Ery stood atop the southern wall, his soul strained and yet his spirit resolute. He intentionally taunted the barbarian beastmaster, hoping to lure her into making a mistake.
With only one of her three godly beasts remaining, her position was fragile. More importantly, her soul had only recently integrated into a new physique—her control unstable, her power dimd.
Now was the ti. If Ery could eliminate her, he might sever her connection to the Varkhall Banner entirely. With that, he could truly make the artifact his own. But instead of charging through the shattered barrier, the beastmaster halted halfway. Her eyes, filled with wrath, flickered toward the top of the citadel.
There, standing still as a mountain, cloaked in divine pressure, was the Supre Magus—Rosin Karat. The aura surrounding him now blanketed the entire fortress. The barbarian's expression twisted with a mix of fear and fury. In her current state, she dared not cross the wall.
Ery exhaled slowly, disappointed but relieved. The last spirit battle had drained him more than expected. His success in neutralizing two of the three godly beasts had lightened the burden on the southern gate. Even with the barrier broken, the defenders—rallied by hope—held their ground. For now.
The situation across Northstar Stronghold had taken a dire turn.
While Ery's efforts had alleviated pressure at the southern gate, the other walls were drowning in blood. More and more barbarian warriors managed to scale the fortress, swarming over broken parapets, carving their way through weary defenders. Screams echoed from the north and east as bodies were hurled from the ramparts like broken dolls. The walls bled, and morale threatened to collapse.
Commanders Feila and Jhett, two of the strongest warriors, could do nothing. Both were locked in ferocious duels high above, fending off cosmic-ranked invaders in a violent battle. Their absence was deeply felt. The defenders were stretched thin. Death crept closer.
And then—he moved.
From the citadel's heart, Rosin Karat raised both hands. His voice rang out in a deep, echoing tone—like the breath of the world itself—and the earth trembled violently in response.
A Tier 10 spell.
A power possessed only by a Supre Being.
The kind of magic that only existed in legend. World-defying. Calamity-wrought.
A thunderous crack echoed across the sky as the three colossal mountains surrounding the stronghold fractured. Massive fissures split their roots, and with a deafening roar, their peaks sheared apart. The mountains collapsed inwards, stone grinding against stone, releasing a storm of boulders, debris, and dust.
Then—crack—three of them split wide open, rock and stone shrieking as they tore apart.
Avalanche.
An unfathomable deluge of rock and earth tore down the slopes, a living wall of destruction. Entire squadrons of barbarian troops—tens of thousands strong—vanished beneath it in an instant. There was no ti to flee. No place to run. The crush of the mountains consud everything in its path.
Even the defenders stared in horror, awe-struck by the divine scale of destruction.
But Rosin's spell wasn't finished.
As the dust settled and the screams died, the shattered remnants of the mountains floated into the air—hovering, pulsing with residual magic.
Then, with surgical precision, the Supre Being shaped them.
The stones fused, forming towering barriers around the stronghold's fractured defenses. The shattered walls were reborn in monts, now reinforced with elental earth far stronger than stone.
It was a total manipulation of earth elents. Like missiles, so of these stones shot outward, slamming into enemy ranks with catastrophic force. Several of the cosmic barbarians were obliterated before they could react.
The battle turned in an instant. Cheers erupted from the walls.
Morale surged. The defenders rallied, pushing back their enemies with renewed purpose.
From atop the wall, Ery watched the display with wide eyes. Awe and disbelief warred within him. It wasn't just the scale of power—it was the mastery of Earth Law, the absolute authority Rosin wielded over the terrain itself. Just witnessing it allowed Ery to deepen his own comprehension of elental resonance.
But that level of power ca at a price.
The Supre Being now stood still, unmoving. Ery could sense it—the toll that Tier 10 magic exacted. Rosin Karat wouldn't be able to intervene again so soon.
As the mountains settled and Rosin Karat's titanic spell faded into a mournful stillness, Ery's gaze was drawn upward—toward the heavens where the true storm raged.
Above Northstar Stronghold, the skies were torn asunder.
Roughly fifty cosmic-ranked experts battled in the air, streaking across the firmant like shooting stars, each clash exploding with elental fury. Waves of heat and frost, blades of wind and thunder, collided in a chaotic tempest. The sheer power of it warped the clouds themselves, creating spirals of energy and shimring fractures in space.
At the center of it all, Jhett and Feil moved like twin titans.
Jhett, the Storm Commander, was a blur of jagged arcs. Lightning danced from his fingertips, each bolt charged with laws of speed and precision. His body beca the storm, teleporting in flashes, striking down enemies with brutal finality.
Feil, graceful yet deadly, painted the sky in frozen crescents. Her frost magic twisted and blood into vast fields of sharp ice, slowing opponents and protecting her allies. Every motion was calculated, defensive yet unyielding—she was the wall to Jhett's blade.
Together, they held the line
Until a cloaked figure moved.
From the depths of the enemy's ranks, a silent pressure pulsed outward. The strongest among them had arrived. The mysterious dark magus—the one whose power had remained hidden—finally revealed himself.
With a slow, deliberate motion, the man removed his robe.
Gasps rippled across both friend and foe. His entire torso was a grotesque landscape of blinking eyes, dozens of them—so wide with hunger, others narrowed with hatred.
And then they turned red.
The air turned foul. A putrid, suffocating miasma coiled above the fortress, and a dreadful stillness spread. Ery's skin prickled. The spatial threads of the sky began to unravel.
From above, blood rained down—thick and scalding. It seared through armor and flesh alike.
Then ca the tentacles.
Great, writhing appendages surged from the dark rift forming in the sky. Each one bigger than a siege tower. They heralded a monstrous eye—a single, lidless gaze from beyond the veil.
"It's a summoning spell," Ery muttered, recognizing the spatial warping. He'd felt this presence before—during the Celestial Expedition.
The creature erging was no beast. It was the scourge god itself.
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