Chapter 108-2: Peak Combat Power Is Indeed Very Strong (2) |
Inside the flame city.
The Skyfire hierophant king wore a grave expression. With a single combined strike from the priestly order, the three attacking forces had all been crushed, and victory was achieved in an instant.
He had originally intended to reorganize the strength of the race and prepare to launch plundering wars outward.
He had not expected the three forces that had been routed to assault again so soon.
This left him very perplexed.
By rights, given his side’s strength, the three attacking forces should have learned something through contact in battle. It could be said that he possessed the combat power to completely crush these three forces.
But he did not understand why these three forces still dared to invade.
Without thinking too much about it, he immediately organized Skyfire warriors to go out of the city to engage.
He then issued an order for the priests inside the city to absorb the free mental particles in the air to recover their state and prepare to activate the next round of the Skyfire Grand Array.
But the Skyfire hierophant king’s face never changed.
Because he had long been mentally prepared. From the moment he chose war, he knew his people would inevitably fall continuously in the course of it.
With the resources of the Skyfire World gradually drying up, he had planned a cross-world war one hundred years in advance, continually optimizing the population structure and taking the path of elite development.
Those who followed him across worlds were all exceptionally outstanding warriors.
He believed that with the Skyfire race’s combat strength, they would certainly crush the three attacking forces with ease.
Just as the Skyfire hierophant king expected, even while beset on three sides, the Skyfire race continued to hold an absolute advantage in the war.
But there was one point he found very puzzling.
Within the dense Swarm to the west, there appeared a new combat unit branded with flame spiritual patterns on its body surface.
These newly arrived combat units possessed very high fire resistance, and his racial members could no longer, as before, casually wipe out swathes of them with a single strike.
While surprised, he did not pay this detail much attention.
He only needed to know that his side held an absolute advantage in the war. Next, once the priestly order was ready with the Skyfire Grand Array, they could clear the field again and slaughter all three attacking forces.
Time passed. Receiving feedback from the priestly order, the Skyfire hierophant king transformed into a flame giant several dozen meters tall and raised his sword to the heavens.
At once, the priests’ power converged from all directions and flew from the sword tip into the sky.
An ultra wide-range Skyfire formation took shape overhead, and a new round of heavenly fire rain began. The land was once again swept and shrouded by dense flames.
When the Skyfire Grand Array dissipated, the Skyfire hierophant king dispersed his demonic fire form, hovered high in the air, and surveyed the battlefield.
Where his gaze fell, the combat units of the three forces had all vanished.
The corner of the Skyfire hierophant king’s mouth curled upward, and he could not hide his pride.
—
Three days later.
The confidence in the Skyfire hierophant king’s eyes had completely vanished.
After a brutal struggle of three days and three nights.
He could no longer remember how many times the three native forces had come surging in.
The fighting had lasted three days. Nearly one fifth of his people had died in the war, yet the war showed no sign whatsoever of stopping.
It was as if the reinforcements of these three forces were inexhaustible.
Each time they were beaten back, they could always rapidly assemble new combat units and reenter the battlefield.
Gazing at the waning moon hanging high at the horizon, a trace of confusion surfaced in the Skyfire hierophant king’s eyes, but it was quickly replaced by resolve.
“The peak combat power of this world is indeed very strong… but I will not lose. This is only the beginning.”
Just then, the earth trembled.
The Skyfire hierophant king’s gaze immediately swept toward the source of the disturbance.
Under the Evil Moon’s glow, the ground kept shaking, as if countless lives were stirring restlessly beneath the earth.
Suddenly, the pitch-black thin mist was pierced. Tens of thousands of Swarm warriors, like a black tide, swiftly covered the entire plain. These Swarm warriors had clearly changed in form from the first clash. Some wore heavy carapaces, some brandished sharp mouthparts, and there were also some enormous insect types mixed in. As they advanced, they converged into a dense, impenetrable net.
Most importantly, the Swarm warriors charging at the very front all bore flame spiritual patterns branded on their bodies.
This spiritual pattern was very familiar to the Skyfire hierophant king.
All Swarm warriors bearing this pattern had extremely strong resistance to the fire element.
From only a few scattered Swarm warriors having it at first, to now where, as far as the eye could see, most Swarm warriors bore the blessing of the flame spiritual pattern.
This raised a conjecture in the Skyfire hierophant king’s heart, but he quickly suppressed the thought, believing he was indulging in wild fantasies. How could there exist such a terrifying racial innate ability in this world.
Gazing at the Swarm tide, a trace of killing intent surfaced in the Skyfire hierophant king’s weary eyes, and he immediately issued combat orders.
The racial members who had long been on standby, upon receiving the order, went out of the city one after another to meet the approaching Swarm army.
The Skyfire hierophant king withdrew his gaze, then looked toward another direction.
At the end of his sight was a slowly spreading black surge, as if ink were being flung by an invisible hand, condensing into a boundless black sea of darkness that swept in with utmost clamor. Within the darkness, countless ferocious monsters were birthed, then in an instant merged back into the black mist and vanished.
With a new round of combat orders issued, the Skyfire warriors positioned at the north gate went out of the city to prepare for battle.
The Skyfire hierophant king’s gaze finally turned to the south of the flame city.
His eyes focused on the force that was attacking.
This was the force he understood the least.
Compared to the ferocity and hideousness that surfaced from the other two forces, and their battle style that nearly blotted out the sky, the force attacking from the south behaved the strangest.
Along the way they chatted and laughed, arms slung over shoulders. Some even kept leaping several meters high as they advanced, as if greatly enjoying the weightless feeling brought by each jump.
Sweeping his gaze over them, aside from a few organized groups, the overall battle formation of the force was extremely loose.
His impression was that this force seemed never to have considered that war brings death. To them, this was only a game.
Aside from that, this force was also the weakest of the three.
It could be seen that the three forces were not in an alliance.
When they launched the attack on the flame city, he noticed that after the three forces spread their lines, if they encountered one another, they would strike the other side without hesitation, showing that the three forces were mutually hostile.
This was the strangest part.
In overall strength they were the weakest, and in numbers they were completely suppressed by the Swarm and the Black Tide.
He did not understand how this force had managed to survive on this land without being devoured by the other two extremely evil forces.
He had no way to answer this question.
But while observing the battle, he did witness an extremely bizarre scene.
At that time the priestly order had not yet prepared to activate the Skyfire Grand Array, and the racial members fighting on three fronts were exceptionally exhausted. He issued the order to enter the city.
He planned to lure the three forces into the city and fight through the flame city’s defense system.
As a result, upon meeting inside the city, the three forces started fighting each other without hesitation, mutually wearing one another down. This was an unexpected surprise for the Skyfire hierophant king.
But during this process it was obvious that the Black Tide preferred to engage the Swarm, and the Swarm also preferred to engage the Black Tide.
As for the other mysterious force, they killed whoever they saw.
This was exceedingly strange.
The three forces were mutually hostile, and among them two seemed to loathe the force attacking from the south, unwilling to become entangled with them.
Logically, the force attacking from the south was the weakest of the three.
They also exerted the least pressure on him among the three.
Yet it was precisely this seemingly vulnerable force that the other two were extremely wary of.
Especially the Black Tide. They avoided them whenever possible, seeming entirely unwilling to engage that force.
This was a question the Skyfire hierophant king could not figure out.
As the war continued to this point, a strong weariness had already risen in his heart.
The peak-level combat power of this world was far stronger than he had imagined.
What was even more hateful was that these three forces could always dispatch an endless stream of reinforcements from other regions. They were impossible to kill off.
He could only place his hopes on the reinforcements gradually weakening later.
When that time came, he would launch a counterattack, vent the anger he had accumulated over these days, and bring despair to these three forces.
As an invader, the Skyfire hierophant king had never imagined the opening would be this stifling.
He even felt that this was not the treatment an invading force ought to receive.
Compared with the grand ambitions he had upon arrival, his pride had been challenged on this land.
In his original conception, this was merely the first world war before the Skyfire race swept across multiple worlds and became a terrifying calamity.
But since their descent, the war had always been fought within this tiny patch of land, with reinforcements from the three forces arriving in an endless stream.
In his eyes, this first battle of great significance had been forced to shift from an invasion war to the defense of a city.
The entire time they were defending against the attacks of the three forces near the flame city, completely unable to take a single step toward expansion and plunder.
But he believed that the pent-up anger would be released sooner or later.
The reinforcements of the three forces would eventually run out. They were destined to crawl at his feet and become the stepping stones for him and his people to plunder other worlds.
Perhaps, standing at the peak in the future and looking back, this would be a memory worth recalling.
Thinking of this, the Skyfire hierophant king’s mindset changed slightly, and a smile once again appeared on his face.
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