While Barbatos was occupied fighting the knights, Brandon shouted as he released the arrow,
"Try deflecting this, Barbatos!"
The pillar-sized arrow shot into the sky, bending the air around it with the sheer destructive power it carried. The knights instinctively moved back to avoid being swept away by Brandon's attack.
Barbatos, on the other side, pulled the empty string of his bow once again.
The air around Barbatos rushed into the bow in a violent spiral of wind, forming an arrow made purely of Soulforce. A small tornado appeared at the head of the arrow, and fierce winds surged outward, spreading in all directions.
"Arrow of Windbane Chapter 6:
Tornado!"
The mont the arrow was released, tornadoes erupted along its path, hurling the knights of Thornwall in all directions and crushing their bodies under imnse pressure. The ground split apart into countless fragnts of rock and dust, engulfing the place where Barbatos and Brandon fought.
The two arrows struck at the center, their collision unleashing waves of destruction that could be felt across the entire battlefield.
Slowly, the Aura-laced arrow shot by Brandon began to bend toward the swirling tornado at the tip of Barbatos's arrow, and the next mont, it shattered into countless pieces.
"H-he should have been weakened... How could it be possible?" Brandon murmured, his eyes wide with disbelief.
Fear surged through his body, his survival instincts screaming at him to flee.
"Protect your Duke!" Brandon shouted, turning his back on the battlefield as his primal instincts overwheld him.
Most of the soldiers did not follow his command, seeing him flee. Those who did were swept away by the cataclysmic tornado of Barbatos.
"I told you before," Barbatos murmured with a playful smile. "My arrow never misses its target."
With a sudden surge, the speed of the arrow increased, and it pierced into Brandon's back.
"Aaghhhh!!!"
Brandon's screams echoed across the battlefield as his body twisted along with the motion of the tornado. The sounds of bones cracking and blood splattering followed. His skin split apart under the violent force, and in the next mont, his entire body burst into countless pieces of flesh that scattered in every direction.
"Engrave it into your soul, people of the Western Continent!" Barbatos roared, his earlier smile gone. "This is the fate of those who dare betray the Hundred Sky Mountains and bare their fangs at our King!"
Fear spread through the ranks of soldiers as they witnessed the grueso spectacle before them. The order among the knights collapsed into chaos, with no one left to command them.
"Master of Winds!"
"Master of Winds!"
"Master of Winds!"
The deafening roars of the Banes' army thundered across the battlefield, their morale surging to its peak.
---
"Tch, that annoying bastard has already slain a Duke," Aethon muttered on the other side of the battlefield, his amber eyes twitching in irritation. "He is going to brag about it for the rest of his life."
"Is that what you should be worried about right now?" a middle-aged knight clad in silver armor with a green cape tied to his shoulders demanded.
He had short brown hair, an eyepatch over one eye, and a neatly trimd beard. If not for the overwhelming pressure radiating from his body, he would have looked like any ordinary knight. He was Sebastian Ravenmoor, the Duke of Ravenmoor Duchy.
"Brandon was careless, but he was still a fellow Duke," another voice spoke from beside Sebastian. "Let us finish him quickly and avenge Brandon by killing that so-called Master of Winds."
The voice belonged to a short man with pale skin. He had curly white hair, and his eyes were pale lavender with no visible pupils. He was Klaus Stormhold, the Duke of House Stormhold.
The two Dukes, along with their high-ranking knights, were engaged in a fierce battle against Aethon, who was known as the Fla Emperor across the Western Continent.
He was rumored to be the second strongest among the Eternal Sages of the Hundred Sky Mountains, with Titan standing in first place. So naturally, the empire did not hold back and ordered the two Dukes who could counter his extre flas to fight against him.
As for Titan, who was an unstoppable force on the battlefield, he stood alone, surrounded by forty percent of the empire's forces. They were not there to kill him, but to exhaust him to the point where the Dukes could match his overwhelming strength.
"Since when did you begin to think that the flow of our battle was in your hands?" Aethon asked, his amber hair slowly beginning to glow brightly.
"Hah! We already know everything about your strengths and weaknesses," Sebastian said with a smirk. "Your foolish son revealed everything about you."
"Do not you dare call that thing my son," Aethon shouted, an imnse murderous intent radiating outward from his words, sending the knights around Sebastian and Klaus trembling to their core. "He was the traitor of the Hundred Sky Mountains and the man who sullied the honor of the Flabanes. No action of mine can undo his treachery, but by slaughtering you two in this war, even if only slightly, I will reclaim the honor of the Flabanes!"
From his storage ring, Aethon drew a crimson scythe that shone like a gemstone. Intricate engravings spiraled along its long shaft, recounting the legends of the battles it had faced alongside its master.
"He is a weapon user?" Klaus murmured, confusion evident on his face. "I thought he was a mage type."
"I have never heard of him using a weapon before," Sebastian added. "Was the information given by Ignis incorrect?"
From what they knew of Aethon, he had never used a weapon in any of his clashes, not even when he joined the First Ultimate War at the Sentinel Line for a few years to kill demons.
Yet, just from the appearance of the blade, they could tell that the spear had been with him for a long ti.
"It is natural that you have not seen using a weapon before," Aethon said calmly. "Because none of my enemies have survived to tell the tale."
The temperature around Aethon surged as flas of blue fire, the fire of the Heavenly class, roared through his arm and wrapped around the spear in his hand.
"Spear of the Flabane: Chapter 1:
Solar Thrust!"
With a powerful thrust of the spear, a massive beam of fla shot forward, scorching the ground and burning the air along its path.
As the beam drew closer, Sebastian removed the eyepatch from his right eye, revealing a white, mirror-like pupil beneath.
At the sa ti, Klaus's pale eyes glowed brightly, and both Sebastian and Klaus vanished from the battlefield.
In the next mont, the beam struck empty air, as if an invisible barrier had ford at the spot where Sebastian and Klaus had been standing.
What followed was even stranger. The mont the beam struck the invisible barrier, it reflected back instantly and attacked Aethon.
The reflection was so fast that Aethon barely managed to dodge at the last mont. Still, the fla struck his arm and burned it.
Aethon stared at his burned arm and murmured,
"They are using reflection and illusion techniques."
Normally, cultivators are immune to their own Soulforce and attributes, otherwise a cultivator with a fla attribute would be burned by their own fire.
However, the fla attribute of another Awakener can still affect them because of the different Soulforce signatures contained within the attack.
So Aethon's burned arm ant that the attack he had released was not only reflected, but its Soulforce signature had also been altered.
The mont the attack landed on Aethon, the knights of Ravenmoor and Stormhold launched relentless assaults from all directions.
Aethon blocked the attacks with skilled and precise movents of his spear, not allowing a single weapon to slip past his defense.
Amid the barrage, Aethon sensed sothing dangerous closing in. He imdiately grabbed the spear at both ends of its shaft and raised it into a defensive position. At that very instant, a blade collided with the spear, erupting bright sparks upon impact. The ground beneath Aethon split apart from the force.
"You are true to your reputation, Aethon," Sebastian said, his body becoming visible only at the mont of impact. "To think you could sense my blade even while I was completely hidden."
Aethon removed one hand from the shaft, allowing Sebastian to close in. He clenched it into a burning fist and launched a punch forward.
Terrifying flas surged from his fist, striking Sebastian head-on.
"Aghh! It burns!" Sebastian's scream echoed as flas engulfed him.
Slowly, his screams faded into weak whispers, and he collapsed to the ground, his body scorched and unrecognizable.
Aethon continued battling the knights with the sa tenacity, as if Sebastian's death ant nothing to him.
While fighting, he suddenly ducked as a blade appeared above his neck out of nowhere.
"How? You should have let your guard down after seeing die," Sebastian muttered, his voice filled with shock and confusion.
"Your cheap tricks will not work on ," Aethon replied, swinging his spear at Sebastian.
Slash!
"Then how about this?" another voice ca from behind Aethon as a blade slashed across his back.
The voice also belonged to Sebastian. There were two of them, one in front and the other behind.
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