubbling with fear, the creature brought down a gravity field, intent on dragging the flying Eleanor into the endless stretch of blue.
A slice of crystal blade ended that spell short.
Fully recovered, Edgar reentered the battle, his aching body charged with Planetary Energy. Leaping from the Sky Titan, he spun across the air and splashed back down upon the arena. He stood tall against the abomination in its last throes.
Witnessed by all, he pointed his blade at Alpha. "I'm back. Time for round two."
To that challenge, the horror's countless limbs glared and opened fire with rays of sapphire death.
In that stadium, the curtain of crashing brine suspended by immense will quaked. The final showdown for the title of Omicron's ruler commenced.