Episode-587
Chapter : 1153
It was into this chaotic maelstrom that Lloyd reappeared. He did not emerge with a grand explosion or a heroic charge. He simply… was. One instant, the space behind the Silent Judge was empty. The next, he was there, a phantom of blue-white light coalescing from a single, silent [Void Step].
The Judge, whose power was based on absolute order and predictability, had no defense against an enemy who could violate the very laws of space. It didn't even have time to register his presence.
Lloyd did not use a weapon. His right arm, from the shoulder down, had transformed. It was no longer flesh and bone, but a single, three-foot-long, impossibly sharp spike of pure, polished Ferrum steel, a physical manifestation of his B-Rank power.
He drove the spike forward. Not in a clumsy stab, but in a single, perfect, explosive thrust that contained all of his focused will. The spike plunged into the back of the Judge's skull, shattering the ancient, spell-hardened bone as if it were glass.
The Silent Judge's aura of absolute law vanished in an instant. The creature stood frozen for a single, stunned heartbeat, and then it simply dissolved, its robed form crumbling into a pile of black, lifeless dust.
One of the kings was dead. Again.
The psychic shockwave of its un-making rippled through the unholy legion, and for a fraction of a second, the entire army faltered. Ben felt the oppressive weight on his power lift, and he seized the opportunity, his blade storm surging forward to tear a fresh, bloody swathe through the enemy ranks.
Lloyd did not pause to savor his victory. He was already moving. Another flicker of azure light, and he was across the battlefield, appearing beside the golem that was being overwhelmed. He did not engage the two kings attacking it. He targeted their foundation.
He activated his Black Ring Eyes. The world went monochrome as he perceived not the physical forms of his enemies, but the flow of their cursed energy. He saw the lines of power connecting them to the ground, to the very bedrock of this unholy city.
With a focused, silent command, he placed a single, elegant seal. A "Seal of Severed Connection."
The two King-Level knights, the Weeping Executioner and the bone-armored brute, suddenly staggered as if struck. The endless well of cursed energy they had been drawing from the corrupted earth was suddenly, inexplicably, cut off. They were isolated, their power source severed at the root.
Ben’s golem, freed from the brunt of their assault, immediately capitalized. Its massive steel fist crashed into the bone-armored knight, shattering its chest plate and sending it reeling.
The tide was turning. But it was a fragile, momentary victory.
The Crimson General, seeing Lloyd’s surgical, king-killing strikes, finally recognized him as the primary threat. It disengaged from Ben's golem with a devastating blow that sent the steel giant stumbling back, and then it turned its full, undivided attention on Lloyd.
It was faster than anything Lloyd had ever seen. It crossed the hundred yards of the ruined square in a blur of crimson light, its black sword a needle of absolute death aimed directly at his heart.
Lloyd’s [Void Step] was instantaneous, but the General's attack was predictive. It wasn't aiming at where he was; it was aiming at where he would be.
Lloyd reappeared twenty feet to the left, but the General's blade was already there to meet him. He had no time to form a weapon, no time to dodge. He threw up a desperate, last-ditch shield of his steel chains.
The General's blade did not cut through them. It simply unmade them. The black sword passed through his defense as if it were smoke, and its cursed tip bit deep into his left shoulder.
A fire, cold and black, erupted in his body. It was not a physical wound; it was a conceptual one. The cursed energy of the blade was not just cutting his flesh; it was devouring his very life force, his spiritual energy.
A wave of weakness, profound and absolute, washed over him. The world swam before his eyes. He stumbled, his own power flickering like a dying candle. He was wounded. Badly. And the General was already raising its blade for the final, killing blow.
They were two titans against an ocean, and for the first time, the tide had breached their walls and was threatening to drown them.
Chapter : 1154
The black, cursed blade of the Crimson General was a sliver of absolute zero, poised a hair's breadth from Lloyd’s throat. The cold it radiated wasn't physical; it was a conceptual chill, a soul-draining energy that promised not just death, but a final, silent erasure from the pages of existence. Lloyd stumbled back, his body a chaotic symphony of conflicting signals. The cursed wound in his shoulder was a black hole, greedily devouring his spiritual energy, while his mind, clear and sharp as ever, was running a thousand calculations a second. He was not afraid. Fear was a useless emotional artifact, a corrupting piece of code in the clean logic of survival. He was, however, deeply, profoundly annoyed.
“You know,” he rasped, his voice a dry, sarcastic thing that was utterly out of place in the epic tragedy unfolding around him, “for a silent, demonic entity of pure, weaponized malice, your footwork is surprisingly elegant. There’s a real economy of motion there. Have you considered teaching? I know an academy that’s always looking for… unique perspectives on the martial arts.”
The Crimson General, in a shocking display of predictability, did not respond to his career advice. It simply began to raise its blade, the movement a slow, beautiful, and utterly final gesture of execution.
Across the ruined square, Ben was engaged in his own exercise in frustrating futility. He was a mountain being systematically eroded by an acidic, relentless sea. His two magnificent steel golems, each one a masterpiece of articulated power that would have been the centerpiece of a lesser lord’s entire army, were now just piles of twisted, smoking scrap, shattered by the coordinated assault of three of the King-Level knights. His own flowing, liquid-metal fortress, a power that had annihilated five hundred lesser knights without effort, was now a flickering, desperate defense. It shimmered and buckled under the ceaseless bombardment of cursed energy from the remaining six kings. Ben was bleeding energy at a rate that was strategically catastrophic. He felt no sense of dread at his impending demise; death was merely a cessation of function. But the sheer inefficiency of the situation, the tactical sloppiness of being overwhelmed by sheer, brute numbers, was an insult to his very soul.
They were two titans who had foolishly tried to hold back an ocean. And now, the tide had finally, inexorably, risen over their heads. They were going to cease functioning. A logically sound, but personally irritating, conclusion.
It was in that final, suspended moment of absolute checkmate, as the General’s blade began its final, graceful descent and Ben’s fortress began to shed pieces of molten steel like dying embers, that a new sound entered the world.
It began as a low, almost imperceptible hum, a vibration that resonated not in the ears, but deep within the bones, in the very core of one’s spiritual being. The hum grew, swelling in volume and intensity, from the thrum of a cello string to the roar of a hurricane, from a hurricane to a thunderous, sky-shattering crescendo that was not a sound, but a physical, concussive force that made the very air tremble.
The sky over Ashworth, which had been a sickly, perpetual grey illuminated by the chaotic flashes of the ongoing battle, darkened. Not with storm clouds, but with a living, moving, and absolutely terrifying shadow. It was a shadow that blotted out the sun, a shadow that stretched from one horizon to the other, a shadow composed of ten thousand individual points of angry, righteous light.
Viscount Rubel, who had been standing on his fortress wall like a mad god, his arms outstretched to embrace his glorious victory, looked up. His insane, triumphant smile froze, then slowly began to curdle into an expression of profound, analytical confusion. This was a variable for which he had not accounted. This was not part of his perfect, beautiful, and unholy plan.
The shadow was an army.
It was a fleet.
It was a sky filled with the summoned spirits of a thousand furious gods.
Griffins whose wings beat with the force of a hurricane, their shrieks a clarion call of vengeance. Colossal earth-bears whose paws were the size of boulders and whose very presence seemed to make the corrupted ground of Ashworth tremble in fear. Golems of pure, radiant, solidified sunlight and swirling, shadowy darkness, order and chaos united in a singular, destructive purpose. And dragons. Dragons of fire, dragons of ice, dragons of storm, their magnificent, terrible forms weaving through the sky in a tapestry of elemental fury. It was a magnificent, terrifying, and absolutely unified armada of Transcended-level power, the full, awesome, and long-slumbering might of House Ferrum, awakened and unleashed.