Read Novel Full Chapter 1337 Ding! Ding! Ding!
Chapter 1337 Ding! Ding! Ding!
The world inside that radius ceased to function as a battlefield.
People caught closest were gone before their bodies could react, armor glowing and then failing, silhouettes swallowed by light. Defensive engines positioned to fire outward were struck from behind, frames folding and shattering under the force they were never built to withstand. Stone cracked and flowed like wax. Metal screamed as it twisted, then vanished into the inferno.
Sound arrived late.
A deep, rolling concussion that punched outward after the light, slamming into the city walls and the siege lines beyond, rattling teeth and shaking instruments from dwarven hands.
From the outside, it looked like the heart of the settlement had been replaced by a sun.
From inside, there was no time to understand what was happening.
Death.
Pure and simple.
That's what this was.
Quinlan stood at the center of it all with his armor blazing, wind and fire tearing past him in a controlled storm that obeyed his presence even as it destroyed everything else.
When the light finally began to thin, nothing remained where the largest cluster of defenders had stood.
Only scorched ground, broken structures, and air still shimmering from the violence of his arrival.
Quinlan had done something like this once before.
Back in Lionheart.
The act was now spoken of in hushed tones and recorded under a single name.
The Lionkin Genocide.
That time, he had torn fire from his core and let it loose. A city drowned beneath it. Buildings burned. Streets collapsed. Weaker lives were erased outright. But those above a certain threshold, those hardened by levels and battle, had endured.
Some staggered out with scorched fur. Some laughed it off later, calling it a terrifying spectacle rather than a death sentence.
That attack had been vast.
But it had been blunt.
This one was not.
This time, the fire had not spread blindly. It had been compressed, densified, driven by intent, and reinforced by wind until it behaved less like flame and more like a nuclear bomb.
It did not wash over the settlement… It crushed it.
Quinlan felt the difference immediately.
His senses lit up as reality caught up to what he had done, and then his mind was flooded.
[Ding!]
Ding!]
[Ding!]
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[Ding!]
A thousand of them.
They came in perfect sync, layered cleanly one after another.
[You've slain Kareth Ironveil (Level 46). You've gained 26,000 XP.]
[You've slain Mion Talcrest (Level 45). You've gained 25,000 XP.]
[You've slain Haldrik Stonewatch (Level 47). You've gained 27,500 XP.]
[You've slain Velessa Thornward (Level 48). You've gained 29,000 XP.]
These were not civilians. Not panicked conscripts. These were officers. Wardens. Veteran mages who had been anchoring the barrier's recovery. Engineers who had survived decades of sieges. Fighters hardened well past the point where fire alone should have been enough.
And yet.
[You've slain Brogan Deepforge (Level 51). You've gained 34,000 XP.]
[You've slain Arthelwyn of the Third Spire (Level 53). You've gained 37,000 XP.]
[You've slain Korran Blackmantle (Level 54). You've gained 39,000 XP.]
This was the difference.
Back then, his power had been raw and wasteful. Impressive, but shallow.
Now, the destruction carried weight. Density. Control.
His fire had not cared how high their level was. The pressure had not asked whether their defenses were ready. The wind had not given them room to react.
Those who once would've shrugged off his flames were gone.
And the notifications proved it.
[You've slain Elder-Magus Thryssa (Level 64). You've gained 51,000 XP.]
[You've slain Commander Vorn Halbrecht (Level 67). You've gained 55,000 XP.]
[You've slain Sentinel Kaelor (Level 66). You've gained 58,000 XP.]
Then, clean and unmistakable, another sound rang out.
A final, soft chime.
[Ding!]
[You've reached Level 47.]
[XP: 5,349,183/17,433,886]
Already, he was on a good pace for the next level. This one brutal strike, hitting an area where multiple high-level but defensively weak enemies were grouped together, gave him a boost of XP like never before.
"…" Quinlan stood in silence inside his own globe of destruction.
Stone around him had slumped and fused into uneven shelves. What had once been streets and ramparts now formed a shallow bowl of scorched ground. Defensive engines lay folded in on themselves, frames bent backward as if they had tried to flee the force that struck them.
A wet cough broke the stillness.
Quinlan turned.
A man in heavy armor leaned against a fractured section of rampart. Ornaments once set into his chestplate had melted into streaks. One pauldron sagged. Blood ran from beneath his helm and dripped down his gorget.
The man's voice scraped when he spoke; he was hurt. "You… you betrayed humanity."
He tried to straighten and failed, sliding back against the stone. "For what? To stand with them? With filthy subhumans?"
His breath hitched. "You never were a saint... But this? Becoming the Traitor of Humanity? I always thought you had your own creed like a vigilante… Quinlan Elysiar…"
Quinlan did not answer at once.
He reached into his pocket ring.
The Soul Reaper emerged without ceremony. A pitch black saber hilt, bare and severe. The moment he cleared the ring and settled in Quinlan's palm, however, blue fire rolled along his length, forming a blade that burned without smoke.
The man froze.
A red glow from behind Quinlan's visor fixed on him. In this moment, the eyes looked entirely unnatural, as if they didn't even exist. That was because Synchra protected Quinlan's eyes as well; his helmet had no visor through which his eyes could be attacked.
With the armor still traced in heat and the saber casting cold blue light across the ruined stone, the space around Quinlan felt wrong, as if scale itself had shifted. The distance between them no longer mattered.
Quinlan raised the saber overhead.
"[Eternal Damnation]."
The world answered.
From the ruins, from shattered streets and collapsed towers, something tore free. Wisps at first, then whole shapes. A thousand of them. Souls ripped upward in a violent surge, drawn from where bodies had fallen and were eviscerated moments earlier.
The saber's blue fire lashed out and wrapped around them, pulling them screaming toward the blade.
The sound the souls made was unbearable to the defender. They were not loud per se… More so, piercing and unnaturally layered.
A chorus of voices stripped down to raw panic as they were dragged together and consumed. The saber drank them in, its flames brightening with every intake.
Throughout it all, Quinlan did not look away.
His gaze stayed on the man as the air filled with shrill cries and the light of stolen lives reflected off molten stone.
"Traitor of humanity?" Quinlan repeated.
The man swallowed. His throat worked, eyes locked on the red points behind the visor.
"How could that possibly be true…"
Quinlan lowered the saber.
"… When I was never on humanity's side to begin with?"
He turned his wrist.
"[Awaken]."
Figures rose across the ruined district. One after another, then dozens at once.
Armored forms pulled together from blue fire and shadow, their shapes stabilizing as elite souls took form. Weapons manifested in their hands as if remembered rather than forged.
Hundreds of eyes turned as one.
All of them fixed on the injured man.
Quinlan turned his back and, as he began walking away, ordered coldly,
"Kill them all."
At once, those hundreds of eyes shone with lethal intent as their mouths moved in perfect sync to form two mere words.
"Yes, Master."
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