Pratesias smirked with satisfaction. The arrogant smile etched clearly across his face radiated an unmatched sense of superiority. His eyes stared intently at Arvin Vedegra's figure, who was now surrounded by dozens of his elite troops.
For the King, this was the moment he had been waiting for the most. He was incredibly impatient to see Arvin, the very last member of the Vedegra bloodline, die soaked in blood within his palace. The absolute extinction of the Vedegra family was now right before his eyes.
However, not far from the destroyed entrance of the throne room, Arvin remained extremely calm. He did not feel the slightest bit daunted seeing the dozens of soldiers and assassins darting toward him to attack. Yet, beneath that calm facade, his gaze radiated pure murderous intent.
The blue-haired man had come to this place with only one absolute goal: to destroy those who dared to invade his territory and enslave the people living there, all for the sake of a gold mine.
The greed of the Victoriaz Kingdom, which had allied with the Flamort and Marland Kingdoms to attack his domain, was truly an unforgivable sin.
"I don't have time to entertain grunts like you!"
Along with those words, he raised his left hand and aimed it straight ahead with an open palm.
Rumble...
The floor of the throne room beneath their feet suddenly shook violently. The tremor felt like a small-scale earthquake centered in one spot. However, the elite soldiers and assassins paid it no mind. They ignored the vibration and kept charging forward to fulfill their King's command.
But what they did was a fatal mistake.
Using the earth element magic under his control, Arvin altered the structure of the floor beneath their feet in a matter of seconds.
Unexpectedly, without them realizing where they came from, and before they even had the chance to react in the slightest, dozens of sharp stone stalagmites suddenly erupted from beneath the floor at a 45-degree angle.
Zrash!
The sound of flesh and bone being brutally torn apart echoed simultaneously throughout the throne room.
The elite soldiers and assassins sprinting at full speed toward him were instantly impaled by the sharp stone pillars. The attack was so sudden that all of their bodies were pierced clean through from front to back.
They all died instantly. Their bodies were suspended in the air, dying in a standing position, with blood-drenched stalagmites piercing through them gruesomely.
Fresh blood pouring from their gaping wounds immediately pooled on the throne room floor. A horrifying silence instantly engulfed the atmosphere in the room once all the elite forces were dead.
Pratesias's arrogant smile vanished without a trace. The King, along with his two brothers, was beyond shocked to see the horrific scene that had just unfolded right before their eyes.
In the blink of an eye, with just a single wave of a hand, more than sixty of their proudest elite palace guards had been obliterated. Not a single one of those troops had managed to launch an attack. Not even one had succeeded in touching the edge of Arvin's body.
However, the last Vedegra descendant was not finished with his actions yet.
He activated his magic once more. But this time, he used the ice magic that for centuries had been the identity and pride of the Vedegra family.
Crack!
All the corpses of the Victoriaz Kingdom's elite forces perched upon the sharp stones were slowly encased in ice crystals. The dripping blood froze mid-air, and in a matter of seconds, the dozens of corpses turned into ice statues.
Casually, Arvin lowered his hand. He stared straight at the three brothers positioned around the throne area.
"Will the three of you be my next opponents?"
Hearing what the Vedegra descendant had just said, the pride of the Victoriaz Kingdom felt as though it had been trampled upon. Near the throne, Wiltan, who had been standing to Pratesias's right this whole time, finally made his move.
The figure of the Second Prince of the Victoriaz Kingdom suddenly vanished from sight, as if his body had been completely erased from reality without leaving the slightest trace of movement.
In the blink of an eye, Wiltan manifested right behind Arvin's back. His hands firmly gripped a sword that was already swinging through the air, ready to decapitate the last Vedegra descendant from his blind spot.
"So, you can use blink magic?" Arvin remarked in a relaxed tone, clearly sensing the air fluctuation behind him.
With an incredibly swift and fluid motion, Arvin pivoted his upper body backward.
Clang!
He raised his sword and parried the vertical slash launched by Wiltan with absolute precision.
What?! Wiltan was deeply shocked by his opponent's reflexes.
All this time, besides King Pratesias, who had indeed sparred with him directly and anticipated his movements while training his blink magic, Arvin was the first person outside the palace capable of blocking his surprise attack so effortlessly.
"Anyone without a high mana sensitivity would surely die instantly when attacked out of nowhere from a blind spot like this." Arvin said casually, his voice betraying no strain at all even as he locked blades with the Second Prince. His pair of blue eyes stared straight into Wiltan's increasingly panicked eyes. "No wonder the trained soldiers in my territory could be defeated so quickly by a trick like this."
Zap!
Feeling humiliated, Wiltan's figure vanished once more. He teleported and reappeared right behind Arvin's back, intending to execute the exact same surprise attack for the second time at an even faster speed.
However, the gap in their fighting instincts was as vast as the heaven and the abyss.
Thud!
As he spun his body, Arvin unleashed a fierce kick with tremendous speed and precision. The kick landed squarely and flawlessly on Wiltan's stomach.
Crack! Bang!
The impact of the kick was utterly brutal. Wiltan's body was sent flying backward at breakneck speed, smashing through the ice statues of his subordinates and shattering them into pieces, before finally crashing violently into the palace wall.
"AGHHH!!!!"