Chapter 224: Irrefutable Verdict
The world’s light seemed to have been completely snuffed out.
There was no immediate explosion, no out-of-control shockwave sweeping across the land. The power Priam unleashed was so terrifyingly concentrated and absolute that pure destruction imploded inward, collapsing everything at the center into a horrifying silence.
Not a single ordinary Mage on the planet could see anything during those long seconds of darkness.
When the light slowly began to return...
Seien, Boey, and the two little girls kept their eyes fixed on the fading haze.
There, at the center of the crater, they saw nothing but glassed-over ground and three remaining figures, completely covered in blood.
Seven of the ten Mage Masters had been utterly obliterated—reduced to absolutely nothing, leaving behind not even bones or ashes, including the old leader himself.
The remaining three had survived by sheer luck. They were Physical Mages who specialized in defense, and they also possessed numerous defensive treasures.
High above, Priam’s golden aura dimmed, shrinking into a pulsing glow surrounding his body.
He let out a breath as he felt the energy flowing through him. The Rune’s description had been perfectly clear: its amplification depended entirely on his own base strength. Since he had only just become an Elemental-Level Mage Master, the boost he received was the minimum possible—roughly two to three times his total power.
Of course, merely bending the laws of the world had created a terrifying atmospheric phenomenon, crushing the mental domain of every living being in the surrounding area.
However, because of the massive gap between his Elemental Level and the veterans’ Level 9 power, that two- to threefold increase wasn’t enough to wipe them all out with a single casual attack.
Priam didn’t waste even a millisecond dwelling on it.
His golden eyes shone with a new hue, and his body began radiating a translucent emerald-green light.
His Wind Elemental Physique awakened to its absolute limit!
With the blessing of Manifestation of the Will of the Heavens still active, Priam’s affinity with the wind element soared to divine heights.
He felt as though he understood the very essence of air a thousand times better than before.
With a single thought, his body sliced through the atmosphere, bending space around him.
"RUN!!" the three survivors roared in unison, raw terror filling their voices.
To Seien, Boey, and the little girls watching from afar, the battle that followed looked like a deadly dance of lightning and shooting stars.
Priam moved at an absurd speed, but the three old men, having stared death in the face, burned every last drop of their life force and resources to stay alive.
They truly were veteran monsters, hardened by centuries of bloody wars and life-or-death struggles within the sect.
Even gravely wounded and consumed by panic, they didn’t lose their composure completely.
They swallowed emergency pills, activated talismans, manipulated the power of the surrounding formation, and used every evasive tactic they had accumulated throughout their lives.
But Priam’s greatest obstacle was unquestionably their defensive talismans.
Every one of them had been crafted by high-ranking Sages, and these veterans were capable of drawing out nearly eighty percent of their full power.
Even with Priam possessing up to three times his normal strength and unmatched speed, breaking through those triple layers of defense was no simple task.
If he had been facing only one opponent, he would have executed them in the blink of an eye.
But the three moved in perfect coordination, sometimes fleeing in opposite directions as they tried to escape the runic barrier through separate routes.
That forced Priam to split his attention, intercepting each of them, preventing him from focusing all his power on killing any single target.
At that moment, Priam realized that despite all his overwhelming power, he still lacked real combat experience.
His conceptual advantages were supreme, but the desperate tenacity of those three allowed them to survive far longer than they should have.
If he hadn’t obliterated seven of them with his opening strike, defeating all ten at once would have been nearly impossible.
[250 seconds remaining]
The green screen flashed before his eyes, counting down the remaining duration of the Manifestation.
Priam still retained half the power of his Power Rune, but he knew that the moment the Manifestation ended, all of its effects would automatically disappear.
[150 seconds remaining]
The sounds of spatial collisions and sonic booms echoed endlessly across the plaza.
[100 seconds remaining]
The four silhouettes continued clashing and separating across the sky like colliding meteors.
Down below, the two little girls tightly held each other’s hands, watching that storm of light with eyes shining in pure fascination.
[50 seconds remaining]
*BOOOM!*
Suddenly, a shrill, devastating blast tore through the heavens, making the ground crack apart.
*BOOOM!! BOOOM!!!*
Two more thunderous explosions echoed within a fraction of a second, overlapping the first.
Then...
Everything stopped.
The storm of wind and dust settled abruptly, and silence returned to the battlefield.
At the center of the devastation, Priam stood supreme.
Floating just a few inches above the ground, still wrapped in the golden radiance of his aura, he remained upright and imposing—like a true God of War descending to claim his dominion.
Around him, a thick mist of blood and ashes swirled like a crimson cloak, making his figure appear even more mystical, majestic, and terrifying.
**BUZZ!!**
The colossal multicolored runic barrier shook violently before shattering into millions of fragments of light, dissolving into the air like broken glass.
Priam’s golden eyes finally turned downward.
There, he saw Boey, Seien, and the two little girls staring at him without even daring to blink, overwhelmed by a mixture of awe and absolute shock.
Looking at the little girls’ faces, Priam suddenly felt something strange.
He couldn’t quite describe it. It was close to relief... like finding something he’d lost a long time ago.
But he didn’t have time.
"Wait for me a little longer. We’re leaving this place immediately... but first, I have one score to settle."
Priam’s voice echoed in the ears of all four of them.
The very next millisecond, his figure simply vanished into thin air.
The four barely had time to process what had happened when...
**BOOOOOOM!!**
The tremor that followed shook the ground so violently that all four nearly got thrown off their feet.
When they looked toward the horizon, their pupils widened.
A colossal pillar of light and absolute destruction tore through the heavens, erupting straight from the heart of the Pyrix race’s territory.
Boey let out a quiet snort.
For years now, members of his own race had slowly begun trying to get rid of them.
The Pyrix race had gained enormously from receiving the Magic Arts and knowledge of the Ylisse clan.
But once they had secured their rise and established dominance over the planet’s other clans, they had gradually begun showing their true colors.
So when those ten Mage Masters had arrived just a few hours earlier, they had happily agreed to hand over the four of them.
In fact, it had been members of the Pyrix race who beat Boey until he was covered in blood—not the Mage Masters.
Why?
Simply because they considered him a dead man already, and some of them got carried away, wanting to have a little fun.
**BOOOOOOM!**
But Priam’s ’rage’ didn’t stop there.
Soon after, golden flashes and violent windstorms began erupting across every corner of the horizon.
It wasn’t just the Pyrix race.
It was the entire planet.
Priam moved like a living catastrophe, mercilessly erasing ancient fortresses wherever he went.
At this point, Priam was like a god in the mortal plane.
With his Elemental Physique active, some of his abilities were comparable even to those of a Sage.
*I WILL DESTROY EVERY LAST INCH OF THIS PLACE! FROM THIS DAY FORWARD, THIS PLANET WILL CEASE TO EXIST!*
Priam’s voice didn’t travel only through the air.
It resonated through the rocks, the heavens, and the soul of every living being on that planet.
It sounded like the irrefutable verdict of the apocalypse.