Armipotent

Chapter 2093: Who Are You?

Alger Balaban slouched on his chair, his legs on the table, rocking the chair while puffing the smoke from his mouth with a cigar in his right hand. He looked up at the ceiling of his camp, which had become his second home for over a year already.

He was one of the three renowned commanders in the Auriga Kingdom. He was stuck in this nowhere land because he was tasked to attack the newcomer. The moment the protection expired, he would attack the newcomer along with their allies that were read on the other side.

Among the three commanders, he was the only one who opposed the idea of attacking the newcomer. He was being reasonable and told the King why he opposed the idea. The reason was the lack of information about this newcomer.

They didn’t know which faction owned the territory, whose leader, or how many armies the newcomer had. That was pivotal information before going to a war, yet they knew nothing about this newcomer.

However, the King misunderstood his opposition as defiant, assuming that he didn’t want to fight against the newcomer. That was the reason why he was sent to this place by the King.

Even until now, he didn’t know what kind of enemy he would be, as to this day, his people only saw the dwarves at the other side of the wall. Aside from the dwarves who built the city, they didn’t have much information.

No army in sight, and no one actually lived in that city. It was truly unknown what he would fight against. Since they built a city, it was clear they didn’t want to give up on this territory.

He wondered that the city building might be a distraction, but they found nothing after extensive scouting. That was just a normal-looking building with no enhancement. At least that was what those buildings looked like.

Alger assumed today was just another boring day, lazing around while enjoying his newly found addiction. That was what he thought until his subordinate barged into his tent.

"The territory is open! The territory is open, Sir!"

He put out his cigar by scraping the lit-up side against the table and headed out. He felt bad for this newcomer since it was three factions against one. However, he had no choice but to fight since this was the King’s edict. Or else he would be branded as a traitor for failing the King’s edict.

Alger was about to send a series of commands and intended to communicate with the other two kingdoms. He stopped when he sensed a fierce quake. Then he was completely frozen when he saw the thing in the air.

A whole section of a wall was thrown into the air. It looked like something rooted it out from the ground and threw it off. He put the wall himself, so he recognized that it was the wall of their fort.

Alger was stunned, mouth agape with incredulity. Before he could process everything, the shadow covered the whole ground. Not just where he stood, but it covered the whole fort.

A scream resounded from next to him. He turned toward the right and saw that a subordinate was pulled into the shadow. He only glimpsed his subordinate’s head, and the scream abruptly cut off.

Not just his subordinate next to him, but the scream came from all directions. The shadow pulled a lot of soldiers. While it was unknown what this shadow did, the chance they died was above eighty percent.

It clicked in his head that they were under attack. That was why the newcomer opened their territory before the protection expired. They planned this all along and caught him off guard.

Alger activated his Bloodline Transformation, getting himself prepared for what would come for them. That was when he heard bubbling sounds. He could not pinpoint where the sound came from because it came from all directions. The fact that the shadow covered the ground made it worse for him and his subordinates.

Those sounds were dangerous, and he didn’t want to stand on this shadow-covered ground anymore. He flew up to twenty meters in the air and assessed the situation. It was much worse than he thought. His subordinates crumbled, running around with no purpose.

They stayed here for over a year, doing nothing. That might dull their sense and judgement in this kind of situation, which turned them into an easy target. He was about to shout, trying to relay a command to calm his subordinates, until something erupted from the ground with a boom.

He looked in the direction of the sound and found a black lava burst out from the ground. The eruption swallowed more than twenty people with it, and by the look of it, those people didn’t survive. If they survived, they should be leaving that lava by now.

It was followed by more eruptions. By the end of the eruption, the ground turned into a lake of lava. At first, he didn’t see it because of the shadow, and it was black lava. He could not really tell it at first until his subordinates screamed in pain when they were not in the area of eruption.

This forced his subordinates to fly up. That was when he found out how much was left after those two attacks. He brought five thousand people for this attack: 150 God Ranks, 1350 Demi-God Ranks, and 3500 Legend Ranks.

What was left from those numbers was fewer than three hundred people. All of them were floating in the air, avoiding the shadow-covered ground as if it were some kind of plague. He didn’t realize how devastating the shadow and the black lava were to his army until now.

The worst part was that they had not seen their enemy yet. He had a guess where his enemy was, in the shadow. However, as a commander, he knew that the battle was over and they had lost. His current task was to cut their losses.

Losing the God Ranks would be a blow to the Auriga Kingdom. Again, he was a step too late as the temperature suddenly dropped. That didn’t make sense, considering below them was a lake made of lava, yet it happened.

He watched his subordinates, who were not far from him; three Demi-God Ranks were frozen and fell to the shadow-covered ground. He expected the ice to break apart and kill his subordinates, yet to his surprise, the ice was intact. He expected the black lava would melt his subordinates and burn them into nothingness, but the lava could not melt the ice.

After three, five more followed, free-falling after freezing. They fell into the lava and remained that way. No matter how long they were boiling in the lava, the ice could not be melted. In no time, he lost more than a hundred people that way.

"Fool! Run! Get away from this place!"

Even if they wanted to fight their enemies, they should not fight in this devastated fort. The fort was no longer their safest place. They must fight them outside.

The remaining people turned around and tried to escape from the fort. However, a figure was waiting for them, seemingly predicting their move. Only one figure, a black-scaled figure with three pairs of wings, and each pair looked different. One pair was an ash blue, the second pair was pitch black wings, and the third pair was greenish-black wings.

This figure was holding a sword in his right hand and a battle axe in his left hand. That was a weird combination for sure.

Alger didn’t think much and was ready to fight this one person. It was still one person, and he still had more than a hundred on his side, with most of them being God Ranks.

However, the thought didn’t last that long when his instinct blared like a disaster emergency alarm. Following that, he sensed the dreadful aura from this figure, overwhelming him with just the aura.

The aura was so powerful that he was stun-locked for a moment. In the same moment, the figure threw the battle axe at one of his subordinates. The massive axe was spinning in the air and cut his subordinate into two pieces.

He broke free from the overwhelming aura; some of his subordinates seemed to be able to overcome that dreadful aura as well. However, most of them were still struggling.

Alger then saw the figure bend his body forward, holding the sword in his right hand. Again, his instinct screamed danger at him. His eyes widened in realization as he dove down and screamed.

"GO DOWN!"

The moment he screamed, the figure disappeared, and appeared a meter away from their group. That was when the figure pulled the sword, doing a quick-draw skill that he had never seen before.

The moment the sword was out, he heard a dragon roar, and the sword cut everyone who failed to overcome that aura. Even those who were not in the range of that sword were cut in two.

What was even more terrifying was that he heard the cracking sound. The sound of a space getting cut. For a moment, he saw how that cut opened a gap into a space of pure darkness, a void.

It was something that he heard a lot, but he never saw what a Void Realm looked like. Gazing into the Void Realm was not on the bucket list for sure, but he looked at it now for a moment. That was brief as the cracked space healed.

’RUN!’

That was the only thing that appeared in Alger’s head. He didn’t even bother to send another command to his subordinates. They should know by now that escape was the best choice. They would not be able to win against this monster.

But then a lot of cracked spaces formed around him and his subordinates. His heart almost jumped out when he saw this. What followed that was screams.

Alger didn’t know what happened and didn’t want to know. He flew out, maneuvering around the cracking spaces. He made sure not to enter one of them. To his surprise, he easily flew out of the cracking-space zone and out of the fort.

Just as he thought he would be able to escape, he suddenly lost control over his own body. No, the right word was that he could not feel his body anymore. It looked like he was cut off from his body, and he could only feel his head.

Alger could look around, his eyes moving normally, and he was still breathing as he took a deep breath. However, he could not feel his body, arms, or legs. That was when he realized that he was free-falling.

He landed on the ground with a big shake to his head, and that was when he saw his body was frozen. From the bottom up, his neck was covered in ice. It looked like his frozen subordinate, but only his head was not frozen.

Alger panicked, trying to break free, but that was futile since he could not feel his own body, and he could not move them. When he tried to use his energy to break the ice, he also realized that he didn’t have enough energy to use. Just like how his body froze, his energy also froze. He could not use them; he could not sense them.

In that panic moment, three silhouettes stood over him. That was when he realized that the attacker was just three people, and he realized that the new territory might not belong to a newcomer. It might have belonged to the top faction, and they had angered this faction.

"Who are you?"