Chapter 33: Might of the Earth Patrician (1)
The battlefield fell into a momentary silence.
For a fleeting second, the air was still. Dust and blood hung in the wind, frozen as though time hesitated.
Then—chaos.
The first to react were the Emperor and Empress-ranked beasts. Their primal instincts, honed through decades of survival, screamed in warning—an apex predator had entered their domain, a force that dwarfed them all.
But fear did not halt them.
A deafening roar shattered the pause.
A colossal behemoth, its hide like a moving mountain of cracked obsidian, lunged forward. Its four tusks, each the size of a war chariot, gleamed like blackened steel. The sheer weight of its charge splintered the earth, leaving behind craters in its wake. The Grandmaster-ranked warrior it had been battling was forgotten—this was a greater threat.
Yet the Patrician did not move.
CRACK!
A flick of his wrist.
The air rippled, unseen forces converging into a single point. The behemoth’s charge halted mid-motion—its body locking unnaturally as though reality had betrayed it. A fraction of a second later, the ground beneath it imploded.