Mel had paid WAY more attention to us than I had expected. Not enough to know we were spies, but in a way that was even more impressive. She hadn't known we were special or anything, she had just watched us closely because we were part of the Pavilion. We were her people, and she looked out for her own the only way she knew how. Helping them get stronger. If we hadn't come clean already the whole thing would have made me feel like a giant asshole. Luckily we had, so I didn't have any distractions from her strategies for deploying us.

Not that it would have mattered. They were more straightforward than expected, but they were also highly efficient and shockingly intuitive for what we could do. The basic breakdown of what she wanted from us was pretty simple. Firstly she wanted us far away from either of the enemies, avoiding direct conflict. As skilled and talented as we were, we didn't have the raw stats to keep up with people like Beat and Sever aside from short bursts from Skill powerups.

In order to counter that particular weakness Mel told us about a useful and extremely powerful type of attack called an 'invocation'. An invocation was, at its core, a group Skill. Sort of like a larger version of what Callie and I had already been doing when we merged Skills. It was apparently uncommon at lower levels because of the strain I had already noticed and been using to train my own Skills. Something Mel called 'soul weight'.

Invocations had a ton of soul weight. More than any of the Skills we had been using up to this point, and Mel made it clear that even a three person invocation wouldn't be something any of us would be able to bear. As I had already discovered, the ability to resist soul weight was independent of stats or Skills, and Mel likened it to training the soul as a muscle. Soul strength was an important part of cultivation and became more so as we ranked up, but at the moment even the training I had been doing didn't come close to enough.

Soul strength increased naturally as we ranked up as well, the weight of our Impact and other stats acting as a form of passive growth, but for any abilities that crossed the rank gap, you needed to train it up ahead of time, and it also made the rank up and Skill growth process easier. Abel's soul strength was massive for his level, which was one of many reasons he was such an absolute monster in combat. If you didn't have enough soul strength to use a powerful Skill, even if you had the stats and Skills to use it, your soul would collapse under the weight, similar to the effects of ranking up with too many stats from elixirs.

I was incredibly lucky I'd been training mine so consistently without meaning to, otherwise that flame burst I'd used on the asshole with the gas power would have straight up killed me. All this was to say that while we could theoretically use an invocation to smash one of the others, none of us could bear the soul weight to actually DO it. Luckily Alden was old and had been in G-rank for decades or longer. His soul strength was pretty substantial, and he agreed to support us in the invocation so we could effectively use the combination of abilities in the attack that Mel wanted.

The abilities she wanted us using were...a doozy. The attack we were supposed to execute required massive stacks of effort and Skill from all of us. From Callie, the strongest shadow attack she could use, a massive sea of powerful shadow blades, which I would be doubling up on by dumping in two of her stored full power attacks (more would apparently be too much even for Alden). From Benny, a triple damage, a density shift, and some of that cerebral overclocking to let Callie maneuver them more easily.

Finally, I was going to be putting in the most, even if most of it was subskills. Mercy Kill, Consecration of Flame, Touch of Tears, Stone Limb, and an Afterburner to top it all off. The raw power of the attack we were cooking up would have pretty much flattened any of us, and Mel said even she wouldn't have been able to bear the weight of it. Luckily Alden had a soul strength second only to Abel, and he would be able to keep it up for approximately thirty seconds. Thirty seconds for Callie to attack with everything all three of us had.

Even for a member of the Titan Twenty and someone whose stats were probably multiple times what mine were, I was pretty sure this would be enough to take them down. Or at least I hoped so. It also made me even more determined to increase my soul strength as I had been. So much of the fluidity in the system was down to the strength of the soul, and the more I increased it the better I could use that. I was pretty sure I'd even be able to manipulate stored attacks like they were my own if I got it high enough, and that alone would be reason enough to do it.

The process of the invocation wasn't complicated, surprisingly. What it WAS was difficult, and it required a lot of trust. Much like I knew Callie needed to let me work with her Skills and vice versa, in order to the invocation we all needed to open up our power to each other completely. It wasn't something you could just do with a stranger. It required a level of implicit belief in another person that I wouldn't have had with anyone but my team. Alden, who was just taking the weight on himself rather than adding anything in, had less stringent requirements, and we did trust the old man quite a bit for all the help and training, even if not to the same extent.

We were lucky to have him with us really. Using an invocation wasn't just a matter of being high ranked, you needed someone with enough soul strength, and that amount changed based on how much power was used. That meant you either needed someone like Alden who was extremely powerful for his rank from long term training, or you needed someone higher ranked to take the weight, which kind of defeated the purpose since at that point they could just USE a higher ranked Skill.

The actual execution of the attack just required physical contact and the use of all the Skills we'd picked out. Each of us put a hand on Alden and funneled in the abilities we needed to use. It wasn't exactly effortless. There was still some soul weight on my side that I needed to bear to mold the attacks into something that could be shaped by Alden. Touch of tears wasn't naturally made to be given to another person, and I hadn't finished the process of altering that one to be usable easily by others, so I had to do that manually.

Still, we managed to get all of it in place, and Alden was able to bear it. We didn't sever the connection after that though. Callie would be directing the actual attack with her Shadow Manipulation Skill. Alden was just acting as the cauldron where we mixed the ingredients so to speak. Knowing time was short, the bearded man grunted when he was done, nodding to Callie. "Thirty seconds lass, can't hold it longer, so make it count." His voice was rough with strain that I recognized from my own attempts at Skill manipulation.

Callie took a deep breath. "Got it. Let's do this." She triggered the invocation, staring out past the wall of flame through a small hole Mel had made in the barrier for us to use. With a focused effort she held out a hand, unleashing...power. The result of the invocation was staggering. A wave of magma infused darkness that almost seemed like a forest of power snaking up from the ground surrounding the already fading Shadow Swamp.

Mel had told us she was having the most trouble with Sever. Beat's abilities weren't as effective a counter against her flames, but Sever could cut through her defenses if he had time to prepare, so it was our job to pin him down at the very least. Once Mel finished Beat she would jump in, providing the other twin was still alive at that point. Callie was supposed to go at him all out. Thirty seconds wasn't really that long in the grand scheme of things, but in a fight between people with our levels of Perception and Focus, there was still a lot that could be done in that time.

The magma shadows scythed through the air at Sever, aiming for several vital points on his body and attacking with very little warning. Little was apparently enough, however, because the masked blade user reacted nearly instantly. His body nearly blurred as he flickered between stabs, the red light on the edge of his knife parting the few that managed to get close like an axe through tissue paper. The only thing that prevented it from being a perfect evasion was the very last of the Shadow Swamp. One of the dark tentacles had lashed around an ankle, and while Sever had dispatched it quickly, it slowed him down enough for one of the magma spears to graze his shoulder.

There was a blaze of poison fire as the sleeve of his hoodie went up and his non-knife hand flickered up to tear it free, tossing the burning fabric away even as he exposed the smoldering gash in his arm. I saw his knuckles grip his knife hilt harder as he turned to glare through the flames right at us, but he was already in motion, dodging yet another wave of poisonous magma spears aimed at his vital spots.

The next twenty seconds or so were a blur of flashing lights and flickering knives as Sever danced between the attacks. His Vitality was countering the arm wound, but Callie managed to surprise him and score another on his leg, which he cut free with his knife to save time so he didn't get pincushioned while dealing with the injury. The longer it went on though, the more certain I became that even with this invocation, we wouldn't be able to finish this in time.

Mel seemed to agree, because she waited until the last possible second and then completely bypassed Beat to attack Sever while he was distracted just as Callie was launching the last assault Alden could handle the weight of. Beat dashed across the ring with a shout, desperately trying to rescue his brother, but he needn't have bothered. As a wave of golden fire smashed into Sever's location in the shape of a roaring flame serpent a golden wall of gentle energy appeared in front of him, soundlessly cancelling out the roaring flames, melting them like snow in the sunshine.

Serenity appeared next to the pair even as Abel's fist created a massive crater in the ground where she'd been standing. Apparently the rabbit masked warrior had been distracted by momentarily by the shout and given Serenity an opening to regroup with the others. Abel took a step, appearing next to Mel as he creating a fluid zone of space between the two points, all but teleporting up to where his partner was standing. He checked her over with concern, and the hand she laid on his face showed better than any smile how much she adored him.

I cleared my throat. "Sorry to interrupt the couple time guys, but they seem to have grouped up, and I somehow doubt this is going to be the end of it." Without letting on what I was doing I triggered a trip of heal bursts, one each for Alden, Abel, and Mel, bringing our best back up to not only peak efficiency, but beyond as they were infused with fresh lifeforce to keep them going. Then I turned back to the enemy. I hadn't been bullshitting just then. I didn't think this was over. Not by a long shot.