Adam and Ophelia appeared before the bone giant one behind the other, and lightning and greatsword struck at its skull almost in the same instant.
The First Servitor's arm tightened around the crystal skeleton of its own accord. The bone giant flung both hands up over its head, and the bone spurs along its arms shot outward, knitting into a wall of bone that wrapped its skull in a hazy white glow.
Thunder and blade ground against bone with a noise that set the teeth on edge, boring through the wall of bone like a pair of drills; then, without a word between them, the two arched their bodies in midair like drawn bows and hurled themselves at the skull, driving forward with no thought of turning back.
Cristel and William stared open-mouthed at the two of them cutting loose, so stunned they paid no mind even to the screech of metal on glass in their ears. William was shaken by their strength; Cristel only murmured anxiously, "Miss Ophelia."
Thump. Thump.
Both of the bone giant's arms were sheared off at once and struck the ground with a dull thud, then crumbled away across the earth like dust. Adam and Ophelia, spent, were flung back.
The First Servitor screamed in agony; white light shot from her eyes again and again, blasting patches of vacuum that annihilated every mortal substance they touched.
"It worked. Its energy isn't limitless!"
Before the four of them the bone giant regrew its arms, but its bulk was shrinking fast: a body that had stood nearly twenty meters tall was now under fifteen.
"Damn it! Damn it!" The First Servitor roared over and over, and white radiance burst out from it indiscriminately in every direction; then a low, obscure incantation filled the space between sky and earth.
The spell he had just cast had drained Adam's entire mana reserve in one burst, so for the moment he had no way to obstruct the First Servitor's divine spell. Fortunately the other three weren't quite that stupid; they knew the enemy couldn't be left free to cast, and they leaped into the air together to attack the bone giant.
Ophelia displayed astonishing strength. The blaze of mana around her burned brighter and brighter, and every slash of the magic sword in her hands carved off great sheets of bone. By Adam's calculations her power now wholly surpassed his own: if I went up against her in this state, I wouldn't stand a chance.
Just then the First Servitor's long incantation ran out, and she bellowed, "Dead Rise."
White light flashed. Then the bone it had lost — the severed arms, the ashes that had dissolved into the world as dust — all reappeared, and knitted itself together at tremendous speed until skeleton soldiers stood packed shoulder to shoulder across the whole region.
Each skeleton soldier carried a blade or saber of bone, and each was wrapped in white light and able to fly.
"Believers! Hear the god's call and return to this world! Slay the heretics with the mighty power the Supreme God has granted you, and prove your loyalty!"
At the First Servitor's words, fire flickered inside the skull of every skeleton soldier. As one they opened their jaws in a silent roar and threw themselves at the four, fearless of death.
The divine spell called Dead Rise had cost the First Servitor an enormous amount of energy, and its body shrank again, down to ten meters; but with it came a vast increase in agility. It stamped both feet hard against the ground, leaped more than a hundred meters into the air, and came down running flat out straight ahead.
Adam triggered the defensive magic rune in his necklace. The earth element stirred to life, and a three-meter-tall earth elemental was summoned forth; it swallowed Adam into its belly and went rampaging through the crowd of skeletons. It had no way to destroy them in bulk, but their attacks had no effect on it either.
Adam found that he could still make himself heard from inside the elemental's body: "Stop it! Don't let it get away — its energy is almost spent!"
The three of them understood at once why the First Servitor was running: it meant to find a human town and replenish itself by blood sacrifice. If it slipped away and completed the sacrifice, the four of them were finished — in a war of attrition like this, once one side was resupplied the other had no chance at all.
Cristel drew a scroll from her robes with great care and tore away part of it. All the air in front of her was sucked away entirely, and then the outside atmosphere came crashing in, crushing every skeleton within a hundred meters of her into fine powder. She took no notice of the feat; she simply launched herself into the air and gave chase to the bone giant.
At Adam's words Ophelia gripped the magic sword in both hands and charged along the ground, faster and faster, everything in the path of her blade smashed to pieces; then the blaze of mana condensed into a pair of wings at her back, and Ophelia beat them and took flight.
Adam had no attention to spare for them. Once he felt his spiritual power and mana recover, he dismissed the earth elemental outright; the necklace dimmed, but unlike the ring it did not shatter.
"Adam, I—" William shouted to Adam, bedraggled. His fire elemental magic was largely canceled out by the white light around the skeleton soldiers, and with no properly ranked spell as a trump card he could only fight to stay alive among them, with no strength left to strike back.
"Get out of here." Adam said those four words to William coldly, then traced the water elemental magic rune with his spiritual power. Mist began to fill the region, damp and cold; then Adam cast out streaming fire, and the steam rose on the air currents into clouds, threads of lightning flickering through them.
William shuddered without meaning to. Realizing that Adam was about to cast some large-scale magic, he hurried away into the distance, not even sparing a thought for the skeleton soldiers hacking at him as he went.
Electrical runes surfaced around Adam and vast amounts of mana poured into them; bolt after bolt flickered through the damp air, the concentration of the electrical element climbing ever higher, and countless skeletons cracked apart under the shocks.
Suddenly the ether crystal in Adam's hand shattered outright. He shot up into the sky, driving his spiritual power at full stretch, and rune after rune raced into being and merged into the clouds.
A killing stillness fell over sky and earth, but the skeleton soldiers knew no fear; they rose into the air and came at Adam.
William felt as though a boulder were pressing on his chest, squeezing the breath out of him. He did not dare delay even an instant, and only once he was clear of the thunderclouds did he turn and look back in dread.
"My God."
In his sight Adam hung between the darkened sky and earth like a thunder god incarnate, serpent coils of current wrapped around his whole body, flickering so fast his face could not be made out. Adam rose again into the thundercloud, and the next second countless enormous bolts came down like the end of the world, their glare all but blinding William.
About a minute later the light faded. William coated his eyes with psychokinesis and tentatively opened them: not one skeleton soldier remained in sight, the terrifying thundercloud and its bolts were gone, and only Adam hung high in the air, face pale, gasping for breath.