“Master, the boss got snared by that All-Slaughter Doom Array; should I step in?”
Hill looked over at me, worry pooling in his eyes like dusk rain, hands itching to move.
“No.”
Xinuo turned a page like a drifting leaf, voice cool as a spring stream. “That All-Slaughter Doom Array is trash. At our Servant’s level, it’s barely breakable. So Hill, just watch.”
“Oh.”
Hill nodded, his breath settling like dust on stone.
…
“What do I do?”
Frustration iced over my chest like winter frost. The array’s boosted spells swarmed like hornets, and its hidden strikes snapped like snakes in the grass.
Then realization like dawn breaking over a ridge: the array’s core sat on those mages’ neck pendants. Beat one, break the array.
I lashed out at the weakest mage with a strand of Sword Aura, a silver streak like moonlight cutting mist.
“Electric Wall!”
Before the aura left the ring of glyphs, slabs of lightning rose like iron gates, two meters tall, hissing blue and caging my strike.
“Haha. So you figured out how to crack the All-Slaughter Doom Array. And so what? If you can’t touch us, you’re just swinging at air.”
Intera’s grating voice scraped my ears like sand on glass. Every time my strike faltered, he crowed. If not for this array, I’d have carved him with three streaks of Sword Aura already.
“Focus. Break the array.”
I thought that, a knife of urgency pressing in. Then Intera’s voice came again, oily as smoke.
“Enough with the kiddie spells. Let’s use something proper. Low-tier tricks can’t scratch that brat. Boring!”
He lifted his wand like a spear catching stormlight. “S-Class Magic: Thunderlight Lance!”
A lance of living lightning coalesced midair, blue glare flooding the circle. It buzzed like a hive, reeking of ruin, then tore toward me like a hawk stooping.
“Wind Sweeps the Clouds!”
“Wheel of Thornwood!”
“Shadow-Soul Arrow!”
Intera barked, and the mages unleashed, spells stacking like waves before a typhoon, each heavier than the last.
“This is bad!”
Panic bit like frost at my gut as the barrage screamed in. They were high-tier to begin with, then the All-Slaughter Doom Array juiced them further. Who knew how brutal the total impact would be?
No matter the number, if they hit me, I’d be dust on the wind.
“No choice. One more push—Sword Qi Storm!”
I gritted my teeth, poured everything left into the technique. The Sword Qi Storm burst from me like a twister born from a dragon’s breath, a cannoning funnel ripping outward.
Then—
Boom!
The spells slammed into the tornado, detonations piling like thunderheads. The shockwave roared; the ground sank several meters and cracked like dry riverbeds.
“Not good!”
The Sword Qi Storm hadn’t blocked them all. Intera’s Thunderlight Lance had slipped the whirl. When the funnel shredded, the lance reappeared, arcs crawling its shaft like serpents, and it was less than five meters away.
“Flash-Shadow Thrust!”
I didn’t have time to breathe. I raised the Shattered Light Sword and stabbed into the onrushing lightning, blade singing like frost.
…
I turned the lance aside by a hair, but pain flared like sparks under skin. It wasn’t fatal, yet my clothes hung in tatters like burnt leaves.
“Oh my, look at you. Tough little cockroach, huh? Still breathing after that?”
Intera smirked, his words like vinegar on a wound.
…
I held my tongue. My body trembled like a taut bowstring, but anger boiled over, a red tide beyond anything I’d ever shouldered.
No one had ever drawn my blood before.
Intera did. Then he mocked me, jeered like a crow. Rage seethed, black stormclouds filling my mind.
“You. Die.”
I lifted my head slowly, gaze colder than ice on a mountain lake, and fixed it on Intera.
“Oh? Haha! Did I hear that right? You can’t even protect yourself, and you say I should die? You’re the dead man here!”
Intera laughed high and loud, like a hyena under the moon. Then he raised his wand, arm carving the air like a blade.
“I’m done playing. I’ll send you off with my strongest spell. World-Ender Divine Thunder!”
Rumble.
The sky dimmed like a shroud being pulled. Thunder rolled, heavy as drums in a temple.
Then dozens of purple bolts fell like judgment, each dripping annihilation, the horizon dressed like the end of days.
Hmph.
The Shattered Light Sword in my grip flared without warning, gold pouring from the blade like dawn over peaks.
The purple bolts fell. I didn’t spare them a glance. I swung the Shattered Light Sword, a golden arc like the sun cutting rain, and cleaved into the storm.
Sizzle…
The golden blade-light shredded the thunderbolts with ease, turning wrath into glittering shards like fireflies.
Ten heartbeats later.
The sky was back to blue, clear as washed glass. I still stood at the heart of the All-Slaughter Doom Array, unruffled, as if that lightning had been a fever dream.
“No. No—impossible! How could you take World-Ender Divine Thunder like that? Not a scratch?”
Intera stared, shock locking his face like stone, babbling “impossible” like a stuck drum.
“Nothing’s impossible. The power inside the Shattered Light Sword isn’t something your mind can reach.”
Understanding cooled through me like rain after drought. My rage had sparked the sword’s strength, just a ten-thousandth of it, yet far beyond your little apocalypse thunder.
I had no interest in explaining. I stepped forward, each footfall like a hammer on a bell. “You had your fun. My turn—Sword Qi Dance.”
I gathered my last scrap of strength and swung, sending arcs of Sword Aura like crescent moons scything through air.
“You can’t kill me! I’m the son of the Grand Elder of the Kage Family’s Arcane Branch!”
Intera screamed, but mercy was ash in the wind. The first stroke fell—
“Ah! It hurts!”
The first Sword Aura severed his right arm, shards of lightning peeling like bark.
“No, don’t!”
The second cut took his left arm, crimson spraying like broken petals.
“The Kage Family will never forgive you—aaah!”
The third stroke crushed his right leg, bones cracking like dry twigs.
“You bastard! Even as a ghost, I’ll hunt you!”
The fourth stroke shattered his left leg, his body folding like a ruined scarecrow.
“My anger’s spent. I won’t drag this out. When you reincarnate, learn to be human. Don’t offend those you can’t afford.”
I loosed the last arc of the Sword Qi Dance, a finishing crescent like the setting sun.
Boom.
Intera burst under the Sword Aura, blown to dust so fine even a scream couldn’t take shape.
“All right. Now it’s your turn.”
I looked at the pale-faced mages, fear washing them white like chalk, and I smiled, thin as a blade.
…
