Chapter 65: Symphony of Destruction
Valerian took off from the ground and ascended into the sky. Arthur didn’t wait long and followed behind.
They began to accelerate in the direction the arrow pointed, with Valerian leading the way and Arthur staying behind.
The forest passed under them; it was a monotonous sight. Only green trees, here and there a monster, but nothing that stood out.
During their flight they didn’t speak, both lost in their thoughts. Like that, a few hours passed, and their destination was still not in sight.
As Valerian continued his high-speed flight, he felt a large group of beasts on the edge of his perception.
They counted in the thousands, with hundreds of different races. Their ranks ranged from B+ to the strongest few being S+.
’This could be fun.’
Valerian stopped mid-air. Arthur, who saw him suddenly halt, also came to a stop next to him.
"What’s going on?"
"There is a large group of monsters, and I’m bored. I don’t know about you, but I want to have a little fun."
Arthur shrugged his shoulders.
"I’m not really feeling it, they are all yours."
Valerian grinned and folded the space around them. Instantly, they appeared high in the sky 50 km away. Down below, a massive wave of beasts was tearing down the forest below.
They bulldozed through the thick trees in a panicked rampage, not caring if they got injured by running in a straight line.
"You probably don’t know, but that is called a beast wave. They mostly happen when a large mana signature appears and their basic brains are attracted to it. The second reason would be when something big was fighting in an area and panic takes over, leading them to run for their lives. And from the looks of it, it’s the second option."
"Wait, but doesn’t that mean that something insanely powerful is nearby?"
Arthur asked with a slight panic in his voice. If something could make an S+ rank beast act like this, there was no way they could fight it.
"Not necessarily. From the path of destruction they left behind, it looks like they have been running for quite some time."
Behind the large beast wave, a path of broken-down trees followed, and even from their elevated point of view, they couldn’t see what caused them to run.
Valerian stretched his arms.
"This shouldn’t be too hard, they are weak after all."
At this point, anything below SS- was no problem for Valerian. Even against SS-, he was confident he could win some way.
"The only question is, how should I do this?"
Valerian had a lot of large-scale ways to deal with enemies. [Cosmic Fire], [Absolute Zero], [Event Horizon], and [Void Lightning] were excellent area-of-effect elements, and while Space could also wreak havoc on such an army, it was better for precision attacks.
"You might want to back up."
Arthur listened to Valerian’s call and flew backwards. He was excited to see Valerian fight the wave; after all, he himself wasn’t confident he could beat so many beasts before his mana ran out. So he wanted to see how Valerian with his ridiculous SS Rank reserves would beat so many enemies.
Valerian stayed afloat in the air, the wind rustling through his long, silver-white hair. His cold, cosmic purple eyes looked down on the beast wave, not a single piece of nervousness in them.
He exhaled once and brought his hands out in front of him. Inside his palms, which were facing the ground, ice crystals began to form and a cold mist rose upward. The air around him dropped several degrees, mist leaving his nose with every breath.
The cold in his hands whirled around and grew in size, growing a bit and then compressing down. Then at once, the ice mana trapped in his hands exploded outward.
From his point in the air, a wave of [Absolute Zero] rolled downwards to the beast wave. It crashed into the earth and, as if it had a mind of its own, washed over the beasts running in one direction.
Instantly, the beasts at the front froze into statues of clear light blue as the wave of ice rolled over them. The weaker ones died instantly from the sudden drop in temperature, even if they weren’t hit directly by the wave. The sheer coldness of it instantly eliminated over two hundred beasts.
The ground below turned into ice, creating an uneven and dangerous ground for the beasts that just continued running.
The beasts that weren’t at the front broke through the ice statues of the others, not bothering to run around them.
Valerian let out a cold breath.
Clearly not intending to stop just now, he let his left arm fall to his side but kept the right in the air.
The ice crystals in his palm changed to [Cosmic Fire], lighting up his hands.
He raised his burning right hand into the sky. Constructs made from the same deep purple fire appeared above in the air.
The constructs made from the fire turned into a 2-meter-long spear shape. There were dozens of them, each strong enough to kill an S- rank beast. The deep purple fire turned into a deep black, as if they devoured any light hitting them. The gravity around them visibly increased as the air trembled being near them. Their burning tips aimed down on the beast horde.
Valerian let his arm fall down, and like the command of a ruler, the spears raced down to the ground with speeds that defied physics, the gravity effect of [Event Horizon] dragging them down towards the ground.
When the spears of fire finally hit the frozen ground, they exploded in an inferno of [Cosmic Fire], devouring any beast coming in contact with it. Over three hundred beasts died in that single attack of gravity-enhanced [Cosmic Fire], but the beasts were in the thousands, so even after unleashing two powerful area-of-effect attacks, it only made a small dent in their numbers and they continued their advance, trampling over the burning and frozen corpses of the others.
’I want to get down there...’
While Valerian did have fun raining down magic on the beasts, he also wanted to fight them in a closer way. A black substance appeared in his right hand. Twilight changed into the form of the sleek black katana with purple veins he used against the cave goblins.
’I kinda like this weapon, maybe I will use it more.’
Valerian teleported down below, roughly 2 km in front of the wave, so he had time to clear the way and not have to fight with trees in the way.
He readied the katana, covered it in space mana, and swung it in a wide horizontal arc.
For a moment nothing happened, then the space of all the trees 1 km in front of him split in a fine line and they began to fall, cut down by a single spatial slice.
As they fell, Valerian’s katana got covered by a layer of [Cosmic Fire], and with a second horizontal arc, the fire separated from the blade and burned all the trees, not even leaving ashes behind.
Now, with 1 km cleared, Valerian prepared for the wave, and he didn’t have to wait long as the unstoppable horde of mindless beasts broke through the treeline and entered the clearing.
’This is more fun than I thought.’
Valerian grinned like a madman and channeled his mana for the next attack.