Titan King: Ascension of the Giant

Chapter 1570: The Guardian of Blackstone

"Lady Lorelia, I want to slaughter every last one of them too, but... but..."

As the Legion Commander, Dirtclaw had a multitude of concerns weighing him down. He was no longer mere cannon fodder, nor was he the mindless Gnoll who only knew how to scream and hack away at his foes. He was a commander. He had to maintain cold, absolute clarity at all times.

"There are no ’buts’!" Lorelia interrupted. "Go. Smash those cowards hiding in the dark to pieces. I’ll hold the fort here."

Lorelia pointed a single delicate finger toward the ground beneath them. It was a silent promise to Dirtclaw: as long as she was here, Blackstone City would not fall.

Dirtclaw hesitated for a fraction of a second, but his eyes quickly hardened with iron resolve.

"Lady Lorelia, I leave the city in your hands! I’m going to rip those obnoxious bastards to shreds!"

With that, Dirtclaw stomped the ground, launching himself into the firmament like a ballistic missile, tearing straight into the void.

In the next instant, a deafening boom echoed from the heavens. The dark clouds were violently blown apart by Dirtclaw’s punch. A colossal, serpentine insectoid slithered out from the rift in the void. Its terrifying maw gaped open, dripping with caustic slime as it lunged to snap Dirtclaw in half. The monstrous bug’s hide was covered in grotesque, pulsating warts, and its flanks were lined with dense, razor-sharp bristles. A single, iron-hard horn protruded from its skull. It possessed the length of a giant serpent, yet it moved with the sickening, undulating crawl of a caterpillar.

"An insectoid Archlord!"

Rendall cried out in shock. He couldn’t even fathom that such a nightmarish leviathan had been lurking in the sky right above their heads this entire time. Without Dirtclaw, without Lorelia, and without the defensive wards laid down by Orion... what would have happened to them?

"Its aura and sheer pressure are terrifying!" Onyx’s internal shock was no less intense than the Archelder’s.

It wasn’t that they were overreacting. To lords of their caliber, an Archlord-tier powerhouse was an insurmountable giant.

"There’s nothing to be afraid of. Dirtclaw can smash it to paste with a single punch!" Boosting the enemy’s prestige while diminishing their own was absolutely not Lorelia’s style. She had high hopes for Dirtclaw. As for whether or not he could actually one-shot the enemy? Lorelia didn’t care in the slightest.

"Bring it on!"

High in the firmament, Dirtclaw’s body rapidly expanded against the howling wind. His tusks jutted fiercely toward the sky, and the claws on his fingers instantly elongated into lethal, scythe-like blades.

Roar! Barking a furious war cry, Dirtclaw charged head-on at the giant insectoid.

In the very next second, every single entity looking up at the sky—friend and foe alike—witnessed the savagely brutal spectacle of a giant insect being torn apart barehanded.

"Something’s wrong!"

"Dammit!"

Rendall and Onyx shouted almost simultaneously. They had just detected two more terrifying auras erupting from different directions.

Bzzzt! Bzzzt!

Even as Rendall yelled his warning, the cloud cover to the east and west was violently blown away by an overwhelming pressure. Two more colossal monstrosities, identical to the first, actively revealed themselves and rapidly converged on the blood-crazed Dirtclaw.

The situation had instantly soured. Dirtclaw was about to be ganged up on.

"Don’t panic! So what if it’s a little ambush? Dirtclaw is great at taking a beating!"

Truly, with the battle escalating to such a lethal degree, Lorelia was still making jokes, leaving Rendall and Onyx completely at a loss.

Meeting their bewildered and astonished stares, Lorelia remained completely unfazed, a look of absolute indifference on her face. Rendall and the others were in the dark, but Lorelia knew the truth. Dirtclaw was The God of the Grave within Orion’s Divine Kingdom; he could actively channel the divine power of their Master. Simply put, Dirtclaw’s actual combat prowess was leagues beyond what he showed on the surface.

Bzzzt! Just then, to the north of Blackstone City, the fog was blasted apart by a deep, resonant insectoid shriek. Yet another giant insectoid revealed its massive form. However, this one didn’t charge toward Dirtclaw. It plummeted straight down, turning itself into a living meteor aimed directly at Blackstone City.

"Not good!"

"Brace yourselves!"

Pure terror flashed across Rendall and Onyx’s faces. Subconsciously, they had never viewed Lorelia as a standard Archlord; they still thought of her as someone who needed to be protected. Truthfully, the self-preservation-minded Lorelia had absolutely no intention of taking the field personally either.

"If not now, then when?" A smug, self-satisfied smile curled Lorelia’s lips as she enunciated the words slowly, taking on a dramatically deep tone.

Crack-crack-crack! The jarring sound of stone fracturing, sliding, and crumbling to the ground echoed in everyone’s ears.

Under Rendall and Onyx’s utterly dumbfounded gazes, a pillar of black light erupted from the central plaza of Blackstone City’s outer ring. Within the light was a silhouette that was both familiar and entirely foreign to the two elders.

Familiar, because of its unmistakable anatomy: arms ending in spiraling lance-heads, a long barbed tail, wings like massive cleavers, and feet like razor-sharp eagle talons. Foreign, because the aura radiating from this shadow was solidly at the Archlord tier—a level of power this entity had never displayed within the Stoneheart Horde before.

"Is that..."

"It’s... it’s the Slaughter Tyrant! The creature of darkness from back then!"

At Onyx’s words, vivid memories flooded back into Rendall’s mind. It was the absolute nightmare of a dark creature they had faced in the past.

"Hee hee... This is the Guardian the Horde has been nourishing with faith all this time. Did you guys really not know?" Lorelia tilted her head, genuinely perplexed by the Archelder’s shock. Given the status and authority of the Archelder and the Prophet within the Horde, there was no way they shouldn’t have known about the Slaughter Tyrant’s existence.

"No, we knew," Rendall managed to say. "But we’ve never actually seen the Slaughter Tyrant take the field."

"To think the entity the Horde has been venerating was this terrifyingly powerful," Onyx muttered.

In the past, Orion had mentioned the Slaughter Tyrant to Rendall, Onyx, and the core brass, but he had never clarified exactly how strong the beast truly was. Only in this exact moment did they finally understand: Blackstone City had been guarded by an apex predator this entire time.

"Look, they’re clashing!" Lorelia promptly snapped the two awestruck Horde elders out of their daze, directing their attention back to the battle. Observing a fight of this caliber would be immensely beneficial to their own martial growth.

High in the firmament, the Slaughter Tyrant blurred into a streak of black light, completely ignoring the giant insectoid’s incoming attack. Instead, it dove straight into the monster’s gaping, acidic maw. Once inside, its bladed wings, lance-arms, and barbed tail all transformed into lethal meat-grinders, ripping the colossal insectoid apart from the inside out.

Above, furious roars and insectoid shrieks overlapped in a deafening crescendo. The clouds and winds were violently churned by the warring Archlords, entirely blotting out the sky. Below, the beacon fires of war were lit. The flash of blades danced alongside the shadows of swords, while volatile magic chased deadly volleys of arrows. It was a sprawling, apocalyptic tapestry of war, painted in the crimson hues of spilled blood and set to the endless, roaring soundtrack of slaughter.

"I’ll go fetch your food!"

An indeterminable amount of time passed before Rendall finally pulled his gaze from the sky and snapped back to reality. He cast one last glance at Lorelia before turning and rushing down the mountain.

"I’m coming too!" Onyx bolted right after him.

Looking into the eyes of the two Horde elders, Lorelia saw a raging inferno burning within them. It was a mad, unbridled fire that absolutely refused to be extinguished.

"Hee hee... The veil of dreams has quietly fallen. The darkness is about to descend!"

"Truth or illusion, a phantom or a dream... the true self remains, while the dream-fragments scatter to the wind."