Chapter 141:
The masked operative from the Hidden City of Sand stood at the roof's edge, his hand still extended from the [Wind Spell: Gale Burst] that had sent Austin and Kaya tumbling through the ruptured ceiling.
Below him, the warehouse had become a cathedral of destruction.
The initial explosion had torn through the eastern section of the building, collapsing support beams and sending walls of flame racing across the stored supplies.
But the purple giant that now rose from the wreckage was something else entirely—a half-figure of condensed ocular power, mana and purple flame that materialized around Austin's body like a second skin expanding outward.
It had no legs, no lower body, only a torso and arms and a head that burned with an intensity that made the air shimmer and warp around it.
The purple flames did not consume the debris that touched them but pushed it aside with a force that sent crates and shattered stone tumbling across the warehouse floor.
Austin stood at the heart of the Avatar, his feet planted on the cracked concrete, his red eyes blazing with the four black leaves that marked him as one of the rarest cultivators in the history of the Hidden City of Sky.
Kaya was pressed against his chest within the protective shell of purple light, her white eyes wide as she stared at the construct that surrounded them.
Now the warehouse was filling with elites who had been drawn by the explosion a hundred cultivators, their mana flaring as they formed a ring around the purple giant.
Austin looked at Kaya, and his voice was steady despite the strain of maintaining the Avatar. "I am going to throw you. Lucas and Ethan are that way." He nodded toward the western wall, toward the distant signatures of his teammates that his Clover Eyes could sense even through the chaos. "Go."
Before Kaya could respond, the Avatar's massive hand closed around her with a gentleness that seemed impossible for something so vast, and then she was airborne.
Austin hurled her with the full strength of the purple giant, her body shooting through the hole in the warehouse roof like an arrow loosed from a bowstring.
She understood immediately, her lightning body crackling to life around her as she oriented herself mid-flight and began racing toward the mana signatures of Lucas and Ethan.
The elites attention was fixed on the purple giant that stood in the wreckage of their warehouse, its flames casting dancing shadows across the cracked walls and shattered supply crates.
A Seven Star with a great sword charged first, his blade wreathed in arcs of lightning as he brought it down in a two-handed strike aimed at the Avatar's torso.
Impact sent a shockwave across the warehouse floor, but the purple flames did not yield.
The great sword stopped as if it had struck a wall of solid stone, and the Seven Star stumbled backward with his arms shaking from the recoil.
Before he could recover, the Avatar's massive hand swung sideways in a backhanded strike that caught him across the chest and sent him hurtling through the air.
He crashed through the remains of a supply rack and did not rise.
Three Six Stars attacked simultaneously from different angles. The first hurled a sphere of compressed lightning that detonated against the Avatar's shoulder in a burst of white light and crackling arcs.
Second one drove a spear toward the base of the construct, aiming for the gap where Austin's body stood exposed.
And third one circled behind and launched a volley of lightning bolts at the Avatar's back, hoping to find a weakness in the flames. None of them succeeded.
The lightning sphere dissipated against the purple light without leaving a mark, spear struck the edge of the Avatar's shell and snapped in half, the broken shaft spinning away into the darkness.
The lightning bolts splashed against the purple flames like water against stone, their energy absorbed and scattered into harmless sparks.
Austin raised his hand, and the Avatar's hand rose with him. The motion was fluid, natural, as if the giant was not a separate entity but an extension of his own body.
He brought the hand down in a hammering fist, and the ground where the three Six Stars had been standing erupted in a crater of shattered concrete and purple flame.
The shockwave flattened the nearby supply racks and sent debris flying in all directions.
When the dust cleared, the three elites lay motionless in the wreckage, their bodies broken and their mana signatures flickering into darkness.
They had seen the power of the Avatar now, had seen what happened to those who attacked it head-on, and they adjusted their tactics with the discipline of soldiers who had trained for exactly this kind of engagement.
The Seven Stars among them barked orders, and the formation shifted. The elites spread out, widening the ring, giving themselves more space to dodge the Avatar's strikes. And then, in unison, they cast their spells.
[Lightning Spell: Seeking Bolt]
[Lightning Spell: Static Shackles]
[Lightning Spell: Volt Barrage]
[Lightning Spell: Heaven's Arc]
[Lightning Spell: Storm Lance]
The attacks came from every direction at once bolts of lightning that curved through the air to track Austin's mana signature, chains of solid static that erupted from the ground and tried to anchor the Avatar's arms, volleys of lightning projectiles that rained down from above like a storm of white fire.
A great arc of lightning shot from one Seven Star's palm, five meters wide and burning with the blue-white intensity of a sky-splitting thunderbolt, and a lance of compressed lightning followed it, aimed at the same point on the Avatar's chest where the previous attacks had struck. If they could not pierce the shell, they would batter it until it cracked.
The Avatar's arms moved in a sweeping arc, the purple flames trailing behind them like the tail of a comet.
Seeking Bolts detonated against the shell's surface, their tracking capabilities useless against a target that was too large to miss.
The Static Shackles wrapped around the Avatar's wrists and tightened, but the purple flames burned through them in seconds, the static dissipating into nothing.
Volt Barrage hammered against the giant's shoulders and head, each impact sending ripples across the purple light, but none of them penetrated.
Heaven's Arc struck the Avatar's chest with a sound like a thunderclap, and for a moment the purple flames flickered. But they held, and the arc shattered against the shell, its energy scattering into a thousand dying sparks.
The Storm Lance was different.
It came from Austin's left flank, a spear of compressed lightning moving at a speed that should have been impossible to track. It was aimed not at the Avatar's chest or head but at the space beneath the construct—the gap where the purple flames did not reach, where Austin's actual body stood exposed.
The Seven Star who had cast it had been watching, had seen the way the Avatar's shell terminated above the ground, had calculated the angle and the timing and the force needed to thread a spell through that narrow gap.
Austin saw it coming. His Clover Eyes, spinning with the four black leaves that marked his awakened state, tracked the lance's trajectory in the fraction of a second before it arrived.
He could not block it with the Avatar's arm—the angle was too low, the gap too narrow. He could not reinforce the shell in time to close the opening. But he could move.
He stepped sideways, a single stride that carried him to the edge of the Avatar's protective shell, and the Storm Lance passed through the space where his chest had been.
It struck the warehouse floor behind him and detonated with enough force to carve a crater three meters deep, the shockwave sending cracks spider-webbing across the concrete.
Austin did not pause.
He raised both hands, and the Avatar's arms rose with him, the purple flames intensifying until they were almost too bright to look at directly.
The elites had given him an opening by concentrating their attacks on a single point, and he used it.
The Avatar's fists came down together in a hammer blow that struck the center of the warehouse floor.
There was only a wave of purple force that rippled outward from the point of impact, moving at a speed that the elites could not outrun.
It caught the nearest Seven Stars and flung them through the air like leaves in a hurricane.
It shattered the remaining supply racks and tore the walls from their foundations.
It punched through the warehouse roof and sent a column of purple light shooting into the night sky, visible for kilometers in every direction.
The warehouse came apart.
Steel beams groaned and twisted as the supports that had held them in place were ripped away. Concrete shattered into clouds of dust that billowed outward across the depot.
The purple wave continued to expand, reaching fifty meters, then eighty, then a hundred, and everything it touched was destroyed.
Elites who had been outside the warehouse when the Avatar struck were caught in the wave and thrown through the air, their bodies broken by the sheer force of the impact.
Those who had been inside did not have time to scream.
When the wave finally dissipated, a hundred meters of the depot had been reduced to rubble.
The food warehouse was gone, replaced by a crater of shattered stone and twisted metal.
Fires burned in the wreckage, their flames orange and gold against the darkness.
And at the center of the destruction, the purple giant still stood, its form flickering now, its flames dimming as Austin's mana reserves drained toward empty.
He had killed over seventy elites.
The initial explosion had claimed the first wave, and the Avatar's hammer blow had claimed the rest.
The few survivors who remained were scattered at the edges of the crater, their bodies broken and their mana signatures flickering with the unsteady pulse of the gravely wounded.
Austin stood within the Avatar's shell, his chest heaving, his arms trembling at his sides.
The strain of maintaining the construct was immense—not just on his mana core but on his eyes, on the ocular power that made the Avatar possible in the first place.
The four leaves in his irises were spinning slower now, their movement jerky and uneven. Blood began to seep from the corners of his eyes, tracing dark lines down his cheeks.
The Avatar flickered.
The purple flames dimmed to a faint glow, then to nothing, and the half-figure dissolved around him like mist before the morning sun.
Austin stood alone in the center of the crater, his body swaying, his vision blurring.
His knees struck the shattered concrete, and then his body pitched forward, his face pressing against the cold stone. The blood from his eyes dripped onto the ground beneath him, pooling in the cracks between the rubble. His mana core was empty, his ocular power spent, and the darkness that rushed up to claim him was absolute.