Aldrich flew above the battlefield at a fast-cruising speed, giving himself some time to see what was going on.
The left side of the battlefield was decisively in Aldrich's favor with the variants getting pushed back more and more by the second.
This was entirely within Aldrich's expectations. After all, the vast majority of his forces were there.
Under a slew of massive explosions, deadly sword swings, onslaughts of laser beams and acid and claws and fangs, and Valera's murderous rampage, the variants were nothing but fodder to add to the meat grinder.
At the center, Crab surprisingly managed to survive until now.
The Zombie Giant and Crab were both still engaged in intense battle at a sufficiently high level where they were basically fighting by themselves. The shockwaves of force emitted from the giant and Crab clashing with each other, not to mention their large sizes, meant that the riff raff weakling variants either got blown apart or squished if they even got near that.
Crab seemed to have an interesting ability to convert any damage it took against its shell into energy that boosted its strength and size. That was why little red flecks of light gathered around its shell whenever it got hit by the Zombie Giant's huge blows.
The more energy it gathered, the larger it seemed to get, and by this point, Crab was eight meters tall, almost getting to even footing with the giant's twelve-meter bulk.
At first, the Zombie Giant had thoroughly pushed Crab back, but now, they were in a dead stalemate, exchanging massive blow after blow, echoing out shockwaves with each attack. They were quite literally like two kaijus amid a sea of human sized fighters, their each and every movement accidentally squishing a fishman or crabman.
The Zombie Giant roared as it grabbed crab's pincer in its two burly arms before yanking hard, ripping it off.
In response, Crab retreated backwards, stomping over dozens of its own kind, before focusing energy onto its severed limb. Red gathered around the wound, and then flesh and shell rapidly grew out of it, nearly as good as new, just a little bit thinner.
The regeneration was not as fast or explosive as the Geist's, but any form of regeneration was a pain to deal with when an enemy had an ability that benefited them in longer fights.
"Hm," said Aldrich. "That may be a problem if I let it grow too strong, though I assume there is a limit to the power."
"Shall we deal with that one first?" stated Volantis. "Its bones are quite mighty. I would not mind devouring it and adding it to my collection. And it would serve our forces well to be rid of this creature."
"Crabs don't have bones," corrected Aldrich. "But I get what you mean. Taking Crab out now would not be too hard, either, especially with Seismic here.
However, I trust in Valera to deal with this herself. She has command over all my forces here, after all, and she's shown herself very capable of handlings things without me. If anything, this is another chance for her to prove herself against sudden threats without my assistance."
Valera had already sensed that Aldrich was leaving, which in turn meant that he was not raising more undead to fill up the fifty fishman attack force on the right side of the battlefield.
To compensate, she had moved over to the right side with the Geist and some Blackwater students, abusing the Geist's neurotoxic cloud to keep the variants from advancing easily against comparatively fewer numbers.
When Valera was done routing the variant army at the right side of the battle zone, she would deal with Crab in her own way, Aldrich was sure of it.
Trusting in Valera, Aldrich commanded Crow to soar at full speed over to the flyers. Crow's six eyes gleamed yellow before it forcefully pushed down its wings, loosing a sonic boom of force that sent it hurtling forwards at fighter jet speeds.
Within a minute, Crow had ferried Aldrich right over the line of sea anemones that were now newly manned by the fishmen.
Merman stood at the center of this formation of seven anemones. He seemed to actually be personally manning the anemones, explaining how they had managed to control the anemones so quickly.
At the center of his slimy blue green chest was a crystalline blue spherical organ. It glowed strongly as Merman raised his six hands up to the sky, channeling strands of water from that organ to every single anemone, powering them up manually.
The mermen variants under his rule guarded him in a thick phalanx, generating water construct shields while others fired off spears and blades of water construct energy, raining down a storm of projectiles against the flyers, the majority of whom were huddled behind chunks of fallen buildings.
The fact that Merman was protected like that on top of its lack of offensive movement meant that it needed to use all of its energy and attention to man the anemones, and they were still inactive from firing before.
"Scan for all visible energy signatures," said Aldrich as he surveyed the battle zone from above. "Try and focus on all the humans present."
"Done," said Volantis.
Aldrich could see a hundred or so little white lights shining through building chunks and various other forms of cover: the presence of the flying Alters. He quickly calculated the distance they were from Merman and the anemones and determined that they were not in any danger from Aldrich's next move.
Good.
That meant that they had listened to Aldrich and retreated back. No doubt, their leader had told them to retreat on Aldrich's recommendation, but the way they were holding their hands to their ears, listening in deeply to their earpieces, showed obvious signs that they were listening into comms from the firing line about Aldrich.
In the faces Aldrich could zoom into, he could see expressions of hope.
They were waiting.
Waiting for the savior of the men and women at the firing line and walls to descend upon them.
"Alert me at all times when Shrimp's energy signature moves," said Aldrich. He made a mental note that Shrimp was still underground and immobile, perhaps buried under too much rubble.
Seismic truly must have put in every single ounce of his strength into that last attack, maybe even more.
"My eye is always upon that one," said Volantis. "You need not worry."
"And when Shrimp moves," Aldrich turned to Seismic who stood on Crow's back. "That's when you and I move together. I would like to have you use your powers on the battle zone down here, but you need to be ready at all times to assist me with Shrimp.
I can't deal with strong physical burst DPS like that, at least not for long. And your shockwaves and stats are the best way to put distance between myself and Shrimp when the time arises."
Seismic just nodded, registering Aldrich's commands.
"Now then," said Aldrich as he focused his sight on Merman and his phalanx of hundreds of mermen creating a massive dome of interlocked water construct shields. "It's time for a show."
With that, Aldrich walked off of Crow, free falling down towards Merman.
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