Chapter 137: The Opening Salvo
The war truly began.
Skele-Envy raised a bony hand, his frame drifting backward as he instantly put hundreds of meters between himself and the front lines. Behind him, dozens of jagged spatial rifts tore open soundlessly.
A pre-emptive strike!
However, a streak of emerald light was faster than his malice. Queen Elina tapped her toe against the dirt, her body rising like a feather caught in a updraft. As she ascended, a gentle yet violent cyclone trailed in her wake, upending the thousands of soldiers caught in the crossfire below.
The distance between her and Envy evaporated in a single breath.
Envy snapped his raised hand forward.
WHOOSH—WHOOSH—WHOOSH!
Hundreds of spears forged from raw necrotic energy erupted from the rifts, a rain of death intended to saturate the airspace around the Elven Queen. Facing an assault capable of leveling a mountain peak, Elina did not retreat. She drew her longbow mid-air, the runes representing Nature and Life igniting along the wood like brilliant stars.
Countless green motes of light surged from the earth below, condensing into arrows of pure, flowing Od upon her string.
She loosed.
It was a storm of emerald against a deluge of ink. Every collision in the sky triggered an annihilation of energy that sent tremors through the atmosphere.
Just then, a far more oppressive shadow loomed over Elina.
"Not good!" Elina hissed, snapping her gaze upward.
It was Skele-Lust. Purple thunderclouds gathered above the Lich's head, while black flames and shards of dark ice swirled around her frame in a chaotic orbit. Three fundamentally different destructive elements were fused into a singular, impossible magical construct.
The next moment, a literal flood of elemental disaster poured down toward the Elven Queen.
A solemn voice boomed through the sky.
"Your opponent is here."
Pope Hupert had ascended into the high altitude, his scepter pointing forward. A barrier of solid, crystalline gold erupted from the air, an immovable aegis that intercepted the elemental flood.
BOOM—!
The magical tidal wave smashed against the golden dam, shattering into billions of sparkling motes. No matter how the inferno raged, the golden wall remained as placid as a mountain lake. The duel of high magic turned the sky into a tapestry of split reality—one half a blinding noon, the other a suffocating midnight.
On the ground, Skele-Sloth flickered through a series of magical explosions. Before he could even draw a breath, a massive shadow wreathed in the power to cleave mountains descended upon his skull.
"DIE!"
King Barock roared, his greataxe tearing the air with a screeching, metallic howl. Sloth leaned back at a grotesque, unnatural angle, the blade passing so close it practically polished his nasal bone. He used the momentum to roll backward, skidding dozens of yards to create space.
"Close one," Sloth murmured. "I almost had to exert effort."
Barock's axe slammed into the earth, the impact cratering the stone and sending up a wall of dust. He gave the Shadow Demon no room to breathe, his powerful legs acting like pistons as he launched himself forward like a cannonball.
Sloth watched the charging Dwarf King with a flicker of mockery in his eyes. A split second before Barock reached him, Sloth's form dissolved, merging directly into the shadow cast by the Dwarf King himself.
Barock froze, his momentum carrying him into empty air.
The next second, a pitch-black hand reached out from the shadow beneath Barock's feet, clamping firmly onto his ankle. In one fluid motion, Sloth surged out of the darkness. He seized Barock by the leg, engaged his core, and swung the massive Dwarf King in a full circle before slamming him face-first into the dirt with "unreasonable" force.
BOOM!
A thunderous impact followed. Barock's head was driven deep into the ground, leaving only a thrashing, indignant body sticking out of the crater.
Elsewhere, Skele-Wrath had mounted his skeletal steed, becoming a bolt of crimson lightning. He bypassed the main melee, charging directly for the floating Pope.
"WAAAGH!"
A violent, primal war cry erupted from the flank. Warchief Grom's gargantuan frame slammed into the side of the charge, his sheer mass forcibly veering Wrath off-course. The skeletal horse let out a hollow shriek as it was shoved sideways for twenty meters.
Grom bared a row of yellowed tusks, his massive axe swinging in a wild, unrefined arc aimed at Wrath's skull. Wrath raised his lance to parry, and the resulting collision sent a shower of sparks across the field. The duel of raw, unbridled strength caused the very ground beneath them to subside.
But the focal point of the entire battlefield was the silhouette clad in platinum and gold.
The Strongest Hero, Altlais.
He ignored the slaughter around him. He ignored the magical cataclysm in the sky. He ignored the low-tier undead charging his position. His eyes were fixed on a single target: the Lich, Lust.
Wherever he walked, an invisible corridor seemed to open for him. Any undead that entered the vacuum of his aura was instantly ground into white powder by the mere pressure of his presence. He hadn't even drawn his sword.
"Excuse me."
The voice rang out, and in a single step, he had crossed a hundred meters, closing in on the undead backline.
Skele-Gluttony let out a muffled roar, his mountain-sized body shifting to block Altlais's path. "YOU SHALL NOT PASS!"
A shield of abyssal energy condensed before him. Altlais's expression turned grim as his hand finally gripped the hilt at his waist.
Just as the Holy Sword was about to clear the scabbard, a bolt of black lightning lanced in from his rear flank. Its velocity was equal to—perhaps even greater than—Altlais's own speed.
CLANG!
Altlais didn't even turn his head. He drew his blade in a backhand arc, the steel meeting the strike with surgical precision.
Holy Sword met Obsidian Bone.
The next instant, both figures vanished from the perception of the mortal soldiers. One white streak and one black streak began to weave through the ranks of both armies at terminal velocity. They clashed on the ground, the wind of their blades launching squads of soldiers into the air. They leaped into the sky, trading blows amidst the rain of magical fire.
The entire battlefield had become their stage.
Skele-Greed flickered along the perimeter of the chaos. He moved like a ghost, refusing a head-on engagement. One moment he loosed a blood-red arrow to harass the chanting Pope; the next, he transformed into a swarm of bats to shred the Elven archer formations. He moved through the gaps, a persistent and lethal nuisance to the Alliance.
High above, Hupert remained aloft, his scepter weaving a web of sanctified magic. He intercepted Lust's bombardments while keeping a paranoid eye on Greed's flanking maneuvers.
Suddenly—CRACK-BOOM!
A bolt of purple lightning, thicker than any summoned before, tore through the firmament with the weight of a divine sentence. It hurtled toward Hupert. The Pope's face hardened as he leveled his scepter for a total defense.
In the melee below, Altlais executed a near-impossible sliding parry, ducking beneath a devastating cleave from Skele-Pride. In the momentary lull, both warriors began to gather their power for a definitive strike.
The resulting fluctuations of world-shaking energy caused the entire battlefield to stutter for a heartbeat.
Far above, Hupert and Greed both sensed the buildup. Simultaneously, they shouted warnings to their respective targets.
"RETREAT! GET CLEAR OF THE IMPACT!!"
The warnings echoed through the minds of the combatants.
The next second, both Altlais and Pride kicked off the ground. They became two streaks of light that pierced the world, lunging directly into the heart of each other's assault.
"YOU EXPECT ME... TO RETREAT FROM HIS EDGE?!"
☆☆☆
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