“Fire…fire, I need more fire!”
The tall, fierce flame giant raised his head and let out a deafening roar upon appearing. He then waved his hand and cast out a halo of flame that engulfed an area of over a thousand meters. The halo was so large that it encompassed the entire battlefield, catching Mietzel, Kanganas, and the dozen large buildings around them in its fury.
Where the halo of flame passed by, houses collapsed, and the earth cracked. A raging sea of fire devoured everything under the heavens.
The wild and untamed flames licked away at the bodies of the two Fourth Grades furiously. It burned through their defensive forcefields, burned through their magical shields, and lashed at their actual bodies.
Kanganas was not much affected by this. He had the body of a lich, after all. He was unburdened by frail, useless flesh and tendons. What remained of his body was a skeleton, most of the bones of which had been turned into unusual magical weapons. He was not at all afraid of such an unconcentrated energy attack.
However, Mietzel was still a human of flesh and blood.
If you took away his divine halo and divine powers, his body was incredibly frail in comparison to a Fourth Grade lich.
When the fires brimming with the power of laws burned Mietzel, he screamed out loud. He had no choice but to activate the only remaining divine spell sealed within the Libram of Wisdom.
Hierro’s Blessing!
Shimmering divine power flowed across Mietzel’s tall and slender body, shielding him from all attacks from the outside. Even the wounds he had sustained prior to this quickly vanished in radiant light.
Lich Kanganas waved the small bone staff in his hand. Three death arrows fired at Mietzel but were instantly dissolved by the divine light around him. They had no effect at all.
Dammit. What powerful defensive ability.
Still, above all else, the most annoying thing about this divine spell was the fact that it had restored Mietzel to his peak condition.
An immovable, restored Mietzel.
Even the cold and heartless Lich Kanganas couldn’t help but feel his skull hurt at the sight of this.
“This divine spell is exhaustible. Our attacks might not be able to break it, but they can run down the divine power required to sustain it!” While Kanganas hesitated, unsure of whether to continue his offense or to resort to harassment to buy time, Greem’s deafening voice boomed once again.
The next second, a two-meter-thick flame shockwave cut across the hundred-meter distance and washed over the Mietzel’s unmoving body. The violent flames clashed with the brilliant divine power, causing wave after wave of energy storms to emanate from the center of the conflict.
Lich Kanganas had not been paying close attention to the subtle energy changes around Mietzel during his probing attacks earlier. Now, upon seeing Greem’s spell clash with Mietzel’s shield, he finally picked up on them.
The energy of the indestructible divine radiance had indeed weakened slightly after Greem’s attack. That meant the two of them could exhaust this divine spell entirely by neutralizing all of its energy.
Kanganas was immediately invigorated by the hope of victory. He roamed around Mietzel, desperately trading shockwaves of death energy for divine spells against Mietzel. Meanwhile, having had his ability seen through by Greem, Mietzel would not sit still and wait for his death. He started to try his best to break through the enclosure.
Unfortunately, the massive flame giant Greem had transformed into was standing right on the perimeter. It didn’t matter which direction Mietzel ran in, Greem would always appear in his path and knock him back with his large, blazing hand.
With the lich and the adept sealing his path of exit, Mietzel could not break through at all, no matter how hard he tried. Again and again, he was repelled. The divine defensive spell around him was gradually turning dimmer from the attacks of the two casters.
While this spell was still active, neither Kanganas nor Greem could do anything to Mietzel. However, it wasn’t hard to imagine Mietzel’s fate the moment the defensive spell was exhausted.
At this point, Mietzel had given up on all thoughts of escaping. He started to use the last remaining time afforded him by his shield to attack Kanganas and Greem with all he had.
Every one of his attacks shook the earth and sent tremors through the air. They were all powerful and destructive.
Divine spells of surprising offensive power spilled forth from the Libram of Wisdom without end, engulfing an area of a thousand meters in the terrifying light of divine radiance. Kanganas and Greem were knocked around by the divine light. They had to dodge, all while gritting their teeth and retaliating with all they had.
Gray death magic, black negative curses, pale bone spears, and Greem’s ferocious storm of flame shockwaves. All of these attacks mingled together, clashed together, neutralized each other, ravaged the battlefield, and turned it into a death zone where no other living being could hope to survive.
Holly and the two-headed siblings stopped a thousand meters away from the battlefield. They looked upon this hell-like battlefield with horror. There was no concealing the shock and fear in their hearts.
Naturally, having fought all the way here alongside Greem, they were all well-acquainted with Greem’s might.
However, they were still shocked to see Greem’s might at his peak, when he was fighting without holding anything back.
They had some idea of Greem’s prowess, but they had no idea that he was already powerful enough to be equal to a lich and a god’s son!
Disregarding everything else, Lich Kanganas alone, despite being intermediate Fourth Grade, was more than a match for most Fourth Grades. That was because of his skeleton, which rendered him immune to most low and intermediate-grade spells. It was the same for Mietzel. The presence of the Libram of Wisdom allowed him to fight even advanced Fourth Grade powerhouses on equal ground.
Yet, a god’s son of such power had actually been forced to death’s door by the combined power of Greem and a lich.
It caused the two adepts to further dismiss and dispel any past or future thoughts of making an enemy out of Greem!
The terrifying commotion caused by the three individuals had naturally drawn many opportunistic predators towards them. However, when they saw Lich Kanganas on the battlefield, they quickly cast away all thoughts of intervening in the affair. All of these individuals hurried away as quickly as they could.
Mietzel might not be all that well-known as a god’s son, and Greem had no reputation to speak of, but Lich Kanganas was infamous as an ace of the Alliance of Liches. He was a horrifyingly formidable as an opponent.
To avoid attracting unnecessary trouble, all those who believed themselves too weak to antagonize the Alliance of Liches had no choice but to give up on this battlefield and turn elsewhere to find easy pickings.
There were over seven or eight such battlefields on the slowly crashing city.
As such, there was no need for them to be concerned that there was no prey to be found!
“The floating city is about to crash!”
No one knew who it was that shouted out loud, but these words caused the otherworldly invaders to realize the unfavorable conditions of their fight immediately.
However, they were all incredibly invested in their battles and were all nearly at the key moment where victory and defeat would be decided. Even if the floating city were to break down and disintegrate in the very next moment, they would fight on until the end.
The divine radiance around Mietzel was already dim and nearly lightless. Yet, he continued to attack his two enemies with all his power, silently waiting for his opportunity to arrive.
Finally, as he hung on desperately to the last vestiges of hope, the floating city crashed onto the plain.
Chapter 1133 - Intercepted
How terrifying was the sight of a massive floating city crashing to the ground?
It was hard to imagine such a thing with the mind alone!
The floating ci
ty was like a small, flying continent. Its foundation was tens of thousands of tons of dense, solid rock etched with a countless number of arcane arrays and anti-gravity barriers. There was also a layer of black dirt above the stone, over thirty meters thick. Built upon this earth were the arcane buildings of the floating city.
When the energy core of the floating city was destroyed, the arcane arrays and anti-gravity barriers on the stone foundation lost their functions. The entire floating city then slowly crashed down towards the plains below at a tilted angle, like a sinking ship in the middle of the sea.
A continuous series of rumbling explosions rang out.
The entire floating city quaked and trembled.
An incomparably violent force spread out from the point of impact, causing most of the foundation–now unprotected by any arcane power–to shatter and disintegrate into debris.
Without any resistance, the floating city started to disintegrate the moment it hit the ground!
The plain beneath it suffered an unprecedented calamity. All the ground within twenty-five kilometers had been smashed into a crater. Even the broad and beautiful lake nearby had been wiped away by the rain of dirt, stone, and indiscernible debris pouring from the sky.
The earth sank, and the ground split apart. Countless pillars of dust rose to the air, engulfing every piece of land within fifty kilometers in a sea of dust and ashes.
Most of the arcane buildings on the floating city had already been reduced to rubble and ruins by the invaders. Now, with the shattering of the city’s foundation and the ceaseless explosions, all of the debris broke down into smaller pieces of waste, scattering in every direction.
An ordinary person could not even survive in such a destructive disaster. However, these otherworldly invaders from all these different planes were still fighting ferociously amidst the apocalypse.
Mietzel despaired!
He put up a divine shield with what power he had left, protecting himself from the barrage of stone and dirt, and quickly escaped in the screen of dust created by the crash.
The fearsome lich pursued closely after him, shrouded in a dense layer of death energy. Meanwhile, the terrifying fire adept had vanished from sight for a while now. It was likely he had been stalled by the savage and harsh conditions of the environment.
Though there was one less enemy now, Mietzel still had no confidence in fighting against the lich.
However, just as he gritted his teeth and fled with all his power, bright crimson light glowed from the dust in front of him. A scorching wave of heat then pressed towards his face.
Dammit! That fire adept caught up as well.
Mietzel turned without any hesitation, switching to a different direction where the energy flux was most intense.
Death was almost inevitable in his current circumstances. His only way out was to reach the radiation zone created by the massive explosion of the floating city. He could rely on the intense radiation there to veil him from his enemy’s spiritual senses, then proceed to find a way to flee.
This path of escape was most definitely incredibly dangerous, but Mietzel had no other choice for the sake of survival!
A fierce wind whistled.
A piece of the city the size of a soccer field whizzed by before Mietzel’s eyes, fragments of buildings still attached to the earth along with a group of horrified arcane apprentices.
The piece didn’t fly very far before it was shattered by a series of flying rocks and broken up into many smaller pieces. The few surviving apprentices on that rock were shredded to blood mist by the energy shockwaves before they could even cry out in surprise.
A series of explosions could be heard emanating from deep underground.
Those were the large-scale explosions resulting from the energy core’s destruction. These bursts happened throughout the entire foundation, blowing up the floating city into countless shattered zones of chaos. In fact, some secrets rooms and treasuries usually hidden underground had been revealed by these explosions, causing large-scale looting and fighting to begin once more.
Mietzel ran away desperately.
After casting all sorts of divine halos on himself, he became light as a swallow and agile as a fox. He sprinted through the flying rocks and broken buildings as if he had wings, constantly changing directions as he ran.
He kicked against a shattered piece of ground, avoided several massive boulders shooting towards him, and leaped right into a massive rift in the earth.
Five minutes later, he appeared from another rift several kilometers away from he had vanished. He looked around him and hastily turned invisible before walking into a gray pillar of dust and fleeing as far away as he could.
However, just as he reached the edge of the ruins, his footsteps stopped. He looked silently ahead of him.
A towering figure clad in bright red flames was sitting, crossed-legged, on the only patch of green left in the area. He had been silently waiting for Mietzel’s arrival.
The flames burned and swayed softly, but the patch of green beneath the flame giant remained completely intact. It had not been ignited or scorched. It was almost as if the rustling flames did not exist at all.
“Hand over the Libram of Wisdom, and you can leave alive! Otherwise…die!”
Greem opened his eyes, a terrifying red light glaring from his blazing eyes.
A twisted smile appeared on Mietzel’s young and handsome face. With a severe tone, he replied, “Do you think I will believe you? You bunch of shameless, despicable, evil, and cunning adepts. I will never believe a single word spoken by you people.”
“You don’t have to believe me. You just have to believe in your own judgment!” Greem smiled casually. “Leave the Libram of Wisdom behind, and you can leave from either my right or my left. I will most certainly not stop you. In fact, I will even offer you valuable information for free: there’s a lich on the left and none on the right.”
Mietzel, who was already exhausted and whose divine power was at its limits, looked around him with feigned toughness. He could see very clearly that the only thing standing between him and safety was this fire adept. As long as he could escape the ruins of the floating city, his survival was basically guaranteed.
He might not be able to beat the lich, but he was slightly faster than the undead. His chances of successfully escaping would increase tremendously when he got out into the open field.
After proper consideration, Mietzel stepped away and lightly placed the Libram of Wisdom on the ground. He then set a simple seal upon the Libram before carefully walking around Greem and escaping into the distance.
The direction he chose to head in was the left!
Greem’s expression did not change. It wasn’t until Mietzel’s figure had completely vanished into the dust cloud that he stood up and walked towards the Libram.
The Libram of Wisdom lay silently on the scorched earth. A rune hovered above the copper cover of the book, still glowing with a faint, sacred light.
“Hmph! Playing these tricks even when death is imminent.” Greem exhaled air from his nose in disdain. Blue light flickered in his eyes, instantly analyzing the magic that Mietzel had left on the book.
The Libram of Wisdom had an owner. It was the origin artifact that the God of Wisdom had made for himself. The Libram was still branded with his divine rune. Naturally, he had handed the artifact to his son, hoping that the might of the Fifth Grade artifact could further protect Mietzel.
Meanwhile, as the temporary owner of the artifact, Mietzel had the means to bind the object to his soul. This way, even if he was billions of kilometers away, he needed only trigger the divine rune, and the Libram of Wisdom would instantly return to him.
It seemed like Mietzel had been trying to trick Greem into an empty deal by taking advantage of Greem’s unfamiliarity with the artifact.
Moreover, Greem discovered a terrifying, activated, and primed divine spell within the Libram of Wisdom with the help of the Chip’s scan. Should Greem undo
the seal, the Libram of Wisdom would instantly attack him.
When that happened, he would have to focus on defending himself, and would not be able to stop the Libram of Wisdom from leaving.
Greem chuckled at this setup as he reached for the Libram of Wisdom.
However, at that moment, a black figure rushed out from the dust cloud. Two human, yet beast-like, claws cut through the air, manifesting as a series of green claws that slashed at Greem like a violent storm.
A red figure swayed mysteriously beside the black figure, blowing a pungent, purple breath of poison at Greem.
Greem seemed to have detected their presence a while ago. His body erupted immediately and flickered a few dozen meters away, where he rematerialized in his human form. When he finally stood firm on the ground, two figures, one black and one red, replaced him at his former position.
The black figure was the werewolf from earlier, and the red figure was the foxgirl.
It was obvious that the two of them had not had a successful hunt inside the city. All sorts of wounds and scars could be seen on their bodies. The fact that they could not use their energy to rapidly heal their bodies despite their power was evidence of the severity of their wounds.
However, they were two against one. Both of them stared at Greem with fierce eyes, as if they could easily take him down at any moment.
The werewolf with the short, bristly black hair bent down slightly, inch-long claws protruding from his hands. He waved and growled at Greem, revealing his sharp teeth inside his jaw.
Meanwhile, the foxgirl narrowed her eyes, looking curiously at the Libram of Wisdom close to her feet.
She might not recognize the Libram of Wisdom, but the unique law flux of a Fifth Grade artifact and its unusual energy aura informed her of its nature.
“Tsk, tsk, tsk. You naughty fellow. To think you wouldn’t know how to treasure an artifact and leave it lying on the ground like that. Why don’t I keep it safe for you?”
Rose, the foxgirl, giggled as she reached for the Libram of Wisdom with her slender hand without any hesitation whatsoever.
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