The Primeval Era-Chapter 157: One Man Army! I
Damian walked forward.
The earth responded to his steps, soil parting before him and reforming behind him. He approached the burial site with the calm of someone taking a morning stroll, his expression betraying nothing of the violence he had just unleashed.
The ground shifted one final time. 𝗳𝚛𝗲𝕖𝕨𝕖𝗯𝚗𝚘𝕧𝕖𝗹.𝗰𝗼𝕞
Two heads emerged from the packed earth, faces barely recognizable through the burns and the dirt and the damage. Their eyes were still open, still aware, still processing the impossibility of what had just happened to them. Their mouths moved in silent attempts to speak, to beg, to curse.
No sound emerged.
Damian stood above them.
He looked down at these Seventh Circle Physique Awakening Imperators who had approached him with such confidence. These beings who had expected to break his legs and drag him before their master. These monsters who served a traitor and had probably participated in atrocities across the Lands of Stone without a moment’s remorse.
He raised his foot.
His heel came down on the first skull like a hammer striking rotten fruit.
CRACK!
The sound was wet and glorious. Bone collapsed inward under force that shouldn’t have been possible from a Second Circle cultivator. Brain matter erupted outward, grey and pink tissue splattering across the vibrant grass in patterns that would have made artists weep. The skull shattered, fragments of bone mixing with pulped flesh until nothing recognizable remained.
Damian’s foot rose again.
It fell on the second skull with equal brutality.
CRACK!
More bone. More brain. More blood painting the sacred earth of his garden! The second Imperator’s head burst like overripe fruit beneath his heel, everything that had made this being a threat reduced to organic debris spread across soil that would absorb it within days.
Damian stood above the shattered skulls of two corpses.
His feet were painted in blood and brain matter and fragments of bone. His simple Dross garments were spattered with evidence of violence that would haunt lesser beings. His expression remained cold, imperial, utterly unmoved by the brutality he had just displayed.
He looked ahead.
In the surroundings, there was a heavy and suffocating silence.
The army of thousands had frozen in place. Velociraptors that had been shifting with predatory eagerness now stood perfectly still, their riders too shocked to give commands. The Imperators who had been preparing to support their comrades hung suspended in the air with expressions suggesting their minds had stopped working entirely.
Two Seventh Circle Warriors. Two Imperators!
Dead in seconds.
Killed by a being whose cultivation was fucking nothing!
Damian didn’t care about any of this.
His blue-gold burning eyes fixed on Sir Alex, on those nine-pointed star pupils that were wider now than they had been moments ago. He saw the calculation happening behind that eerily beautiful face. He saw the reassessment, the sudden understanding that this confrontation might not proceed as expected.
"I have many questions for you regarding that night eight summers ago, Captain Alex."
His voice emerged calm over the silence, carrying across the frozen army with clarity that needed no amplification.
"You think you can answer them for me?"
Blood dripped from his feet onto grass that bent away from the corruption.
He looked over coldly at the forces arrayed against him, at the thousands of Warriors and dozens of Imperators and the one Half-Step Eighth Circle monster who had expected to find a helpless garden waiting to be plundered.
And across that entire army, from the lowest Velociraptor rider to Sir Alex himself, every single being took a step back unconsciously.
It was a heavy silence! But...there was a commander standing above everyone here!
The silence shattered.
"Kill him!"
Sir Alex’s voice cut through the frozen moment, and the army responded with the discipline of beings trained to obey without question. Thousands of Velociraptors surged forward, their riders raising weapons and gathering Mana for attacks that would have overwhelmed any ordinary opponent.
Damian watched them come.
His mind was clear and his heart was cold. And his voice rang out once more inside his skull!
Persevere.
HUUUM!
The sky answered.
Golden lightning descended in pillars thick enough to crush buildings, striking the front ranks of the charging army with force that turned Velociraptors and riders alike into scattered pieces. The bolts didn’t fall randomly. They fell with purpose, with intent, with the precision of a being whose consciousness stretched across twenty miles of cloud and could see every enemy below.
Bodies exploded.
The first wave of cavalry simply ceased to exist, their charge interrupted by destruction falling from heaven. Those behind them tried to swerve, tried to evade, tried to do anything other than ride into the rain of golden death.
The earth denied them escape.
Soil parted beneath Velociraptor claws, swallowing mounts and riders in hungry gulps. Warriors screamed as they plunged into darkness, their cries cut short as dark sand rushed upward to fill their mouths. The substance forced its way past lips and teeth, flooding down throats that couldn’t close fast enough, packing into lungs that desperately tried to expel it.
Some of them were still alive when the sand reached their brains.
It pushed through nasal cavities with grinding pressure, dark particles forcing their way into spaces that had never known intrusion. Eyes bulged as skulls filled with earth from the inside!
Hands clawed at faces that were already dead, nerves firing their last desperate signals into flesh that could no longer respond!
Oh!
Damian walked forward through the chaos.
Golden lightning struck to his left. The earth swallowed screaming Warriors to his right. He moved through the devastation like the eye of a hurricane, untouched by the destruction he was orchestrating.
His eyes found Sir Alex floating above the carnage.
"What happened that day?"
His voice carried over the screams and thunder, calm and cold and demanding.
"Why did you betray your honor?"
Sir Alex didn’t answer.
He simply sent more forces forward.
Three Vessel Completion Imperators dove from the sky, their crimson armaments blazing with contained power. They moved in formation, coordinated attacks designed to overwhelm through sheer pressure. Fire erupted from one’s hands. Another’s body crackled with crimson lightning. The third had transformed partially, scales covering flesh that had grown to twice its normal size.
Damian raised his hand.
The earth rose with it.
A wall of stone and soil and sacred vegetation erupted between him and the diving Imperators, and they crashed into it with force that should have shattered any barrier. The wall held! The wall was part of him, reinforced by blood painted through every grain, strengthened by Mana flowing from a Primordial Core that had been generating power all night.
And then the wall bit back.
Stone hands emerged from its surface, grasping at the Imperators who had struck it. Fingers of rock wrapped around limbs and throats, dragging the three Warriors into the barrier itself. Their screams were muffled as earth closed over their faces, as sand rushed into every opening it could find.
Golden lightning struck the wall.
Once. Twice. Three times! It penetrated through!
When the wall crumbled, nothing alive remained within it.
Damian kept walking.
"What...happened that day?"
...!
