CHAPTER 212: The Honor of the Vajra and the Chains of Aethelgard
In the western sector of the walled courtyard, the air crackled.
Bren, the bald and muscular warrior of the Sequences, was locked in a brutal short-range exchange of blows against Jin The Wall, the siege expert at Stage 5 of the Saint Realm. Both moved at blinding speeds, leaving trails of burning sparks every time metal clashed against metal. Bren sported several superficial cuts on his torso that his draconic bloodline healed in seconds, while Jin's breastplate and reinforced leather robes were torn and covered in burns.
"HAHAHAHAHA! WHAT an EXCITING FIGHT! I LIKE YOU, OLD MAN!" bellowed Bren, throwing a heavy punch.
"AND I LIKE YOU, YOU ARROGANT BRAT!" Jin replied, spitting out a broken tooth. "NOTHING ELSE MATTERS, TODAY ONE OF US DIES, BUT I'LL REMEMBER YOU IN HELL! HAHAHAHA! COME ON, LET'S KEEP GOING!"
Jin planted his feet on the stone and channeled the entirety of his rugged Qi, unleashing his martial art: [Bronze Meteor Impact].
Slamming his heavy spiked mace against his colossal black bronze shield, the mercenary propelled himself forward like a flaming bolide. The scorching vibration emitted by his charge was designed to stun his opponent's senses.
Seeing that bronze mass charging at him at full speed, Bren did not step back. He slammed his volcanic gauntlets together in front of his chest, activating his blood resonance: [Mantle Fortress: Solid Magma Dome].
A wave of dense gravity expanded in an exact five-meter radius around him, drawing in the earth's Qi. Upon entering that stasis territory, Jin's meteoric charge lost its flight vector; the invisible force crushed his shield toward the ground before it could impact the young man's body.
BOOOOOOM!
The clash of both forces opened a deep crater in the pavement, raising a plume of dust, splinters, and crushed rock.
Jin, losing his balance from the gravity technique, dropped to his knees, spitting a mouthful of dark blood:
"Cough, cough... gah!"
Seeing Bren raising his arm to land a definitive hook, the veteran mercenary leaped backward in desperation and planted the edge of his shield into the earth, unleashing his [Indestructible Sulfur Fortress]. A dense, heavy barrier rose before him, reducing physical damage by eighty percent and returning a torrent of burning sparks.
Bren's volcanic fist slammed into the wall.
DONG!
The shield did not break; the blow only kicked up a wave of scorching dust that blanketed the crater. With his mouth soaked in blood, Jin smiled fiercely behind his bronze:
"Hehehe... how about that, brat? You won't be able to put a single scratch on me as long as my barrier stays up!"
Bren flexed the fingers of his right hand, feeling the core's heat throbbing on the back of his matte black gauntlet, and returned a wild smile.
"Mmm... you managed to take a normal punch from me without using techniques and kept breathing," Bren acknowledged. "I congratulate you on your firmness, old man. But..."
Bren bent his knees, anchoring his boots into the fractured stone, and drew his right arm back as the space around his fist began to distort like the air over a burning desert.
"Clench your teeth tight... if you don't want to die instantly."
Sensing the low-frequency hum that the boy's body began to emit, an instinctive chill ran down Jin's spine. Desperate, he burned more vital Qi to reinforce the thickness of his shield.
Bren unleashed the arts of the [Codex: Seismic Resonance Fist].
He didn't try to break the bronze through external brute force. His fists became a blurry reflection that slammed against the barrier at a terrifying speed.
BOOM-BOOM-BOOM-BOOM-BOOM!
Each impact sounded dull and wet, like a mallet striking a sandbag. The codex's [Phase Oscillation] technique caused Bren's Qi to completely bypass the outer hardness of the shield and breastplate. The energy transmuted into a wave of destructive vibration that passed through the metal without denting it, traveling directly through the mercenary's bodily fluids, meridians, and flesh.
"WHAT THE FUCK IS HAPPENING?!" screamed Jin, feeling his own internal organs rumble with the violence of an underground earthquake. "HOW IS IT POSSIBLE TO TAKE DAMAGE IF MY DEFENSE IS ACTIVE?! Cough, cough...!"
Vomiting large quantities of blood mixed with tissue fragments, Jin realized his shield was useless. He dropped his defense and launched a suicidal counterattack, slamming his weapon against the floor: [Suffocating Smoke Burst]. A micro-explosion of dry heat and scorching gusts of air blasted into Bren's face to blind him.
"TAKE THIS, BRAT! BOOM!"
Bren felt the heat singe his eyelashes and redden his facial skin, but he didn't even blink. He ignored the pain with absolute coldness.
"Alright, old man... it's time to end this," said Bren, his voice losing its mocking tone. "It was a true pleasure fighting you. Now... die."
Jin tried to raise his mace to cover his chest, but his arms wouldn't respond; the internal vibration had already liquefied his tendons.
Bren shifted his full body weight forward into a close-quarters stance and unleashed his execution blow: [Cataclysm Hammer: Core Fracture].
The Red Mountain Heart in his gauntlet released a simultaneous discharge of vibration and conceptual fire that struck directly into the mercenary's sternum. There was no explosion to blast him through the air; a blinding orange flash illuminated the crater as a wave of distortion passed cleanly through Jin's torso, exiting out his back.
The battlefield around him fell into a momentary silence.
Jin remained standing for two eternal seconds. His bronze armor glowed red-hot from the heat injected into his veins, until a dense column of black smoke billowed out of his mouth, nose, and eye sockets.
THUD!
His lifeless body collapsed onto the dusty ground, all light fading from his eyes as he lay in a motionless sprawl.
Bren exhaled a breath of hot steam and walked over to stand before his adversary's corpse. With a completely serious face stripped of any arrogance, he wrapped his left palm around his right fist at heart level and performed a deep bow, bending his torso at ninety degrees in an immaculate martial salute.
"You were a formidable warrior," he declared quietly.
At the other end of the walled courtyard, absolute chaos reigned between Magnus, Korg, and the other two mercenary generals: Zang The Lead Axe and Hu Lei The Iron Hound.
Zang, the Stage 3 Saint Realm brute, realized he could not compete with Korg's physical strength. In a desperate bid to regain the offensive, he activated his [Explosive Charge], dragging his feet across the ground to kick up a massive curtain of stones, earth, and blinding dust. Charging like a raging bull within the cloud, he raised his notched axe and brought down his [Rock-Cleaving Slash], aiming to fracture Magnus's arms with a massive shockwave.
Magnus, the two-meter titan whom Hu Lei had made the mistake of calling a "gorilla" minutes earlier, didn't even try to dodge. Slamming his armored forearms together, he activated the transformation of his supreme gauntlets: [Annihilator Vajras: The Pillars of the End].
CLANGGGGG!
The plates of matte black metal and molten gold unfolded like the wings of a mechanical dragon, forming a deep amber hexagonal shield that possessed the gravitational density of an entire mountain.
Zang's axe slammed into the hexagonal shield.
BOOOOM!
Zang's weapon rebounded with such violence that the mercenary felt his shoulders rip from their collarbones. As the dust cleared, he saw Korg standing unharmed to one side and Magnus behind the amber wall, bearing a polite yet murderous smile on his face.
"Shit... how can you take so much punishment?" panted Zang, stumbling backward with a heaving chest.
"Again... my turn," Magnus said softly.
Dismissing the shield form, Magnus charged forward, turning his fists into whirlwinds of molten gold. Zang tried to block with the haft of his axe, but the speed and weight of the impacts completely overwhelmed him:
CLANG! CLANG! CLANG! CLANG! CLANG! CLANG!
The cadence of the blows was so rapid that the metal sparked continuously. Zang stumbled backward through the rubble, suffering cracked ribs and deep gashes from the wind pressure, until a direct punch caved in his sternum.
CRACK! BOOM!
The mercenary was sent flying through the air, spitting blood. Mid-flight, knowing his end was imminent, he resorted to foul play: he slammed the haft of his axe against the floor upon landing, releasing a cloud of gray alchemical dust that blinded Magnus, while throwing a fan of hidden daggers coated in swamp poison.
The poisoned daggers struck directly into the young titan's chest and neck.
But instead of tearing through skin and injecting poison, the steel blades bounced off with a dull snap, as if they had struck pure diamond. Magnus had activated his bloodline property: [Mercury Bronze Scales]. His skin, coated in a metallic sheen, hardened at the exact moment of impact, dissipating the force and channeling the energy directly into his Vajra bones.
"Shit... that's playing dirty, bastard," said Magnus, brushing the dust off his shoulder without a single scratch. "Now... you can die in peace."
The titan concentrated all his strength into his right hand, collapsing the air in front of his knuckles due to the immense gravitational pressure: [Broken World Execution: God's Hammer].
A terrified Zang desperately activated his defensive technique, the [Rotten Mud Guard], coating his body and weapon in a crust of sticky earth Qi to absorb the impact while waiting for Hu Lei to rush to his aid.
However, when Magnus's fist tore through the void, Zang's perspective underwent a violent, unnatural shift.
His field of view suddenly plummeted toward the courtyard grass. Blinking, he saw a segmented human torso on the ground, wearing his own armor. Huh... is that my body? he thought in confusion.
Before he could process the horror, the two halves of his anatomy collapsed asynchronously into the mud.
SPLAT! THUD!
A torrent of thick blood erupted at immense pressure from his severed waist, staining the ground a frothy crimson; the void compression of Magnus's fist had simply split him in two through a sheer differential in force.
And the trajectory of that attack didn't even stop after the amputation.
The beam of energy continued its destructive path with a deafening roar, obliterating tents, palisades, and watchtowers as if they were paper, until it slammed directly into the adamantine ice wall Draven had raised to seal the courtyard.
BOOOOOOM!
The glacial structure shattered violently, tearing open a ten-meter-wide hole that left behind a smoking landscape of utter desolation.
Magnus let out a sigh, looking at the two halves of his adversary.
"I thought you could take more... Tsk, what trash."
He then glanced over at Korg, who was still dealing with Hu Lei a few meters away:
"Hey, when are you going to finish off that piece of trash?"
From the other end of the courtyard, where Draven was still impaling infantry mercenaries with frost stakes, an enraged roar echoed out:
"HEY, MAGNUS, YOU IDIOT! DON'T DESTROY OTHER PEOPLE'S THINGS!"
Magnus sheepishly scratched his cheek, giving an embarrassed smile as the molten gold cooled on his fists:
"Hahaha... sorry, Draven. I didn't control my strength very well... And honestly, your wall is really weak!"
"WEAK MY ASS, YOU ANIMAL?!" Draven yelled back, returning to beheading bandits with veins bulging on his forehead.
Seeing the bleeding halves of his comrade Zang lying in the mud, the assassin Hu Lei lost all semblance of human reason. A heart-rending scream tore from his throat:
"NOOOOOOOO! YOU DAMN BASTARDS! YOU'LL PAY FOR THIS!"
Clouded by pain and madness, Hu Lei lunged like a rabid dog at Korg, unleashing his [Night Stalker Step]. Crouching low to the ground, he slithered across the mud with the speed of a four-legged beast, dodging the golden warrior's high guard to appear in his blind spot. He unleashed a [Stomp]—a frenzied barrage of knee strikes, low kicks, and claw swipes aimed exclusively at Korg's joints, tendons, and ligaments, trying to dismember him through sheer pain using piercing Qi.
But Korg didn't even bother to step back.
The green-eyed colossus stood his ground with exasperating tranquility, blocking and deflecting the armored slashes with the backs of his black gauntlets as if swatting away annoying insects.
As Hu Lei attacked more and more erratically, exhausting his breath, Korg's passive bloodline—the [Crucible of Boiling Blood]—was quietly at work. With every blow received, his bloodstream absorbed the kinetic energy without his muscles suffering any damage. That hostile force was purified, subdued, and stored directly in his meridians, turning the mercenary's desperate fury into his executioner's very fuel.
Noticing the assassin's movements growing slow, clumsy, and predictable due to extreme fatigue, Korg smiled. He found the opening in the center of his guard.
"This is the end of the line for you, old man. Die," Korg ruled in a sepulchral voice.
He unleashed the [Ancestral Anvil Impact].
Concentrating all the force absorbed from the mercenary's blows along with his blood's primordial fire into his right fist, he threw a devastating straight punch that scorched the oxygen around his knuckles.
Hu Lei's animal instinct reacted in the final millisecond, cutting through the fog of his rage: Shit!
He tried to cross his forearms to activate his [Scorched Shell Reflex], but his exhausted muscles were too slow.
CLANG-CRACK!
Korg's punch shattered the mercenary's incomplete guard, slamming the matte black metal of the gauntlet directly into his chest with the force of a meteorite. Hu Lei's riveted armor splintered into pieces as his flesh scorched instantly.
But the true horror happened inside. Upon full physical contact, Korg activated his [Volcanic Marrow Injection]. He forced a torrent of his searing liquid iron Qi through the exposed acupuncture points on his enemy's sternum.
"AAAAAGH! GFUAAAA!" Hu Lei's shriek ceased to sound human.
Through his circulatory system, the injected molten iron began to expand uncontrollably. The mercenary felt his own blood boil, evaporating his Qi channels and burning his lungs from the inside out. He dropped to his knees, vomiting smoke from his mouth, his eyes bloodshot, until his lifeless body collapsed into a puddle of boiling mud.
Korg shook his gauntlet, looking at the smoking corpse.
"Wow... I wasn't expecting this result. I thought they'd hold out a bit longer, but they are ridiculously weak. I hope the other three finish up quickly."
A few meters away, Maren—the lean warrior with electric-blue hair and purple eyes—swept his gaze over the courtyard littered with corpses and pointed a lazy finger.
"Let's see who I'll pick... Mmm, I like you."
Landing in front of him was Madame Sura, The Desert Hyena, an assassin at Stage 4 of the Saint Realm famous along the borders for her ruthless agility and her addiction to physical mutilation.
"Oh my... should I feel honored that a pretty boy decided to pick me?" Sura mocked, unsheathing two curved swords and butcher hooks.
Maren let out an arrogant laugh, haughtily adjusting the collar of his dark blue robe.
"Of course you should, you dirty commoner. You should feel eternally grateful and get on your knees right now that a being as magnanimous and superior as myself deigns to set eyes on a piece of trash like you. HAHAHAHA!"
A muscle beneath Madame Sura's eye twitched in a tic of pure homicidal rage.
Without saying another word, she moved at a ghostly speed that would have left any orthodox Stage 6 cultivator paralyzed, unleashing her [Crossed Blades Dance] in an erratic whirlwind aimed at slicing the youth's knee tendons and eyes.
But she was completely and utterly wrong about her opponent.
Maren turned with deceptive slowness and deflected both curved swords using only two fingers imbued with purple Qi, displaying an insulting contempt. Sura's eyes widened, stupefied to see her best technique nullified as if it were child's play; before she could retreat, she didn't see Maren's spinning kick coming, which sank deeply into her stomach.
BOOM!
The woman was launched like an arrow, crashing through three stone walls of the lower bastions while vomiting blood and armor fragments.
Giving her not a heartbeat of respite, Maren unleashed his bloodline: the [Wandering Lightning Form].
His physical body vanished in a blinding flash, turning into pure electricity. He didn't run across the courtyard; he shot like a zigzagging lightning bolt through gravity, reappearing instantly over the rubble where Sura had fallen.
[Constant Lightning Strike]
His fists and boots flickered with an alternating high-frequency current. He assailed the woman with a barrage of high-speed blows:
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
Upon the third connected impact, the static charge accumulated in Sura's flesh automatically detonated in an internal electrical micro-explosion, sending a massive shock straight to her nervous system. A dry thunderclap sounded inside the mercenary's chest, and a flash of cyan light escaped from her eyes and open mouth.
As the dust from the rubble cleared, Maren scanned the area with his divine sense and saw Sura crawling several meters away, covered in blood and severe burns.
"Oh... you managed to dodge the direct execution. Nice," Maren smiled. "But it looks like things didn't go entirely well for you, did they?"
"Tsk... what an annoying brat," Sura spat, trembling from muscle cramps.
Maren shrugged and activated his codex: [Lightning God Steps: Lightning Leap]. With a sharp, cracking sound in the air (CRACK!), he vanished, leaving behind an afterimage of sparks, and reappeared directly behind the woman, his robes exhaling ionized electricity.
"I tend to hear that a lot," Maren whispered directly into her ear, freezing her blood. "But setting that detail aside... how much longer do you think you can keep yourself safe?"
Terrified by that speed, Sura spun around in a suicidal reflex, swinging a grappling hook to snag his ribs. Maren dodged it with a minimal shift of his neck; in his eyes, that woman was moving in slow motion.
He landed a short punch to her solar plexus that doubled her over, spitting saliva mixed with bile. He then violently grabbed her by the hair and slammed her into the ground, dragging her across the courtyard as she screamed in pain:
"AAAAAAAGH!"
Sura's face was left unrecognizable, flayed by the friction against the stone. Maren hoisted her into the air by her neck, his purple eyes gleaming with refined sadism.
"Well... I learned very well from Lady Lilith," the youth murmured with a dark smile. "She is an exceptional master in this beautiful art, isn't that right, pretty lady? But... Mmm, I think you're missing a detail."
He pushed her up into the sky, injecting her with a shock of paralyzing lightning so she couldn't twist in mid-air. Sura, suspended in gravity, could only wish for death to reach her soon.
Maren leaped after her and unleashed a rain of twenty punches in less than a second.
CRACK! CRACK! CRACK! CRACK!
The sound of every bone in her arms, ribs, and legs snapping into pieces echoed like dry firewood cracking in winter.
Landing heavily on the floor tiles, Sura could no longer move a single limb. Maren knelt beside her, tilting his head curiously:
"You want to die now, don't you?"
With her throat choking on her own blood, the woman barely managed to articulate an agonizing whisper:
"Ki-kill me... kill me, please..."
"Mmm... I can't hear you well. Did you say you want more?" the blue-haired demon smiled. "Okay, the customer gets whatever they ask for."
Grabbing her fractured right arm, he yanked violently:
CRACK-SHHK!
A jet of hot blood bathed Maren's face and robes as he ripped the limb cleanly from its socket. Sura's eyes widened in mute shock; she couldn't even scream because she was drowning in her hemorrhage. Maren continued with a terrifying calm, tearing off her other arm and legs one by one with overwhelming aesthetic delight.
"Hahaha... what a beautiful, perfect art this is," Maren sighed, looking at the shattered torso bleeding on the ground. "Though looking at it closely, I lack a little supportive healing. I wish we had Cassius, Elowen, or maybe little Lys here to heal her... that way I could start dismembering her all over again from the beginning. But oh well... what can you do."
Shrugging, he left the agonizing remains on the ground and began walking calmly back toward his brothers.
A few meters away, Goran saw the scene and shook his head heavily. This guy... why did he have to learn Lady Lilith's exact quirks? Couldn't be any other way, thought the dark-skinned colossus.
He then returned his attention to his own opponent: Master Mo, The Rotting Eye, the Stage 6 Saint Realm dark alchemist.
Mo had exhaled a massive cloud of green, corrosive smoke from his sleeves, completely enveloping Goran's figure to conceal his position and riddle him with necrosis needles. Goran simply crossed his arms, immovable as a boulder, letting the poisonous mist cover him entirely.
Seeing that the arrogant brat had let himself be swallowed by his miasma without raising wind barriers, Elder Mo smiled triumphantly; no enemy had ever survived his poisons before.
However, when the breeze cleared some of the smoke, Mo's smile choked: Goran was still standing, completely unharmed, without a single blister on his skin!
"WHAT THE FUCK?!" shouted a stupefied Mo. "HOW ARE YOU STILL STANDING?!"
"Huh? That was all you had, old man?" Goran asked, blinking boredly. "You made me wait like an idiot just to release this little smoke that smells like an old swamp."
"I'LL MAKE YOU REGRET THIS, YOU ARROGANT BASTARD!" roared the old man, unleashing his [Corrosive Thorn Rain].
Dozens of black needles impregnated with forbidden alchemical powders shot out from his sleeves at high speed. Goran yawned (Yawn!) and unhooked his relic from his back: the [Shield of the Northern Black Turtle].
The colossal jet-black pavise, carved from living mineralized keratin and adorned with a Northern Sapphire relief, covered his entire anatomy. When the poisoned thorns impacted against the shield, the keratin activated its hardness memory, becoming more rigid than diamond.
CLINK-CLINK-CLINK-CLINK!
The needles bounced off harmlessly, falling to the ground while the freezing blue vapor exhaled by the shield froze the poison in mid-air.
"This is getting ridiculously boring, old man," Goran said from behind the shield.
Seeing that his throwing weapons were useless, Mo resorted to his technique of evasion and deception: [Dark Smoke Vanishing]. His body seemed to dissolve into a grayish fog—a visual illusion combined with hallucinogenic powder to deceive divine sense—while moving toward the young man's flank.
He unleashed his [Mirage of Agony], projecting multiple false copies of himself attacking from different angles to force Goran to open his guard.
Seeing Goran take a clumsy step to the left, appearing to lose his balance from the hallucinations, Mo saw the perfect opening. He materialized a short dagger soaked in concentrated poison and lunged from the blind spot to drive it directly into his jugular.
But he made the mistake of forgetting he wasn't fighting a mortal being of common reason.
Goran had only stumbled intentionally to act as bait. The second the dagger was inches from his neck, Goran's bored gaze turned sharp. His free hand shot out with overwhelming speed, catching the old man's wrist like a steel trap.
"Well, well... who do we have here?" Goran smiled.
Before Mo could scream, Goran unleashed the [Bronze Sunset Hammer Impact].
Channelling all the kinetic energy his shield had absorbed from the previous attacks, he compressed it into the sharp edge of the pavise and delivered a devastating backhand blow against the alchemist's side.
The shockwave of primordial metal was so overwhelming that Mo felt the space around him compress to crush him. His instincts screamed of immediate mortal danger. Knowing that taking that impact dead on would turn his torso into pulp, the old man made a brutal decision: he used the poisoned dagger in his free hand and cleanly sliced off his own trapped arm.
SLASH-SHHK!
"AAAAAAAH!" Mo screamed.
Freed by the sacrifice of his limb, he threw himself backward wrapped in his gray smoke just the second Goran's shield pulverized the air where he had been standing a microsecond earlier, destroying the floor tiles in a fifty-meter straight line.
"Shit, shit, shit!" Mo cried, clutching his bleeding stump as he sprinted toward the perimeter of the courtyard. "I have to get out of here! That hole the other monster blew in the ice wall will do!"
Just as he was five steps away from crossing the breach in Draven's frost wall and escaping into the outside woods, a flash of cyan lightning illuminated his peripheral vision.
A silhouette appeared walking beside him with hands clasped behind its back.
"Where are you going in such a hurry, old man?" a mocking voice echoed.
Before the alchemist's brain could process who it was, the world spun head over heels. His vision inverted as he fell to the ground, watching his own headless body run two more steps before collapsing, blood gushing from his severed neck.
Maren stopped at the breach, shaking the blood from his electric fingers, and shouted back to his comrade:
"Hey, Goran! You took too long to kill this old man and I got bored, so I couldn't help stepping in! Sorry!"
Goran lowered his colossal shield, shaking his head with a smile as he replied:
"No, it's fine... Though you owe me big time when we're done for stealing my prey, hahaha."
"Deal," Maren smiled.
In the center of the courtyard, isolated from the other fights, the tension between Elian and Scar—the Golden Reaper at Stage 7 of the Saint Realm—had reached a critical point.
The dust cleared slowly, revealing Elian standing unharmed after blocking and nearly annihilating the mercenary commander with a single punch, and Scar kneeling thirty meters away with his right cheek torn open by the attack's void.
"Mmm... you managed to dodge that, old man," Elian had told him with his usual passivity. "But tell me one thing... how much longer do you think you can keep dodging like that?"
Hearing those words, a cold, primitive, and absolute terror invaded the mercenary's chest. He, a veteran of a thousand bloody battles in Aethelgard who had never feared death, was trembling with dread before a brat who barely looked twenty years old!
NO! NO! NO! Scar screamed to himself in his mind. Me, being afraid of an arrogant brat? Never!
The mercenary bit his lower lip with such rage that he tore off a piece of skin. The taste of copper and the sharp pain cleared his mind, muzzling his panic. He stood up slowly, his bloodshot eyes locking onto the relaxed posture of the blue-haired boy.
"YOU DAMN ARROGANT BRAT... YOU'RE DEAD!" Scar roared.
Elian blinked slowly, looking bored. He extended his right hand forward and curled his four fingers repeatedly over his palm in a universally contemptuous gesture.
"Come here, old man. Prove it."
Scar lost his last vestige of reason and fell completely for the taunt.
"I'M GOING TO SKIN YOU ALIVE!" bellowed the commander, propelling himself forward at blinding speed.
He simultaneously activated his [Raider's Armor]—forcing his Qi into the chaotic runes of his stolen pieces to create a multicolored shield—and raised his heavy halberd to unleash his Tyrannical Chaos Hammer once more.
In the distance, Maren watched the scene with crossed arms and laughed:
"This idiot old man still hasn't realized Elian's true personality, has he? Hahaha."
Seeing the mortal charge advancing toward him, Elian dropped his lazy attitude. He summoned his primordial relic: the [Mercury Heart].
The liquid, violet orb floated over his palm, acting as a catalyst and mass multiplier for his blood. Unleashing his [Tectonic Fluidity], Elian stretched the black mercury in the air, transforming it into an infinite spear aiming straight at the center of Scar's chest.
The gravitational compression of a star concentrated at the tip of the liquid metal: [Sentence of the Abyss: Collapse of the Stellar Pillar].
When Scar was five meters away, he saw space distorting around Elian's spear, sucking in light. Terror rushed back into his eyes: that tip wasn't just going to pierce his looted armor; it was going to erase his existence and collapse his torso into a mass sinkhole.
But just the second Elian was about to pierce his heart, he paused for a fraction of a second.
Mmm... better leave him alive, Elian calculated coldly in his analytical mind. We need clear intelligence on where we are exactly, the regional map, where other mercenary lairs and factions are located, and where beasts can be found. This guy will serve as our tongue.
With a slight flick of his wrist that defied the laws of physics, Elian altered the infinite spear's trajectory.
Instead of impaling Scar's sternum, the black mercury tip slashed down and to the right.
SHHK-BOOM!
The stellar impact force detonated as it grazed his limbs. Scar's right arm and left leg simply burst into a cloud of blood, crushed bones, and metallic shrapnel from the immense hydrostatic pressure.
Scar was sent flying through the air and crashed heavily into the mud. He didn't even have time to articulate a scream of pain; the traumatic shock of losing two limbs instantly shut down his brain, plunging him into a deep blackout in a puddle of his own blood.
Elian dissolved the mercury spear, letting the violet metal float peacefully back into the orb on his palm, and looked down at the commander's unconscious body.
"Good fight, old man," he said softly to the fallen soldier.
He then turned toward his eleven brothers—Borg, Tormund, Aion, Bren, Draven, Nylas, Goran, Ignis, Maren, Korg, and Magnus—who had already finished cleaning up the courtyard and stood among the mounds of mercenary corpses, wiping down their weapons.
"Alright, boys," Elian announced, dusting off his robe. "Finish securing the perimeter and let's search this place from top to bottom. Vaults, maps, spiritual stone reserves, and prisoners... don't leave a single thing of value behind."
"HAHAHAHA! TIME TO LOOT!" roared Borg, wearing a smile of absolute satisfaction.
At that exact same instant, at a latitude far removed from the mountain ranges, the starlight of a dimensional portal opened silently over a rocky plateau.
Twelve figures emerged from the temporal rift in two orderly formations: the squad designated to infiltrate the underworld sublayer, and the group commissioned to gain fame and reputation among surface mercenaries.
Marching at the front were Dante, hands resting on his belt of knives with dull gray pupils; Lyra, of heavy physical presence and icy beauty; Altair, pale as a vampiric noble with black veins; Joren Morningstar, athletic and bearing an untouchable stance; Rowan, silver eyes scanning the wind; Tamsin, compact and stepping lethally; and Mira, exotic, with pearlescent skin and flowing purple hair.
Beside them advanced the second division led by Varian, wiry and with alert emerald eyes; Aia, the beautiful maiden with pale silver hair and storm-gray eyes moving with the lightness of water; Ciro, with tousled green hair; Lia, athletic with cyan braids; and Ren.
As they took their first steps onto the rocky outcrop, the northern wind hit their faces, parting the morning mist to reveal the landscape sprawling at their feet.
Everyone stopped, holding their breath for a fraction of a second.
Before them opened up Aethelgard.
But calling that place a simple "city" was an insult to language and a sin of conception.
Aethelgard was not an urban settlement; it was a sovereign commercial empire, a geographical and architectural anomaly that defied the logic of the mortal plane and the voracity of neighboring kingdoms.
It possessed no conventional stone and iron walls suffocating the continent's metropolises. Instead, the entire city was built along the length, width, and unfathomable depth inside a colossal crater—a wound of continental proportions that looked as though it had been carved into the Earth's crust by the impact of a fallen god's hammer or a primordial meteorite in the Ancient Era.
From the edges of the abyss rose impossible skyscrapers forged from runic alloys of black metal and silver, disappearing into the clouds. Floating marble and gold palaces remained suspended in mid-air over the center of the crater, anchored to the rock walls by colossal chains of mystical light that hummed with continuous spiritual energy.
And above that abyss, on the upper layers, stood the true Aethelgard: a dazzling metropolis erected upon gigantic tiered terraces of polished, ivory-white stone, crisscrossed in all directions by a network of pristine blue waterways gleaming under the northern sun, where the great commercial alliances, treasure pavilions, and noble sects displayed their obscene opulence.
Aia stepped closer to the edge of the plateau, the wind tossing her pale silver hair, and wrinkled her nose as her gray eyes scanned the floating palaces and ivory terraces.
"Just calling this a city isn't right, is it?" Aia commented softly. "Though looking at it closely... despite all this pretentious architecture, it is absolutely nothing compared to the beauty of our world back at the palace."
A few steps away, Dante let out a dry chuckle, rolling his dull gray eyes with evident contempt as he stroked the black diamond hilt of his Asura dagger on his belt.
"Hey, Aia... comparing our home in the palace to this hole in the ground is like comparing the Heavens to swamp mud," Dante said haughtily.
Then, the young assassin leaned his face forward. His dead pupils ignited with a sadistic red glow, locking his gaze straight through the steam clouds into the unfathomable darkness at the bottom of the crater.
"Now then..." Dante whispered, his voice laden with the promise of ten thousand deaths. "Let's see exactly where the entrance to that famous Underworld is located. Time to start hunting."
Note from Void_Scribe: 🐉
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