Chapter 66: One Man Army
The beasts broke through the tree line, decimating the trees in their way, and entered the clearing.
Valerian stood at the other end of the cleared forest floor. The purple veins pulsed on the katana as Valerian channeled his mana into it.
He exhaled once, pure mana softly leaving his mouth. He felt the atmospheric mana awaiting his call; that was the reason he was so confident to go against an entire army without fearing he would run out of mana.
Every elemental spell he rained down on the beasts was partially fueled by the surrounding mana, consuming way less than it normally should. If he were to just use his own mana reserves, he wasn’t entirely sure he had enough to kill thousands of monsters, but if the mana in the air assisted him, he was confident he would win.
Mana enhanced every bit of his body, from his toes to the tips of his hair, everything was overflowing with pure mana, pushing his already physical might to another level.
Valerian took a step forward. His boots left a cold imprint on the ground, and ice crystals sprouted from the footprint, expanding and freezing the surrounding floor. He took another step and another; with every step, the ice left on the floor by his feet expanded around him.
Soon he broke into a sprint and the ground froze over behind him. The ice crawled from his boots up to his knees, giving him the normal grip he would have on solid ground.
The beast wave didn’t slow down one bit at the approaching Valerian, their minds too corrupted by panic.
Valerian didn’t back down either as his speed increased and [Void Lightning] covered his body and Katana. The lightning crackled around his body with tiny bolts hitting the ground and burning whatever they were touching, just for it to freeze over from the ice underneath his feet.
As he got closer to the beasts leading the charge, Valerian felt a calm wash over him, and he tuned everything else out, his focus entirely on the enemy.
The monsters leading the charge were large behemoths easily reaching 10 meters; they had metal plates covering their bodies and protecting them. They were called Ruin Breakers because once they were running, they could tear down entire fortresses; they were true tanks with a metal affinity.
Valerian and the Ruin Breakers got closer, and Valerian readied his katana, gripping it with both hands, the lightning around his body reacting violently to the approaching collision.
When they were about to meet, Valerian swung down the katana on the Ruin Breaker in front of him. The second the [Void Lightning] enhanced katana met the metal platings of the beast, the erasing nature of [Void Lightning] ate away at its defenses. Everywhere the lightning touched, metal disappeared; flesh burned, just to be erased before the pain could settle in. The lightning made its way to the beast’s organs, deleting the heart and brain from existence.
But the lightning didn’t stop there. After killing the first Ruin Breaker in less than a second, it jumped to the nearest two, repeating the process before jumping to the next ones.
While the [Void Lightning] was eating away at the Ruin Breakers, the force behind the katana attack sent a shockwave through their ranks, splitting monsters in two or throwing them into the air.
Valerian didn’t stand still, and as soon as his katana made contact with the first monster, he teleported behind them, right into their midst.
As soon as he appeared, he released a massive wave of ice and cold from his feet. The wave rolled through the ground, freezing all the monsters around him to the ground. Valerian flipped his katana and stabbed the tip of the still lightning-covered blade into the frozen ground.
The blade pierced through the ice, and from it, [Void Lightning] rolled through the frozen ground and reached the monsters whose feet were stuck to the ground. The lightning tore through their bodies, killing and erasing almost two hundred instantly.
Valerian didn’t stop; he couldn’t. He had to make every second count as the wave of monsters didn’t stop just because their front men were dead, they just kept advancing.
Space folded around Valerian, and he appeared back where he started at the other end of the clearing.
The Ruin Breakers that once led the charge were now dead and the second line consisted of frozen statues, but behind the ice, he could already see more monsters making their way forward.
Valerian threw his katana to the side, and the mana in the air caught it, letting it hover right next to him.
Space mana gathered in his right hand, forming an invisible blade that appeared as only a barely visible distortion in space. The amount of mana compressed in that spatial blade made the air tremble.
Valerian waited and didn’t unleash the spatial attack just yet. He waited for the monsters to break through the ice field of dead beasts, his eyes not betraying a bit of nervousness.
Once they broke through and reached the field of dead Ruin Breakers, Valerian attacked. He swung his hand in a horizontal arc.
The spatial mana left his hand and extended through the fabric of space, creating a cut invisible to the eyes.
The cut traveled through space and appeared a few meters before the first beasts, around the height of Valerian’s chest. Since there wasn’t one kind of monster, but hundreds of different races, he couldn’t cut one place and decapitate everyone. Valerian chose around his chest height because that would either kill a beast or cut off its legs, leaving it to be trampled to death by the others.
And that is what happened. The first ones that reached the spatial cut lost their legs. Having no protection against a cut in the fabric of space, their legs separated without any resistance, making them stumble forward and fall to the ground.
The ones behind them didn’t have a better time, as they either died instantly or lost their legs and were then trampled to death by the following beasts.
But they seemed to have learned, as they began to jump in the air or walked over the dead bodies of the others without losing their legs or lives. But that single cut managed to take out over 500 monsters in total, some died from the cut, but most from the others running them over.
’It’s like there is no end.’
Even though Valerian had already killed over one thousand of them with his large-scale magic attacks, their numbers were still high.
’No matter, I wanted to try something anyway.’
Valerian grabbed the hilt of Twilight that hovered beside him, loyally waiting for its master to unleash it again.
He held the katana with his right hand and covered it with spatial mana. In one movement, he turned around and cleaved at the trees behind him, extending the clearing by another kilometer, and like before, [Cosmic Fire] swallowed the trees before they could reach the ground.
Valerian teleported to the end of the now extended clearing.
He raised Twilight and pointed its tip at the beast horde. He began to channel his [Cosmic Fire] and [Void Lightning], gathering both affinities at the tip.
He tried to do the same thing he attempted to do in his "fight" against Freya: combining both affinities, not just coating one in the other, but actually combining them. He already felt the destructive power of the combo in the short moment before Freya knocked him out, and there was no better time to test a new kind of magic out than now.
The deep purple lightning danced around Valerian’s hand and sword. The black-purple flames crawled up the blade, making their way to the tip.
At first, they acted as separate elements, moving around each other and never truly merging. Valerian concentrated both affinities towards the outstretched tip of the blade.
The lightning answered first and left his hand, solely focusing on the tip and forming a small ball of concentrated lightning.
The fire came second, moving along the blade and converging at the tip around the ball of lightning.
Now came the hard part: not just coating the lightning in the fire or vice versa, but actually combining them.
Valerian furrowed his brows in concentration. He had already managed to do it once, but it was more of an accident wanting to create a strong attack and less an actually thought-out idea.
The two energies thrashed around each other like two beasts fighting for dominion, neither wanting to back down and concede. They both had the nature to destroy, not work together.
But Valerian didn’t give up. He moved both forces closer together. The closer they got, the more unstable they became, both wanting to break free.
But he didn’t stop; he kept not just compressing the two, but merging them. Suddenly, it clicked. The affinities stopped fighting, and like a parent telling both beasts to get along, they worked together, mixing their energies.
Instead of being fire and lightning, they became a deep purple ball of plasma, burning with energy that made reality scream in protest.
Valerian knew what happened, and with a smile on his face, he opened his eyes and looked at the beast horde.
"Thank you, Valerie."
And he released the energy.