The ash-covered plains behind them were a graveyard of shattered ice and pulverized tal. Lucifer did not order the Cryo-Vanguards to rest. The Great Integration did not reward hesitation.
He signaled the Elven Commander. The five-thousand-strong legion smoothly reford their marching columns. Their heavy ice-rifles humd with lethal readiness.
They pushed deeper into the rocky foothills bordering the Whispering Weald. The terrain grew jagged. It was dominated by sheer listone cliffs and the crumbling remnants of an ancient forgotten civilization.
Lucifer dashed ahead of the main column. The Zephyr’s Grace Emblem turned his movents into a blur.
He scaled a fifty-foot vertical cliff face in less than two seconds. His boots found impossible purchases on the sheer rock. He vaulted over the precipice and crouched low in perfect silence.
A heavily fortified encampnt sat below him. It was built directly into the ruins of an old stone amphitheater. It was not a monster nest. It was a bandit camp.
Roughly two hundred n and won sward the ruins. They were survivors of the initial Integration wave. They were thugs and deserters who had quickly banded together to exploit the chaos.
They wore mismatched armor looted from dead guards and wielded rusted iron weapons. A dozen chained captives huddled in the mud in the center of the amphitheater. They were terrified villagers from a nearby settlent.
The bandit leader stood near the captives. He was a hulking brute with a freshly acquired low-tier Berserker class. He was trying to pry open a heavy silver-inlaid chest with a crowbar.
Lucifer did not feel a shred of pity for the bandits. These opportunistic scavengers had cut the throats of fleeing refugees for copper coins in his previous life. They were parasites.
Elara landed silently beside Lucifer. Her silver wings folded tight. "Human hostiles. Two hundred count. I see hostages in the center ring."
"The hostages survive. The rest do not," Lucifer commanded. "Take the Vanguard. Surround the upper ridge. Give ten seconds to draw their attention and then execute a converging crossfire."
Elara nodded once and vanished over the ridge.
Lucifer stood up and drew his steel broadsword. He stepped off the fifty-foot cliff.
He did not brace for impact. The Zephyr’s Grace Emblem completely nullified the kinetic shock of the fall. He landed in the exact center of the bandit camp directly between the chained hostages and the massive Berserker leader. The sheer velocity of his landing displaced the air so violently that the nearest bandits were physically thrown backward off their feet.
The amphitheater fell dead silent. Two hundred pairs of eyes stared at the lone unarmored teenager who had just dropped from the sky.
"Who are you?" the Berserker roared and raised his heavy iron battleaxe. He checked his system interface to try to read Lucifer’s level. The anomaly of the regressor completely scrambled the scan. "Kill him!"
Lucifer did not let them swing. He activated his speed.
He beca a phantom. Lucifer dashed directly into the closest cluster of bandits. His steel broadsword moved faster than the human eye could track. He did not bother with complex swordplay. He simply thrust the blade through unarmored throats and vulnerable joints to let his sheer montum do the tearing.
Twenty bandits dropped dead in three seconds. Their blood sprayed across the ancient stone.
Panic instantly gripped the encampnt. The remaining thugs scread. They raised crossbows and prepared low-tier fire spells.
"Now," Lucifer whispered.
The upper rim of the amphitheater above them glowed with a blinding sub-zero azure light. Five thousand Cryo-Vanguard Snipers stood shoulder-to-shoulder along the ridge. Their massive ice-rifles aid precisely downward into the kill box.
The Elven Commander dropped his hand.
A devastating volley of hyper-compressed absolute zero beams rained down from the sky. The beams surgically bypassed the huddled hostages and struck the bandits with pinpoint lethal accuracy.
The sound of flash-freezing flesh and shattering bone echoed like rapid-fire thunder. The bandits did not even have ti to register the ambush. One hundred and eighty human combatants were permanently transford into bloody shattered ice sculptures within a span of two heartbeats.
The Berserker leader stood frozen in terror. His battleaxe trembled in his grip. He looked at his decimated camp and then up at the terrifying blue army lining the cliffs.
Lucifer walked slowly toward him. His boots crunched on the frozen remains of a bandit.
The Berserker scread and swung his heavy axe in a desperate wide arc. Lucifer effortlessly ducked underneath the clumsy strike. He drove his left fist directly into the solar plexus of the man by utilizing his newly multiplied fifteen Vigor. The ribcage of the bandit shattered inward.
Lucifer followed up with a brutal upward slash of his broadsword to take the head of the Berserker completely off his shoulders.
The headless corpse collapsed into the mud.
Lucifer ignored the weeping hostages. He focused his attention entirely on the silver-inlaid chest the bandit leader had been trying to open. It was a high-tier dungeon drop that was likely stolen from a dying adventuring party.
He knelt and placed his palm flat against the silver lid.
[Item Detected: Locked Silver Chest (Tier-D)]
[Ding! Divine Talent: ’Apex Multiplier’ triggered on specific category ’Loot Acquisition & Item Rarity!’]
[Multiplying item contents, internal rarity paraters, and magical density 10,000x!]
The silver chest violently warped. The tal hissed and turned a searing blinding white. The lock shattered outward like a gunshot. The physical container simply dissolved because it was unable to contain the sheer multiplied mass of the cosmic artifact rapidly manifesting inside.
A perfectly smooth heavy orb of shifting liquid black glass floated exactly where the chest had been. A terrifying localized vortex of orange and red hellfire swirled endlessly deep inside the sphere.
The ambient temperature of the amphitheater instantly spiked by thirty degrees.
[Item Acquired: The Cataclysm Orb (Mythic Weapon - Consumable)]
[Description: A contained magical singularity. Upon activation, releases a localized, devastating nuclear-tier explosion of pure arcane fire. Radius: 10 Kiloters. Warning: User is not immune to the blast.]
Lucifer carefully gripped the searing hot orb. It felt like holding a small sun. He secured it deeply within a specialized dinsional pocket attached to his heavy leather belt. It was a weapon of absolute mass destruction. He would save it for a god.
He stood up and surveyed the amphitheater. The stone walls were heavily scarred by the freezing sniper fire. His eyes locked onto a deep natural fissure in the rock wall as Lucifer walked toward the eastern exit.
A dull oxidized green vein of raw copper snaked through the listone. It was a basic resource node. A lord would normally spend months building a mining camp here to extract a few hundred pounds of low-grade copper ore.
"Let us fix the economy," Lucifer muttered.
He walked over to the rock face and pressed his bare palm directly against the exposed copper vein.
[Resource Node Detected: Copper Vein (Low-Yield)]
[Ding! Divine Talent: ’Apex Multiplier’ triggered on specific category ’Geological Formatting & Resource Yield!’]
[Multiplying mineral purity, vein density, and magical resonance 10,000x!]
The ground violently shook. It was not a minor tremor. It was a localized earthquake. The listone cliff physically bulged outward and groaned under an impossible internal pressure. The dull green copper vein instantly ignited with a blinding violet luminescence.
The magic ripped through the subterranean bedrock. The standard copper was entirely transmuted. It expanded, crushed the surrounding rock, and forced its way to the surface in massive jagged crystalline spikes.
The cliff face shattered entirely to reveal a sprawling open-air cavern completely overflowing with highly compressed humming purple crystals.
[Resource Node Upgraded: Arcanum Mine (Mythic Yield)]
[Description: An inexhaustible source of pure, condensed Mana Crystals. The lifeblood of an empire.]
Lucifer shielded his eyes from the intense violet glare. He pulled a handful of basic Summoning Catalysts from his pouch. These were items he had acquired from the multiplied chests of the Void rchant.
"Multiplier. Apply to basic worker generation," Lucifer commanded and tossed the catalysts onto the ground.
Thousands of heavy four-ard earthen golems violently erupted from the dirt. They were completely devoid of combat stats. They were built entirely for relentless tireless manual labor.
"Strip the mine," Lucifer ordered the golems. "Deliver the Arcanum Crystals directly to the storage vaults of the Citadel."
The golems imdiately marched into the glowing cavern. Their heavy stone fists effortlessly shattered the precious crystals to begin an unending pipeline of absolute unadulterated wealth.
Lucifer turned his back on the glowing mine. The Warlord’s Trial counter was still active. They needed to move. He signaled Elara and the Vanguard.
They left the terrified hostages staring at the impossible spectacle and marched directly into the choking gray fog of the Whispering Weald.
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