CHAPTER 198: The Sentinels of the Eclipse (Part 1)
While the vast main courtyard of the fortress drowned in a thick mud of boiled blood, calcified poison, and the still-smoking ashes of the once-invincible Iron Blood elite, a tense, unnatural silence, heavy with doom, dominated a secluded rocky plateau located at the very top of the igneous fault.
There, far from the deafening chaos of the mutiny and carnage that the Dragon Queens and the Sequences had unleashed below, stood Kaelen.
As an Array Master and Commander of the Internal Guard, Kaelen was a man whose power resided not in the thickness of his muscles or the brutality of his sword, but in the immensity of his mind. He was a Stage 3 Grand Saint, the architect of the Alliance's static death. From his privileged, elevated position, his weathered face, dimly illuminated by the orange glow of the magma flowing hundreds of meters below, was a mask of absolute, cold desolation.
His eyes, accustomed to reading the flow of the world's Qi, had witnessed the systematic annihilation of his faction. He had seen the heavy gunners dismembered before they could fire. He had seen Vorg the Unbreakable fall, aged, withered, and shattered by incomprehensible forces. He had seen the colossal Rurik roasted and quartered alongside his beasts. And finally, he had witnessed the humiliating defeat of Leng Bi, the nightmare of the shadows, crushed and torn apart within the borders of her own illusory domain.
Kaelen let out a long, shuddering sigh, raising a gloved hand to rub the bridge of his nose, trying to ward off the headache that sheer disbelief provoked in him.
"I always knew Vargas's boundless pride would bring us death someday," Kaelen muttered, his voice barely a whisper carried away by the hot wind. "But to be devoured like this... by such young monsters... that is a punishment of humiliation that not even the cruelest gods could have imagined."
Around him, the air of the plateau hummed with lethal, contained energy. Dozens of magical formations floated invisibly in space: Absolute Defense traps, Piercing Attack arrays, Sensory Illusion nets, lethal spatial distortion pits, and inverse gravity fields. Kaelen was not a melee fighter; his domain was battlefield control. Whoever took a wrong step on this plateau would be disintegrated by a thousand cannons of light before they could even draw a weapon.
But suddenly, one of his perimeter warning arrays—a subtle net of Qi threads hidden over three kilometers away—flickered weakly in his mind and went out. A second later, another array on the left flank was erased from existence. And then another.
Someone was approaching. And they were doing so by destroying his most complex and subtle traps as if they were simply walking through old cobwebs.
Kaelen turned slowly, his heavy tunic embroidered with containment runes billowing violently in the volcanic wind. Beside him, leaning with an almost insultingly casual attitude against a sharp obsidian stalagmite, was Zane.
Zane was not like the rest of the mercenary scum that made up the Alliance. He was a man with sharp features, muscular, but with the agility of a feline, short black hair, and a sharp, piercing gaze like that of a peregrine falcon. He had recently broken his bottlenecks to ascend to the Stage 1 Grand Saint Realm. Unlike the cynical, treacherous, and sadistic assassins that abounded in Iron Blood, Zane possessed a strict code of honor and an unwavering loyalty toward Kaelen, the only man who had provided him with the resources, trust, and guidance to reach his current level of power.
Kaelen looked at his friend, the tension in his shoulders relaxing a fraction of a millimeter, and joked with a bitter, crooked smile.
"Well, Zane. It seems our uninvited guests have finished with the opening acts and have decided to come pay their respects to management. Perhaps this will be the last time we fight together, old friend. At least before we die, we must make sure to take one of these little demons to hell with us... that is if our flesh is enough to pay the toll."
Zane let out a laugh. It was a clean, frank laugh, devoid of the hysteria that had consumed the others. He pushed off the rock and, with a fluid motion, drew his weapons.
There was no classic, shrill metallic sound of steel scraping against the sheath; the weapons emerged in sepulchral silence. In his hands rested the Eclipse Twins. The two blades, about forty centimeters in length, had a subtle curve that recalled the silhouette of the moon in its last quarter. They were forged from Celestial Obsidian Steel, a mystical metal extracted from meteorites fallen during total eclipses. Their matte black color was so dense and absolute that it devoured the light from the surrounding magma. To the naked eye, they looked like two cutouts of the night sky, erasing any relief or silhouette. Only a thin line of silver Qi, extremely fine and cold as frost, ignited along the groove of their spines. The space around Zane's hands began to distort subtly, the air vibrating as it was devoured by the friction-nullifying edge.
There was no fear in Zane's eyes, only the solemn and peaceful martial acceptance of a warrior who has found a battlefield worthy of his end.
"It's a damn honor to have you as my partner in this life, Kaelen," Zane said, softly clashing the mute blades of his daggers, which emitted a faint silver flash. "So let's have one last dance. Let's let these arrogant pups know why, a long time ago, they used to call us the 'Sentinels of the Volcanic Eclipse'."
Kaelen nodded in silence. His hands moved in a sequence of quick and fluid seals, injecting his Grand Saint Qi to activate the first defensive line of annihilation formations.
And then, the shadows at the edge of the plateau materialized.
The invaders were not running; they were not crouching to seek cover, nor were they trying to hide their presence. They advanced at a steady pace, dictating the rhythm of the world with the absolute, oppressive arrogance of conquerors.
There were thirteen figures dressed in black and crimson.
Kael led the march. His stoic face was a mask of contained fury. In his right hand, he dragged the immense Magma Fang Sword. The tip of the heavy blade scraped the volcanic stone, leaving behind a deep, smoking scar of molten rock and sparks. Behind the leader of the Sequences walked the twins Cedric and Iris with a firm step. They were followed, radiating lethal and unstable auras, by Elowen, the twins Aion and Aia, Cassius, Selene, Bren, Orion, Jareth, Tormund, and Borg.
The thirteen demons of the Morningstar stopped in unison exactly twenty meters away from the two Grand Saints.
Cedric and Iris, the runic brains of the squad, completely ignored Zane and his lethal daggers. Their glowing eyes were fixed on the ground, scanning the empty air and the ambient light of the plateau. They were analyzing Kaelen's intricate, invisible network of arrays with a cold, clinical, and almost academic appreciation. The twins exchanged glances and nodded in unison, acknowledging the undeniable talent of the creator.
"Clean strokes, efficient energy nodes, a fairly decent overlapping of laws for a mercenary," praised Cedric, adjusting his gloves. A slight, haughty smile appeared on his face. "They will be a very good addition to the tactical libraries of Grand Marshal Vexia's Army... once we've dismantled them piece by piece, of course."
Kael wasted no time on pleasantries or villainous speeches. The cold gray eyes of the leader of the Sequences focused on the two veterans. His voice resonated with absolute command, infused with Qi.
"Cedric, Iris. You two will be in charge of interfering with the formations, breaking the energy nodes, and dismantling the external shield. Assist at critical moments from the rearguard. And don't hold back for a second. Use all your power; that architect is a Stage 3 Grand Saint, a single mistake and he'll blow us to pieces."
"As you command, leader," the twins replied. Their eyes became pools of luminescent data as their minds connected to the invisible array of the battlefield, beginning to control reality.
Kael turned his face toward the rest of his brothers and sisters in arms. The killing intent emanating from his body made the air around him begin to ripple.
"The rest of the Sequences have already swept out the trash, annihilated the squads, and trampled the captains. The girls are flaying the beast tamer as we speak. They left the architects to us. We will take care of this scum. No one holds anything back. WE'RE GOING ALL OUT!"
The suffocating air of the plateau vibrated violently when thirteen primordial auras erupted simultaneously, defying and crushing the oppressive atmospheric pressure of the volcano.
But Kael was not going to delegate the honor of the first strike.
"I WILL PAVE THE WAY!" roared Kael.
The physical space around him seemed to catch fire. The thick blood of the Primordial Era boiled in his veins. Releasing the seals of his bloodline, Kael activated his Semi-Transformation, elevating his power to the pinnacle of Stage 6 Saint.
The change was monstrous. His eyelids opened wide, revealing the feared [Crimson Dragon Eyes of the Spiritual Edge]. The duality of the forge manifested in his asymmetrical gaze.
His Left Eye, the eye of the Magma Dragon, turned into a matte black sclera that absorbed light. The iris shone like a ring of molten gold, and the pupil mutated into a vertical reptilian slit made of dancing flames that gave off micro-sparks of plasma. Through this eye, Kael ceased to see the physical forms of Zane or Kaelen; he saw the world as a map of atomic friction. He saw the wind Qi flowing rapidly through Zane's meridians like celestial rivers, and he detected the array's energy nodes like shining beacons. His thermal vision identified the weakest "ignition point" in the air in front of him, marking it with a cross of golden fire in his perception.
His Right Eye, the eye of the Sword Heart, mutated into a translucent surface of incandescent ruby crystal, lacking a human pupil. In the exact center of that ruby, the sharp silhouette of a miniature broadsword forged in platinum light manifested. This pupil analyzed causality: it broke down the atomic structure of enemy techniques, calculating the exact mathematical trajectory for his sword to strike the structural fissures of reality.
Simultaneously, thick, heavy [Crimson Scales] erupted with a metallic sound along his arms, chest, and neck. They were not simple passive armor plates; they were hexagonal plates of biological metal tempered in magma that acted as Fire Qi Radiators. The intense heat of the volcano beneath the plateau was passively absorbed by the scales, pumping a grotesque energy straight into his arms and causing the enormous blade of his Magma Fang to emit a thermal radiation so intense that the air within three meters of him transmuted into transparent plasma.
And as a seal of his sovereignty, a pair of [Dragon Horns] tore through the air from his forehead. Two stylized appendages of porous obsidian that instantly acted as metaphysical lightning rods for his Nirvana Sword Intent. The horns projected a crown of incandescent white light, stabilizing his destructive power and absorbing the monstrous mental fatigue so that his own body would not collapse under the atomic pressure he was about to unleash.
The "Awakening of the Volcano" was complete.
Kael had become a living projectile of inescapable heat. The entire coliseum experienced a drastic drop in color saturation; the world was tinted a pale, sepulchral gray. The air entered an absolute acoustic vacuum, silenced by the crushing pressure of Nirvana.
With a sonic boom that pulverized the obsidian beneath his boots, Kael shot straight toward the heart of Kaelen's guard. He executed his [Crimson Dragon Dance: The Step of the Igneous Void]. His body wasn't running; it flowed like liquid metal, moving like a bolt of magma that left behind multiple translucent silhouettes and a trail of white ash lotuses bursting into sparks.
Advancing at infinite speed, Kael raised his greatsword. His intention was not to wound, it was to erase from existence. He traced a massive horizontal arc with the [Crimson Slash: The Extinction of the Blood Lotus].
The sword vibrated at an ultrasonic frequency, raising the blade's temperature to stellar levels. It didn't push the air; matter came apart before being touched. A black-crimson line tore through the pale gray world, aiming to decapitate the two Grand Saints in a single, apocalyptic movement intended to causally disconnect them from reality itself.
But Zane was not a frightened rookie, and his loyalty knew no fear.
"YOU DON'T GET PAST ME, PUP!" roared Zane, his eyes bloodshot from the approaching lethal pressure, intercepting the imminent trajectory of destruction.
Zane executed the pinnacle of his movement technique: [The Step of the Flickering Edge]. He massed his Wind Law Qi in his leg meridians and compressed it inward. Upon stepping, Zane literally "cut" the friction of the ground with his martial intent. There was no gust of wind, no smoke. He simply vanished from Kael's line of sight in the pulse of a heartbeat, reappearing instantly right in front of the Morningstar leader.
The newly ascended Stage 1 Grand Saint drastically lowered his center of gravity. His two celestial obsidian blades, the Eclipse Twins, crossed in an 'X' shape in front of his chest, infused to the limit with his cutting Wind Law. The space around the daggers vibrated frantically, devouring the air.
The clash was monumental.
CLAAANG-BOOOM!
Kael's atomic Purgatory Flame collided head-on against the unbreakable, invisible hurricane of Zane's blades. Sparks of blinding white fire and wild bolts of emerald Qi illuminated the gloomy plateau, erasing the shadows for an instant. The shockwave generated by the crossing of weapons was so expansive that it created a concave crater ten meters in diameter, pulverizing the pure stone beneath Zane's boots.
Kael, being "only" a Stage 6 Saint despite his aberrant biological transformation and his Nirvana intent, suddenly felt the pure, unreasonable, and oppressive Qi density difference of a true Grand Saint. The repulsive force generated by Zane was massive and unyielding.
Kael was sent flying backward, his feet dragging and breaking the ground, soaring nearly fifteen meters before having to drive the white-hot blade of the Magma Fang deep into the volcanic rock to brake his dangerous inertia. His right arm trembled from the feedback of the clash.
However, despite the obvious disadvantage in brute strength, Kael's cold, stoic expression broke. A slight, dark, sadistic smile curved his lips as he straightened up, his dual eyes burning with the excitement of having found prey that wouldn't fall in a single blow.
Zane, on the other hand, had not retreated a single millimeter from his original position. But the cost was evident: the mystical metal of his blades smoked violently, and the muscles in his forearms trembled slightly from the absurd, piercing heat that Kael's impact had filtered through his guard.
The mercenary straightened up, cracking his neck from side to side. The vertebrae popped like dry gunshots in the static-charged air. He looked at Kael with a savage smile, baring his teeth.
"Is that it, little monster?" mocked Zane, spitting a trail of saliva next to his boots. "You're going to need to hit a hell of a lot harder than that if you want to claim my head."
"No one asked for a damn one-on-one duel, you old idiot," resonated a hoarse, metallic voice laden with insane madness from Zane's right flank.
The lethal and feared heavy vanguard of the Morningstar Sequences had just formally entered the board.
Borg, the human berserker, advanced like a runaway locomotive, followed closely and in perfect formation by the colossi Bren and Tormund. They were the clan's three tanks; three young monsters who loved pure violence and physical contact more than the air they breathed.
"LET'S SEE WHICH OF US LASTS LONGER, HAHAHAHA!" Borg laughed maniacally, accelerating his pace until his run became a blur of fury.
As he ran, Borg activated the fullness of his genetic heritage. His [Armor Scales] emitted a deep bronze glow. These scales were not external plates or armor that could be torn off; they had symbiotically fused with his muscle tissues and his skin, giving him the terrifying appearance of a fast golem made of hardened leather and pure bronze. This physiognomy granted him an unreasonable property: Recoil Immunity.
From Zane's rearguard, the calculating Kaelen saw the charge. His hands danced, injecting Qi into one of his secure nodes. He instantly activated a passive defensive formation: a "Solid Wind Wall" capable of stopping the advance of a Saint-level beast in its tracks. A wall of turbulent, crystallized air rose in front of Borg's trajectory.
Borg didn't flinch. He didn't slow his speed in the slightest.
With a bestial grunt, he invoked his [Primordial Bronze Horn]. From the upper part of his forehead violently sprouted a short, thick, blunt horn forged of living, pulsating metal. Borg lowered his head, pointing forward. The horn acted as the epicenter and absolute focus of his suffocating Siege Intent. Upon crashing head-on into Kaelen's solid wind formation, the horn generated an aggressive spatial micro-vortex.
The vortex, spinning at incalculable speeds, literally "opened" and tore apart the density of the complex magical barrier. Borg passed through the Array Master's seemingly impenetrable defense as if tearing through a sheet of wet rice paper, without losing a fraction of his overwhelming kinetic inertia.
He suddenly appeared in front of Zane and delivered a brutal headbutt, a direct impact designed to impale and crush the mercenary's sternum.
Zane, genuinely surprised by the absurd speed and terrifying magical piercing capacity of this youth, hastily raised his Eclipse Twins to intercept the charge. The mercenary and the bronze berserker engaged in a frantic, violent, ultra-close-quarters exchange of blows, where Zane's invisible wind blades carved thick orange sparks from Borg's thick bronze skin without managing to deeply penetrate the flesh.
But the Morningstar's strategy was never based on one-on-one combat. Borg was not alone; he was merely the anvil. The hammer was coming from the blind side.
From Zane's left flank, a gigantic figure that completely eclipsed Borg's already enormous size charged forward with the unstoppable force of an alpine landslide.
It was Bren. The very air around him erupted in small but audible sonic pressure booms every time the giant flexed the monstrous musculature of his arms.
Bren's physiognomy was an aberration of nature. His mutation of [Rock and Scale Skin] had replaced all his human skin with a thick, rough, grayish geological shell, interspersed with heavy plates of living volcanic rock. This natural armor not only granted him Penetration Immunity, but his own Behemoth Dragon bloodline had drastically modified his [Expansion Muscles]. The muscle fibers beneath his stone shell were intertwined with fiery magma filaments that pulsed visibly in the darkness, granting him a pure, irrational Tectonic Strength. His blows did not rely on the mysticism of Qi, but on devastating physics capable of pulverizing rocks with the simple air displacement of his fists.
Bren's eyes were no longer human. His [Beast Eyes] had transformed into two deep pits of glowing lava with rectangular pupils. Through them, Bren did not evaluate Zane's martial stance or defensive guard; he saw the world through wave physics. He saw the Resonance Points of the Grand Saint's body. The Behemoth's mathematical and instinctive mind had already calculated exactly at what rhythm, angle, and speed he must strike Zane's ribcage for his resilient bones to enter a lethal harmonic vibration and liquefy along with his internal organs.
While the tenacious Borg kept Zane's lethal blades occupied at the front, Bren prepared his execution. He raised his immense right fist.
The weapon attached to his arms was not an ordinary gauntlet. The Behemoth Core Knuckledusters were biomechanical extensions made of matte black Tectonic Obsidian that seemed to "breathe" fire. On the back of his hand beat the Heart of the Red Mountain, a sphere of crystallized magma that shone a blinding white. As he contracted his expansion muscles, the artifact's ignition chamber sucked in his magma blood and overloaded the core.
Bren threw a massive right hook, infused with the Gravitational Mass of magma and the Authority of Resonance, aimed directly and mercilessly at the mercenary's exposed left side.
"YOU BASTARDS JUST DON'T GET TIRED!" yelled Zane, the death instinct making the hair on the back of his neck stand up as he perceived the crushing, lethal imminence of the approaching blow.
Gripped by desperation, Zane explosively released the entire immediate reserve of his cutting wind Qi from the pores of his own body, creating an expansive burst that managed to push Borg a measly meter backward, just enough to free his arms. Spinning on his heels at breakneck speed, the mercenary tried to block Bren's massive fist by positioning the broad, flat blade of his Saint-Grade dagger as an emergency shield.
Bren's colossal fist, sheathed in the tectonic obsidian and stellar heat of the knuckledusters, brutally slammed into the dagger's unbreakable blessed metal.
CRRAAAAK!
The resonant boom was deafening. Zane's weapons, forged in celestial obsidian, did not break under the pressure, but the mercenary felt as if his human arms were trying to stop a speeding freight train head-on. The Inertial Mass and sonic vibration of Bren's weapon nullified the guard; the unreasonable force made Zane's own blades rebound violently, smashing hard against his own chest.
Bren, observing the perfect fissure in his enemy's stance, did not stop his assault. He prepared his left arm and threw a second punch, a straight, relentless blow aimed right at Zane's unprotected heart to apply the finisher of the Internal Shockwave.
The incandescent fist devoured the distance. Zane widened his eyes in disbelief; he had no physical or magical time to retreat or interpose another defense.
But at the rearguard of the plateau, the Stage 3 Grand Saint was no mere spectator.
Kaelen was going through his own personal hell, sweating profusely under the surgical and mental siege of Cedric and Iris, who from a distance were crumbling, rewriting, and corrupting the complex lines of code of his external formations with terrifying speed. However, demonstrating why he was the Commander of the Internal Guard, Kaelen managed to divide his concentration and channel a fine, yet dense thread of his personal Qi.
He made a tactical sacrificial decision; he allowed three of his expensive peripheral offensive arrays to collapse under the twins' relentless control, just to free up enough mental bandwidth to activate a small but incredibly dense Defensive Formation Plate he kept hidden up his sleeve.
A translucent, shining shield, the "Aether Shield," materialized in the air mere millimeters from Zane's chest, interposing itself between the mercenary's flesh and the incandescent stone doom.
Bren's massive fist struck the glowing magical barrier head-on.
The clash between the brute force of a primordial dragon and the crystallized magic of a Stage 3 Grand Saint illuminated the entire plateau. The Aether Shield, designed to withstand artillery bombardments, groaned under the immense tectonic force. It held... for exactly one full second.
A second later, the inertia accumulated by the Behemoth Knuckles overloaded the array, and the majestic shield burst into a million harmless fragments of light that rained down like stardust.
But that single, miraculous second granted by Kaelen was all the margin of life Zane needed.
Reacting with the haste of the damned, the Stage 1 Grand Saint cleverly used the monstrous recoil of the broken impact against the barrier to desperately propel himself into the air. He leaped backward, flying ten meters above the battlefield and narrowly escaping the deadly radius of the Internal Shockwave that Bren unleashed on empty air.
Zane landed heavily, his boots skidding and carving deep into the smooth, black volcanic stone. A thick, cold drop of sweat rolled slowly down his temple, tracing a path through the ash deposited on his skin. His arms twitched spasmodically. He knew, with absolute and terrifying certainty, that if that bare fist of volcanic rock had connected cleanly with his torso, the tectonic resonance would have turned all his ribs to dust and his lungs to bloody pulp in less than a blink.
"What kind of damn demons are these kids?" thought Zane, gritting his teeth until they ground together, as he tried to stabilize his breathing and his Dantian.
But the pride and paramilitary tactics of the Morningstar Clan were relentless. Their combat doctrine did not allow their prey to breathe, regroup, or evaluate the situation. The pressure had to be continuous, absolute, and suffocating.
As Zane exhaled a microscopic sigh of relief, believing he had gained a few valuable, safe meters of distance away from the deadly pincer of the two front-line giants, he felt something disturbing. The solid ground at his back vibrated, but in a profoundly strange and unnatural way. It wasn't the sharp impact of a heavy boot running toward him; it was a constant pressure, a dense hum. It was as if the immovable weight of the world itself was shifting toward him in silence.
In the fraction of a second he dedicated to evading Borg and surviving Bren, he had completely forgotten to calculate the position of the vanguard's third tank.
Tormund was already planted less than an exact meter behind his back.
The colossal youth had not emitted even the slightest sound of footsteps as he approached, because his lethal [Basalt Scales] were not bulky, external armor that clanked metallically when walking. His dense, cold scales were fused at a microscopic level with his muscle fibers beneath his human skin. Although to the naked eye his figure looked like an unusually broad warrior with dark skin resembling tanned leather, his true biological weight defied the fundamental laws of gravity and mass. Tormund didn't weigh a hundred kilos; he weighed tons. He was the seabed compressed into the shape of a man.
His inexpressive [Agate Eyes], of a muddy brown color that lacked emotional gleam and blinked rarely, had been patiently "reading" the microscopic seismic vibrations that Zane's footsteps and jumps sent through the plateau's volcanic stone. The earth did not lie. Tormund knew exactly where, when, and in what posture Zane was going to land, long before the mercenary himself even initiated the conscious thought of his evasive retreat.
He had walked toward that very same final coordinate with a slow, chilling calmness, simply waiting for the prey to fall into his lap.
When Zane's boots finally touched the ground and he stopped, the giant Tormund didn't even bother pulling his arm back to throw a punch, he didn't draw a sharp weapon, he didn't utter a war cry or conjure flashy flames or magical wind hurricanes.
Simultaneously, he activated the Pneumatic Retraction Mechanism of his Plate Bulwark: The Golem's Shell. With a quick, dry, and muffled clack-clack-shhk, the immense bronze shield collapsed onto itself in half a second, retracting towards his forearm and becoming a heavy armored bracer that left his shoulder free and shielded. The artifact's Tectonic Stability Anchor rooted him deeply to the gravitational roots of the mountain.
With the path clear and his inertia secured, Tormund simply let himself fall forward, employing the most primitive, brutal, and devastating form of his passive offensive: [Collapse].
Due to his inconceivable, infinite body mass, he needed no technique. A simple physical push from Tormund, dropping the dead weight of his body against the enemy's back, carried the exact same catastrophic kinetic energy as the orbital impact of a dense meteorite, capable of crushing Saint-grade armor, pulverizing Qi barriers, and liquefying vital organs purely by the dull inertia of his overwhelming mass.
Upon suddenly feeling the cold, lethal void approaching inescapably from his rear, Zane's sharp, trained Grand Saint survival instincts screamed in absolute panic. There was no time to jump or use another evasive movement technique.
Spinning on his heels at a speed dictated by terror and the will to live, Zane took half a step forward to stabilize himself, faced the massive dark silhouette falling upon him, and crossed both Eclipse Twins in the shape of an inverted 'X' in front of his chest and face.
The mercenary infused his daggers with the absolute one hundred percent of his protective Qi reserve, preparing the strongest and most desperate defense of his entire martial life, entrusting himself to the gods to withstand the blunt, frontal impact of what seemed to be a human asteroid.
He activated his supreme defensive skill: the [Inverse Cross Parry: Void Deflection].
Zane knew that crashing brute force against Tormund's cosmic mass would be instant suicide; his bones would turn to flour. The moment Tormund's imposing, dark basalt shoulder made the first microscopic contact with the daggers, Zane executed a micro-twist of his wrists at a speed imperceptible to the human eye, injecting his Law of the Infinite Slash directly into the epicenter of the contact point.
The black blades, which did not reflect light, emitted three blind flashes of silver lightning. The Law of his weapons generated three instant, simultaneous spatial micro-cuts, specifically designed to shred, scrape, and tangentially deflect the overwhelming, linear kinetic energy of Tormund's collapse.
But Tormund was not a magical attack or a heavy sword; he was a moving continent.
BOOOOOOM!
The final impact of Tormund's heavy, rocky shoulder against Zane's fragile crossed arms generated a detonation so massive it sounded exactly like the explosion of a huge seismic bomb deep within a cavern. The entire plateau shook violently beneath their feet.
Even though Zane's miraculous Void Deflection managed to execute its function—smoothly sliding seventy percent of the lethal impact toward the ground, preventing the mercenary from literally being split in half and ground into a puddle of blood—the thirty percent of the remaining kinetic inertia that did hit his guard was enough to rewrite his destiny.
Zane felt like an entire volcano had just fallen on top of him. The pain robbed him of oxygen and numbed his arms instantly.
Unable to anchor himself to the ground, the Stage 1 Grand Saint's body was lifted into the air and sent flying, soaring chaotically and violently backward as if he were a simple, light rag doll whipped by a hurricane. He crossed the air over the rocky plateau at more than a hundred kilometers per hour, with no control over his trajectory.
With a dull, nauseating crash, Zane's back smashed brutally against an immense, solid, unforgiving natural wall of sharp obsidian stalagmites at the opposite end of the battlefield. The fierce impact shattered several of the dark stone pillars, instantly kicking up a dense, suffocating cloud of dark volcanic dust and crushed rock that buried him, leaving the Morningstar vanguard standing, imposing and immovable, contemplating the crater of their own creation.
*************************
Note from Void_Scribe: 🐉
And if you want to directly support this humble author, swing by my ko-fi.com/void_scribe (for a little coffee... wink, wink hehehe ☕). Thanks for reading! Are you enjoying the story? Then don't forget to add it to your library and leave your votes to support the book! Every show of support counts immensely and motivates me to keep writing. See you in the next chapter!