Midir stood on the hand of No. 23, his gaze like a torch as he stared intently at the ever-expanding black cloud ahead. Even the surging air currents at high altitude could not shake him in the slightest.
As the distance shortened, the figures of the Void Demons began to grow clear in his sight, even without the long-range function of his goggles.
Just as Ronald had said, the black cloud before them was formed by the gathering of countless locusts. Each locust was the size of a human forearm. Their originally yellow-green shells had turned pitch-black under the transformation of Void Energy. Sharp, cold-gleaming spikes stood along their powerful hind legs, and their mouthparts had been magnified dozens of times, appearing incredibly hideous.
Upon nearing the swarm, even the rumbling from behind No. 23 was completely drowned out by the dense sound of vibrating wings. The massive noise was no different from a series of thunderclaps exploding right next to one's ears.
Under the influence of such immense noise, they could not even communicate normally through speech. Midir turned and gestured toward No. 23’s face, and Ronald immediately piloted it to fly higher.
Once the two had climbed directly above the Void Demon swarm, Midir leaped lightly from No. 23’s hand, hurtling like a cannonball toward the unsuspecting swarm below.
“Destruction Flame!”
As Midir fell, he guided all the fire elements from the surrounding air toward himself.
Midir’s gaze pierced through layers of black clouds, seeing bursts of blazing fire suddenly erupt deep within the swarm. These flames were like angry behemoths, wantonly devouring the surrounding black locusts and turning them to ash.
Every second, tens of millions of black locusts were consumed by the flames, but their numbers were so vast that these losses failed to cause any substantial weakening of the black cloud; such casualties were a mere drop in the bucket.
On the contrary, the swarm seemed to possess endless vitality. They continuously converged from all directions, using more corpses to extinguish the flames in the air, ensuring their offensive remained entirely unhindered.
The endless black swarm, instead of being deterred by the fire, had its ferocity ignited. They swirled into a massive vortex, surging toward Midir, the instigator.
Seeing the change in the black cloud below, Ronald did not stay in place for a single moment. He immediately maneuvered No. 23 to rapidly disengage from the battlefield. He had no desire to be swallowed by those insects; all he could do now was trust in Midir’s power.
Midir, falling toward the center of the swarm, used the platinum-white Destruction Flame to create a massive spherical shield around his body. From a distance, he looked like a white-glowing meteor crashing into a black ocean.
The locusts continuously threw their bodies against the fireball at the center of the vortex, trying to extinguish it. However, the world-shattering heat caused the lunging insects to ignite instantly; they didn't even have a chance to touch the fireball.
In just a short while, a thick smell of burning filled the air. The white fireball punched a massive hole through the black cloud from top to bottom, falling toward the mountain range below.
Just as Midir thought the insects would instinctively chase him as before, he discovered that the swarm, having pursued him halfway, somehow turned around in mid-air and flew toward Azure Fortress once again.
“There really is something controlling them! That woman really didn't die!”
Midir’s expression tightened as he fell. He immediately realized the swarm's state was completely different from those encountered before. If there was a controller, it could only be the woman in the black gown who had fought him earlier.
Midir quickly turned in the air to stabilize himself. He controlled the surrounding wind elements to form a pair of pale-green wings behind him, chasing after the swarm along the slopes beneath them. He waved his hand and released several large-scale spells in succession, attempting to obstruct the swarm's progress overhead.
Yet no matter how he attacked the swarm from below, they no longer showed the frenzy of the initial moment. They simply flew forward relentlessly. The gaps created by Midir’s attacks were filled by others of their kind in just a dozen seconds, as if they had never existed.
Seeing that his attacks were of little use against the sea of insects, Midir grit his teeth. The space around his body distorted, and he moved several kilometers toward the fortress in an instant.
This time, Midir arrived atop a rocky peak directly in front of the swarm and summoned Starflame.
His eyes were slightly closed, as if the entire world had fallen silent with him. He gripped the longsword tightly in his right hand, pointing the tip toward the sky. As his power condensed, the elements in the air seemed to be granted life, becoming active.
Elements of various colors intermingled at that moment. Soon, the originally distinct elements actually converged into a sphere shining with rainbow light.
The sphere hovered above the tip of Midir’s sword, emitting a dazzling light that reflected across the sky in a kaleidoscope of colors.
This was the first time Midir had spent so long condensing elemental power. After a full five minutes, the elements within several kilometers were almost entirely swept clean by him, and an oversized elemental sphere dozens of meters in diameter had formed above his head.
“This should be enough to stall them for a bit, right? Honestly, this is my first time trying something like this. Let’s try playing it big!” Midir took a deep breath and swung Starflame vertically forward. The elemental sphere shot toward the incoming black swarm following his movement.
Compared to the swarm that blotted out the sun, the massive rainbow elemental sphere was as insignificant as a grain of sand. It streaked directly into the black ocean, flashing with beautiful rainbow light.
As Midir held his longsword horizontally and made a sudden grasping motion with his other hand, the elemental sphere that had vanished into the swarm exploded violently under his control.
.....
On the wall, Aila and Rosal were still anxiously watching the movements of the distant swarm. Several minutes had passed since Midir first launched his offensive. From afar, it appeared that those supposedly powerful spells couldn't even slow the swarm down, leaving everyone on the wall feeling frantic.
When they saw the rainbow sphere fly into the pitch-black swarm after several minutes without making a sound, everyone was stunned.
But before long, those who had thought something was wrong with the magic witnessed a scene they would never forget.
A startling change suddenly occurred in the center of the swarm. Within the originally dense swarm of black locusts, an area seemed to be filled by an invisible force, rapidly expanding into a massive black balloon.
In just a few seconds, the black balloon reached its limit and then burst violently in the sky.
At that moment, it was as if even the air was torn apart. A massive shockwave radiated outward from the point of explosion. Everywhere it passed, the black locusts were like scraps of paper caught in a hurricane, ruthlessly torn into fragments.
The black locusts near the center were shredded by the massive impact, while the outer swarm was blown away by the spreading shockwave. Rainbow light dissipated from the center of the explosion, looking as stunning as a giant flower blooming in the sky.
Immediately following, a small black rift appeared at the center of that bloom. It was so small that an average person wouldn't even notice it, but within a range of several thousand meters centered on it, a trace of spatial distortion was produced, forming a forbidden zone in the sky.
Any locusts that dared to approach that distorted space were crushed into powder by the immense pressure the moment they entered, turning into clouds of black dust that drifted down with the wind, staining the entire ridge below black.
Only then did the shockwave from the explosion reach Azure Fortress. The massive tremor made it impossible for the soldiers on the wall to stand firm; they fell to the ground one after another. Even Iron Man No. 23, which had just returned to the line, had to lean its massive body forward to withstand the violent impact.
Having anticipated this, Aila and Rosal sat down with their backs against the battlements in perfect sync, only peering out from behind the wall after the impact had passed.
A hole several kilometers in diameter had appeared in the center of the distant black cloud. The blue sky within the hole formed a sharp contrast with the surrounding pitch-black darkness. The originally dense swarm had been significantly scattered by this strike, becoming disorganized and greatly slowing its pace.
“This...! What kind of power is that?”
“Is this damage really something a human can cause?”
“God of Light above, is this a miracle!”
Witnessing this shocking scene, the people on the wall could not help but let out exclamations originating from their very souls.
Rate on N.U.
