CHAPTER 198: The Sentinels of the Eclipse (Part 5)
The impact of the Mirror Execution did not produce a conventional shriek of pain. Instead, the entire plateau vibrated with a deafening metallic roar, as if a mountain of solid iron were split in two from its core. Kaelen, the proud Array Master, let out a roar that dragged with it the gloomy echo of a thousand chains breaking simultaneously. It was a guttural, choked sound, laden with absolute disbelief, which made the walls of the volcanic canyon tremble until gigantic shards of stone detached from the heights.
The beam of stellar light infused with the concept of Nirvana pierced his guard without resistance. It erased his right chest and shoulder, evaporating flesh, armored bone, and accumulated Qi in a fraction of a millisecond. Kaelen's right arm was cleanly severed, cauterized instantly by the absolute light of annihilation.
The Stage 3 Grand Saint fell heavily to his knees, his eyes bulging. His chest, or what was left of it, had become a fountain of boiling crimson and steam. The heavy runic chains floating around him, previously imposing, abruptly lost their coppery glow and fell inert, clinking like pathetic, old junk onto the obsidian. The Lattice of Perpetual Gehenna shattered into pieces, dissolving into the air like a broken illusion.
"KAELEN!" Zane's heart-wrenching scream tore through the stale air of the plateau.
The dual-blade assassin, the mercenary who had always remained cold, sarcastic, and calculating in the face of death, lost all composure. His black eyes, accustomed to the gloom, became bloodshot, dilated by the visceral horror of seeing his only friend, his unwavering 'Bastion', crumbling into dust like a ruined tower.
Completely ignoring the defensive formation of the Morningstar tanks and dangerously turning his back to Kael, Zane threw himself forward like a madman. He violently interposed himself between the artillery group of Cedric, Selene, and Aia, and Kaelen's mutilated body. His Eclipse Twins vibrated in his hands with a suicidal and erratic fury. To Zane, loyalty was no longer a simple martial code among mercenaries; it was an open wound bleeding through his very soul.
The collapse of the coppery domain instantly freed the Sequences from the crushing gravitational pressure and the agonizing internal chains. The thirteen young geniuses reacted with a terrifying discipline, immediately regrouping in a wide semicircle around the two fallen Grand Saints.
They had been engaged in uninterrupted combat for an hour at a demented level of attrition. Their high-grade armors were dented and melted at the edges, their luxurious black robes were torn, and everyone breathed heavily, exhaling hot steam. Their bodies were at their limit.
However, seeing Kaelen's shattered state, spewing streams of blood onto the stone, and the desperate madness in Zane's eyes, the Sequences did not cheer or celebrate. They simply sighed heavily. Deep down, witnessing the tragedy of those two veterans, they silently steeled themselves to become even stronger, crueler, and more relentless, so that the Morningstar Clan would never have to experience that pathetic despair of seeing a brother fall to his knees.
Zane fell to his knees beside Kaelen. His friend's boiling blood stained his trembling hands as he tried to support him.
"Brother... old friend... hold on," Zane whispered, his usually arrogant voice breaking into a choked sob.
Kaelen coughed up a thick mass of blood and fragmented Qi. He smiled with a bitterness that deformed his face, while the light in his eyes rapidly lost focus.
"It's time, Zane," Kaelen croaked, clutching the assassin's robe with his single trembling hand. "Take them to fucking hell with us. Use the Shroud..."
Zane saw in his companion's glassy eyes that there was no other option. His friend was on the brink of true death, seconds away from passing out or having his soul dissipate from the trauma.
Zane stood up slowly. He still had fifty percent of his immense Grand Saint spatial Qi reserve left. His aura changed drastically. The speed and evasion vanished, replaced by a heavy, sorrowful, and apocalyptic pressure. He looked at the thirteen youths surrounding them with the hatred of a thousand lifetimes.
"Prepare yourselves, little monsters," Zane said with a sepulchral voice that made the temperature drop. "Today, absolutely no one leaves this canyon alive."
The inert chains on the ground at Kaelen's feet began to levitate, scraping the stone and glowing with a dim, blood-red light. It was the last resort. Immolation.
Joint Skill (Kaelen & Zane): [The Shroud of the Iron Maiden].
Zane crossed the Eclipse Twins in front of his bloodshot eyes. There was no heroic pillar of light; it was a violent, chaotic burst of Qi tinged with a dark red hue that roared with the sorrow and hatred of two Grand Saints peering into the abyss.
Kaelen bellowed like a wounded beast, coughing up streams of blood, and with a final effort that tore apart what remained of his meridians, he ordered the chains to frantically wrap around Zane, lifting him into the air. The chains did not glow with solar gold; they absorbed the fragmented Qi and Kaelen's own crimson blood, turning a macabre incandescent red. Zane became the floating core of a liquid metal tornado, fueled by his best friend's dying life force.
From inside that bloody cocoon, Zane unleashed the Absolute Friction Void. There was no longer mathematical calculation or tactics, only a pure desire for mutual extermination. Kaelen collapsed over his mallet, releasing the cocoon with his last breath of consciousness.
The immense tornado of molten steel and cutting wind shot toward the thirteen young geniuses at a hyperbolic speed. Zane entered Law Hyper-Speed, dragging the chains in a trajectory of pure massacre. The space within a one-kilometer radius completely shattered. Thousands of incandescent blood-red and ash-black lines and cuts appeared simultaneously in the air, as if a network of exposed veins and floating lava had trapped reality. Every chain possessed the Law of the Infinite Slash. With a deafening crack that distorted spacetime—Slash-Slash-Slash!—each cut collapsed and repeated itself three times in the air, creating an inescapable meat grinder.
The cost of this attack was absolute: upon finishing, both Grand Saints would be dead or crippled for life. It was mutually assured destruction.
The Sequences saw the colossal sphere of destruction approaching, devouring the plateau.
"Game over!" Kael transmitted through the Soul Nexus, his voice resonating with an urgency that brokered no argument. "No one steps back. Give me your Qi! Give me everything you have left! We don't have the energy to form the Genesis Spear again, so you will use my own body!"
There wasn't a microsecond of hesitation. Cedric, Iris, Elowen, Cassius, Selene, Aion, Aia, Jareth, Tormund, Bren, Borg, and Orion. The twelve brothers-in-arms broke their formation and placed their hands on their leader's back, shoulders, and arms.
They closed their eyes and emptied their Dantians completely, sending every last drop of their pure Qi, their remaining vitality, and their elemental affinities straight into Kael.
Kael absorbed the monstrous overload of twelve primordial bloodlines. His crimson scales cracked under the immense pressure of the foreign energy. Spouts of boiling blood gushed from his skin, his Dual Eyes, and his ears, but he didn't step back. Pain was the best of fuels.
His [Heart of the Eternal Forge] beat with a seismic violence. He absorbed the energy of his twelve siblings and swallowed the immense heat generated by the incoming apocalyptic tornado. For a divine and fleeting instant, pushed by his clan's blind faith, Kael's aura shattered the conceptual wall.
His power soared, crossing the threshold and temporarily reaching the brute strength of a Grand Saint.
"CODEX: SUTRA OF THE INFERNAL KING'S SWORD!" Kael roared, his voice distorted by the overlapping of twelve echoes.
His Qi became the true Purgatory Flame, golden and black, ready to latch onto Zane's violent Qi and use it as tinder. Kael raised the heavy Magma Fang. His Semi-Domain, the [Realm of the Crimson Ash Lotus], compressed entirely along the edge of his weapon.
The Mastery Level, "Cessation of Cause," activated in his eyes. The Nirvana Intent sought to "extinguish" the hostile intent of the steel tornado before it could consume their lives. And to finalize the verdict, he applied the Direct Extinction Effect. There would be no dazzling flare, no pyrotechnic explosion. Just a black-crimson line representing the "End of the Cycle," a cursed slash where the concept of healing would never exist.
Kael and Zane locked eyes through the storm of fire, blood, and steel. The madness of familial duty against the madness of mercenary loyalty.
Both supreme attacks shot toward each other.
The clash had no describable sound on the mortal plane.
Kael's [Ultimate Move: Solar Cut: Judgment Day], infused with Nirvana, collided head-on against the furious core of [The Shroud of the Iron Maiden].
The resulting conceptual mega-explosion erased the light from the volcanic canyon. A shockwave of incandescent vacuum and disintegrated steel shrapnel swept across the entire plateau. The blast wave was so absurdly colossal that it didn't matter how dense or heavy Borg and Aion were, nor how anchored Elowen was. The twelve youths of the Morningstar Clan, who had emptied every last ounce of Qi to give to their leader and had nothing left to brace themselves with, were sent flying through the air like dry leaves in a hurricane, smashing violently against the rock dozens of meters away, rolling inert and unable to stand.
Kaelen, already mutilated and drifting into unconsciousness, was lifted by the brutal force of the explosion and thrown like a rag doll into the abyss surrounding the plateau, vanishing into the unfathomable darkness of the smoke and magma below.
When the blinding glare ceased, at the epicenter of the immense newly formed crater, the result of the clash was revealed.
Zane fell to the ground grotesquely, the inertia of his body dragging him across the obsidian. His ultimate attack, the product of the sacrifice of two lives, had been "extinguished" and split in half. Kael's Solar Cut had ignored the spatial friction and the blood barrier.
The left half of Zane's torso, from the edge of his shoulder to his hip, had simply been erased from physical existence. However, to the terror of any healer, the Dantean wounds did not bleed at all. The very concept of "healing" or "bleeding" had been nullified by the authority of Nirvana. Zane lay on his back, inert, his empty black eyes staring blankly at the sealed, ashen ceiling of the canyon. It was unknown if his soul still hung by a thread or if he was dead, but his long war was over forever.
Ten meters away from him, Kael fell heavily to his knees, the impact cracking the stone beneath his weight. The draconic Semi-Transformation had completely unraveled. Kael was a human youth once again. His right arm, which had borne the weight of twelve souls and channeled the Magma Fang, was blown apart. The fractured bones peeked through the severely charred flesh due to the sheer thermodynamic pressure of artificially raising his cultivation and clashing against the will of a Grand Saint. His heavy sword fell to the ground with a dull, inert thud.
Bleeding profusely from every orifice, panting in the pure agony of the collapse of his overloaded meridians, Kael barely managed to keep his asymmetrical eyes open. His vision was turning black, clouded by blurred edges. He was at the absolute limit of passing out.
But, through the dense curtain of smoke and the fine red ash falling slowly like bloody snow, an elegant, graceful, and dark silhouette descended from the sky.
Lilith landed softly in front of him, the fine heel of her boots barely touching the scorched stone. Her divine and seductive face did not show the cold, cruel mockery she had used with the Supreme Commanders. It showed a smile of genuine, warm, and profound maternal respect.
The Inquisitor knelt elegantly and gently stroked Kael's blood-soaked hair. Her red lips moved, whispering words meant only for him.
Kael couldn't hear the sound due to the high-pitched ringing of deafness in his ears. But he read her lips perfectly. He read the absolute confirmation of victory. He read the phrase every Morningstar yearned to hear: The Patriarch would be very proud of you.
A faint, painfully tired, but absolutely victorious smile curved Kael's broken lips.
Knowing that his family's heavy vanguard had accomplished its suicidal mission, Kael finally closed his eyes and let the warm, heavy darkness claim him. He fell unconscious on the cold volcanic stone, joining the exhausted and triumphant slumber of the rest of his brothers and sisters scattered across the plateau.
The indomitable Iron Blood Alliance had been dismantled from its foundations.
When the gravitational collapse of the Shroud finally settled and the volcanic dust stopped swirling, the impregnable fortress of the Igneous Fault Bastion was plunged into a sepulchral silence, broken only by the crackling of fire.
The Morningstar Clan's Blood Vanguard had fulfilled its directive. Annihilation was a fact.
On the intricate walkways, the immense lower courtyards, and the surrounding plateaus, the mutilated bodies of thousands of Bounty Hunters, elite assassins, and rebel slaves lay scattered, forming a macabre tapestry. The twelve Alliance Captains and the four arrogant Supreme Commanders were captured, their meridians sealed and their limbs mutilated, ready like cattle to be delivered on a silver platter to Matriarch Sienna's laboratories.
The Sequences who had been tasked with clearing the outer ring (Elara, Dante, Varian, Vorian, Nylas, Magnus, Lyra, Voltar, Darius, Tamsin, Draven, and Ciro) regrouped in the center of the vast crater of the lower courtyard. They were all covered in dried blood and smoking viscera from head to toe, breathing heavily, but their collective auras radiated a level of grim lethality that would have terrified an entire army of conventional Saints.
Dante, in particular, sported a smile that split his face from ear to ear. His Dagger of the Fallen Asura vibrated in his hand with an insatiable dark thirst, and his mysterious Slaughter System kept flashing frantically with golden notifications on his retina. The points were accumulating by the hundreds of thousands, rapidly approaching the mythical one-million mark. He felt his latent Slaughter Intent was about to break a fundamental bottleneck; his own Law Domain was stretching and awakening with every life his blade harvested in the darkness.
Around him, the sturdy Magnus and the others heavily dragged the captive Saints by their hair. They had witnessed the apocalyptic battles of their vanguard comrades from a distance and felt a fierce pride, a sense of brotherhood burning in their chests. They knew perfectly well that while massacring the cannon fodder had been their task, the true monsters (like Kael, Cedric, Iris, or Violet) had walked straight into the hell of the Iron Blood elite, facing Grand Saints head-on, and had survived to tell the tale.
Suddenly, a majestic figure descended slowly from the starry night sky filtering through the mouth of the volcano.
Lilith landed in the center of the courtyard with the lethal grace of a destructive deity. Her long, intense red hair swayed lazily in the thermal wind. She swept her amber gaze over the twelve Sequences who were still standing.
"You have done a flawless job, my children," Lilith said, her warm and seductive voice contrasting sharply with the hell of blood, viscera, and ash that surrounded her. "Do not feel bad for not having the opportunity to flay the Commanders yourselves tonight. Our Clan is just beginning its grand hunt in this world; there will be inexhaustible oceans of blood and a thousand more wars in the future for you to enjoy. For now, gather the fallen from the upper plateau, secure the trash you have captured, and return immediately to the Void Herald. The air down here... is going to get very turbulent in a moment."
As soon as Lilith uttered those enigmatic words, the ambient temperature in the entire canyon seemed to stop dead, as if the volcano itself came to life and held its breath in terror.
From the deepest core of the main fortress, in the very bowels of the black mountain, a colossal, ancient, and bloodthirsty spiritual pressure erupted.
It wasn't a vulgar explosion of sound, but an invisible tsunami of oppressive force. The physical space around the immense black iron doors of the main entrance rippled violently, distorting vision. The air suddenly became so dense and heavy that the simple act of breathing was like trying to swallow boiling liquid lead. A dark blood-red aura, densely laden with a millennial killing intent that reeked of genocidal massacres, shot toward the sky like a pillar, tinting the ash clouds a sickly scarlet.
The twelve Sequences in the courtyard felt the monstrous pressure slam into their bruised bodies like a physical steel wall. Their knees trembled from the instinctive weight, and the gravity around them seemed to multiply tenfold. It was the raw, stark, and absolute power of a Grand Saint at the very peak of his existence, just one step away from the supreme realm.
But not one of the Morningstar Clan youths knelt. Not a single one stepped back.
There was no panic in their eyes, only a clinical and silent evaluation. They had survived the infernal training, Samael's physical tortures, and Vexia's mental nightmares. They had seen their own Patriarch unleash the true absolute void, a darkness that devoured the soul. What this old mercenary was doing with his aura was undeniably impressive by the standards of the weak continent... but, compared to the unfathomable and cosmic darkness of their leader, this man's pressure was just a pathetic match struck in the middle of an eternal hurricane.
Seeing that her young ones did not bow before the terror of a superior being, Lilith's smile widened, overflowing with fierce pride. However, she was not going to let her beloved children endure that heavy suppression needlessly; they had already given enough of themselves.
The Inquisitor took a step forward and released a single, delicate thread of her own abyssal aura. The clash was invisible but definitive; it was enough to shatter the dense enemy suppression over the Sequences as if breaking thin glass.
"Go. You have won. Rest," Lilith ordered softly, her tone brokering no argument.
The youths gave a quick martial bow, brief but full of deep respect, activated their heavy containment rings to store the prisoners, and leapt one by one through the spatial portal to the safety of the Void Herald, whose immense defense formations were already glowing in orbit.
Lilith was left completely alone, floating indifferently ten meters above the bloody crater floor.
The colossal black iron doors of the fortress were blown to a thousand pieces from the inside, the shrapnel whistling harmlessly around Lilith's invisible barrier.
From the dense darkness and smoke of the shattered threshold, his footsteps echoing like hammer blows on the stone, emerged the immense figure of Vargas "The Butcher" (Stage 8 Grand Saint).
The absolute Master of the Iron Blood Alliance had awakened. And the true final hunt was about to begin.
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