Chapter 91: Clash of Martial Lords [3]
The underground ritual chamber of Norona City had completely ceased to exist as a physical structure, transformed instead into a terrifying, underwater abyss.
Millions of gallons of high-density spiritual sea water, summoned out of absolute nothingness by High Priest Croak’s tyrannical battle skill:
Lord of the Sea!
Lord of the Sea, swirled in a violent, claustrophobic maelstrom.
Above, the earth groaned under the weight of the supernatural ocean, while far above the surface, the desert sky screamed with continuous, world-shaking cracks of lightning.
"Such grand skill you have" the human knight-priest exhaled a soft chuckle.
At the epicenter of this aquatic crucible, the two Martial Lords stood suspended within the churning currents, their auras clashing with the force of grinding tectonic plates.
"You think a bit of water can drown the judgment of the gods, you overgrown mutated toad?" the human knight-priest sneered.
His voice, channeled through dense martial mana, cut through the roaring hydrostatic pressure like a razor.
His immaculate white-gold plate armor flared with a blinding, holy kinetic light that pushed back the crushing weight of the sea in a three-meter radius around him.
"We are the children of Misfortune! You are nothing but an evolutionary mistake clinging to a swamp!"
"A mere bug!" the human knight-priest roared.
High Priest Croak stood perfectly still amidst the raging currents, his shredded ceremonial robes billowing like dark kelp around his ancient frame.
His webbed fingers tightened around his wooden staff, his dark, ancient eyes reflecting the faint, bioluminescent glow of his own primordial mana.
"You sure do have a lot of hate in your heart" High Priest Croak stepped forward.
"But...."
"Your ignorance is the only mistake here, human," Croak rumbled, his voice carrying the deep, resonant bass of a crushing ocean trench.
"You hide behind your shiny metal and your stolen holy words, yet you tremble before the very cradle of life." Croak chuckled.
"Let us see how your faith holds when the pressure of the deep breaks your spine!"
"Let’s see how grand this human strength you do brag about"
With a sharp flick of Croak’s wrist, the hundreds of three-meter-long water spears hovering in the vortex violently detonated forward.
Each spear hummed with immense kinetic rotation, ripping through the underwater domain like torpedoes, their tips aimed squarely at the knight-priest’s vitals.
"Pathetic!" the human roared, his aristocratic composure completely melting into bloodlust.
He vaulted through the water, his rapier flashing with a conceptual, golden-white light.
He unleashed his active concept at its maximum output:
Lord of Cleave!
The latent strength of his skill, quadrupled by his Martial Lord evolution, violently warped the fabric of the submerged reality.
Lord of Cleave was not a single, telegraphed attack—it was an absolute, unavoidable conceptual sure-hit effect.
Suddenly, the knight-priest didn’t just swing once; he unleashed countless inevitable slashes simultaneously.
SHRIIIK—! SHRIIIK—!
The space within the sea violently fractured.
Hundreds of invisible, colossal blades of pure spatial cleavage manifested out of thin air, slicing clean through Croak’s water spears, disintegrating their kinetic rotation and turning them back into ordinary fluid.
"Tch" High Priest Croak groaned, he instantly fell back, creating distance between himself and the human Martial Lord.
The conceptual law of the skill dictated that these slashes must land, completely bypassing any spatial barriers or evasive maneuvers Croak attempted.
"Die in your damn amphibian pest!" the knight-priest screamed as dozens of the inevitable spatial slashes tore through the water and slammed directly into Croak’s body.
SPLAAAT—!
The defensive exoskeleton beneath Croak’s skin groaned loudly, fracturing under the sheer volume of the conceptual damage.
"I can’t defend against it" Croak’s bit his lips, "I need to go on offensive"
Deep, bloody gashes erupted across the old beastman’s shoulders, chest, and arms, painting the surrounding water in clouds of dark, billowing green-crimson blood.
Because they were fighting as absolute equals at the same cultivation realm, the absolute damage was dynamically mitigated, preventing Croak from being cleanly quartered.
But the pain was agonizing, a tingling, burning sensation that threatened to rip his mana cores apart.
Yet, Croak did not retreat.
He didn’t even blink at his injuries.
His martial willpower was forged from centuries of survival.
"It seems you are getting frustrated, you stupid frog" the human knight-priest bragged.
"A mundane scratch," Croak smirked, his teeth bared in a rare, terrifying display of primal aggression. "Is that the full weight of your human heavens?"
"How light."
"How fragile!"
"I’m not done yet!"
Stomping his foot against the invisible currents, Croak drove his staff forward, commanding the Lord of the Sea.
The overflowing, high-density water reacted instantly to his will.
The fluid around the knight-priest violently compressed, transforming out of nothing into massive, heavy liquid chains that wrapped around the human’s white-gold armor, pinning his limbs to his sides.
Simultaneously, colossal water hands, each the size of a siege engine, manifested from the dark corners of the maelstrom.
They slammed into the knight-priest from opposing sides, crushing his armor with thousands of tons of hydrostatic pressure.
"Get off me, you filthy animal!" the knight-priest howled.
His white-gold armor creaked under the immense weight, the metal denting inward against his ribs.
He unleashed another frantic barrage of Lord of Cleave, the invisible spatial blades slicing through the liquid chains and severing the massive water hands into harmless spray.
But the sheer physical impact sent him crashing backward through the flooded ruins, coughing up bright red human blood that clouded his visor.
While the two titans were entirely consumed by their mutual, unbridled slaughter, a faint, frictionless shadow glided along the very edge of the submerged plaza.
It was Alisa.
Her newly acquired Ghost-Silk properties allowed her to move through the churning, high-pressure currents without making a single ripple, completely invisible to the sensory arrays of the warring Martial Lords.
She slid down to the blood-soaked floor where Eurenia’s limbless, bleeding torso lay.
With mechanical, silent precision, Alisa wrapped her translucent, dark mana threads around Eurenia’s fading form.
She pulled the heavily injured Martial General into the absolute safety of the shadows, retreating from the catastrophic epicenter just as another shockwave of energy tore through the area.
Back in the center of the abyss, the battle reached a fever pitch of mutual destruction. Neither Martial Lord cared for their own safety anymore.
They were completely blinded by the desire to erase the other from existence.
"Look at you, old toad! You’re bleeding out in your own temple!" the knight-priest laughed maniacally.
He blurred through the water, ignoring a broken rib, and unleashed a swirling vortex of a thousand conceptual slashes.
The Lord of Cleave bypassed Croak’s fluid defenses entirely, carving deep lines into the old beastman’s face and legs, shattering pieces of his defensive exoskeleton that drifted into the dark water like broken shell casing.
"And you are drowning in a tomb of your own making," Croak countered ruthlessly.
Even as the spatial blades carved his flesh, Croak’s hands never shook.
He molded the surrounding ocean into a gatling-array of high-pressure water bullets.
Tens of thousands of liquid spheres, each compressed to the density of solid iron, violently launched at the knight-priest.
The barrage hit the human like a localized meteor shower.
The holy white-gold plates on his chest shattered, exposing his fractured collarbone and tearing his flesh into a ragged, bloody mess.
The two Martial Lords collided again and again, throwing hands, trading bone-crushing punches and conceptual slashes inside the underwater graveyard.
Blood—both the vibrant crimson of the human and the dark, thick hue of the beastman—swirled together, clouding the maelstrom in a grim, purple fog.
They were perfectly matched.
Fighting as absolute equals.
Two unstoppable forces refusing to yield an inch of ground as they systematically tore each other, and Norona City’s foundations, to absolute pieces.