The Primeval Era-Chapter 158: One Man Army! II
The army was breaking.
Not in spirit, not yet, but in formation. The discipline that had held thousands in organized ranks was dissolving under assault that couldn’t be predicted or defended against. Some units tried to retreat. The earth opened beneath them and swallowed entire squads. Others tried to charge faster, to close distance before the lightning could find them. The lightning found them anyway.
An Imperator burst from the chaos with a battle cry, her crimson hair streaming behind her as she activated her Physique.
Crimson Storm Heart.
Red clouds gathered around her in seconds, her emotional state feeding power into a technique that should have matched Damian’s weather control. Crimson lightning crackled from her summoned storm, bolts reaching toward the young man who had just killed many of her comrades.
Golden lightning met crimson lightning!
BOOOM!
The collision painted the sky in colors that were glorious, energies warring for dominance in the space above the garden. For a moment, it seemed like the Imperator might actually match him, might actually push back against the storm he commanded.
Then Damian looked at her.
Just looked.
The earth beneath her feet erupted upward in a spike of crystallized soil, impaling her through the abdomen before she could react. Her concentration shattered. Her crimson storm dissolved. And the golden lightning that had been held at bay crashed down upon her with all the fury of a terrifying storm!
What remained wasn’t recognizable as human.
"Why...did you betray your honor?"
Damian’s voice never wavered.
More Imperators came.
Stone Titan’s Flesh, another one with the same Physique as the warrior he had already killed, charged forward with skin hardened to mountain density. Damian let him get close. Let him think his defense was impenetrable. Let him swing a fist that should have shattered bones!
The fist met a palm wrapped in white Mana dense enough to make the air scream!
The Imperator’s eyes widened.
Then the earth swallowed him from the waist down, and Damian tore his arm off at the shoulder before the man could process what was happening. Blood fountained from the wound. The Imperator tried to scream!
Sand filled his mouth before sound could escape.
Damian dropped the severed limb and kept walking.
Phantom Step.
The warning came too late.
An Imperator materialized behind him, blade already descending toward his spine. The Physique that allowed phasing through matter, that granted near-instantaneous movement, had let this assassin bypass every defense to strike at the unprotected back.
The blade stopped an inch from flesh.
It stopped because the air itself had become solid, Mana so dense that physical matter couldn’t penetrate it. The Imperator hung there in frozen confusion, weapon extended, body committed to a killing blow that would never land.
Damian turned his head as their eyes met.
"I asked you a question."
Golden lightning struck the Imperator from above, and when the light faded, a charred corpse collapsed to the ground with a blade still clutched in smoking fingers.
The Velociraptors were turning.
Damian had noticed the crimson runes binding them, had seen the hazy light in their eyes that spoke of wills suppressed and instincts chained. When their riders died, those bindings weakened. When enough riders died, those bindings broke entirely.
And the beasts remembered who had enslaved them.
Across the battlefield, Velociraptors were attacking the Warriors who had been commanding them moments ago. Claws designed for killing found throats. Teeth meant for tearing found flesh. The army was being devoured from within by the very tools it had brought to wage war.
Damian felt no sympathy for the dying riders.
They had used slaves to wage war. Now those slaves were free and hungry for revenge. This was justice older than any law written by human hands.
"What happened that day?"
He asked the question again as he crushed a Warrior’s skull beneath his heel.
"Why did you betray your honor?"
He asked it as the earth swallowed a squad of cavalry whole.
"Where is your honor?"
He asked it as golden lightning struck a cluster of Imperators who had been gathering for a combined assault.
The army was dying, and yet he didn’t feel like his rage was calming even one bit! Because none of this changed the fate pf his parents!
Oh!
Thousands had become hundreds. Hundreds were becoming dozens. The crimson tide that had swept into his garden with such arrogant confidence was being erased from existence, bodies feeding soil that would grow more beautiful for their nourishment.
And through it all, Sir Alex floated above the devastation.
His body was surrounded by a terrifying force field, stellar light emanating from those nine-pointed pupils and wrapping around his form in layers that nothing could penetrate. Golden lightning struck at him constantly, bolt after bolt crashing against that barrier with force that should have overwhelmed any defense.
The lightning was pushed away and deflected.
Sir Alex’s Stellar Sovereign Gaze wasn’t just about perception. It was about projection, about radiating power outward in forms that could protect as easily as they could destroy. The light of stars formed his shield, and stars did not bow before lightning.
He looked down at the massacre with an expression that had shifted from shock to something colder.
Somberness.
Recognition of what he was witnessing because...damn, what was this?!
Damian stood amidst the bodies of an army that had ceased to exist.
Blood painted the sacred grass in patterns that would take days to fade. Corpses lay scattered across terrain that had been pristine hours ago, some whole, most not, all equally dead. The few surviving Velociraptors were fleeing or standing still into the garden’s depths, their runes broken, their hunger for revenge temporarily sated.
The flying Dinusaurs had regained control and were swirling above in the storm as everything darkened above!
Damian looked up at Sir Alex floating in that shell of stellar light.
The traitor who had helped destroy everything.
The monster who had smiled while an empire burned.
The being who owed him answers he intended to collect.
"Where is your honor?"
His voice emerged cold over the silence that had fallen.
Sir Alex didn’t respond.
Those star-filled eyes simply stared down at the young man who had just massacred an army designed to threaten Noble Beasts on Sacred Mountains. The calculation behind that gaze was almost visible, reassessments happening in real time as everything the traitor thought he knew crumbled like the soldiers bleeding out below.
...!
Damian waited for an answer that didn’t come.
The question hung in blood-soaked air between them.
Where is your honor?
They both knew the answer as this man...had no fucking honor!
