Free Web NovelChapter 565: Chapter 483: Metal Thicket
The wind whimpers across the ashen wasteland.
This patchwork abandoned plane is essentially the remnants of dozens of worlds whose resources have been completely exhausted, with nothing but endless grey dust and occasionally exposed rock.
Yet at this moment, in a certain spot on this maddeningly monotonous wasteland, an extremely abrupt scene emerges.
Black.
A "dense forest" formed of countless sharp black metal spires, growing wantonly on the grey-white ground.
Each metal spire stands over ten meters high, entirely pitch black, its surface covered with dense spiral textures and sharp thorns, reflecting an ominous glow under the dull daylight.
Weaving tightly together, they form an intimidating black jungle with a diameter exceeding ten kilometers.
This is clearly not a natural creation.
Any experienced wizard could immediately recognize this as the residual effect of some large-scale witchcraft.
Likely the product of "Metal Proliferation" or "Material Transformation" type witchcraft, forcibly transforming the soil and stone within the area into specific forms of metal structures, maintaining for quite a long time.
And at the center of this dense forest, atop the sturdiest metal spire, a Chaos Secret Sect Wizard is busy at work.
He dons a deep red robe, seeming woven from coagulated blood, his face covered in intersecting suture lines.
The threads still subtly squirm, akin to living creatures.
At the moment, he’s humming a tuneless ditty in a hoarse voice, fiddling with the corpse of a Nolun Workshop Wizard.
The state of the corpse is dreadful.
Limbs twisted to unnatural angles, chest cavity cut open, exposing but not entirely detaching the internal organs.
The skin laced with fine incision marks, each slicing open blood vessels, clearly intentional.
The eyes gouged out, sockets stuffed with two slowly rotating black beads.
Mouth ripped to the ears, revealing an eternally frozen, tortured silent scream.
Yet the Chaos Secret Sect Wizard seems dissatisfied.
He adjusts the corpse’s posture, attempting to "hang" it on a lateral spike atop the metal spire.
But with the corpse stiffened, adjusting its posture proves difficult, forcing him to repeatedly snap its joints for reshaping.
Crack.
Another crisp sound of bone breaking.
"Tsk, such a nuisance..." the Chaos Secret Sect Wizard mutters, voice like sandpaper scraping, "Even in death they won’t let me have peace."
At the forest’s edge, another figure stands.
This is a Tower of Annihilation Wizard, completely enfolded in a grey-white tight robe, face concealed by a faceless pure white mask.
At this moment, he’s frowning, observing the twisted creation of his companion at the center.
If not for the fact that both factions are now allied, he might have acted directly, purifying this madman on the spot.
"Hey."
He finally couldn’t hold back, his voice emanating from the mask, sounding dull and suffocating:
"Is this really okay?"
The Chaos Secret Sect Wizard doesn’t even turn around, continuing to tinker with the corpse:
"What’s wrong with it? Such a beautiful piece of art. Once I hang it up, engrave a few emotion runes on it, letting the wave of resentment emanate for tens of kilometers... Tsk, tsk, the expressions of those passing Nolun Workshop scum will be priceless."
"I’m not talking about that." The Tower of Annihilation Wizard’s voice turns colder, "I’m talking about... How can you blatantly massacre and desecrate enemy wizard corpses like this, arranging it so conspicuously, without fearing you’ll thoroughly enrage the Nolun Workshop?"
"What if they send an elite team specifically to hunt you down? Then, I’ll be implicated by you."
Crack.
Yet another bone snapped.
The Chaos Secret Sect Wizard finally ceases his movements, slowly turning his head.
His eyes beneath the suture lines reveal a near-innocent confusion:
"Anger them? Isn’t that better?"
He grins, exposing his jagged, seemingly deliberately sharpened teeth:
"That way they’ll come looking for me, and I won’t have to go out to find them. Much easier, isn’t it?"
The Tower of Annihilation Wizard remains silent for two seconds.
Then, he rolls his eyes—though concealed by the mask, the expression remains unseen.
"You lunatic..." he curses softly, "Ever considered they might send a Sixth Level Wizard? What will you do then? Beg for mercy?"
"Sixth Level?" The Chaos Secret Sect Wizard tilts his head, seeming to ponder seriously, "Hmm... If it’s a Sixth Level adept at frontal assault, indeed a bit troublesome. But..."
A cunning gleam flashes in his eyes:
"This ’Forest of Pain Metal’ isn’t just for show. Moreover..."
He hasn’t finished speaking.
Suddenly, a mutation occurs.
The Tower of Annihilation Wizard’s face changes abruptly: "Enemy attack!!!"
He barely has time to roar these words, his body instinctively plunging leftward, while his hands quickly seal in front of his chest, instantly deploying three layers of grey-white shields, overlapping and enveloping his entire body.
Almost at the same moment...
The sky brightens.
A blazing white beam of light, over three meters in diameter, descends vertically from the seams of leaden clouds, striking precisely in the center of the black metal forest.
Boom!!!
The sound of the explosion appeared for a moment and then disappeared.
Or rather, the sound was completely drowned out by the release of more violent energy.
At the spot where the white light landed, everything began to melt, vaporize, and annihilate.
The black metal cluster, upon contact with the white light, instantly jumped from a solid state to a plasma state, transforming into boiling metal vapor that sprayed outward.
Under high temperature and pressure, the ground became glass-like, then continued to melt and collapse, forming an ever-expanding lava pit.
The shock wave spread outward in a spherical shape from the point of the light column.
Where it passed, those metal clusters not directly hit snapped and flew away like stalks of wheat knocked over by an invisible giant hand.
Gray-white dust was raised, forming a wall of dust several hundred meters high, sweeping outward like a tsunami.
The entire attack process lasted for quite some time.
When the white light dissipated, the black metal forest with a diameter of ten kilometers had become a scorching magma basin.
Magma rolled at the bottom of the pit, emitting a dark red glow and scorching heat waves.
And at the very center of the attack...
"Cough cough... cough..."
A fit of violent coughs came from within the magma.
The Chaos Secret Sect wizard was in an extremely miserable state at the moment.
The deep red robe he wore was mostly burned away, revealing beneath it skin that was charred, cracked, and covered with stitching lines.
His left arm had disappeared from the shoulder, with no blood flowing from the stump, only unstable dark red energy sparks flickered.
At the last moment, he voluntarily severed his arm, transferring most of the damage to the discarded limb.
The lower half of his right leg was also gone, and he was half-kneeling on the scorching, already solidifying lava ground, the exposed flesh sticking to the fiery surface, his body on the verge of collapse.
The stitching lines on his face were frantically wriggling, trying to repair the damaged tissue, but the repair rate was far behind the ongoing burns and energy erosion.
Yet even injured to this extent, he still smiled.
It was a twisted, mix of agony and ecstatic perverse smile.
He lowered his head, looking at what he still held tightly in his remaining right hand.
It was a half-charred corpse remnant belonging to a Nolun Workshop wizard.
At the moment the white light descended, he used this corpse as a "substitute medium" to absorb part of the attack’s power.
Now, this half corpse had become so carbonized that it seemed like it would crumble to dust with a gentle touch.
"Such ruthlessness..."
The Chaos Secret Sect wizard looked up at the sky, laughing hoarsely:
"Don’t even care about your own comrades’ remains, Nolun Workshop’s ’gentlemen’?"
In the sky, two figures slowly descended.
Both were Nolun Workshop wizards, wearing standard gray combat wizard robes with Nolun Workshop insignias embroidered on the chest.
Both were Fifth Level, one male and one female, now hovering about fifty meters above the magma basin, coldly looking down at the enemy below.
Upon hearing the Chaos Secret Sect wizard’s taunt, the male wizard snorted coldly:
"As long as we take you down, that counts as avenging that colleague. The corpse... is merely material remains."
"Oh? So cold?" The Chaos Secret Sect wizard licked his cracked lips, a dangerous light flashed in his eyes, "I like it."
Before he finished speaking...
"Side!"
The female wizard suddenly shouted sharply.
Almost as she spoke, a gray-white "Annihilation Beam" seemingly capable of devouring all light shot out from the shadow at the edge of the magma basin, aimed directly at the male wizard.
It was the wizard of the Tower of Annihilation!
At the moment the white light descended, he had escaped the core area, and was now lurking at the edge, waiting for this ambush opportunity!
The male wizard reacted quickly, forcibly twisting his body in mid-air, sketching a virtual shape with his left hand in front of him, and a light blue water curtain shield unfolded instantly.
But the Tower of Annihilation wizard’s attack was clearly not something an ordinary water curtain could withstand.
Hiss...
At the moment the Annihilation Beam made contact with the water curtain, it vanished silently, like pencil marks erased by a rubber eraser.
The beam penetrated the gap, continuing to shoot toward the male wizard’s body.
At the critical moment, the female wizard made her move.
She raised her right hand, and a metal disc engraved with complex runes flew out from her sleeve, exploding in the air, transforming into countless fine golden threads, weaving a large net that blocked the Annihilation Beam’s path.
The golden threads collided with the gray-white beam, emitting a piercing shriek.
The two forces held, offsetting each other in the air.
While taking advantage of this opportunity...
"Heh heh..."
The Chaos Secret Sect wizard below let out a low laugh.
His remaining right hand suddenly made a bizarre gesture.
From his fingertips, a barely visible dark red thread quietly drifted out, silently sinking below the lava surface.
And he himself suddenly flew up, rushing toward the two.
