The war still raged across the battlefield, and at the center of the chaos stood Solarynth.
Front ranks of the Pandemonium Legion barely had time to brace themselves before he reached them.
A streak of blue, violent lightning tore violently across the battlefield, weaving between spear points and shield walls faster than the human eye could properly follow, soldiers shouted warnings to one another, but the words came too late.
Then came the impact.
Solarynth crashed directly into the center of the formation with a lightning-infused side kick, the collision erupting outward like a thunderclap splitting the battlefield apart.
The force detonated through the tightly packed soldiers, sending three of them flying backward through the air as their shields shattered into fragments, formation folded inward instantly, breaking apart beneath the sheer violence of the strike.
"Hold the line!" one commander shouted desperately, raising his sword. "Don't let him break through!"
Before anyone could recover, Solarynth was already moving again.
His Kurie eyes glowed brightly, celestial rings spiraling within them as they tracked every twitch of muscle and every fluctuation of mana around him, to him, the battlefield had slowed into patterns and predictions.
A soldier swung a sword toward his neck.
Solarynth dipped beneath the blade with smooth precision another soldier thrust a spear from the left side.
He pivoted around the tip without breaking momentum, his body flowing naturally between attacks before his heel slammed directly into the spearman's chest hard enough to crush the armor inward with a sickening crack.
The soldier collapsed instantly.
Another kick snapped across a second soldier's jaw, launching him sideways into his own allies.
The battlefield descended further into chaos.
"Fire at him!" a mage screamed from the rear lines.
Several mages raised their hands simultaneously as streams of flame and compressed wind surged violently toward Solarynth from multiple directions, magical energy lighting the battlefield in flashes of red and blue.
But Solarynth's eyes had already seen the attacks before they were cast it.
Blue lightning exploded beneath his feet, he accelerated instantly.
His body blurred through the narrow openings between the incoming spells with impossible speed, leaving only streaks of electricity behind him the attacks missed entirely and detonated directly into the soldiers standing behind him instead.
Explosions erupted across the battlefield.
Screams followed.
One armored captain roared furiously and charged forward through the smoke, his enchanted blade glowing red-hot with energy.
"I'll kill you myself!" the captain bellowed.
He brought the sword crashing downward with enough force to split a nephrite Jade.
Solarynth met him head-on.
The instant before the blade connected, Solarynth stepped inside the captain's swing, redirecting the armored arm with his forearm before spinning sharply into a devastating hook kick.
The captain's helmet shattered apart on impact.
He crumpled to the ground without another sound.
More soldiers rushed him together immediately afterward, shields raised high while swords and spears thrust from behind the safety of the formation.
"Surround him!" another officer yelled. "Don't give him space to move!"
Solarynth planted one foot against a shield and vaulted upward effortlessly, flipping over the entire line of soldiers in a blur of blue and violent lightning.
Moment he descended, lightning erupted violently around his legs.
Then his kick struck the ground, a massive shockwave exploded outward through the formation, tearing through the battlefield with overwhelming force soldiers were thrown from their feet as arcs of blue and violent electricity surged violently across armor, weapons, and bodies alike.
The ground itself cracked beneath the impact.
Still...they kept coming.
Dozens upon dozens of soldiers rushed toward him without hesitation.
Fifty soldiers against one.
Yet to Solarynth every movement had already been written before it happened...
While Solarynth remained locked in battle against the soldiers of the Pandemonium Legion on his own, the kingdom's army finally crashed into the enemy front lines.
Then the true clash began.
Steel met steel across the battlefield with violent force, the sound of blades colliding echoing beneath the burning night sky shields slammed together, sparks erupted from grinding weapons, and the once orderly formations dissolved into brutal close-quarters warfare.
The Spartans, Thespians, and Vikings surged forward like unleashed beasts.
A Spartan warrior roared as he slammed his bronze shield directly into a Pandemonium soldier's face hard enough to shatter teeth and send blood spraying across the dirt.
Before the enemy could even fall completely, the Spartan drove his spear downward with savage precision, the tip punching straight through the soldier's skull.
"FOR SPARTA!" he bellowed, ripping the spear free as another enemy charged him.
Nearby, the Thespians fought with disciplined aggression, shields locked while their spears thrust repeatedly through gaps in enemy armor.
"Push forward!" one Thespian commander shouted. "Break their center!"
The Vikings, meanwhile, fought like a storm unleashed.
One massive Viking swung a two-handed axe with enough force to split both shield and man apart in a single strike before grabbing another enemy by the throat and hurling him directly into the advancing soldiers behind him.
"SKOL!" the Vikings roared together, beating their weapons against their armor with wild adrenaline.
All across the battlefield, warriors found their own brutal ways to kill or overpower the soldiers of the Pandemonium Legion.
For a brief moment, it looked like the kingdom's forces were gaining momentum.
Then everything changed.
Three elite enhanced soldiers of the Pandemonium Legion suddenly entered the battlefield.
Their movements were precise.
Controlled and deadly.
Unlike the ordinary soldiers around them, these monsters cut through the battlefield with horrifying efficiency, destroying anything that crossed their path without hesitation or emotion.
One of them possessed the same terrifying ability as Asura.
His right arm twisted violently before reshaping itself into a massive blade-like weapon formed entirely from compressed magic, edges were gleamed unnaturally sharp beneath the firelight as he tore directly through the front lines.
A Spartan raised his shield.
The enhanced soldier sliced straight through both shield and body in one motion.
A Thespian lunged with a spear.
The elite soldier pivoted instantly and severed the warrior across the chest before continuing forward without slowing down.
Blood sprayed across the battlefield as bodies dropped around him.
"Monster..." one soldier muttered in horror.
The enhanced soldier kept advancing.
When then suddenly a blast of force exploded against his side.
The elite soldier was launched several meters across the battlefield, his body crashing violently through dirt and broken weapons before he stumbled and regained his footing.
The battlefield paused around him for a split second, he slowly lifted his head then he saw who had attacked him.
Elyndra stood several meters away, her expression cold with fury.
Her grimoire floated beside her, pages flipping rapidly on their own as magical energy spiraled around her body in waves the air near her shimmered beneath the sheer density of mana gathering around her fingertips.
Several nearby soldiers instinctively stepped backward even the elite enhanced soldier remained still for a moment.
Elyndra's eyes locked onto him sharply.
"You slaughter warriors without even a trace of emotion," she said coldly, her voice carrying clearly through the chaos around them.
The pages of her grimoire flipped faster.
Golden magic circles began forming behind her one after another.
"Let's see," Elyndra continued, her tone dropping further, "if you still look so empty after I tear you apart."
Elyndra began casting a spell.
A massive blue portal-like construct slowly formed behind her, hovering just above the back of her head as layers of glowing circular rings expanded outward one after another air was around it distorted violently beneath the overwhelming concentration of mana gathering into a single point.
Energy crackled across the battlefield.
Nearby soldiers instinctively stepped backward as the pressure from the spell alone began shaking the ground beneath Elyndra's feet.
"What the hell is she casting?!" one Pandemonium soldier shouted while shielding his face from the intense light.
The blue radiance illuminated the battlefield around her like a second moon.
Elyndra remained perfectly still at the center of it.
Her silver hair flowed wildly in the wind generated by the unstable magical force building behind her, strands whipping across her face while her glowing eyes remained locked directly onto the elite enhanced soldier standing in the distance.
The floating grimoire beside her flipped pages rapidly on its own, symbols and runes glowing brighter with every passing second.
The elite soldier's eyes widened behind his mask first time since entering the battlefield, he reacted...
Without hesitation, his body began reshaping itself through compressed magic, layers of hardened armor-like material rapidly spreading across his arms, chest, and shoulders.
Veins glowing neon blue pulsed violently beneath the reinforced structure as he forced more magic into durability and resistance.
He understood immediately if that spell landed directly, he would die.
"Brace yourself!" another enhanced soldier yelled from nearby.
The elite soldier planted his feet firmly into the ground, crossing his blade-shaped arm in front of his body while unstable mana erupted around him in violent waves.
Meanwhile, Elyndra slowly raised one hand outward toward him.
The battlefield suddenly grew quieter around her even the surrounding soldiers hesitated.
The sheer amount of magical energy gathering behind Elyndra had become suffocating.
Then...the spell fired.
A colossal beam of blue energy erupted outward from the portal construct behind her with catastrophic force, tearing through the battlefield like a divine judgment unleashed upon the earth itself.
The explosion of mana shook the entire battlefield.
The beam carved directly across the ground toward the elite soldier, vaporizing dirt, shattered weapons, and bodies caught in its path as the surrounding air screamed from the heat and pressure alone.
"MOVE!" someone screamed in terror but there was nowhere to move.
The elite enhanced soldier roared while forcing every ounce of reinforced magic into his body, the compressed armor around him cracking violently beneath the incoming pressure before the beam finally collided with him head-on.
Impact of the beam detonated across the battlefield in a blinding explosion of blue light..
Though the beam struck the battlefield with catastrophic force, it never fully landed on the elite enhanced soldier, at the final second.
Something intercepted it.
The elite soldier felt the pressure instantly, violent winds exploding outward around him hard enough to tear chunks of earth from the ground while the blue beam carved through everything nearby.
The battlefield vanished beneath the light.
When the attack finally ended, the surrounding area had been completely devastated, earth dirt had been ripped apart, trenches carved deeply into the battlefield while smoke and burning mana drifted heavily through the air.
Several soldiers of the Pandemonium Legion had been caught in the blast directly.
Bodies were gone and there armor had melted.
At least forty-three soldiers had been erased by the beam during the impact alone, even nearby warriors from the kingdom side stared at the destruction in silence.
"Holy shit..." one Viking muttered, lowering his axe slowly.
Another soldier swallowed hard. "That attack could've wiped out an entire city..."
Yet despite all of it the elite enhanced soldier was still alive, his eyes slowly widened behind the mask as he looked upward.
Standing directly in front of him was a massive figure.
A seven-foot juggernaut of muscle and reinforced flesh stood unmoving within the smoke, blocking the remains of Elyndra's beam with his own body.
Project X-002.
The tank-built fighter that had intercepted the attack a split second before it could fully connect with the elite soldier behind him sheer weight of his presence alone made nearby soldiers hesitate instinctively.
His enormous frame remained standing completely still despite the destruction surrounding him, smoke rising slowly from both of his arms.
Only his arms had suffered damage...
Burn marks spread across the reinforced flesh while pieces of hardened skin cracked apart slightly from the impact.
Then, wounds began healing.
Veins glowing neon blue pulsed violently beneath his skin as regeneration magic activated automatically throughout his body system.
Burned flesh stitched itself back together in real time, steam rising from the recovering muscle as if the damage had never happened.
Elyndra's eyes narrowed sharply.
"He blocked it..." she said quietly, disbelief slipping into her voice for the first time.
Nearby Spartans stared at the monster in stunned silence.
"That thing tanked the spell?" one of them said.
"No..." another answered nervously while gripping his spear tighter. "It survived it."
To clarify the sheer scale of what had just happened..
The beam Elyndra unleashed possessed enough destructive force to erase an entire city from existence, an attack carrying power comparable to roughly twenty kilotons of TNT.
Yet Project X-002 had endured it head-on and the only visible damage left on his body were slight burns across both arms.
Then slowly, the massive Project X lowered his arms from the blocking position.
His glowing eyes locked onto Elyndra across the ruined battlefield.
Since the war began the atmosphere truly changed...