Chapter 1239: Adamant Thunder Annihilation Campaign (30)
Crackle, crackle…!
Dark blue lightning coiled and blazed around the carelessly outstretched arm.
The dark blue Lightning God Body seemed to have transformed its entire physique into pure lightning.
In that fleeting moment, as everyone first confronted the elegant yet grotesque form enveloped in scattered lightning up close,
No one could articulate a proper impression of Adamant Thunder, who had just descended to the ground for the first time.
Thwack!
The Transcendents of The Legion, who had been approaching simultaneously from all sides of the shattered golden throne.
The arm of Adamant Thunder, which had pierced Song-ha’s heart, glittered with boundless malice, casually bypassing their full-force Will-thought detection, mana, and perceptual abilities.
Sizzle!
Droplets of blood fell, evaporating as they met the shimmering lightning.
A prelude to disaster, crushing and burning flesh, siphoning the light of life.
“…! ! !”
A beat too late, everyone understood the meaning of what had unfolded before their eyes and stared in horror.
The Level 8 Transcendent, once called the strongest swordsman of the Western Continent.
A genius said to have no equal in swordsmanship, hadn’t even registered Adamant Thunder’s preemptive strike.
‘No, it’s beyond that—!!!’
He approached, casually breaching Song-ha’s defenses, who possessed the most sensitive Will-thought detection on this battlefield.
A swiftness that prevented Song-ha himself from perceiving the attack until the moment his heart was pierced and shattered.
Realizing this, Deimus trembled, grasping the unfathomable Transcendent Rank of Adamant Thunder.
“This is, impossible…!!!”
“Idiot…!!!!”
“Ah.”
Behind Baragan’s shout, Song-ha slightly bowed his head.
“…Cough.”
Staring blankly at the shimmering dark blue Lightning God Body before him, Song-ha convulsively coughed up blood.
The blood gushing up his throat was ceaseless, changing from vivid crimson to a dead black.
Even as he disgorged streams of blood, Song-ha clung to his sword, but as he struggled to lift it, he gave up and let out a wry chuckle.
“So, that’s it…”
[…]
“Ethan was wrong…”
Crunch!
There was no answer.
As Adamant Thunder twisted his arm without even looking at Song-ha, his form exploded, engulfed in dark blue lightning.
Song-ha’s body, splattering blood, was flung with incredible speed, slamming into the labyrinth wall and tumbling down.
CRAAASH!
DRRRRRK!
Song-ha’s body, with a hole punched through his chest, bounced like a toy, leaving a smear of blood as it slid down the wall.
His head bowed, battered and collapsed, his body showed not even a faint tremor.
“…Ah.”
“Ah, ahh…!!!”
The Superhumans of The Legion watching him could no longer endure, falling into panic.
The Ascension Ritual had been stopped after a brutal struggle that consumed most of their forces.
But Adamant Thunder, pulled into reality after the ritual’s failure, was no longer merely a Transcendent or a Seeker.
He was merely a monster that had lost his reason, turned his body into a mere handful of lightning, and was consumed by an unfathomable killing intent,
Killing and destroying everything that moved before his eyes.
Even Song-ha must have been nothing more than a target for his fury.
That merciless touch made the soldiers realize that fact more certainly than anything else.
“No, no…”
“Retreat…!! From here, we must retreat…!!”
As if their earlier resolve had been in vain, the soldiers, their fighting spirit instantly broken, screamed and turned away.
Forgetting loyalty to The Legion, forgetting disobedience to orders, the minds of the Superhumans, gripped by fear, crumbled.
The moment they flailed their limbs and broke ranks,
Crack!
A black-blue bolt of lightning flashed, and the heads of the fleeing soldiers evaporated.
Their bodies, headless, sprayed fountains of blood as they staggered and fell.
FWOOSH!
Adamant Thunder stood before the corpses, silently watching the blood they spewed.
“…Unbelievable.”
As Deimus watched, his expression frozen, those who had not yet lost their fighting spirit moved.
“WAAAHH!”
A giant whose entire body had been modified with machinery swung the axe he held in his hand with a desperate roar.
Its length easily exceeded three meters, and its weight was enough to turn anything it hit into a lump of flesh.
WHOOSH!
Before the giant’s axe blade could even touch Adamant Thunder’s body, it evaporated and vanished.
Before the giant could regain his balance, swaying from the sudden lightness of the axe’s handle, Adamant Thunder turned.
CRUNCH.
Black-blue lightning flashed, instantly vaporizing the giant’s upper body.
From the severed waist of the mechanical giant, its remaining lower half spilled guts and spinal cord onto the ground below.
“This, can’t be…”
As Deimus watched, repeating the same words blankly, Adamant Thunder slowly took a step.
Crack…!
With each step, dark blue lightning surged up his leg and wrapped around his entire body.
As if with every movement, the very existence of Adamant Thunder was being newly constructed and created.
The endlessly blooming lightning continuously redefined, rewrote, and altered Adamant Thunder.
“…Robert Loveride.”
Atiya, standing beneath the throne, called the Legion Commander in a rigid voice.
Her face was now streaming with pale cold sweat.
“You see that, don’t you?”
“…Indeed.”
“It’s a monster. Perhaps even more so than before…”
“…”
Both Robert Loveride and Atiya were Level 8 warriors who had transcended their Transcendent Rank through martial arts.
Because they had constantly trained themselves and cultivated their mind and body, they knew it the moment they faced him.
The black-blue lightning piercing and swirling through heaven and earth. The dark blue Nebula that had swallowed the Legion Commander. The large-scale massacre magic that had annihilated The Legion’s main forces.
They now realized that the being standing before them was even more incomprehensible than the Adamant Thunder who had freely wielded such power as easily as breathing.
The Transcendent who had failed the Ascension Ritual had lost his physical body and reached a completely unpredictable state.
“Oh, this isn’t the ending I expected.”
Sarin muttered, instantly drawing her blood-red twin blades.
The smile had completely vanished from her face.
“We ruined the Ascension Ritual, but there’s a bonus stage left. This changes things.”
“Has he maintained his original power intact, despite failing a great challenge?”
The Iron Chain Dragon King said with an unexpressive face.
“Even the blessed Silver Star could not command such a miracle. This is indeed an exceptionally rare case.”
“Was The Doctor’s… prediction wrong?”
Esteban Aisen, who had been flung away from the throne, painfully raised his gaze.
Having stopped the bleeding of his damaged internal organs with mercury, he muttered as he rose.
“At the point of stopping the ritual… it wasn’t over. Adamant Thunder’s abilities… already surpassed failure…”
The plan The Doctor had explained before entering District 49 was to stop the Ascension Ritual and draw Adamant Thunder out to deal with him.
This plan was, of course, based on the premise that Adamant Thunder, having failed the ritual, would be much weaker than before.
However, despite stopping the Ascension Ritual at the cost of annihilating most of their forces, the Transcendent standing before them had become a completely incomprehensible entity.
Whether Adamant Thunder had become this way because he failed the Ascension Ritual, or whether he was already ‘like that’ regardless of the ritual.
There was no longer The Doctor to deduce it for them.
Even if he had remained here, it was uncertain if he could have provided an answer.
Instead, a monster, grotesquely warped beyond anything they had faced so far, simply stood before them.
Beep!
“System communication network… reconnected. Selecting available power… newly assigning identification numbers.”
Deimus stammered with difficulty, displaying the noisy, glitching system.
At the point where he had collapsed after using his lifespan to bind Evelyn Marcia, he was effectively at his limit.
Fulfilling his duty as a commander would be the best he could do.
“From now on, I will assist with the operation. However…”
However, was it a delusion that the surroundings had become strangely quiet the moment the ritual failed?
Neither Hyun-gung’s sniping. Nor Tatiana’s barrage. Nor Fearsome Blood King’s Blood Magic could be felt.
At this moment, the powerful Superhumans who had been fighting on Adamant Thunder’s side had vanished as if by prior arrangement.
Knowing it wasn’t a coincidence, Deimus kept his mouth shut instead of speaking that fact.
Uncertain information would only lower morale and cloud judgment.
Here, they would focus all their efforts on facing the Transcendent before them.
WHOOOOOOSH!
Listening to Deimus’s briefing through the communication network, the surviving Superhumans moved.
Any Superhumans too foolish to understand what Deimus was trying to say were already dead.
Only the capable remained here, possessing the intellect and abilities to judge for themselves and survive.
[…]
Crackle, crackle…!
Feeling the killing intent pouring toward him from all directions, Adamant Thunder raised his gaze.
In the moment the strangely unperceivable dark blue Transcendent stepped forward,
Dark blue lightning coiled around his foot, and the battlefield drastically changed.
FLASH!
Everything visible shimmered and distorted, and he ran in an ecstatic frenzy.
Mixing mana and Will-thought haphazardly, he increased his speed and changed direction.
WHOOSH!
Clang!
In a space where time seemed to have stopped, Atiya and Robert Loveride’s forms rotated with incredible speed on either side of Adamant Thunder.
The moment Atiya, who had unleashed mana to swing her gauntlet, and Robert Loveride, who had used his Miniature Universe to increase his weight, struck with their crushing blows from above and below,
Adamant Thunder pushed his crossed hands, simultaneously blocking both vertical punches.
CRACK-CRACK-CRACK!
“…! ! !”
Was this what it felt like to punch a dam full of water with bare fists?
Despite striking with full force using even his Miniature Universe, there was a sense of utter futility, as if the impact wasn’t even transmitted.
No. What was even more incomprehensible than a simple power difference was that he simultaneously severed the two men’s punches, which crushed space with a time lag—
Crunch!
As Adamant Thunder lightly twisted his hand, Atiya’s gauntlet and Robert Loveride’s armlet were torn off like toys.
The two warriors, instantly losing their equipment and exposed, were too late even as they lunged with full power without panicking.
As the lightning that pierced Atiya’s and Robert Loveride’s shoulders and abdomens exploded, their bodies slammed into the ground and crumpled.
CRACKLE-CRACKLE-CRACKLE—
Bones and muscles were crushed, armor shattered, and flesh torn, revealing bare bone.
Behind the two Legion Commanders, who had instantly been reduced to chunks of flesh, the Superhumans moved.
“Everyone, stand behind me!!!”
The Ten Seats of the Ability Awakening Warband. The 9th Seat, Escardo Silvan.
Silvan, a hardening Ability User, possessed the unique ability to transform his entire body into an insulator impervious to any properties.
Silvan’s skin instantly turned black and hardened, blocking Adamant Thunder’s path.
Other Ability Users unleashed their Collective Mind Net to its extreme, pouring it directly towards Adamant Thunder.
KIIIIING—!
One of the key methods used to derail the Ascension Ritual was Ophelia’s Spiritual Presence, which Esteban Aisen had directly injected into Adamant Thunder.
Therefore, connecting a Collective Mind Net orchestrated by her to Adamant Thunder’s consciousness would inflict damage.
It wasn’t a wrong judgment, but—
Crunch!
With both forearms raised, Adamant Thunder’s hand slammed into Silvan’s face as he moved forward.
His lightning-shimmering fingers dug into Silvan’s eye sockets, grabbing his entire face at that moment.
Adamant Thunder, clutching Silvan’s face, swung his shoulder with invisible speed.
BOOOM!
Following Adamant Thunder’s arm-flinging motion, a black-blue Thunderclap Star erupted like dark blue wings, exploding.
It swept away all the Ability Users moving with Silvan, cleanly vaporizing their bodies.
“Ugh, uh…”
Silvan’s face, still caught in Adamant Thunder’s hand, was half-melted and dripping.
Firepower that ignored and suppressed even high-level unique abilities. A single countermeasure that annihilated the Warband’s Ability User unit.
“Ah, my God…!!”
“Have you forsaken us…!!”
CRACKLE-CRACKLE-CRACKLE!
The heads and upper bodies of the cult priests, lamenting and praying, were crushed and scattered into the sky.
Modified weapons, continuously reporting system errors, were torn apart piece by piece and melted down.
Soldiers, Ability Users, fanatics, wizards. The form of the dark blue Lightning God Body crushed everything, human and machine alike.
KWOOOAAAH!
He exploded an officer’s shoulder with a mere gesture, then reached out a hand towards incoming sorcery.
He caught the Disintegration Sorcery bombardment, fired using a totem as a material, with his bare hand.
The vivid green mana surging within his hand was then compressed with force and extinguished.
GRIND-GRIND-GRIND…!!!
A grotesque tearing sound, enough to rupture eardrums.
Behind Adamant Thunder, who silently looked down at it, Sarin bit her lip and increased her speed.
“This isn’t a wizard. What kind of—”
CLANG!
Gripping twin blades made from blood, she spun her body in mid-air.
As Adamant Thunder discarded the mana fragments and turned, Sarin and Adamant Thunder’s forms collided with tremendous speed.
Heavy dark blue shockwaves erupted one after another, dyeing the surroundings in darkness.
RATTLE-RATTLE-RATTLE!
From Sarin’s wrists, moving at invisible speed, fresh blood surged ceaselessly.
Discarding the twin blades after a single clash with Adamant Thunder, she instantly created new ones from blood and attacked.
As Atiya and Robert Loveride showed, direct prolonged weapon clashes were not even permitted.
It was a sharp response, finding meaningful clues amidst moments of continuous defeat, but—
BOOM!
“Kugh…!!!”
He grabbed Sarin’s form, moving at insane speed, and slammed her to the ground in one swift motion.
A strange, incomprehensible movement, as if Sarin had willingly been sucked into Adamant Thunder’s hand.
CRACK!
Dark blue lightning surged and churned along Adamant Thunder’s arm, which gripped Sarin’s neck.
Just as the lightning, swirling along Adamant Thunder’s right arm, was about to incinerate and explode Sarin’s body without mercy,
A translucent shield flashed before them, and Sarin’s form vanished.
“Now I understand the meaning of the message Heiberk spoke.”
Ezekiel, his face covered with cloth, stood holding Sarin by the scruff of her neck with one hand.
He threw the vampire, half-unconscious from pain beyond her limits, and slowly turned towards Adamant Thunder.
“A great failure… is that the ending you desire in this war?”
[…]
“Masochism that pursues destruction even after designing everything…”
A faint hint of a smile seemed to mix with Ezekiel’s indifferent voice.
“His Majesty The Emperor would have been very pleased to see you.”
Adamant Thunder showed no reaction to Ezekiel’s words.
As if disinterested, he turned his expressionless face to survey the battlefield,
And simply looked down at his two hands, shimmering like lightning.
[…]
He slowly clenched his hands, unsullied by a drop of blood, realizing what he was.
He recalled those he had just killed with these hands, reaffirming who he was.
Crackle, crackle…!
Dark blue lightning erupted from Adamant Thunder’s back, soaring like wings and drawing a massive circle.
The black-blue lightning faded to a brilliant white, then became an opaque light hovering above his head.
It began to rotate behind Adamant Thunder’s head, forming a grotesquely pale Halo.
OOOOOH!
A strange reverberation, as if shaking the soul.
The resonance exploding from Adamant Thunder’s center suppressed the Spiritual Presence of everyone standing there.
An uncanny feeling, as if compelled to bow down, worship, and believe in him.
Before he could even recognize the nature of the déjà vu, Adamant Thunder raised a hand and lightly tapped the air.
At that moment, following his gesture, a pure white ripple slowly rotated through the atmosphere.
The Flame Pillar who had been attempting an incantation behind Adamant Thunder was torn apart along with the space, and flung backward.
CRACK-CRACK-CRACK-CRACK-CRACK!
All the flames protecting his body evaporated, and his flesh and bones were crushed and scattered.
A corpse reduced to pulp, without even a single scream, leaving only a tragic remnant on the floor.
Adamant Thunder stood amidst the corpses, their heads bowed as if in worship, their breath ceased, wearing a pale Halo and with both hands outstretched.
“This, can’t be…!!!!”
Deimus trembled at the grotesque yet suffocating divinity, something incomprehensible to the human mind.
Since facing Adamant Thunder after the ritual’s failure, he could only repeat the same words, as if his mind had broken.
“No, this is… no longer…!!”
Deimus had not re-engaged Adamant Thunder in reality without any countermeasures.
Yet, the power Adamant Thunder was displaying now far exceeded anything Deimus had anticipated.
‘It’s clear he’s expending immense power to maintain his body after failing the ritual. And yet…!’
The Ascension Ritual was a process of completely disassembling one’s Mental Image and physical body to reconstruct them as an Ascendant.
It was undeniable that Adamant Thunder’s body had been pulled into reality without being perfectly formed when the ritual failed.
His entire body, now permeated with lightning, was proof that Adamant Thunder was continuously ‘consuming’ lightning to maintain his physique.
Every moment he moved and thought, merely existing, he must have been consuming vast amounts of Lightning Power.
The initial reduction in output after unleashing his power against Song-ha must have been an instinctive measure to conserve energy.
‘At the point of engaging in combat, the consumption should have intensified to the point where he couldn’t maintain his body. But…!!’
If merely existing consumed lightning, there was no need to explain how great the consumption would be once he started fighting.
The reason Deimus had risked his life to order his forces to re-engage Adamant Thunder.
It was because he believed that a moment would inevitably come when Adamant Thunder would ‘wear down’ to the point of being unable to maintain his body.
But as if mocking Deimus’s calculations, Adamant Thunder was still, at this very moment, casually massacring his allies as easily as breathing.
And he wasn’t merely being defensive; it was an incomprehensible spectacle of him toying with and breaking even the powerful Transcendents who had survived so far, like toys.
Fragments of Transcendent power, infinitely cruel yet incomprehensibly grotesque, empty, and broken.
Deimus could now finally understand the true nature of that power.
“Martial arts…”
An afterimage of Transcendent martial arts, something Deimus had never once considered for Adamant Thunder since planning the Annihilation Campaign.
An incomprehensible Martial Zenith, to the point where one might doubt if he had achieved Ascension Ritual as a martial artist, not a wizard.
At this moment, having broken through all of Adamant Thunder’s plans and pulled him into reality, something impossible still remained.
A martial art so profound that Deimus’s understanding could not fathom it, nor his imagination conceive it, was present there.