Chapter 54 : Chapter 54
Chapter 54: A Desperate Gamble, Hundredfold Amplification
The City of Miracles. The black stone walls.
The cold wind howled past the battlements like a beast in mourning.
Caesar Valerius stood against the wind, and within his deep violet eyes were reflected two utterly different visions of hell.
To the south, a staggering figure was appearing on the horizon. His God’s Eye saw it clearly: that thing did not possess the slightest trace of the living. It was a creature built entirely from death energy and resentment—the undead saint’s messenger had arrived.
Farther east, a straight plume of wolf smoke tore through the gray sky.
It was not ordinary cooking smoke, but a magically reinforced signal, filled with unquestionable authority and a holy killing intent.
A Temple Knight Order.
They could not even be bothered to conceal their movements. They were openly proclaiming, I came, I saw, I conquered.
Behind Caesar, iron-tower Roland and the fierce-looking one-eyed Barrett stood with lowered hands, their expressions darker than each other’s.
“My lord.”
Barrett licked his cracked lips, savage light filling his single eye.
“That bunch of birdmen from the east are marching straight at us. They’ve come with bad intentions.”
Roland said nothing, but the fingers wrapped around his sword hilt had already gone white from excessive force.
He understood better than anyone what that signal smoke represented.
The Empire’s iron fist. The Church’s blade.
Any Temple Knight Order would be led by at least one Earth Knight, with several Grand Knights and more than a hundred full Knights under his command.
A force like that could easily crush ten Cities of Miracles in their present state.
“One dead thing has come to deliver a letter. A pack of living men have come to take our lives.”
Caesar withdrew his gaze, his voice terrifyingly calm, as though he were discussing some trivial matter unrelated to himself.
“The undead to the south want to watch the show and profit from the fight.”
“The Church to the east wants to purify everything and pick up the spoils along the way.”
He turned and looked at the two strongest men under his command.
“We’re like a piece of meat caught between two millstones. The only difference is which side grinds us into paste first.”
The air fell deathly silent.
This was a dead end.
A hopeless situation with no solution.
Yet Caesar smiled, and in that smile was a trace of mad self-mockery.
“So before they make their move, we need to turn this piece of meat into a lump of iron neither side can chew through.”
He looked at Roland and issued a short command that brooked no refusal.
“Roland, from this moment on, you will govern the entire city in my place.”
“The city’s defenses are yours. Command of all soldiers is yours.”
“Until I come out, no matter what happens, you will hold this city.”
“Barrett, assist Roland. Keep those grizzled veterans of yours under control. If anyone dares stir up trouble before the battle, I give you the right to kill first and report later.”
Roland’s head jerked up. The muscles in his scarred face twitched violently.
“My lord, you intend to…?”
“I’m going to make a gamble.”
Caesar’s eyes were as sharp as blades.
“If I win, we flip the table.”
“If I lose… then there won’t be any of us left.”
Having said that, he did not look at the two men again. He turned and strode down from the wall, heading straight for the deepest part of the lord’s manor.
There, carved out from a single massive block of black rock, was a sealed chamber.
No windows. No light. Only a massive stone door thick enough to shut out everything.
It was the chamber he had prepared for his seclusion.
And also the grave he had chosen for himself.
CLANG—
The stone door slammed shut with a dull boom, like the death knell of fate.
Inside the chamber, absolute darkness and silence fell.
Caesar sat down cross-legged, his breathing deep and steady.
He had no time left.
Slow and steady cultivation? Impossible.
At the marching speed of the Temple Knight Order, they would reach the city walls in at most three days.
His only chance was to complete a leap in the hierarchy of life within those three days.
From Grand Knight to Earth Knight!
“System.”
His voice rang through the deathly silent chamber, calm and resolute.
“Lock amplification target—my current knight cultivation.”
【Target locked: Host’s current cultivation (Grand Knight · Mid Stage).】
【Talent Hundredfold Amplification activated!】
【…Performing random multiplier determination…】
Clack-clack-clack—
The wheel of fate turned once again, its grating sound seeming to scrape directly against his soul.
Time stretched into eternity at that moment.
At last, a pitch-black number, burning like hellfire, slammed into place within Caesar’s mind.
【Determination successful! This amplification multiplier is: 100x!】
BOOM—!!!
The instant he saw that number, Caesar’s pupils shrank to pinpoints!
He did not even have time to rejoice before a surge of energy a hundred—no, a thousand—times more terrifying than before detonated violently inside him like the singularity at the birth of the universe!
“GAAAHHHHHH—!!!!”
A scream crushed to its absolute limit burst from the depths of his throat!
An invisible force slammed him against the wall so hard that the black rock chamber cracked outward from his body in a web of fractures!
If the last time had been molten iron poured into his body, then this was his soul being roasted at the core of the sun!
One hundred times the cultivation insights!
One hundred times the accumulated energy!
One hundred times the impact against the bottleneck!
Everything was forcibly rammed into every cell of his body by the system in the most savage, unreasonable way possible, all within one-thousandth of a second!
Shattering!
His bones were reduced to powder in the very first instant!
Collapse!
His meridians disintegrated like embankments overwhelmed by a flood, breaking down into their most basic energy particles!
Melting!
His organs—his lungs, liver, heart, all of them—were turned into a blur of mangled flesh beneath this god-punishment-like torrent of energy!
Death!
The pure, icy shadow of death instantly engulfed his consciousness.
And yet, just as his awareness was about to sink into eternal darkness, the dark-red Sword-Devouring Dragon mark over his heart burst forth with a light as deep as a black hole!
ROOOOAR—!!!
A dragon’s roar that transcended time and space exploded—not in the outside world, but from the deepest recesses of his bloodline, from the very source of his soul!
The Golden Dragon blood hidden within his veins, inherited from the first ancestor of House Valerius and long since thinned to the point of near insignificance, was completely ignited by that apocalyptic torrent of energy and by that roar from the source of his bloodline!
The sleeping bloodline awakened!
Reforging!
Those bones that had been crushed into dust were wrapped in the tyrannical power of Golden Dragon blood and began to reform!
The newborn bones were dark gold with a metallic sheen, harder by far than steel refined a hundred times!
Reforging!
Those collapsed meridians were forcibly widened and reinforced by dragon blood, turning into golden rivers vast enough to contain surging torrents!
Caesar’s body—already reduced to little more than a lump of flesh—was being remade before the naked eye into an entirely new dragon body, divine and demonic at once!
This was a cycle of destruction and rebirth.
The ultimate metamorphosis from mortal to transcendent.
That one-hundredfold amplified destructive energy had finally found a vessel capable of containing it and transformed into the supreme force used to forge a divine weapon!
The mid-stage Grand Knight bottleneck… shattered!
Late-stage Grand Knight… shattered!
Peak Grand Knight!
That barrier which had stopped countless geniuses, that gulf separating mortals from the kings of the land, was as fragile as paper before the dual force of Hundredfold Amplification and the Progenitor Dragon Blood!
RUMBLE—!!!
In Caesar’s mind, it felt as though the world itself had been split apart.
He “saw” the flame of his Knight’s Heart being compressed and compressed again, collapsing inward until it became an infinitesimal black point so tiny it was nearly invisible, yet so heavy it seemed capable of crushing space itself.
In the next instant, the black point exploded!
An invisible domain, heavy as a mountain and tyrannical as a king, spread out violently from his body!
Within that domain, gravity twisted and space froze!
All laws bowed into submission!
Earth Knight!
He had succeeded!
RUMBLE—
A formless shockwave heavy as a mountain burst outward from Caesar’s body.
The black rock walls of the chamber were instantly covered in cracks like a spider’s web.
Outside the chamber, Roland—standing guard at the door—felt a pressure terrible enough to crush the soul come crashing down on him. His iron-tower body buckled. His knees gave way, and with a thud, he fell uncontrollably to the ground.
His resolute, scarred face was filled with a terror and ecstasy beyond words.
That sensation… that pressure as if one had fused with the entire earth itself, so heavy that it smothered all resistance…
It was an Earth Knight!
His lord… had succeeded!