Renith was utterly baffled. She genuinely couldn’t understand why Kolk had suddenly descended into such a maniacal fit of laughter.
While concentrating fully on her magic, trying to stabilize the situation, she listened to Kolk’s arrogantly unhinged words echoing through the air:
“You can’t win against me. With just one word, I can render your spells useless in an instant. And with a single thought, I can snap your limbs and strip you of any ability to fight back.”
His tone was dripping with arrogance, as if he had complete control over the entire battlefield.
“The gangsters and those damned workers shouldn’t hold onto any hope of winning either—my forces are rushing here as we speak. Sure, they were slightly delayed by the uprising in the neighboring city, but that’s nothing more than a motley crew of rabble. They can’t possibly stop my elite troops from advancing.”
“By my estimate, they should be arriving any moment now. Do you know what that means?”
Renith’s expression grew grim, but she did not respond to Kolk’s provocation.
However, just as Kolk was gleefully taunting Renith, his words came to an abrupt halt, and his movements froze mid-motion.
He whirled his head around, his gaze locking onto the northern transportation hub.
There, at the edge of the horizon, several strange, wriggling curves were slowly closing in.
Renith also glanced in the direction of Kolk’s gaze. As the curves grew closer, a creeping sense of dread began to settle in her heart.
As the silhouettes came into focus, Renith roughly understood what they were—Kolk’s army!
This force was massive, with a rough estimate of about two thousand men.
Their equipment was as advanced as ever, gleaming coldly under the faint moonlight. Leading the contingent were two barons and a viscount, riding in military trucks, their expressions stern and unyielding.
Renith’s heart sank like a stone into an abyss.
If these two thousand soldiers entered the battlefield, the tide of battle, which had just begun to show a glimmer of hope today, would collapse in an instant—all their efforts would be for nothing.
And, according to what Kolk had said earlier, this was far from the end of it.
Could it be that…
Renith furrowed her brow and quickly calculated the travel time from the neighboring city to Mobis. To her shock, she realized that Kolk’s army had arrived more than three days earlier than she had anticipated.
“You… you gave them your ‘Divine Blessing’?” Renith finally couldn’t hold back and spoke, clutching her codex tightly as a wave of foreboding washed over her.
“Exactly. And right now, I’ve already withdrawn that ‘Divine Blessing.’ That means…” Kolk curled his lips into a smug, cold smirk, and the pressure radiating from his body began to surge relentlessly.
The peak of the Earl rank was a massive dividing line—many strong warriors found it insurmountable. But now, this seemingly unbreakable barrier could no longer stop Kolk from advancing.
With the overwhelming power of the “Divine Blessing,” his “Aura” continued to compress and condense until it formed a small cube inside his body—a hallmark sign of stepping into the Marquis rank.
“I can’t let him ascend!”
Alarm bells rang loudly in Renith’s mind as she made a split-second judgment. She knew all too well that once Kolk successfully reached the Marquis level, his strength would undergo a qualitative leap, and she would be even less able to withstand him.
“Codex, page 727, Earth Magic—Abyssal Mire of Oblivion.”
After making her decision, Renith wasted no time and unleashed her killing move without a moment’s hesitation.
From various directions, the earth began to heave violently and cave in, forming within the blink of an eye a massive, pitch-black enclosed space that trapped Kolk inside.
The ground started to tremble violently, like a slumbering beast suddenly awakened, letting out a low, guttural roar. Creatures made of mud and bones crawled out from beneath the surface, brandishing their claws and lunging at Kolk in midair, as if intent on tearing him to shreds.
The stagnant air was churned by invisible hands, and a fierce gale rose within this sealed space, carrying the stench of rotting corpses and damp earth into Kolk’s nostrils.
These air currents sliced through the air like razor-sharp blades, hacking at Kolk’s limbs in an attempt to dismember him.
Kolk’s eyes snapped open abruptly, a sharp, piercing light flashing within them.
The energy surging inside him burst forth like a breached dam, erupting from the cube within his body. The attacks that sought to destroy him were instantly annihilated upon contact with this overwhelming “Aura,” vanishing into nothingness.
Even the mayor’s villa beneath Renith and Kolk’s feet was shattered by the violent pulsation of the “Aura,” crumbling like a fragile house of cards into a cloud of dust in an instant.
Kolk then stood effortlessly atop the void. With a casual wave of his hand, a dense wave of “Aura” surged forward like a raging tide, and the mountains and chasms Renith had conjured were instantly erased, obliterated without a trace.
Renith’s inner alarms blared once more. She had to find a way to escape as soon as possible—otherwise, the consequences would be catastrophic.
But before she knew it, Kolk had appeared behind her like a phantom. His injuries were gone now, for the immense regenerative power granted by his ascension to the Marquis rank had seamlessly pieced his body back together, restoring him to full strength.
His colossal “Aura” locked onto Renith like an invisible net.
A suffocating, crushing pressure descended upon her, making it hard for her to breathe. She felt as though an immense, unseen mountain was pressing down on her, rendering her unable to move.
But this wasn’t the first time Renith had faced such a crisis. She took a deep breath, forcing herself to stay calm, and spoke to Philove inside the codex:
“At this stage… without using Demon Magic, we simply won’t survive.”
Sensing her mana reserves running dangerously low, Renith made this judgment.
Philove, within the codex’s space, was acutely aware of the gravity of the situation, but the thought of that repulsive Demon Magic scent made her hesitate.
As Kolk drew closer and closer, his “Aura” slithered around Renith’s limbs like icy serpents, sending a bone-chilling cold through her. Philove gave no reply for a long while, so Renith took her silence as consent!
“Codex, page 269, Greed Magic—Touch of Avarice.”
Silently and instantly, jet-black tentacles burst forth from within Renith’s body, surging outward like an inky tide and flooding the empty streets in an instant.
These tentacles writhed and devoured wildly, consuming every magical particle they could reach and converting them into the purest mana within Renith’s body.
Kolk felt a flicker of threat from these tendrils; he could clearly sense his radiating “Aura” being slowly consumed.
“Deal with the caster first.”
Kolk muttered to himself, then curved his fingers into claws and slashed through the air. An invisible force shot forth like a razor-sharp blade, slicing through the earth and the mass of tentacles enveloping Renith before him.
But Kolk felt no real impact.
It turned out Renith had already been relocated by the tentacles. The conspicuous bundle of tendrils before him was merely a clever decoy she had set up to mislead him and buy herself a moment of respite.
Of course, it wasn’t that Kolk didn’t try to sense Renith’s position—it was just that this sea of tentacles was composed entirely of mana. His “Aura” could only detect the boundaries of the tentacle sea but couldn’t perceive what lay inside, leaving him momentarily at a loss.
“If that’s the case, don’t blame me for being ruthless.”
Kolk hovered in midair, completely ignoring the soldiers tangled in the tentacles and the two viscounts below.
He threw punches in all directions, each one packed with a massive “Aura,” then dropped heavily from the sky onto one of the fist-shaped craters.
The ground shattered by Kolk’s fists actually lurched upward from the impact.
With a sweeping motion, Kolk used his “Aura” to lift that chunk of earth, hurling it into the air and pressing his palms together.
The floating landmass—and everything on it—would be casually erased by the sheer force of this strike.
…However, things didn’t go as Kolk had anticipated.
Suddenly, a blinding white light blazed from within the tentacles, as scorching as the sun, illuminating the entire night sky in an instant and forcing everyone to squint.
“Codex, page 851, Holy Light Magic—Pseudo-Divine Art·Divine Protection.”
The energy plundered by countless tentacles replenished Renith’s depleted body. By the time Kolk launched his attack, her mana reserves were already overflowing.
That was why she could cast Holy Light Magic without hesitation, forming a protective barrier around herself and those nearby, blocking Kolk’s fatal blow.
And with the “Pseudo-Divine Art·Divine Protection” in place, the plummeting earth from above inflicted little impact on those inside the barrier. The tremendous force dissipated harmlessly the moment it contacted the shield.
Kolk was rather exasperated. He hadn’t expected Renith to possess such a formidable defensive measure.
How could this Holy Light Magic and that bizarre spell possibly coexist? And he had never heard of the Mages’ Tower teaching such magic.
He struck out repeatedly with his palms, each blow hurling powerful waves of “Aura” at Renith’s barrier like cannonballs. Yet even as a Marquis, he couldn’t breach the defenses of the “Pseudo-Divine Art·Divine Protection.”
Of course, that was because Renith’s mana was nearly infinite at the moment, and the highly draining Divine Protection could fend off the vast majority of attacks. Combined, these two factors placed Renith in what felt like a makeshift invincible state, leaving Kolk temporarily helpless.
Still, Renith knew full well that the tentacles’ absorption wouldn’t last forever.
Once they had drained all the nearby magical particles, she would no longer have enough mana to sustain the incredibly taxing “Pseudo-Divine Art·Divine Protection.”
She needed an opening—a chance to break free from Kolk’s relentless, rain-like barrage of punches.
Seeing that his fists couldn’t break through Renith’s defenses, Kolk took a deep breath and began to condense his “Aura” into his arm.
“Breaker Strike!”
The moment Renith heard those two words, accompanied by the violent surge of “Aura,” she knew exactly what it was, even while still wrapped in tentacles.
This was a battle technique recorded in warrior training manuals—a skill designed to help soldiers on the battlefield unleash their inner power to its fullest potential.
If available, such techniques were usually appended to the cultivation methods for warriors to study and reference.
Clearly, Kolk didn’t seem to be entirely proficient in using his own breaker skill yet, and this might be Renith’s only chance.
