Earth's Greatest Magus

Chapter 2974: Baeldum Battle 2

High above, the two Supremes collided, and the heavens themselves recoiled. Dunadan’s frozen domain erupted outward in spiraling aurorae, blue and emerald light condensing into walls of ancient ice that lunged to bind the Hunter.

But Marc did not meet them alone.

With a single low snarl, the air around his body roared to life, and from it surged a menagerie of beasts woven from raw elemental force, each one a ghost of some legendary creature he had slain across the centuries. A tiger crackling with lightning, larger than a warship, its every step splitting the sky with thunder. A serpent of living flame that coiled through the air leaving molten trails behind it. A great eagle of howling wind whose wingbeats alone flattened everything beneath them. They were not summons in any ordinary sense — they were trophies, the souls of monsters he had hunted and bound to his will, now reborn as weapons.

The elemental pack hurled itself at Dunadan from every direction at once.

Yet even amidst the spectacle, Dunadan’s eyes narrowed. He had face enough corrupted experts to know the truth at a glance: the parasite had not replaced Marc’s power. It had *fed* it. The Supreme Hunter’s beast-binding art remained wholly his own — only now the corruption coursing through him drove his bound trophies into a frenzy, lending them speed and ferocity no living beast had ever possessed in life. The parasite had not made a puppet of the Supreme.

It had made a weapon of him.

The Supreme Lord’s eternal ice rose to answer, freezing the lightning-tiger mid-lunge and shattering it into glittering dust — but two more beasts took its place before the fragments could fall. Marc himself moved between them like the apex of his own pack, every strike honed by the instincts of a predator who had never once lost his prey. Where his claws fell, even Dunadan’s ancient ice cracked and steamed. The shockwaves of their clash rolled down across the plain in concussive rings, flattening hills and shattering stone for kilometers, until it became impossible to tell where the Hunter ended and his beasts began.

Below them, a second war raged.

A hundred Grand Magus met eighty, and the air filled with light and blood. The plain became a storm of clashing law: the ground heaved and split as earth-element cultivators buried entire clusters of infected alive, while sheets of flame rolled across the dunes and pillars of ice erupted to swallow them whole.

Talismans and treasured artifacts streaked through the smoke like falling stars — spinning blades, thundering bells, banners that spat lightning — each detonation tearing fresh craters into the battlefield. It was the kind of large-scale war between upper-realm experts that ordinary cultivators would never witness in ten lifetimes, and it raged across every meter of the plain at once.

Yet for all that fury, no one mistook the slim edge in Grand Magus for safety. The infected fought without fear, without restraint, without any care for their own ruined bodies — and behind those eighty corrupted experts came the endless flood of a million lesser monsters, threatening to drown the line by sheer mass. A handful more Grand Magus than the enemy meant nothing if the swarm broke through first. Only their discipline, their formations, and the desperate refusal of the thirty million at their backs to be abandoned kept the wall from collapsing outright.

That was when Arctus made his move.

The formation master slammed both palms against the earth, and every banner he had planted blazed to life at once. Lines of golden light raced across the plain, linking flag to flag until an enormous array sealed itself shut around the infected horde — a great curse-formation that descended upon the swarm like a mountain. Invisible pressure crushed down across kilometers; the very weight of the world seemed to triple. The million-strong tide buckled. Front ranks were ground into the dirt, and those behind crashed blindly into the immobilized masses, collapsing the charge into churning chaos.

The formation could not kill them all. But it had stolen away the enemy’s greatest advantage, the crushing weight of the million-strong swarm, and forced the fight down into something the defenders could actually contest.

Anderson tore through the corrupted ranks himself, summoning storms of razor wind that shredded twisted flesh by the dozen. Ayla’s beasts harried the flanks, dragging infected Grand Magus out of formation to be swarmed and cut down. Julian, Guskov, and Poseidon fought back to back at the heart of the line.

The defenders pressed forward. The infected fell. Cheers began to rise behind the walls of Maren as the people dared, for the first time, to believe.

To anyone watching, *this* was the battle that would decide the fate of the planet.

---

At the center of the city, atop the tallest tower still standing, five figures observed the carnage without moving to join it.

The strongest of Group Nine.

The Sword Demoness stood at the edge, her dark blade humming with impatience. "Should we not be down there?" she said coldly.

Beside her, the Star Tower Lord said nothing. Archbishop James only bowed his head and continued a quiet prayer beneath his breath.

It was Duke Damien who finally answered, his old eyes calm and fixed on the horizon rather than the battle below.

"That creature has not revealed itself yet." His voice carried no doubt. Until it shows its hand, we hold our position"

This group had not been assigned to the front. They had been held in reserve precisely for the monster no one could yet see — the true unknown born beneath that distant mountain.

A short distance away, leaning against the parapet with maddening ease, stood the man in tall dark hat.

Hubert flipped a golden coin into the air.

He caught it, glanced at the result, and his easy smile faded into something quieter.

"It seems the Supreme was right," he murmured. "Our battle isn’t here."

As if in answer, the communication runes along every one of their wrists flared to life at once — an emergency transmission, priority override.

And before any of them could read it, the air on the rooftop split open.

A spatial rift unfolded in a sweep of dark, folding light, and through it stepped a familiar silhouette.

Emery’s dark avatar.

It said nothing at first. It simply held the gate open behind it — a tunnel of churning shadow leading not down to the plain, not to Marc or the horde or the trembling walls of Maren.

But to another city entirely.

---

Far across the continent, beyond the reach of the battle, lay Dravos.

The largest city on all of Baeldum. More than one hundred million people sheltered within and around its sprawl — the single greatest concentration of life left on the dying planet, and, until this moment, one of the last places anyone believed still safe.

On the pale dunes of its outer desert, where nothing moved but wind and heat-haze, a lone shadow took shape.

It rose slowly from the sand, thin and wrong, its outline never quite holding still. Then, one by one, eyes opened across its body — huge, lidless, burning yellow, each one swiveling independently until dozens of them stared out across the horizon in the same direction.

Toward the distant glitter of Dravos.

Toward one hundred million unsuspecting lives.