Free Web NovelChapter 75: Flipper Of Armies
Malik planned to use Ember’s Touch and Goliath’s Fall only.
He needed to save Shifting Ground for an emergency, so three single-use glyphs were all he had to deal with the enemy.
’Ember’s Touch.’
The first one was activated.
White fire coursed through his veins.
Power flooded his body; his strength and speed multiplied.
Everything had sharpened into a point.
He went forth and jumped.
His feet left the ground, and he soared over the heads of his own.
Enemy arrows whistled past his ears while friendly spells crackled beneath him.
He dodged them all, twisting in the air, using bursts of his own Ember’s Touch, not the Soul Glyph, to adjust his trajectory.
Landing back down, his boots touched the shoulder of one soldier, then another, then the raised shield of a third, allowing him to run over them and skip past the chaos.
The front line approached.
Spotting a traitor—one of the grey-clad soldiers—struggling to hold his ground against an enemy swordsman, Malik landed on his head, pressed down hard, and launched himself skyward.
Others he was gentle with, but not this one; thus, he soared once more.
The wind roared in his ears, and the battlefield shrank beneath him as he rose higher and higher, arcing toward the enemy’s front line.
Below him, thousands of faces turned upward.
Faces that held incredible fear.
’Let’s see who they believe now.’
Malik descended.
The enemy soldiers braced themselves.
All manner of blades pointed at the sky, forming a forest of steel.
They waited for him to fall onto that ’forest’...
Waited to tear him apart.
The moment stretched until...
"DIIIIIIIIIIIIIEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!"
Malik was finally upon the glittering points of blades, wielded by men with desperate eyes, men that knew they were about to die but hoped to at least take their killer with them.
"Burn."
White fire erupted from beneath the enemy army.
Yes, not from his hands, but from the very sand beneath their feet.
The fire bloomed upward, an expanding... flower made of pure, devouring flame.
It caught the soldiers at the front line first.
Their screams lasted less than a second.
Nothing of them remained.
The fire spread outward in a circle, consuming everything within its radius.
Thousands of men died in an instant, their armor and their weapons vaporized alongside them.
Those at the edge of the blast—the lucky ones, if luck could be called that—were thrown into the air by the shockwave.
They flew backward, their clothes burning and skin blistering.
Some landed among their own ranks, setting their comrades ablaze. Others crashed into the ground and lay still, dead.
The ones strong enough to protect themselves—or Magi with Holy Relics—survived the initial blast.
But their barriers, in whatever form they came, shattered, and their Holy Relics cracked.
Half their bodies were gone.
They crawled through the ash, dragging missing limbs, and died within seconds. freёwebnoѵel.com
...Indeed, war was worse than Hell.
Malik landed in the middle of the destruction, his boots cracking the glassed ground.
The heat radiated around him, but the fire knew its master. It didn’t touch him.
He looked up.
The enemy army had stopped.
Every soldier near the blast zone stared at the carnage with uncomprehending eyes.
Those further back had frozen mid-stride; their drums had fallen silent.
The charge had halted.
’Good.’
Malik didn’t wait.
He rushed forward through the gap he had created.
Thousands of his own soldiers followed—the vanguard and those who had been waiting for an opening—poured through the gap like water through a broken dam.
Malik led them.
He ran through the ash and the glass, past the burning bodies, towards the second wave of enemy soldiers.
They saw him coming and tried to form a line.
Many thousands of shields were raised and braced.
’Goliath’s Fall.’
Yet he reached them before they could finish.
His second single-use Soul Glyph was activated.
Malik’s fist slammed into the first shield, only for it to... cease.
A hole tore through it, through everything around and behind it.
Miles of soldiers, rock, and sand were utterly annihilated by that single punch.
Reinforcements that had yet to reach were hit the hardest, all dying without knowing how.
Of course, there was no need to speak of the man who’d wielded the shield.
There was only bloodied mush left of him.
Malik continued to push through the opening, his soldiers fanning out behind him.
Blades were swung and thrust while elements destroyed.
The enemy fell.
But, as expected, even then, more kept coming.
Easily more than ten thousand were just killed, yet the gap was already closing.
Invaders from the left and right pressed inward, trying to surround him, trying to cut him off from his army. Worse yet, Malik saw the path in front of him become blocked again.
Amidst the screams, bodies had pressed together and shields locked.
’Hm.’
He activated the second Ember’s Touch Soul Glyph.
The fire returned; he could feel it straining against his skin, begging to be released.
Without pause, he used what remained of Goliath’s Fall and jumped high.
The battlefield was far beneath him nearly instantly.
He had reached the apex of his jump, next to the apex of mountains.
His right hand shot to the side.
His left hand shot to the other.
"Burn."
Two mighty blasts erupted.
The fire exploded outward in both directions simultaneously.
Twin waves of white flame raced along the enemy lines, consuming everything in their path.
Invaders on the left died where they stood. Invaders on the right died where they ran. The fire didn’t discriminate, nor did it pause.
Malik had burned them all.
The blasts extended for hundreds of feet in each direction, killing tens of thousands.
Many were thrown into the air, their bodies raining down like hail.
When the fire faded, the battlefield was quiet.
The wounded still moaned, yes, the dying still whimpered, but the clash of steel had stopped.
The roar of the charge had ceased, and even Malik’s own soldiers stood frozen, their eyes fixed on their slowly descending Sultan. freewebnσvel.cøm
They saw him stand in the center of the destruction, alone.
The ground around him was black glass.
It was an absolute massacre.
Enough of a massacre that every single soldier stopped fighting. The enemy survivors stumbled backward, dropping their weapons, their faces pale with terror.
This before them was the Sultan of Fire and Blood.
Never would they believe otherwise again.
Malik, meanwhile, remained still, seemingly... waiting for someone.
And, sure enough, from the back of the enemy lines, a tall figure emerged.
He walked through the ranks of his own terrified soldiers, dressed in simple clothes, sporting no armor or insignia.
His hair was white, similar to the man Malik had killed in the cave, but his face was surprisingly plain.
Unremarkable and almost forgettable.
That was unusual. Those who ascended the Divine Hierachy usually grew closer to perfection. Symmetry. Beauty. Presence. This man had none of that.
Rather, he looked more like a farmer who had stumbled into this warzone by accident.
But his eyes were enough to keep such a thought away.
"So the rumors were wrong."
The man stopped a safe distance from Malik.
"Heh. They couldn’t have been more wrong."
His words proved Malik’s earlier thoughts to be correct. Indeed, his enemies thought him to be weakened.
He didn’t know exactly how that rumor spread, but it was likely a result of his enemies trying to quell their people’s fear of him.
"Flipper of Armies."
