Sowhere in Mid Sector 100-
BOOOOOOOOM
The planet was engulfed in a massive, all-consuming battle at that very mont.
The sky itself seed to burn.
It was impossible to determine the true color of the horizon, as layers of fire, smoke, and ash blended together into a chaotic blur of reds, grays, and blinding flashes of light.
It was equally impossible to tell whether the ground beneath was rock, mud, or sothing else entirely.
The surface had long since been torn apart.
Craters overlapped with shattered terrain, molten patches glowed between broken ridges, and thick clouds of ash drifted endlessly across the battlefield. All that could truly be seen was destruction.
Ash.
Fire.
And countless glowing attacks streaking randomly across the planet like falling stars gone mad.
What if you extended your soul sense just a little?
You would imdiately detect soldiers.
Endless numbers of them.
The land, already buried beneath layers of ash and smoke, seed to carry another moving layer on top of it.
A living layer.
Masses of soldiers locked in continuous combat.
There were no orderly formations.
No disciplined ranks.
No elegant strategies unfolding across mapped battle lines.
No...
There were soldiers clad in black and gray, their heads unnaturally elongated backward, their physiques twisted into strange, almost unnatural proportions. And there were others with human forms, wearing gold armor that glead even through the smoke and chaos.
They were scattered across the entire planet.
Fighting.
Dying.
Not in organized waves, but in chaotic clusters, as if two enormous anthills had collided and their inhabitants had collectively decided that one of them must cease to exist by the end of the night.
Swoosh
At that mont, a figure shot across the battlefield at terrifying speed.
He cut through the layers of dust and smoke, splitting them apart as if carving a path through the air itself.
For a brief instant, it seed as though he might descend into the battlefield and engage directly.
But in the very next mont, the chaos swallowed everything again, as if his presence had never existed.
Then-
Whoosh
The figure suddenly sensed danger.
Sothing was approaching him at high speed.
He imdiately twisted his body midair and took a sharp, unnatural curve, narrowly evading the incoming attack.
BAAAAM
A massive attack, shaped like a drifting gray cloud, rushed past him and crashed
into a large cluster of soldiers below.
The impact spread outward without discrimination.
Everyone within its range was struck.
And yet-
The result was strangely uneven.
All those wearing black and gray collapsed instantly, their bodies lifeless the mont the attack touched them.
anwhile, those clad in gold dropped to their knees in visible pain.
They trembled.
Clutched their chests.
But after only a brief mont, they forced themselves back up and fled quickly
in a specific direction, as if following a silent command.
None of them were killed out right!
"Enough!"
The flying figure ca to an abrupt halt in midair.
He raised his hand and waved it forcefully, dispersing the lingering energy
around him.
"You know you'll never touch like this," he said sharply. "Be a proper Nexus State and stop harming the soldiers!!"
Now that he had stopped moving, his appearance could finally be seen clearly.
A bald man in his fifties.
A thick white mustache extending across his face.
A broad, heavy build, solid and imposing, yet not to the point of obesity.
It was Ryan iser, the head of the human iser family under the Double
Centennial Cradle Empire.
Once...
He had been nothing more than a struggling cultivator.
When he had first been granted the chance to et Marshal Caesar and plead
for the return to his ho planet, he had still been trapped at the threshold of
breakthrough.
At that ti, he had been striving desperately to reach a high-level World
Cataclysm.
A goal that had seed distant.
Uncertain.
Almost impossible.
But everything changed.
With the support of the Marshal.
With the backing of Sky Opening City.
With centuries of relentless cultivation, pressure, and carefully allocated
resources...
Ryan iser had finally broken through.
He had entered the Nexus State.
Marshal Caesar had deliberately elevated the iser family as a symbol.
They were the first family to join him.
The first to be reshaped under his system.
A clear ssage sent across the entire sector:
This is what happens to those who stand with us.
And the ssage worked.
After vast amounts of resources had been invested into them, the iser family
rose rapidly.
They beca the strongest human family under the empire.
Not just powerful-
Influential.
They turned into a magnet.
Attracting other human families with exceptional innate talent, drawing them
into the empire's fold.
"Hmph!"
Ryan's pursuer finally ca to a stop as well, hovering in the air at a distance.
"If you were truly honorable," the pursuer said coldly, "you would have stood still and died already instead of wasting ti running."
He was a figure whose legs were noticeably longer and thinner compared to the rest of his body, giving him an unnaturally stretched silhouette that made his presence feel off even at a glance, his head drawn backward in a smooth elongated curve while his entire body was covered in sculpted black and gray armor that clung to him like a second skin, not sothing worn but sothing that seed grown or fused into him, its surfaces flowing along his limbs and
torso with sharp contours that reflected the chaotic light of the battlefield
around them.
Zzzn Ryan drew out a strange sword from his spatial ring, a weapon that instantly caused the air around it to tremble faintly the mont it appeared, a single sheath housing two blades aligned side by side, each vibrating at its own independent frequency, one steady and controlled while the other flickered with an erratic pulse, together producing a low unsettling resonance that spread outward like a silent warning, making it imdiately clear that this was
no ordinary weapon.
"...?!" His opponent instinctively stepped back, his elongated form tightening
slightly as he stared at the weapon, "A filthy human like you managed to lay hands on second-tier planetary equipnt?!"
"Wake up from your delusions!!" Ryan's voice rose sharply as he lifted the twin-bladed sword and pointed it directly at him, his tone carrying both anger and pride, "Our empire that has humiliated you for centuries is entirely human!" then without pause he continued, "And the ones who took Planet Day Raven
from you this week are all human as well!!"
"Ghh-!!!" The opponent clenched his teeth violently, the sound almost audible
even through the chaos, the humiliation clearly cutting deep as the mory of that defeat resurfaced.
The Double Centennial Cradle Empire had sent half of its special forces to
Planet Day Raven, and in a short span of ti they had crushed all resistance there, driving out every opposing force without leaving room for recovery, and as a result there were no longer any major planets left that could sustain a large-scale war, no battlefield vast enough nor valuable enough to justify total conflict except for this very planet beneath their feet, a world worth billions to those currently fighting above it.
Because of that, the Seven Thrones Empire had gathered all of its remaining forces here, every soldier, every reserve, every hidden asset brought to bear in
a single desperate effort, as this planet had to be taken no matter the cost and it had to be taken quickly, otherwise their reputation would shatter beyond repair and their decline would accelerate into sothing far worse than anything they had endured so far.
"...We'll see how long that fake pride remains on your face," the Nexus State
cultivator from the Seven Thrones Empire said as he brought out his own weapon, an epic weapon that caused the surrounding air to distort slightly upon its appearance, before letting out a low mocking laugh, "we'll see whether you can even remain on this planet until the end of the day!" "Heh?" Ryan showed a faint smile, one that carried more confidence than amusent, "Are you joking right now? Even if you bring in more armies and
even if you dare to deploy your fleets, do you really think we will retreat within
a single
day?"
Then he raised his hand and gestured around him in a wide motion, indicating the entire battlefield that stretched endlessly beneath them, "Even if you sohow manage to kill , do you think that would change anything?!" This planet was not rely covered by the presence of millions of soldiers, but
layered with power far beyond that, as hundreds of World Cataclysm existences road its surface while dozens of Nexus State cultivators clashed across its skies, and for the sake of this single planet the Seven Thrones Empire had committed everything they possessed, every elder, every hall master, every hero, every general, every strategist, every individual capable of holding a
weapon had been brought here, leaving their imperial capital empty save for the emperor himself, an emperor too afraid to reveal himself lest Hedrick appear before him.
On the other side, all human families under the Double Centennial Cradle Empire had been summoned and sent into battle by direct order, without exception, while the responsibility of defending the already conquered planets had been handed over to the Kumaji race along with the other races that had joined the empire throughout its history. Dozens of Nexus State cultivators on a single planet...
Yes, even if Ryan iser were to fall here, the battlefield would not shift
significantly.
"Hehe, perhaps killing an old man like you will not make much of a difference,"
the opponent said as a twisted smile spread across his face, his voice lowering
slightly as he continued, "but there are certain places... and if we strike them, the planet will fall into our hands within a single day, don't you think?" "..." Ryan's brows furrowed slightly as he tried to grasp the aning behind
those words, but then suddenly his eyes widened to their absolute limit as realization struck him all at once, his expression changing completely as he turned sharply toward a distant direction and shouted with everything he had-
"No... Pitsuuuu!!!"
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