As the first light of dawn struck the ramparts of Sun City, I donned my heavy combat armor and stepped out of my room.
The moment I set foot in the courtyard, Scatroj greeted me.
Just like me, he was wearing his legendary armor from before we fell into this world—into this damn game.
We stood facing each other and gave a heavy, mutual nod.
With a grim, relentless seriousness in his eyes, Scatroj said, “Kaan, no matter what happens, you must hold the main gate.
My men and I will defend the wall lines.
You can handle it, right?”
I slammed my fist hard against my chest, making the metal of my armor ring, and smirked.
“What do you take us for, you big bear?
Did you at least set up the necessary barriers in front of the gate?”
He nodded in affirmation.
“They won’t buy us much time, but yes, I’ve cast the strongest wards I could.”
Just as we were about to split up and deploy to our positions, Kaju suddenly bowed respectfully before me.
“It is a great honor to meet you and fight alongside you, sire,” he said, his voice trembling with gratitude.
“Even when you viewed this entire world as nothing more than a game, you were always more than kind to us.”
I gripped him firmly by the shoulder, forcing him to stand straight.
“Make sure you don’t forget to say those beautiful words to Ermo before I die, Kaju,” I said.
Then, turning my back and heading toward the gate, I shouted over my shoulder at Scatroj: “Don’t you dare die, you old geezer!”
From atop the ramparts, I could feel him smirking slightly through his thick beard as he gripped his battleaxe.
When I reached the colossal main gate, I took a deep breath.
Gripping my katana tightly with both hands, I forced every single mana vein in my body to stretch and expand to their absolute limits.
Intense waves of mana began to swirl around me.
I thrust the katana fiercely into the marble floor; if the enemy forces managed to break past me, I was going to weave massive protective wards across the gateway, thread by thread, to completely prevent them from infiltrating the palace corridors behind me.
The exact second I completed the ward, Scatroj’s roar echoed from atop the walls: “Kaan!
They’re coming!
I’m opening the gate!”
Without even waiting for my reply, the massive mechanical gate groaned loudly and began to slowly part open.
When the gate was open by only a few inches, the first to leap inside were the elite vanguard units of the Fire Elves, clad in blood-red armor with infernal flames rising from their shoulders.
At their very front stood their chieftain, pointing his massive sword directly at me.
Locking his eyes onto me, he roared, “Finally…
Finally, I will claim my son’s vengeance with my own hands!”
Taking a deep breath, I slowly lifted my katana from where it was embedded.
Extending my bare hand toward them, I opened dozens of shimmering light portals simultaneously behind me.
From within the portals, lethal swords forged of pure ice erupted toward the Fire Elves like thrown spears.
As the first elves to enter the gate collapsed one by one under the weight of the massive ice swords piercing their bodies, the Fire Elf chieftain shouted to rally his men behind him: “Do not fear!
There is only one person standing against us, press forward!”
The elven mages in the back line instantly deployed a massive fire barrier and began approaching me with slow steps.
As I dialed up the intensity of the mana surging from my core, the fire barriers began to crack under the bombardment of the raining ice swords.
Dropping my katana for a brief moment, I extended both hands forward; dozens of new portals detonated in front of me, launching even larger, sharper beams of swords into the field.
Their barriers finally shattered with a deafening crash.
Dozens of elven corpses began to pile up in front of the gate, forming a literal, natural wall of flesh.
Witnessing this slaughter, the Fire Elf chieftain roared in fury, channeling his own immense mana into his soldiers’ remaining barrier and barely preventing it from collapsing at the last second.
Immediately after, he raised his other hand into the air, using telekinesis to hurl those elven corpses on the ground toward me like cannonballs.
Dodging the incoming corpse missiles with ease through fluid movements, I shouted across the battlefield: “So that’s how we’re playing, huh?!”
The elves, who couldn’t even move due to being pinned down under the intense ice assault from my portals, began to slowly part to the sides at their chieftain’s command.
All the mages of the camp began to draw out every ounce of their mana, spinning it in a dense vortex around the chieftain’s body.
In the end, only the chieftain remained in front of the gate.
Absorbing the mana of the entire army, the man created a fire barrier compressed tight enough to coat his own body—an incredibly dense, impenetrable shield. Find the original chapter at novelping.com.
When I saw the ice swords from my portals melt and vaporize the instant they struck that barrier, I realized this spell would no longer work.
I calmly picked up my katana from the ground and placed an ancient dark magic scroll from my inventory onto it.
I leveled the tip of the blade straight at the chieftain.
Laughing arrogantly from behind his barrier, the chieftain shouted, “You will share the same fate as my son!
You can never defeat me in close combat, human!”
Unable to suppress the psychotic smirk creeping onto my face, I chuckled softly.
“I don’t need to defeat you in close combat…” I said quietly.
Not understanding what I meant, the chieftain gestured with his hand toward the ramparts above, where the sounds of battle were intensifying, implying that my time was running out.
Ignoring him entirely, I lunged straight at him with magical speed.
When I swung my katana with all my might against his barrier, the man managed to stop my blade mid-air with his compressed shield.
He was completely focused on defense, not even bothering to throw a kick at me.
“Let’s not drag this out,” I said, closing all the portals behind me in a single second.
With the portals closed, my mana veins relaxed with a massive wave of relief.
Instantly pumping all my focus and remaining mana into my right leg, I kicked my katana hard, launching it straight into his barrier.
The chieftain burst into laughter, “Fool!
A foolish humanoid who pumps mana into his leg just to throw his sword—”
I didn’t let him finish his sentence.
Before he could even complete the word, I used a backup sword drawn from my inventory to instantly teleport right behind him, severing his head from his shoulders with a single horizontal slash.
As his head hit the ground, his eyes were still wide with shock.
He had been so hyper-focused on the incoming katana that he hadn’t even realized I could get behind him and finish the job with another blade.
Looking down at the corpse on the ground as I sheathed my katana, I shouted out into the darkness beyond the gate: “Who’s next?!”
But when I looked past the gateway, I saw no one.
Although the sounds of massive explosions and screams echoing from atop the ramparts made me uneasy, I had to defend this post due to Scatroj’s absolute command to “hold the gate.”
I approached the threshold of the gate.
“If you won’t come to me, I’m coming to you, bastards!” I muttered.
I downed a massive mana potion pulled from my inventory in a single gulp and stepped outside the gate.
However, the moment I stepped out, I couldn’t believe my eyes.
Across the plains outside, thousands of elves were lined up in a massive, flawless military formation, standing completely still and dead silent, as if waiting for a single command.
I whipped my head upward toward the ramparts and saw Scatroj clashing alone in the sky against King Oberon and Queen Titania.
The situation was critical.
I immediately used my magical power to leap up toward the top of the walls.
Mowing through any enemy soldiers in my path like mincemeat with a single swing of my katana, I was sprinting toward the clearing where Scatroj was fighting when…
Scatroj suddenly took a massive blow and was sent hurtling onto the stone floor right next to me.
As he furiously wiped the blood leaking from his mouth, I pointed one hand toward him and poured my strongest healing spell over him.
With my other hand, I was about to deploy a shield to block any potential magical strike coming at us from the sky, but Scatroj gripped my healing hand firmly.
With my support, he managed to stand up, albeit with difficulty.
Just as we were about to speak to each other, King Oberon descended slowly from the sky like a feather, landing right in front of us.
With an arrogant smirk on his face, he said, “What a dramatic end, isn’t it, you wretched human?”
I opened my mouth to deliver a soul-crushing comeback, but right then, I felt a massive spell of destruction approaching from directly behind us.
Spinning around quickly, I deployed a powerful mana barrier, but out of the corner of my eye, I saw Oberon taking advantage of the distraction to spring at me.
He was just about to sever my arm from my torso with his sword when…
Scatroj intervened with his massive battleaxe, blocking the blow.
“Not on my watch, bastard!” Scatroj roared.
After sending Oberon flying yards away with the blunt side of his axe, he gave me a brief nod.
I, on the other hand, turned toward Queen Titania right behind him.
The woman’s long hair was floating up toward the sky, and due to the pressure of the massive, divine aura radiating from her body, a natural, translucent energy barrier was forming around her. This chapter is updated first at NovelPing.
Raising a single eyebrow, I shouted mockingly, “Don’t tell me you made a deal with those false gods and sold your wretched bodies to them?!”
A bone-chilling smile appeared on Titania’s flawless face.
“I have always liked clever humans,” she said, her voice echoing through the sky.
“But do you know what kind of humans I like even more?” She raised both hands to the heavens, forming a massive area-of-effect magic circle: “Dead ones!”
As the spell was about to rain down upon us, I constructed a massive-scale protective barrier in a single motion to shield our own soldiers on the wall as well.
Simultaneously, using my other bare hand, I concentrated all my mana into a single point at my fingertips and unleashed an invisible beam of light directly at Titania.
Titania didn’t make the slightest effort to block or evade the incoming spell.
“What can such a weak, pathetic light possibly do to me—”
She couldn’t finish her sentence.
Because at that exact second, deep, festering rashes and burns began to manifest across her pale skin.
I burst into a loud laugh.
“In our world…
we call that a Radiation Spell, fair queen!”
Without giving her a moment to pause in pain or recover, I leaped toward her with magical speed.
When I swung my katana to take her head off in a single strike, she pulled herself back with a sudden, dragon-like reflex.
My blade lightly grazed her throat.
Looking at the golden blood oozing from her neck, I smirked: “Well, look at that…
Turns out gods can bleed too.”
Winding up, I hurled my katana straight at her heart while simultaneously raising both hands to the sky to activate a top-tier “AoE Dark Magic Spell.” Logically, this spell should inflict catastrophic damage on these entities that had absorbed false god power; dark magic fed entirely on chaos, whereas gods fed on the absolute energy of order.
While Titania used both hands to form a front-line barrier to parry my thrown katana, she failed to notice the pitch-black beam of chaos descending from directly above her head at a lethal speed.
As the dark vortex completely engulfed and trapped her inside, it also began to incinerate hundreds of enemy elven soldiers beneath her, turning them to ash within the maelstrom.
Turning around quickly, I scanned the battlefield to locate Scatroj and help him, while continuously firing waves of healing from my bare hand toward our wounded soldiers on the wall.
Right then, Kaju darted to my side with swift mage steps.
He gave a frantic nod.
“Sire!
We are struggling severely to hold the elves on the walls,” he said, completely out of breath.
“Furthermore, I’ve lost sight of Lord Scatroj in the chaos, I can’t see him!
What should we do?!”
Thinking furiously about our next move, I turned around and began walking toward the slowly dissipating dark beam where I had trapped Titania.
Turning back to Kaju, I shouted loudly:
“Fall back inside toward the main gate in a controlled retreat, Kaju!
Depending on the situation, I will send you the necessary signal flare from inside.
Await my word until further orders!”
With those words, I flew straight into the sky, right into the epicenter of that pitch-black beam.
As the dark smoke slowly cleared from the air, I saw Titania suspended right in the middle.
The woman’s flawless face was completely melted and deformed due to the radiation spell I had cast; not a single shred of beauty remained of that grand, ancient elf queen.
Her eyes were tightly shut; she had spent all her focus and remaining divine power to protect her body from my chaos beam.
She was defenseless.
With a sudden burst of speed, I dove into the heart of the beam and swung my katana forward with lethal velocity, aiming directly for her neck.
When I emerged from the beam, the runes on my katana had turned entirely crimson from the god blood it had absorbed.
Descending to the ground, I was preparing to cast the same chaos magic on those thousands of motionless elven troops still waiting for orders when…
I was startled by a colossal, deafening explosion coming from directly behind me.
I whipped my head toward the sky and saw something—no, someone—falling rapidly through the clouds toward the palace courtyard like a massive meteor.
Canceling my prepared spell, I closed my portals and flew toward the crash site with immense dread.
When the cloud of dust settled, the sight before me tore my heart to pieces.
The legendary combat armor of Velmora, the grand, proud Dragon Princess, was completely shattered, and she lay there motionless on the ground, drenched in blood…