Chapter 63: The Leroy Advent – Cataclysm of Wrath
Leornars hovered high above the smog-choked battlefield, his silver-white hair whipping around his face. Below, the Knights of Vurnam were a thin, desperate blue line against a tidal wave of grotesque, horned monsters.
"This is perfect," he muttered, the corners of his lips curling into a predatory smile. The wind carried the stench of blood and sulfur right to him, a perfume of battle. "The plan is already in motion."
The Impenetrable Wall and the Catalyst
Inside a hastily pitched command tent, Captain Luke of the Vurnam Knights traced a line on a parchment map with a grime-stained finger. Across the table, Rachel Suvallina, her face a mask of determined concentration, pointed at a strategic choke point.
"We commit the reserves to the northern ridge," Luke said, his voice a low, gravelly drone. "If we can hold them there, we buy enough time for the wounded to retreat to the inner city. It's a gamble, Rachel, but we have no choice. The density of this stampede is unlike anything we've faced."
"We can't just contain them, Captain," Rachel countered, her hand slamming softly onto the map. "We need to break their morale. We need a catalyst, something so overwhelming it shatters their line—"
Whoosh.
A knight stumbled into the tent, his steel armor dented and his chest heaving, his face bone-white with shock. He collapsed to his knees, utterly unable to draw a steady breath.
"What is it?" Luke demanded, rushing to him.
Rachel's heart seized. Not again. Her mind flashed to the last devastating attack. "Another Devil? Has the Northern base fallen?"
The knight finally managed a breathless, fragmented gasp: "A spell! From a mile out! A column of red plasma energy... it hit the main body, just beyond the perimeter. It just... erased them. Hundreds! An entire wedge of the horde—gone! And then... a light. Pale gold. It healed them!"
Luke and Rachel exchanged a look of utter perplexity. That kind of destructive power, deployed with such precision, didn't belong to any known Vurnam mage.
They burst out of the tent, shielding their eyes. The battle seemed to pause, the knights looking up in stunned silence. A sphere of impossibly bright, pale-gold light was descending from the heavens. When it hit the ground, it didn't scorch; it healed. The wounded knights, who moments ago were clutching mangled limbs, felt their wounds knit shut, their fatigue melting away, replaced by a surge of impossible vitality.
And then, they saw him. Leornars.
He hung in the air, a silver-and-white silhouette against the bruised sky, and he didn't hesitate. "Helvecklev!" he roared.
A wave of purple-black, scorching energy surged from his palms, a focused beam of utter destruction that vaporized another massive chunk of the monster tide. The air shrieked from the sheer force, the residual heat turning the wet earth to glass.
He plummeted. Not a drop, but a blur that broke the sound barrier with a concussive boom. He hit the ground at what Captain Luke's veteran eyes could only register as Mach 4800, a silver comet tearing through flesh and bone. He wasn't running; he was teleporting through speed.
A large, three-headed Cerberus-like beast, its teeth as long as swords, charged him. Leornars was already past it, a dagger flashing in a blur so fast the monster felt nothing until its three monstrous heads tumbled simultaneously, leaving thick, black ichor spraying the ground. He vaulted over the next beast, planted a hand on its spine, and roared, "Dark Aria!" A patch of void-black flame instantly erupted from his palm, burning the creature to ash from the inside out before it could even register the pain. He spun, killed the next one with a single, brutal slash that cleaved it in two, and dropped into a small clearing in the monster ranks.
His voice, amplified by his sheer, terrifying Aura, echoed across the valley, a cold promise of finality.
"AUDITOR ERASE!"
A pulse of invisible, omni-directional force exploded outward from him. Three-quarters of the remaining monster horde, over a thousand hideous creatures, turned instantly into fine, gray ash that drifted away on the wind. The surviving monsters staggered, their coordination dissolving into pure, panicked terror.
"These monsters have done nothing wrong for me to use gate keeper on them, I have no quarrel with their souls," he said, the words a low, weary statement of his self-imposed restraint.
He stood, swaying, a shuddering breath escaping his lips. A dark trickle of blood ran from the corner of his mouth—the sheer toll of the power he had unleashed.
The surviving monsters, now a desperate, enraged rabble, swarmed him, their remaining instincts dedicated to overwhelming their solitary tormentor. Leornars didn't flinch. He flipped impossibly high, a final, desperate gasp on his lips. "D-die... FIRE SPELL... BLACK PHOENIX!!!"
A colossal bird made of swirling, deep-red and black flame manifested above the battlefield, its shadow momentarily eclipsing the sun. It descended, a roaring, fiery vortex that incinerated the surrounding monsters, leaving scorched earth and molten armor behind. Leornars felt a sharp, agonizing stab behind his eyes as blood began to leak from his pupils. Despite the pain, he instantly cast the fire bolt spell, unleashing four thousand searing projectiles that punched through the horde. Simultaneously, he fired an opposing wave of ice magic, freezing the ground, causing the monsters to trip and fall into a chaotic, slippery heap. As they struggled, he fired his skill: Bubble, which made the monsters' flesh melt off their bones in grotesque streams, and finally, a wave of Purgatory flames engulfed the other incoming ones. He panted, his chest heaving, his body pushed far past its limits.
"Plan D is complete... now just one final piece and it's set," He thought, his mind racing even as his body failed.
My mana is depleted, he thought, falling back to the earth. I don't know how long I can hold my Soul Ki from depleting.
With a grunt, he slammed his fists into the ground. "EARTH BOX!" A colossal, perfectly cube-shaped structure of rock, hundreds of feet wide, erupted from the earth, trapping the last cluster of monsters. He simply snapped his fingers, and the rock box crushed inward with a horrific sound of grinding stone and snapping bone, silencing the final screeches.
He shot back into the sky, pausing only to wipe the blood from his eyes and mouth. Below, the knights were frozen. They had been certain the end was upon them, fear so profound it had tasted like metal on their tongues. Then, the terror abruptly snapped and turned to utter elation. Their savior, their impossible hero, stood victorious. A roar of cheers erupted from the weary survivors, a deafening sound of gratitude and awe.
Leornars locked eyes with Captain Luke, who was sprinting toward him. Leornars simply fired a final, weak Dark Aria—a finality—at a straggling monster before descending toward the command ten
Leornars stepped past the tent's destroyed flap. His eyes instantly found Rachel Suvallina. He let out a long, heavy sigh, the raw relief palpable in his voice.
"Good thing you are alive," he said. "Or I'd desert this city."
Luke quickly relayed the intelligence: the monsters were a feint, a massive distraction. The true threat was five mid-to-high-level Devils attacking the Northern base.
Leornars's relief vanished. His silver-white hair bristled. He instantly looked at Rachel with eyes of cold, deadly ice. His Aura of Depravity flared—a noxious, suffocating wave of power that instantly sent Rachel Suvallina, the proud heir, sprawling to her knees, gasping for air.
"Devils don't stage attacks," Leornars's voice was a low, dangerous growl. "They act on contracts. What were devils doing attacking the city? And why were you, specifically, attacked?" His gaze was merciless, demanding a logical answer. Captain Luke tried to speak, but Leornars turned to him, his gaze void-like.
"Silence before I end you," Leornars said in a merciless tone.
He recalled his recent conversation with Stacian—the details about their deals, the clauses in their contracts, and their horrifying hobby of collecting organs from living victims for sport.
Gasping, Rachel forced out the truth. "T-There was a contract... between the city of Vurnam and the Witch of Greed... it required the city to sell one of its people every two years. When you... you unified Vurnam and the village of Oak Haven... the ruling council wanted to terminate the contract. To do that, they decided to sacrifice me and Marrielle, the heirs. Our father was the one doing all those negotiations and he was the one responsible for the killing of the witch of greed's only son, that's why she takes one of our citizens to sacrifice to the devils ,then she....heard that you kill my father so she came for us. Marrielle is back at the manor -"
Before she could finish, Leornars's eyes widened. He grabbed Rachel and violently threw her up and backward just as a massive explosion ripped through the command tent.
A mid-level Devil, its body scarred and its eyes alight with malice, emerged from the smoke. It looked at the weakened Leornars and the startled knights and cackled with victory.
Leornars groaned, blood still seeping from his eyes. The Devil rushed forward to finish him off, its claw extended like a dagger.
But Leornars smirked. "You fell for it."
The Devil's eyes narrowed in confusion. It instantly looked behind it and froze, its demonic resolve shattering into pure, paralyzing terror.
Standing on the ridge, bathed in the moonlight, were six impossibly powerful figures: Stacian, Zaryter, Zhyelena, Bellian, Zhyier, and Avryl.
The Devil's voice cracked with unadulterated fear. "The... the... WITCH OF WRATH!"
Stacian didn't even acknowledge the pathetic thing. Her hand moved, and a stream of Dark Aria—a void flame—shot forth and instantly erased the mid-level Devil, leaving no trace but a wisp of smoke and a searing sulfur smell.
Stacian landed gently beside the critically injured Leornars and immediately began casting powerful, high-level healing spells on him. A sudden, tense silence fell over the entire valley.
The silence was broken by the sickening thud of four more arrivals: the remaining High-Rank Devils who had been attacking the Northern base. They materialized in a cloud of crimson light, their faces etched with arrogance that quickly turned to shock.
Leornars, his wounds rapidly closing, merely lifted his chin.
"Perfect timing," he said, his voice regaining its strength. "I was wondering when you'd stop hiding behind the hills on the East."
The four High-Rank Devils were visibly shocked. He knew we were here? And our location?
Adaptation and the Void-Blue Eye
Leornars, his body healed but his mana core empty, felt the subtle tremors of the Althelia Skill working its impossible magic.
"Mana restoration in completion, switching to variable fuel source. Searching... no results. Adaptive energy detected in the user's core. Analysis complete. Switching to adaptive energy. Instant Infinite Adaptability activated."
He was instantly engulfed in a ferocious red aura, a shimmering, intense light that pulsed against the smothering blue of Stacian's power. His signature silver-white hair—a hallmark of his mixed lineage—drained completely of color and became a mesmerizing, absolute void black. His pale, ethereal skin seemed to grow taut, his form now radiating a compressed, barely contained power that seemed utterly foreign to this world.
The Althelia Skill spoke again, the final warning to his enemies.
"Due to body reconstruction and adaptation... Hellish Skill has been activated to 30 percent."
Leornars's eyes, which moments ago were leaking blood and burning with deep crimson Ki, snapped open. They were no longer red; they were a terrifying, limitless void blue. It was the color of a starless sky looking into the deepest part of the abyss—cold, endless, and utterly devoid of mercy.
He stood, perfectly still, his new black hair stark against the red aura that flared and crackled around him. The change was definitive: the exhausted savior was gone, replaced by a ruthless, adapted engine of destruction.
He looked at the shocked High-Rank Devils, and a slow, cold smile stretched across his face.
"Perfect timing," he repeated, the void-blue of his eyes burning with renewed power.
"Now... let's.... dance!" He said in a cold, merciless tone.
The High-Rank Devils recoiled. They were humanoid, but horribly beautiful, with skin the color of polished bone. Massive, leathery black wings sprouted from their backs, and sharp, obsidian horns curved menacingly above their brows. Strange, intricate black marks—the tattoos of their contracts and power—crawled across their pale white bodies like veins of solidified shadow. They radiated an aura of arrogance and ancient power, though that confidence was rapidly giving way to confusion and dread.
The Devils of Wrath Unleashed
Standing against them were Leornars's loyalists, the Devils of Wrath.
Zaryter: The Chains of Eternal Flame
Zaryter, usually the most serene of the group, was now a portrait of concentrated fury. His calm, cheerful tone was entirely gone, replaced by a low, guttural snarl that promised agonizing death. His eyes blazed with a murderous, bloody red.
His unique weapon, the Eternal Chains, manifested with a terrifying sound of grinding metal. They were thick, rusted lengths of shadow-iron that coiled around his body, but they weren't cold. Each link burned with a contained, intense scarlet flame. These were not simple fire chains; this was the Void Fire of the abyss, hotter than any mortal star, capable of searing the very soul from a body. The air around Zaryter crackled and warped under the sheer thermal power radiating from his weapon.
He cracked the chains, the sound like a whip of pure energy, and stepped forward, his eyes locked on the Devil leading the enemy group.
"Do. You. Really. Believe. That. You will. Get out of here. Alive?" Zaryter's voice was a harsh, rasping whisper, yet it cut through the din of the battlefield like a knife. "You dared to disturb the Lord. The price for that offense is not merely death—it is the obliteration of your existence, piece by agonizing piece. You will beg for the cold void to take you, and I will be the one to deny you even that comfort."
Zhyelena: The Silent Predator
Zhyelena was the picture of a coiled, lethal predator. Her usual cocky, teasing demeanor had vanished under the mantle of focused rage. She stood low, her knees bent, a stance that promised impossible speed.
She drew her twin daggers—two wickedly curved blades of pure, light-absorbing shadow-steel. Her eyes were not merely red, but glowed with an internal, fierce crimson light that promised to dissect the battlefield. Her Aura felt like a suffocating vacuum; it didn't roar, but instead compressed the space around her, making the air heavy and hard to breathe for the nearby knights. She was completely silent, her fury channeled into a chilling, absolute readiness to kill.
She moved with an unnatural grace, circling the enemy's flank, her voice cutting through the rising tension, cold and utterly devoid of mercy.
"Touching Lord Leornars is punishable by death, little flies," Zhyelena said mercilessly, her voice soft but carrying an undeniable weight of authority. "You have stained his ground with your presence and wasted his precious energy. For that, I won't kill you fast. I will make your final moments a lesson in fear—a gift of eternal, crippling dread that will be carved into what remains of your souls for the next billion years." She walked ahead, the twin blades absorbing all light, making her hands look like she held two shimmering voids.
Stacian, the Witch of Wrath, stood before the enemy High-Rank Devils. Her entire demeanor had shifted. The composure she maintained as Leornars's advisor and healer was utterly gone, replaced by the terrifying aspect of an entity whose patience had run out.
"You insolence... insects dare to touch the Lord Leornars," she whispered, a threat that rang with the promise of extinction. "I'll end you all."
As she spoke, her massive, brilliant blue aura exploded. It didn't just radiate power; it congealed, becoming a palpable force that instantly washed over the entire battlefield, drowning the remaining vestiges of the monster stampede and the stunned knights alike.
The blue aura was a tempest of chilling, perfect energy, utterly silent but overwhelming. It didn't scorch or burn; it oppressed. It swallowed light, deadened sound, and froze motion. The boundary of its influence extended across the valley, engulfing the entire city of Vurnam and continuing for a terrifying twenty-mile range.
Every knight and every surviving Devil within that radius felt their breath stolen and their knees weaken. The air became thick, heavy, and lethal, as if they were suddenly submerged deep underwater. This was not the chaotic release of a battle mage; this was the calm, total jurisdiction of a Devil of the highest echelon, declaring the entire territory her personal domain of slaughter. The very ground beneath the enemy Devils' feet began to shake as Stacian prepared to unleash the full extent of her fury.
The Stage for Annihilation
Bellian stepped forward, his cold, icy voice matching the glow of his silver eyes as he drew his blade, its edge humming with suppressed power. "I'll dispose of these... filth." His statement was a dismissal, not a challenge.
Leornars snapped his fingers, summoning his 1279 undead soldiers. Then, he flew over the entire battlefield, gathering the dead corpses of the fallen monsters and knights with a single, massive wave of power, and cast his undead conversion on them, instantly attaining an army of 49,000 undead monsters. He instructed them to quickly eliminate the few remaining straggling creatures.
"Kill them all," Leornars commanded, his voice ringing with absolute authority. "Stacian will handle the witch. The rest of us will eliminate these devils."
Stacian used shadow movement and teleported into the forest, disappearing in a ripple of blue light, looking for the Witch of Greed. Leornars drew his dagger, its surface etched with arcane symbols, and looked at the four High-Rank Devils with an icy expression.
"The age of revolution already began, and I don't need your kind's existence in it," He said coldly, the void-blue of his eyes promising immediate and brutal extinction.
The battle for Vurnam was over. The war for the new world had just begun.