Free Web NovelChapter 23: Unmoved Sky and the Blood-Red Retribution
The air around the apex of the Lotte World Tower didn’t just grow heavy; it turned entirely static. Through the shimmering violet interface of the Sovereign Battle Map, Shin Ye-rin’s fingers blurred across the obsidian console, tracking a sudden spike of extreme kinetic and magical energy vibrating from two miles away.
"Min-jae, they’re synchronizing their strikes," Ye-rin reported, her voice tightly controlled but carrying a sharp edge of military urgency. "Commander Tae-shik’s renegade artillery division has just locked onto our mid-section with twelve S-Rank Mana-Infused Railguns. Simultaneously, High Priest Samuel has completed his casting. The northern sky is already beginning to fracture."
Min-jae didn’t step back from the open observation deck. He slowly pulled his hands from his cargo pockets, casually checking his knuckles. A low, rhythmic thrum vibrated deep within the skyscraper’s structure— the un-breachable Iron Citadel core was drawing raw mana from the atmosphere, prepping its defenses.
"Let them fire," Min-jae said smoothly, his bottomless obsidian eyes watching the distant horizon. "If they spent all this time building a stage, the least we can do is let them play their part."
"They’re going to think they hit a mountain," Yoo Ji-a purred, stepping up to his right flank. Her newly evolved Void-Valkyrie’s Crescent Fang was tucked loosely under her arm, the light-devouring obsidian blade hissing as it slowly fed on the residual shadows of the penthouse.
Crack.!
The northern horizon violently ripped open. A deafening, mechanized roar shattered the silence of the metropolis as Commander Tae-shik’s heavy railguns fired in unison. Twelve hyper-velocity tungsten projectiles, wrapped in dense layers of crackling blue mana electricity, tore through the green toxic fog at Mach 7. They traced blinding lines of kinetic destruction straight toward the glass facade of the tower.
An instant later, the bleeding crimson sky directly above the skyscraper buckled. A massive, three-hundred-foot meteor constructed of concentrated, searing holy fire descended from the clouds— High Priest Samuel’s Judgment of the Seven Heavens. The intense heat from the celestial rock was so profound that the plastic and asphalt on the streets below began to liquefy before it even made impact.
"It’s a direct convergence!" Han Chae-won yelled, bracing her boots against the black alloy floorboards as she clutched her logistics terminal.
The twelve supersonic railgun rounds and the cataclysmic holy meteor slammed into the Iron Citadel at the exact same millisecond.
A blinding, multi-mile explosion of azure electricity and white-hot holy fire completely swallowed the upper fifty floors of the Lotte World Tower. The sheer kinetic shockwave blew the surrounding green fog back for three districts, shattering every abandoned vehicle and storefront window within a two-mile radius. To the remaining survivors hiding in the ruins of Seoul, it looked as though the sky-high fortress had been turned into a pillar of vaporized glass.
But inside the heart of the inferno, the Citadel’s mirrored absolute parameters were firing off raw world code at reality-warping speeds.
[Ding! Received 45,000 points of High-Velocity Kinetic Physical Damage.]
[Ding! Received 60,000 points of Rank-S Holy Elemental Magic Damage.]
[S-Rank Mutation Active: ’Vajra Ward’ converts all Magic Damage into Physical Impact... Successful.]
[SSS-Rank Faction Grid Active: ’The Iron Citadel’ mirrors Host’s absolute immunity protocols!]
[Total Damage Negated: 105,000 / 105,000. Structure Integrity: 100%.]
[SSS-Rank Passive Active: ’Vajra Retribution’ triggers 150% True Damage amplification!]
[Reflecting 67,500 points of True Damage to the Artillery Line!]
[Reflecting 90,000 points of True Damage to the Holy Magic Caster!]
’Voomm!’
Before the smoke from the dual explosions could even begin to clear, a terrifying, dual-pronged counter-force erupted from the pristine glass walls of the tower. It didn’t take the shape of standard energy beams; it manifested as an invisible, conceptual shockwave of pure golden-crimson space- fracture, locking directly onto the soul signatures of the attackers.
Two miles south, inside the heavily sandbagged trenches of the renegade military camp, Commander Kang Tae-shik was laughing hysterically, a cigar clamped between his teeth as he watched the smoke over the tower. "Ha! I don’t care what kind of freak talent that kid has! Nobody tanks twelve rail—"
Bang.!
Tae-shik’s laugh abruptly transformed into a horrific, blood-curdling shriek.
The 67,500 points of True Damage bypassed his Ares’s Iron Domain entirely, treating his heavy defense buffs like thin air. An internal kinetic shockwave caved his chest plate six inches deep into his torso. His lungs instantly collapsed, and the sheer force of the amplified backlash blew him and thirty of his elite artillery officers thirty feet backward, their bodies violently exploding into dark system ash before they even hit the dirt. The twelve multi-million dollar railgun batteries fractured into molten scrap metal from the localized kinetic resonance.
Simultaneously, in the northern cathedral square, High Priest Samuel was raised on a floating platform of light, his arms extended as his fanatical followers chanted hymns. "The heretic has been purged by the light of the seven—"
Thoom.;
A violent, internal geyser of blood erupted straight from Samuel’s mouth and eyes. The 90,000 points of True Damage struck his soul core directly. The golden divine wings manifested behind his back tore apart into tattered shreds of burning feathers. He let out a choked, desperate gurgle as his magical mana veins violently ruptured throughout his entire body, sending him crashing face-first off his holy platform into the concrete below, barely clinging to a single digit of his health pool.
"The... the god is bleeding..." a cultist whispered, their fanatical conviction instantly shattering into cold, unadulterated horror as they watched their invincible priest writhe in his own blood. freeweɓnøvel.com
Back on the 100th-floor observation deck, the smoke cleared completely. The pristine celestial glass of the tower wasn’t even smudged. Min-jae stood perfectly intact, casually brushing a microscopic speck of ash off his black t-shirt.
[System Alert: Faction Synergy Active! Stacking ’Vajra Retribution’ velocity buffs to Max!]
[Host’s Attack Speed and Movement Speed increased by 100%!]
"Ye-rin," Min-jae called out, his voice low, vibrating with a lethal, terrifying calm. "Deploy the Void-Ember Dread-Mechs to the southern military camp. Wipe out the remaining renegade infantry and secure the nuclear launch silos. Chae-won will go with them to vacuum the wreckage."
"On it," Ye-rin said, her steel-gray eyes shining with absolute tactical authority as her fingers executed the command sequence on the Sovereign Battle Map. "Dread-Mechs 01 through 12... Execute orbital drop on the southern camp coordinates. Erase them."
Down below, the twelve massive black war machines ignited their thrusters, phase-dropping through the atmosphere like twelve descending comets of purple fire, heading south to harvest the remaining military remnants.
"Ji-a, Seo-yoon. We’re taking the short route to the northern cathedral," Min-jae said, stepping into the center of the lounge. He held out his right hand, the purple spatial mana swirling around his palm with volatile friction. "It’s time to show that bleeding priest what a real god looks like."
"Wait, Min-jae," a sharp, ice-cold whisper echoed from the dark corner of the penthouse suite, directly behind the elevator shaft.
The shadows along the floorboards twisted like liquid ink. Walking out of the darkness was a woman who looked to be around twenty— but she moved with the silent, fluid grace of a high-tier predator. She was strikingly beautiful, with a pale, heart-shaped face, a small, dark crescent-moon tattoo beneath her left eye, and a cascade of crimson-dyed hair that fell wildly around her shoulders. She wore a tight, blood-red leather combat corset reinforced with sleek obsidian alloy plates that highlighted her incredibly narrow waist and dangerously sharp, athletic curves. In each hand, she held a short, black dagger that was completely invisible to standard perception filters.
This was Lady Crimson / Park Ha-eun, the Level 22 absolute leader of the Silent Orchid Syndicate.
She didn’t raise her daggers. She stood exactly five feet away, her sharp, cat-like crimson eyes locked onto Min-jae with a mix of intense, predatory intrigue and high-stakes caution. She had just witnessed her entire elite infiltration squad get deleted on her tracking monitor, followed immediately by the mass suicide of the military and holy vanguard lines.
"I came here to slit your throat while you were distracted by the artillery," Lady Crimson murmured, a sharp, dangerous smile playing on her lips as she lightly flipped one of her daggers mid-air. "But I’m a businesswoman, Monarch. I don’t invest in losing contracts. The coalition is dead, and my daggers don’t work on your skin. What do you say we renegotiate the terms of my survival?"
