Chapter 110: Croak Vs Aradin [2]
The steam rising from the obliterated plaza did not merely drift.
It boiled.
Swirling like a white shroud around the two entities who now stood at the absolute center of the desert’s apocalypse.
Aradin was no longer the serene champion of Damascus who had marched into the west weeks ago.
The humiliation of his previous defeat.
The lingering burning agony of Croak’s spatial toxins in his veins, and the utter eradication of his emergency border outpost had completely broken his knightly composure.
His amber eyes were bloodshot, his sleek black hair wild and matted with sweat and ash.
A terrifying, volatile aura of pure, unadulterated bloodlust radiated from his body, so intense that the very air around his boots distorted with a crimson hue.
He wanted to rip the beastmen apart.
He wanted to paint the white stones of Damascus with their fluids.
And he wanted the frog-kin standing before him to die a thousand agonizing deaths.
In stark contrast, High Priest Croak stood perfectly still on the slick, waterlogged stone.
His large, hollow emerald eyes reflected the raging fires of the city without a single flicker of fear. He was the epitome of absolute, icy calm.
To a high priest who had spent decades communicating with the primordial deep.
The manic rage of a mortal knight was nothing more than a passing squall on the surface of an infinite ocean.
"Your wrath is loud, human," Croak’s raspy, multi-layered voice vibrated through the steam, his liquid jade staff resting lightly against his palm.
"But the sea does not care how loudly the wind screams before it is swallowed."
"Shut your wretched mouth!" Aradin roared.
BOOM—!!!
With a catastrophic burst of mana that shattered the stone tiles beneath his feet into dust, Aradin vanished.
He reappeared instantly in front of Croak, his longsword gripped in a two-handed hold.
Activating his raw Martial Lord cultivation, he brought the blade down in a vertical arc so fast it bypassed the sound barrier, creating a localized vacuum.
But Croak did not dodge.
He didn’t even lift his staff.
Instead, the High Priest activated the absolute pinnacle of his physical modification.
His legendary Blade Tempering Physique skill, which had been systematically reinforced over months of brutal cultivation, perfectly merged with the medicinal properties of the rare Titan Bone-Tempering Marrow Elixir.
This was the same case for the other followers.
The transformation was instantaneous and terrifying.
A sickening, metallic crunch echoed from within Croak’s body as his skeletal structure expanded and hardened to the density of continental bedrock.
From beneath his green skin, a pitch-black, iridescent, beetle-humanoid exoskeleton erupted, locking together like interlocking sheets of divine alloy.
This was the birth of the Supreme Beast Physique—a terrifying amalgamation of high-tier beast anatomy and peak alchemical reinforcement.
CLANG————!!!
Aradin’s sword struck Croak’s shoulder with enough force to level a fortress.
The kinetic shockwave rippled outward for hundreds of meters, violently parting the surrounding water and blowing away the steam in a perfect circle.
Yet, the blade didn’t draw a single drop of blood.
The supreme exoskeleton violently deflected the blade, the hyper-dense armor absorbing the strike entirely.
Even the passive Lord of Cleave spatial cutting effects that usually splintered defenses were cleanly neutralized, sliding off the iridescent beetle plating like water off a stone.
"What the....what have you done?" Aradin growled.
"Suprised huh?" Croak chuckled.
Croak’s emerald eyes flared.
Before Aradin could pull his blade back, Croak’s thick, exoskeleton-armored arm shot forward like a pneumatic ram.
CRACK!
A brutal, heavy physical blow caught Aradin directly in the sternum.
The human knight-priest coughed a fountain of crimson blood as his chest plate cave in.
The sheer kinetic weight of the Supreme Beast Physique sent Aradin flying backward through the air at supersonic speeds.
Crashing violently through three consecutive obsidian pillars before slamming deeply into the stone foundation of an outer wall, burying him in rubble.
"Die! Die! Die!"
The rubble exploded.
Aradin burst from the debris, completely blinded by his frantic rage.
He didn’t care about his broken ribs.
He amped his speed to its absolute limits, his mana burning like a localized star as he transformed into a streak of silver light.
He collided with Croak once more, and the battle devolved into a ferocious, visceral brawl of titanic proportions.
They threw each other across the capital like ragdolls.
Aradin gripped Croak by the neck of his exoskeleton, channeling his martial force to slam the High Priest face-first into the flooded earth, creating a massive crater that spewed boiling mud.
But Croak, completely unbothered by the impact due to his bone-tempering marrow, caught Aradin by the ankle mid-air, spinning him around before violently throwing him directly into the frozen ocean of permafrost nearby, shattering the ice walls into millions of jagged pieces.
The ferocious impact of their clashes shook the very foundations of Norona City.
Every punch, every parry, and every thrown body sent shockwaves that violently demolished the surrounding structures.
Realizing his physical strikes were being mitigated by the supreme physique, Croak decided to drown his opponent’s momentum entirely.
He slammed his liquid jade staff into the waterlogged ground, taking absolute command of the surrounding fluids.
"Drown in the depths," Croak commanded.
Massive, fifty-meter-tall sea waves, superheated by Eurenia’s lingering flames, rose from the flooded capital like the jaws of a leviathan, crashing down from all sides to trap Aradin in an inescapable aquatic tomb.
The boiling pressure alone was enough to melt flesh from bone.
"A mere puddle cannot hold me!" Aradin shrieked.
Steeling his resolve, he swung his longsword in a violent, circular motion.
The Lord of Cleave skill manifested in its truest form.
Dozens of spatial slashes erupted from his blade, cleanly cutting through the sea waves, slicing the massive wall of boiling water into harmless, scattering ripples that rained down across the ruined stones.
Taking advantage of the falling water, Aradin completely vanished from Croak’s sensory field.
He heavily amped his speed with the absolute remainder of his core mana, tearing through the distorted space.
Shhhk—!
He spawned directly behind Croak’s blind spot, his face twisted in a manic, triumphant grin.
"I got you now, damn frog!"
With every ounce of his remaining strength, Aradin swung his blade in a ruthless, horizontal arc, aiming directly against Croak’s exposed neck to completely behead him.
The blade was fractions of a millimeter away from the flesh.
But High Priest Croak’s reaction time was absolute.
Without turning around, Croak willed his elemental control to manifest instantly.
"Did you?" Croak whispered, a lopsided grin written on his lips.
A hyper-pressurized, dense coat of primordial water materialized around his neck, swirling at thousands of rotations per minute.
When Aradin’s blade struck the water coat, it didn’t hit flesh—it hit an impenetrable, spinning hydraulic shield.
The friction generated a deafening, metallic screech as the blade was violently trapped and blocked mid-swing.
The water dispersing the kinetic force harmlessly into the air while Aradin’s eyes widened in sheer, unadulterated horror.
For what he saw next.
He knew the end had come.