Wandering Knight

Chapter 493: Unstoppable

The colossal reservoir of power was wrenched from the great serpent's energy core by sheer force of Wang Yu's will. Every last thread was torn free and transmuted into ammunition for Avia, fuel she guided into the spell taking shape before her: the eighth-tier Wendel Myx's Wrath.

Strictly speaking, Avia wasn't yet a legend. The mana vortex within her body had yet to reach the point where she could independently cast a legendary spell.

But that was only natural. Records showed that the average age at which magicians ascended into the legendary realm was over a hundred and sixty. Even the youngest, at forty-seven, had been a once-in-an-era prodigy named Sulla. Avia, not even twenty, was all but guaranteed to step into that realm within a handful of years.

Her talent, magnified by countless factors, was nothing short of monstrous. And in truth, with the power of the Chariot substituting for her own mana vortex, her limits were now far beyond what a normal magician could dream of.

The liberated energy rose skyward in a pattern that Avia had constructed. That said, it could not rightly be considered her own creation. True to its namesake, its essence was a reproduction of the thunder lance once wielded by the Dragon King's body under Wang Yu's control. Not wholly original, yet formidable beyond question.

A vortex of concentrated force whirled into existence. All the vast power once housed in the serpent's frame converged into that spiraling core. Then, slowly but with terrible inevitability, a long, azure lance wreathed in crimson lightning emerged and drove down toward the earth, unshakable and unstoppable.

The moment the weapon was fully forged, every dragon suppressing Utopia's clustered towers abruptly released a burst of uncharged dragonbreath. Using the recoil from the energy, they hurled themselves backwards, withdrawing in haste to escape the range of that all-too-familiar falling spear.

In a flash of argent light, Aurelian seized Wang Yu and tore him from the battlefield. From the silver dragon's back, Wang Yu watched the spell's detonation unfold.

The instant the azure lance struck the ground, intricate spell structures embedded within it guided the release of power. Like a flood of electrified mist, a veil of force swept out, akin to spilling water around a field of high-voltage current to help its lethal charge spread.

Then the true discharge began.

Blue radiance lashed across heaven and earth, torrents of light whipping violently in all directions. Every spire touched by the expanding mist was marked as prey, unable to escape the tearing fury of the spiraling currents. The energy density was so great that even the distortion of the void could not cushion the blow; struck head-on, the spires splintered, their internal scaffolding buckling and exploding.

As the raging currents multiplied, so too did the number of spires that were reduced to ruin. The colossal spiraling lance unfurled its structure entirely, blooming across the Ashen Wastes like a vast, delicate blue flower. The Utopia's spires were swallowed whole within its radiant, deadly petals.

The slender petals spread out fully, then immediately folded inward again, contracting toward the center. As they drew back, they crushed the last few spires that had survived the first wave of destruction. The petals converged where the flower had bloomed. Then, a single massive beam erupted skyward, annihilating all remaining foes and punching a cavernous hole straight through the clouds above.

The power of the spell was staggering. With one strike, nearly every Utopian spire was pulverized. Only a few distant spires managed to endure the blast, though their eventual fate would be little different.

A silver blade tore space open. It cleaved cleanly through the heart of a surviving spire, splitting its core in two. In another direction, converged dragonfire erupted once more, blasting the final two spires into dust and debris.

The force of Avia's spell was nothing short of unbelievable. It was difficult to imagine it as the work of a single person rather than a colossal engine of war charging up for hours.

Yet perhaps the blame lay partly with the Utopia: the great serpent they had deployed was itself a genuine weapon of war and had possessed a staggering internal power core. Unfortunately for them, Wang Yu had simply removed that core and handed its contents to Avia.

In truth, the only limits on Avia's Chariot-empowered spellcasting were the unreachable ceiling of the Chariot's own might—and the hard fact that energy could not be created from nothing.

In this world, energy-storage technology lagged behind most other fields. Crystals of varying purity served as the primary method of keeping power. Novel storage devices were little more than spatial spells creating larger containers: modern in form, archaic in essence.

At the scale of this battle, even if Avia were to fill the entire Seed of Eden with the highest-purity magic crystals, it would scarcely be enough to power even one or two spells of this magnitude. The stored energy might not even rival the energy content of Wang Yu's blood.

Because of this technological lag, nearly all massive constructs and engines of war relied on internal power furnaces. Such was the case with the Iron King Bogul and the main citadel of Skyborne City, which traded storage for overwhelming generation capacity.

The Utopia's serpent, however, was an exception: its body stored a tremendous amount of void energy, granting it a far higher output threshold than any power furnace. It would have been able to unleash forces several tiers beyond current mainstream technology.

But such storage methods proved unfortunate when facing Wang Yu. What the serpent's structure held in place was something that he could readily pluck. He seized it and handed it to Avia—and the result was the devastating strike they had just witnessed.

The Utopia had simply had catastrophic luck with that serpent. What was meant to be their great advantage had been turned against them with brutal finality.

"First barrier cleared. Follow Lord Wang Yu and continue forward."

Miselyx issued commands to the surrounding dragons. The earth-shattering explosion had barely changed the desolation of the Ashen Wastes, but the airspace was now clear. Satisfaction flickered in Miselyx's eyes. Wang Yu was as much of a monster as expected—no, even more so. Even the young woman by his side was ridiculous.

With the first obstacle beyond the wall obliterated, the dragons under Wang Yu's lead flew on without pause toward the center of the Ashen Wastes. On the other side, Skyborne City began advancing toward the target in unison.

Flanked by the elite vanguard at their rear, the five war golems surged forward, seizing the opening created as the Church of Nightfall drew away much of Utopia's attention. They advanced with astonishing speed, soon reaching the shattered remnants of the wall that Wang Yu and his dragons had broken through earlier.

"Obstacle detected—a structure composed of mana and dense void energy. Structural integrity: battlefield-grade. Requesting bombardment support from Skyborne City."

The vanguard's wizards relayed their readings with rapid precision. A moment later, Skyborne City, through Astartes' phenomenal computational arrays, issued its response.

"Approved. Commence bombardment."

Far across the plain, atop a deck outside the city proper, one of the newly completed engines of war crafted expressly for this campaign roared to life. Its rune-etched barrel swiveled, aligning toward the distant target.

A rift bloomed from the heavens—part spatial rift, part void fissure. Its defining feature was contagion.

In the blink of an eye, it struck the "wall." Instantly, the hybrid rift began to spread like a plague, its presence corrupting the space around its point of impact. The wall's clever design, diverting force and dispersing energy, proved utterly meaningless before a weapon aimed not at matter, but at space itself.

Cracks proliferated, devouring structure and stability alike, until the rift finally exhausted its energy. By then a vast gap had opened in the wall, far too wide to prevent the Alliance forces from advancing.

The Iron Titans drove their fists forward in unison. Iron knuckles wreathed in high-density matter and void energy crashed into the already crumbling wall, shattering it completely and laying bare the spires Utopia had seeded behind it. There were still dozens, yet they were unprotected by the giant serpent that Wang Yu's group had faced.

A pulse rippled from the void. The spires linked once more into a lattice, drawing upon an even greater surge of void energy. Starlit hues spilled outward and bled into the material plane as the spires sought to transform the battlefield into terrain suited for their kind. free𝑤ebnovel.com

"Credit where it's due, fighting you has taught us a thing or two. But the same trick was never going to work twice."

Aboard Skyborne City, the scholars assigned to counter this exact scenario activated their devices. A surge of force eerily similar to the spires' lashed forth across the battlefield, racing toward the encroaching wave of environmental distortion.

The two waves collided. For a long moment they ground against each other, then both ruptured and dissolved. Utopia's attempt to reshape the battlefield had failed. The material realm remained firmly in control.

Even with the void weapons derived from Icarus's breakthroughs, the material realm was still home ground to the continent's mortal races—and enemy territory for those born of the void.

"Advance! Press the line! This is a war we must win!"

A frontline commander bellowed out orders. Under the Iron Titans' lead, the vanguard surged forward without hesitation, driving their formation straight toward the heart of the Ashen Wastes, where the Utopia's forces awaited them.