Chapter 787: The Early Morning Battle [part 1]
Two figures stepped through the rift.
One was a woman clad in white and red armor, her crimson spear glinting like liquid fire.
The other was an ashen-haired man, his eyes burning with an all-consuming fury-so intense that it seemed he could set the world ablaze with his will alone.
Northern spoke without looking at them.
"I hope it wasn't bothersome to call upon you so soon after finishing a tough battle."
Jeci cracked her neck, the bones popping like breaking twigs, a smile curling her lips-a demented nun in a battlefield of the damned.
"Not at all, My Lord." She exhaled with a soft chuckle. "We didn't get much of a chance to be of significant use in that fight. It was beyond our league."
She cast a sideways glance at Lynus, whose face remained frozen in unrelenting fury.
He said nothing.
Northern was silent for a moment.
He hadn't demanded a full recount of the battle-not with everything happening before him. But from the way Bairan and the others looked ragged, it was obvious the fight had been a brutal one.
There were several reasons he had chosen these two instead of using his Void Summon.
But the one that overshadowed every other reason-
He wanted them to grow.
To exist in the world.
During his journey, his thoughts had drifted-not just about passion, purpose, or the true meaning of power, but something far more personal.
Their perspective.
How they felt.
For the longest time, he had never considered it.
What was it like, being limited to his soulscape? What did they feel, being confined to the Limitless Void? Did they not long to see the Central Plain?
And so, Northern had decided-
He would treat them more like people and less like souls bound to him.
With a slow shake of his head, his gaze steeled with focus.
The forest turtle's minions were already gathering, their grotesque forms quivering with readiness.
They seemed to have regained their confidence, a dark tide of writhing monstrosities- waiting for the moment to lunge.
Northern exhaled, rolling his shoulders.
"So, do I dismiss my clones? If I do, I can focus all my power on myself."
His azure gaze flickered toward them.
"Will the two of you be enough to handle the smaller ones?"
Smaller.
That was the word Northern used.
But these creatures were not small.
Each one was a catastrophic Hellion. A single one was more than enough to kill a Master.
And there were hundreds of them against only two Masters.
But these two-
These two had been forged in an immolating crucible. Their souls were on the verge of evolution.
And their combat experience was unmatched. Raw. Savage. Ruthless.
They were created to kill.
Only now-
Their target had shifted.
Less human.
More monsters.
"Of course we would be able to, my lord!"
Jeci answered with enthusiasm while Lynus darkened his face.
A chilling silence settled over the battlefield.
The wind howled-softly, eerily. Mist drifted, weaving through the air, obscuring the open expanse like a ghostly veil.
Morning had long risen, its golden light stretching across the land.
But here in this place of war-time itself seemed unwilling to intrude.
The battlefield ignored the dawn.
It drowned in a fearsome, terrifying, and deafening silence.
The kind of silence before a storm.
And from a certain perspective-the deadliest kind.
Northern exhaled-and grinned.
"Well, then."
He moved.
And in the blink of an eye-
He vanished.
A thunderous gale exploded outward from where he had stood, the sheer force shaking the
ground beneath Jeci and Lynus.
Their eyes barely tracked him-a blur tearing across the battlefield.
The next moment-
Northern was already in the air, lunging toward the creature's head.
The forest abomination reacted instantly.
Dragon-like tentacles lashed outward, curling through the air with terrifying speed.
They extended limitlessly, moving in from every direction-intended to crush him mid-air before he could land a single strike.
But Northern-
He did not fly.
He flowed.
Like the wind itself, he wove between the curling tendrils, moving with impossible fluidity- not dodging, but slipping through the chaos as if it had been choreographed just for him. The Illusioned Hefter swung with every movement-but its blade remained invisible. From a distance, it looked as though Northern was merely throwing his hands into the air, conducting a symphony, guiding an unseen orchestra while gliding through the sky like an
aimless current.
Then-
A flicker of white sparks.
A thunderous boom split the air.
And the tentacles fell.
Severed.
Carved apart in several places.
All of them.
Not a single head remained uncut.
Jeci paled as she watched-staggered, breath caught in her throat.
Lynus, too, felt the shock ripple through him.
But unlike Jeci-his fury only swelled.
Teeth grinding, he clicked his tongue-the rage inside him burning hotter, searing his
insides.
And then, beneath his breath, he muttered-
"Just when I thought I'd finally get the chance to beat the shit out of him."
But neither Jeci nor Lynus had the luxury to watch.
The moment Northern vanished into the air-
His clones vanished with him.
Not as fading illusions. Not as dissolving shadows.
They simply ceased to exist.
And with that-
The "smaller" forest abominations began their march.
Savage. Relentless. Faster than before.
Jeci took a step forward, her crimson spear twirling lightly in one hand—a simple motion, yet
it violently disturbed the air, warping the atmosphere around her.
Lynus shifted his sheathed sword, his fingers settling around the hilt.
His eyes burned, locked onto the advancing monstrosities.
Between the two of them-
There was something unspoken.
A connection woven not by words, but by movement.
An invisible string of flow, tying them together-
Matching rhythms. Matching steps.
Even the rise and fall of their shoulders seemed to follow a seamless pattern.
Then they moved.
The wind trembled as their figures blurred forward-
Or perhaps―
Their sheer ferocity carved through the wind itself.
Jeci's spear flashed.
With minimal movement, she slashed the head clean off the first abomination lunging at her.
Before its corpse even hit the ground-
Her spear twirled, retracted-
Then it exploded forward.
A blinding thrust tore through another creature's chest, bursting into a shockwave that
rippled outward-
Disrupting the others.
Giving her momentum and leverage.
As she danced through the slaughter, the abominations fell, subjected to the cruelty of her
spear.
It glowed a wind of gore, carving heads from bodies, splitting spines apart.
Jeci wove through them, movements unnatural, unhinged, hypnotic.
Like an insane nun, a twisted grin frozen on her face as she dashed back and forth-
Moving with her spear as fluidly as blood flowing through veins. Lynus was just as fearsome as Jeci-though he lacked her demented elegance.
Instead he tore through the battlefield like a bull carved out of blades.
His strikes were unstoppable.
And though he was a swordsman, he fought with his entire body.
As his blade fell upon one enemy, his hand was already reaching for another.
As his sword cleaved through the first, he was either plunging it into the next, or using his
knee to shatter wood, or simply hurling his victim aside—all while his sword was already flying toward its next target.
The silver blade glinted beneath the golden sky-catching the morning light, singing with a
thin, metallic voice.
A somber dirge whispered into the chaos-each strike, each departure, sending another abomination falling.
The battlefield became a masterpiece of brutality-
A weave of violence, cruel yet mesmerizing.
Though these creatures should have overpowered them, their experience told a different
story.
The Limitless Void had forged them in harsher crucibles.
Jeci had Black Mamba to thank.
She could adapt to anything.
Any shift in the battlefield, any slight movement-she could sense it, mold herself to it,
become the storm within it.
Though she needed space to wield her spear, she was never restricted when she lacked it.
Instead she broke through space itself.
Her movements, short, sharp, deadly, manipulating momentum in unnatural ways, crashing
through her enemies with demented ferocity. Lynus, on the other hand-
Was a bull of blades, burning with unrelenting fury.
His movements were raw, furious-untamed.
The air itself burned with his presence, thick with his bloodlust, pressing down on his
enemies, infecting them with a paralyzing, animalistic fear.
And in that moment of hesitation-
He struck.
Northern-watching through one compartment of his Chaos Eyes-exhaled as he clashed
against the regenerated tentacles of the monster.
A fleeting thought passed through his mind.
'Damn... they've grown. I'm so jealous.' Northern was the most unaware of his own growth.
Perhaps he acknowledged that he had become stronger-
But he often failed to recognize just how much.
A tentacle crashed toward him-but before it could land, his fist shot forward, crushing it
mid-air. Splinters of wood exploded outward, the fragmented remains scattering like brittle glass.
Yet even as one fell, three more were already incoming.
And behind them-the shattered one was already reassembling itself.
Northern's body moved on instinct.
He shot upward-then dove down.
A perfect, fluid 540-degree kick slammed into the first tentacle-
Crushing it against the second.
The second against the third.
The creature staggered sideways-recoiling from the impact.
A brief opening.
Northern seized it-shifting his compartment view from Lynus and Jeci.
He needed to check on the travelers.
His Chaos Eyes darted toward the bridge-
And his heart clenched.
A strange, eel-like creature had coiled around part of the bridge.
The older woman, the one leading the group-
She was on her knees.
Blood streamed down her face, her body leaning against a broken spear.
Further ahead-
The Shadow Drifter.
The bald-headed Drifter.
And Roma.
All three stood rigidly, their swords clenched in a desperate deadlock.
Their blades blocked something-
A serpentine tangle of tentacles.
Each one gleaming like a flamberge- Twisting. Serrated. Unrelenting. 'What the hell is... going on?!'
For the first time in the battle, a flicker of genuine alarm flashed through Northern's mind.
That split-second distraction-
Was enough.
The flying tentacles struck.
Slamming into his figure.
The impact sent him hurtling toward the ground.
A thunderous crash.
The earth shattered beneath him, snow and debris exploding outward as his body skidded
across the battlefield.
For the first time-Northern lost his footing.