Read Novel Full Chapter 1571 The Great Forces Are Here
Chapter 1571 The Great Forces Are Here
"Do you expect me to keel over and give in just because you and your sister want me defeated? That's not how the world works, Lilith. Of course I fought back against a gang of hateful women much more powerful than myself using any means necessary."
"Don't you dare lecture me!"
The spellblade flared and Lilith's mana spiked hard enough to crack the ground beneath her boots.
Quinlan held her gaze without saying anything more.
He was done talking.
Alexios held his blade in front of the seething woman.
"Lilith." His voice was low and steady. "I know. I understand your pain. But you must not let emotions cloud your skills."
She exhaled. The white fire dimmed, but her grip on the spellblade didn't loosen.
Then the Dawn Breaker spoke up. She'd been staring at the three Undead Lords since her arrival. Blood ran from her hairline and the divine radiance flickering across her cracked golden armor pulsed brighter every time her gaze swept across their frames.
"Father. Leave the undead to me. I will put them back in the ground where they belong, even if it's the last thing I do."
Across the divide, Vozen's empty sockets locked onto the Dawn Breaker. Necromantic energy flared along the archlich's damaged frame.
Gorthrax the Eternal silenced him with a raised hand.
The ancient undead lord regarded Elisabeth the way a teacher regarded a student who had wandered into the wrong classroom.
"Little girl, the Goddess grants you her light and lets you hunt us while bypassing the Heavenly Restriction. You enjoy every advantage a hunter of the dead could ask for." His empty gaze swept across her cracked armor, the blood on her face, the way she favored her left side. "And yet here you stand, bleeding. Tell me. Where is this confidence coming from?"
Elisabeth's divine radiance flared.
Gorthrax chuckled. The sound was deep and hollow, like something heavy settling into a tomb.
"I will take your head and mount your skull on my staff. The daughter of the Warrior King, blessed by the Goddess herself, reduced to a trophy for the world to see." Blue fire burned in his sockets with overwhelming ambition. "We were never meant to rot beneath the earth when we are the superior life form, and your skull will be the proof."
...
On the eastern edge of the field, Black Fang's katana began to drip.
Purple venom beaded along the edge and ran down the steel in rivulets that hissed where they touched the ground. The air around the weapon turned acrid, and the venom kept coming, drawn from the Venomborn class itself.
"[Ouroboros: Serpent's Maw]."
The venom exploded off the katana and coalesced into the shape of a massive serpent's head that erupted from the blade's edge with jaws wide enough to swallow a horse, fangs trailing streams of venom that scorched the air black. The construct lunged at Kaede with the speed of a striking viper.
Kaede caught the serpent's fang on her blade and the impact drove her backward, boots carving trenches through the dirt, venom spraying off the point of contact and eating through her pauldron where it landed. She held for half a second before the force overwhelmed her guard and launched her off her feet.
Black Fang was already in the air.
She closed the distance before Kaede finished tumbling, katana descending in a killing stroke. Kaede twisted mid-flight and brought her blade across her body, catching the katana on the flat, teeth grinding, arms shaking from the force.
Black Fang kicked her in the sternum.
Kaede cratered into the ground on Alexios's side of the field and skidded until the dirt stopped her.
Black Fang landed on the opposite side beside Quinlan without looking back, katana still dripping venom.
Kaede didn't understand it.
She'd trained. Every waking hour since Greenvale, every sparring match, every drill, every brutal session with the Fujimori clan's best instructors and every moment of private practice that stretched past midnight into the small hours of the morning. She had torn apart every memory of their last fight and rebuilt her technique around the gaps that had killed her, and the woman she'd become was not the woman Black Fang had dismembered.
Yet Black Fang had become faster.
Not by the margin Kaede expected from a woman four hundred years her senior. At that age, that far into their journey as combatants, people did not improve in just a couple of months.
Not like this. The timing was different. The footwork was different. The way she transitioned between defensive reads and offensive bursts had a crispness to it that hadn't been there before, a discipline layered on top of the predatory instinct that Black Fang had always relied on.
Kaede pulled herself upright. Blood ran from a cut above her left eye and dripped off her chin.
"What have you been doing?" The question was quiet. Almost confused. "You've had four centuries to reach your peak. In a few months, you moved past it?!"
Black Fang said nothing.
She stood with her katana angled forward and her purple eyes flat, and she did not explain herself to the woman who had sold her sister into slavery.
But the answer existed, whether she shared it or not.
In the primordial realm, Hanae had been chopping her head off on repeat.
The Primordial Sadist, the Head Chopper. The ancestor of the Fujimori line, the woman whose blood ran through both Ayame and the half-sister who had never been acknowledged. Hanae had taken one look at Black Fang's technique, all four centuries of self-taught brutality and survival instinct honed into something lethally effective, and she had dismantled it.
Black Fang had entered the primordial realm as the most dangerous assassin on Iskaris.
She'd left it as something worse.
Kaede read the answer in the silence and her expression went colder than it had been all day.
Then Elder Chizuru of the Fujimori clan touched down beside her with blade drawn and grey hair pulled back in a severe knot. She was showered in blue blood from the soul soldiers she'd dispatched, and the look she gave Black Fang was one of motherly worry.
"Child, listen to me. It's still not too late to-"
"Shut your foul mouth, you disgusting creature."
The words came out flat and venomous, and the purple eyes that locked onto the elder carried the promise of the same treatment Kaede had just received.
Black Fang was still not a fan of the Fujimori clan.
...
And just like this, two sides had emerged.
The scorched field became a stage, and every surviving fighter on it had chosen where to stand.
Quinlan Elysiar held the center. Stone-and-ice hands at his sides. Morgana bled at his right, the puppet queen's empty eyes fixed on nothing. Scar stood at his left with both daggers raised and blue-tinged blood drying on her arms. Black Fang took position behind him, katana angled forward, expression flat.
Myrasyn took off the ground and hovered above and behind, staff trailing light. Aelindra's elves held the western flank. Ragnar's dwarves anchored the south in blacksteel and locked shields. The three Undead Lords loomed on the eastern approach with a horde that stretched to the horizon. Cassandra and five spectral Royal Guards burned with blue-white fire near Quinlan's flank.
Across the divide, Alexios Valorian stood with his golden longsword planted before him, Stormlord at his right and Elisabeth the Dawn Breaker at his left. Lilith Ravenshade anchored her side with the Scarlet Lilies at her back. Kaede Fujimori and Elder Chizuru held the east. The Aegis Vanguard filled the gaps in storm-grey armor, and behind all of them, the backup army positioned themselves to push the enemy from the sides.
The Great Convergence had happened!
Now it was time to kill each other.