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(Huh... sorry, I completely missed that post.)

To his glaring baring of teeth, she only offered an overly anime-esque smile of hidden malice at him. And it looked a lot like this.

^_______________^

Did he want her to approach? It wouldn't be happening, it wasn't her style. Unlike other mage-types, she knew better than to throw herself in the middle of any fray. She was much more useful and out of danger where she was, doing what she was doing. As for that... she was spinning her hands once more, her feet now moving in small steps, matching her humming. Why would she have to do any more than that? The man remained more or less swarmed by the shadows, despite her attack.

To do anything else would endanger the situation, and mean more needless work for her.

[1/2]

Leo suddenly grinned, squeezing the handle of his cleaver tightly so the shadow's couldn't force him to drop it.

"Insects are adaptable, they live and regenerate" Leo said calmly, "They have a F#$&#xin;g meaning! Now learn it!"

Wasps emerging from his coat, each one with a fire fly on its back. The wasps expanded his psychic energy as they flew outwards, creating a sphere of psychic energy. This time, the psychic energy had light properties, the light of fireflies, when imbued with the right type of human emotional energy, was the insect adaptation of holy light, dispersing negative energy. The shadows, if they remained in the sphere, would feel a burning as their negative energy was dispersed, their connection to the negative energy plain would be severed.

If that was sufficient to free him, he'd run straight for Descant, moving fast, his wasps and firefly riders of the wasps keeping negative energy and shadows at bay.

The second nest of wasps with firefly riders would empty as well, a swarm of twenty Vespa, each over an inch long, protected by holy light of the fire flys. These Vespa would race towards Descant, stingers ready, and they reach her in seconds, attacking in triangular formation.



With Leo's blood already shed, these hornets were in blood craze mode, their abdomens pumping venom at an accelerated rate, concentrating it 9 times the normal toxicity for each sting.

Hives in use: 2 out of 5.

Not only was the man wasting his spiritual energy, he was wasting his bugs. The exact same way the roaches met resistance, so would these wasps... her cloak continued to cover her body and the wasps were free to remain in the area until the holy energy was drowned in darkness and just like the roaches before them, drop out of the air. Any hopes of stinging her through the cloak was going to fail because as previously stated, it wasn't touching her. It was at least an inch off her body. Its current state was also good enough to protect her against magic-imbued supersonic bullets so the stinger of a wasp or thirty was cake. To make sure that there was no off-chance of something crawling beneath it, she limited her footwork to small, choppy steps as well as lowering just a bit... tucking. However, the Song of Shields and Dance of Titans didn't stop.

Even from her lowered position and as the insects met the resistance, her protected shuffling ended and at the established down-beat she slammed her foot down on the ground. The result of it was a shockwave in the ground good enough to make all but the most athletic and nimble stumble... which would mean that her entourage some number of feet behind her dropped to knees and behinds. Leo going head-over-heels wouldn't have been surprising. That is, if he wasn't already floored from the spirits and other ghouls... in which case, it'd just serve to stop any attempts at getting up.

Her entourage soon stood and approached to assist in the ending of this.

[2/2]

As stated before, whatever 'holy' energy, however it was used, would still be swallowed up. No matter what the use, it was the same thing, and consequently in the same ways ineffective.

Now, if the shield was made up by a part 'holy' energy, and that energy was destroyed, then wouldnt that make the shield overall weaker than it should be?

But that didnt matter. The psychic shield was effective only against the shadow's direct feed of life from the man by contact, as when they could no longer rip into his body. Psionics gave the ability to make contact to incorporeal beings, in this case, shadows, which would protect against the direct feed of negative energy from their bodies by contact, but in no way were they a counter agent against negitive energy of the land. Only positive energy, or the genertic term of 'holy', the opposite of negative energy, would do anything. But sadly, the land didnt allow that.

So, as it didnt affect the area effect of the land itself, as infinite the amounts of bugs as it may seem that can crawl out of the man's internals, through his nostrils or holes in his chest or wherever they lived to safely get into the land, once they were out and away from the body, it was only a matter of time before the land killed them.

So, as the attempts beforehand to knock him down beforehand were never adressed and completely ignored, it will be assumed that the man didnt go down at all.

The shadow's would be pushed away by the barrier of force, thrown about in the air, but then the insects would die right after, being away from the body. So what of the barrier when the insects died from exposure to the natural elements?

As for needles... well, what of them? They were just needles, coated in toxin. Nothing magical about them. Near silent but for the small mechanical click from the launchers which would be drowned out by the louder song of the woman. Near invisible because... they were needles moving at sub-sonic speeds similar to that of a blowgun; small, fast, and with the angle of attack, directly in front of the man, they had little to no profile. Would he be able to see a one millimetre diameter needles speeding towards him in the gloomy terrain without light to reflect off of?

The insects were expanding the barrier, so they would remain inside it, they could only expand it less than a meter in diameter, and the amount of time they could dod so was limited. They simply pushed it out forcefully to throw the shadows into the air. The spherical barrier would disapate when this was acheived, but the insects would remain string tied to Leo's barrier, keeping barriers of their own.

As for the elements here, they weren't natural, nothing was natural about this place, it was as said before, defiled.

The holy aura was depleted, the fireflies died as they ran out of energy, their husks remaining atop the wasps. The wasps remained protected by Leo's psychic sheild, however, despite the quick depletion of the holy energy produced by the fireflies. They wouldn't drop out of the air unless their connection to Leo was broken.

Their were a total of twenty wasps in formation around Descant, another twenty protecting Leo. The twenty formed around Leo would take the needles. The first clicks of their firing caught him off guard, and the wasps flew into the path, impaling themselves so as to blunt the needles, release any toxins, and slow their velocity. They would do this with anything that Leo himself couldn't sense or avoid, and the psychic energy they carried would return to Leo if they died, when they died.

The wasps around Descant were flying at speeds in the hundreds of kilometers per hour, they would dash for her face, hopefully sting it before she could completely close the hood, if she could completely close the hood and still see. Instead of attacking the hole, they flew clear of the Treble blast, most flew behind her, and about ten attempted to get inside her cloak as she created the second stomp. Some flew above her, harrasing her hood and her hands.



It wasn't infinite, like the power of this negative land, but Leo carried a great deal of insects. His hair was filled with lice and fleas, his cloak lined with wasp and hornets nests, ussually he only carried around a thousand fleas, but fleas were so tiny he could carry thousands more if her chose to. Parasites, tape worms, pin worms, and nasty flesh eating worms, lived in his bowl and their eggs were under his fingernails. We wouldn't want to go into details where many of the roaches came from, he had been giving them a free ride of sorts. And his giant pet fly Clarabelle resided in his coat pocket. The hornets had kept the fire flies in their nest as food. His nostrils were filled with little red blood ticks at the moment. He had a few thousand flea eggs that he could induce to hatch if needed, in small containers.

That was his stock, a few of the nests already dpleted, but even an army of insects would be useless against the infinite power of this place. If it wasn't for Leo's mental powers, he would have already been dead.



Leo dropped into the pit, right in the center, but landed with a slight crouch, immediatly meeting the attackers who dove in after him with his blade. He swung his cleaver across the chest of the first figure, not waiting for reaction as he turned on his momentum and sliced his along cleaver along the figures neck, and crossed the blade down along its torso. He moved with a fast fluid motion, keeping his movements timed to avoid being caught as he attacked. A psychic pulse ripped out from his blade, it would have the effect of tearing through flesh and allowing the blade to slice these beings even if they were only apparations and not undead as he thought. If they were undead, the pulse would only be slightly less effective, but that would be counter by the increased effectiveness of his keenly sharp blade and the effective chopping momentum of the cleaver.

Clarabelle buzed in his pocket, morse code, as Leo was in the midst of his attack.

"Ya, F%&^, we'll die here in a F^%&ing pit" Leo spit, "But let's have some f*%^ing fun before we go, eh?!"

Her own ghouls also had large robes on with mesh faces where the hood would be to hide the fact that they were ghouls from any public venue she performed at. So if it mattered at all, there'd be that much more resistance against the man's wild hacking.

Their clothes were quite unspectacular compared to her own, especially in its current state. Her cloth was deceptively large and able to fold over to hold various things in pockets created from that folding. The important thing was that there was enough sheer length to cover her entire body and drag the ground. Knowing that there were wasps about, she'd be sure that there were openings from behind or below that a stray wasp may find and seek to attack her. The sight area had been closed ever since he'd launched the insects, and there was no change in that. The only hole existing was that where sound traveled.

She did not have to see him to know where he was.

She knew there were wasps remaining by the incessant beating of their wings, so wouldn't dare stick her hand out where it could be stung or attacked, or whatever they were meant to do to her. She instead attacked from inside the cloak that was currently acting as a shell, a cloak that closed so that no wasps could get in. It was quite troublesome to keep track of so many small sounds in front of her- those behind and above were of no consequence- but it was what she did.

The effect of ghouls pouncing the man... that had yet to be seen, if he cleaved through them only to get needled, or what. However, she wouldn't wait for anything to play out. She thrust her hand forward, and the cloak opened again for another attack. Had Leo been standing, he could have seen the distortion in air. However, he could hear it.. and it'd be little less than a whine, a ringing in the ear.

Her normal Concussion worked on the principal of sound walls or forces, disruption and sound incredible, yet able to be heard. Anything happening there could result in deafness, along with the chance of being KOed at close range. However this attack was above the range of human hearing. So high that glass, had there been any, would shatter and ears would bleed. Though it'd sound like someone scraping their nails on a chalkboard, the effect was much worse. She was shaking him down to his ears, his bones, his mind... and if it was all going well (which it should, why shouldn't it?), he'd start feeling like someone was curb-stomping his brain as it was being melted.

Half a second to draw and also throw a knife of some sort into the ghoul's face, which would be within an arm's reach of the man himself, for the ghoul was making a close quartered attack. Going by an average person's arm length, could consider the distance between the two to be less than two and a half feet. The time it takes for a person to extend one's arm to its full distance in such a way to indicate an attack; fast, because velocity is a factor which determines force, would simply mean that by the half second's time it took to throw the weapon, the clawed fingers would have driven themselves into the man's eye sockets. Because as noted, the psychic barrier only protected against energy attacks rather than physical ones. Not to mention the questionable manuever to actually throw a blade with only two feet of distance.

As for the cleaver hacking into the ghoul's body... well, it was undead, it didnt matter much what the hell happened to its guts. And so it would be split in twain, and have a knife in its face, though in the end, the attack did still go out to rip apart the man's face.

Additionally, with its forward lunging motion, it would essentially still be moving forward if it was cut in half, time to actually stop the body being almost non existant if it was ripped in half first.

So, with his arms busy swinging the cleaver and throwing the blade at the ghoul's face in the duration of a half second that was less than two and a half feet away, the ghouls would be split in half at the chest down, its claws poking into the man's skull by the eyes and then crashing into him afterwards, there wouldnt be much time to grab an arm which would no longer be outstretched. The other arm, once the upper toso struck the man's body, would wrap itself around the man and grab on as it made a miserable attempt to eat the man's throat even when it was more or less useless now.

As for the other ghouls, they just continued shooting the needles from either side, regardless of their now near-dead half bodied buddy. They just didnt aim at the ghoul which would attach itself to the man. Everything else was game though. Side of the head and neck, arms, whatever.