Chapter 318: Rowenna’s Confidence
The forty-foot crater in the center of the Umbral Basin groaned under the invisible suffocating weight of twenty times atmospheric gravity.
The battlefield was no longer just dirt and stone.
The terrifying downforce had compressed the bedrock into a smooth darkened sheet of hyper-dense glass.
Every loose pebble, every stray blade of grass, and every droplet of moisture had been violently flattened against the earth.
The air itself was warping as the deep sapphire magic circle etched into the floor of the crater pulsed in steady cycles, bending the surrounding light inward like a localized spatial sinkhole.
"U-ugh!"
In the center of that crushed zone, Ignis and Frost lay pinned flat against the stone.
The physical pressure was incomprehensible.
It was as if a mountain range had been condensed into a sheet of iron and dropped directly onto their spines.
Their heavy armor plates, forged to withstand the brutal impacts of high-tier magical beasts, were failing.
The steel gauntlets covering their hands scraped uselessly against the ground, grinding into fine stone powder as they tried to find even a millimeter of leverage.
Rowenna stood gracefully at the northern lip of the crater.
Her long silky hair, which had grown significantly longer and more lustrous following her evolution to an S-Rank Grand Runemaster, cascaded past her shoulder in dark waves.
The updrafts generated by the battlefield fires tugged lightly at her pristine robes and beneath the high-quality fabric, her newly sculpted hourglass figure stood relaxed.
Her sharp blue eyes looked down at the two trapped Heroes with a sense of cold detachment.
"Is this truly the limit of Sky’s vanguard?" Rowenna murmured softly.
Her voice was cool and smooth, carrying effortlessly over the whistling wind of the battlefield.
She didn’t sound angry or triumphant. Rowenna sounded genuinely disappointed.
"I expected at least a minor challenge," Rowenna continued, delicately dusting an imaginary speck of ash from her sleeve. "Especially after I spent so much time refining my deconstructions."
Down in the crushed bedrock, Ignis’s teeth gritted together with such feral intensity that a faint cracking sound echoed inside his scorched helmet.
Blood welled up from his gums.
The sheer gravitational weight was compressing his internal organs, forcing the dark crimson liquid to drip past his lips and splatter onto the flat stone beneath his visor.
Yet, his mana core refused to submit.
It flared inside his chest with wild desperate defiance, pumping raw heat through his agonizing veins.
"Shut... up..." Ignis spat.
His voice was thick with blood and distortion, grinding out from his throat like crushed gravel.
He forced his neck upward, defying the crushing atmospheric downforce through pure willpower.
"Do you think..." Ignis snarled with his bloodshot eyes burning beneath his visor. "...a single gravity array... is enough to put down the Flame Warden of the Unmovable Wall?!"
Beside him, Frost was fairing no better.
His icy blue eyes burned with cold panicked resolve.
He couldn’t lift his torso. Every breath he drew felt like dragging jagged, broken glass through his lungs under the weight of twenty atmospheres.
Yet, his left hand twitched.
Through agonizing physical effort, Frost managed to slide his frost-covered gauntlet barely three inches across the crushed stone, bringing it agonizingly close to Ignis’s scorched pauldrons.
"Ignis..." Frost choked out.
His breath froze the ambient moisture instantly, coating the mud beneath his chin in a layer of dark blue ice.
"Thermal Overdrive," Frost whispered, his voice laced with finality. "Now."
"Do it!" Ignis roared, spit and blood flying from his lips.
The dual elemental Wardens did not attempt to fight the twenty-times downforce with physical muscle.
They were veterans of countless wars under Sky’s banner, and they understood that raw physical strength meant nothing against spatial manipulation.
Instead, they tapped directly into the deepest, most dangerous secret of their paired synergy.
It was a technique, forged through years of fighting side-by-side on the bloody frontlines of the Sovereign Realm.
Ignis forced his left gauntlet flat against Frost’s shoulder plate.
Simultaneously, Frost clamped his frost-covered fingers onto Ignis’s arm.
A violent apocalyptic thermal reaction detonated between their bodies.
Ignis channeled every single drop of his superheated, white-hot flame mana directly into Frost’s body.
At the exact same microsecond, Frost flooded Ignis’s core with absolute-zero glacial energy.
The collision of these two opposing elemental extremes at point-blank range did not result in a simple neutralization.
In the high-tier physics of the Sovereign Realm, introducing sudden, temperature shifts into a compressed space created a rapid, explosive molecular expansion.
KABOOOOOOOM!
A massive shockwave of superheated steam, thermal displacement, and pure pressure erupted from the center of the crater!
The sudden, violent expanding force generated tens of thousands of pounds of upward pressure in a fraction of a second.
The thermal explosion completely overwhelmed the downward vector of Rowenna’s gravity well.
’Oh that’s actually very smart...’
CRACK! CRACK! SHATTER!
The deep purple runic circle etched into the bedrock shattered like brittle glass.
The complex geometric lines fractured into thousands of glowing magic particles, instantly dissolving into the burning chaotic air.
Ignis and Frost shot straight up out of the crater like two elemental meteors.
They flipped mid-air, tearing through the thick cloud of boiling steam generated by their own explosion.
They soared over the lip of the crater, crashing heavily onto the scorched grass thirty yards away.
Their heavy boots dug deep, ten-foot trenches into the mud as they skidded to a halt.
"Haah... We managed..."
"Damn... right guh!"
They were panting heavily.
Blood leaked from their broken armor seals, and their bodies were bruised and battered from the immense gravitational crushing they had just endured.
However, their combined elemental aura erupted to heights three times greater than before.
The near-death experience had pushed their cores into overdrive.
Ignis threw his head back and spat a thick wad of dark blood onto the ground.
A wild sneer spread across his face as white-hot plasma fire engulfed both of his arms, raging all the way up to his shoulders.
The air around him began to warp and distort from the sheer volume of heat.
"HAHAHAHA!" Ignis laughed hysterically.
His voice echoed over the battlefield with a mad feral thrill. He pointed a burning finger toward the crater.
"Did you see that, Arcanist?!" Ignis screamed, his eyes wide with adrenaline. "You thought you could lock us down with a simple spatial trick?! Our synergy bypasses basic physics! You cannot hold the storm!"
Frost stood right beside him with his posture rigid and unyielding.
His ice-covered armor hummed with a terrifying frequency.
Jagged, sub-zero crystalline spears materialized out of thin air, hovering around his waist like floating daggers spinning with lethal velocity.
"You got arrogant, woman," Frost said coldly, wiping a stream of half-frozen blood from his cheek with the back of his gauntlet. "You relied on your power and thought we were common soldiers. You gave us time to sync our cores. Now, the battlefield belongs to us!"
The collateral force of their thermal release had completely transformed the surrounding environment.
For a hundred yards in every direction, the green grass instantly flash-froze into jagged, dark blue glaciers.
Seconds later, massive geysers of roaring crimson fire erupted from the subterranean fissures beneath the ice.
’They’re really strong...’
The magma geysers shattered the glaciers into floating, burning ice shards.
The sky above them turned into a swirling chaotic vortex of gray ash, boiling steam, and freezing rain as the entire central clearing of the Umbral Basin had been turned into a literal hellscape of dual elemental destruction.
The winds howled across the basin.
The conflicting pressures of extreme heat and cold bent trees in half, snapping trunks like twigs and sending scorched mud soaring across the frontlines.
Seeing the two Heroes break free and unleash such widespread, catastrophic environmental havoc, two nearby members of Blessed Land’s Vanguard immediately pivoted away from their skirmishes.
Fenna, still carrying the unconscious form of Lupina over her shoulder, skidded to a halt atop a tall stone ridge overlooking the chaos.
Without a moment of hesitation, Fenna’s composite bow was instantly drawn to her ear.
A glowing armor-piercing arrow materialized on the string, aimed straight down through the thermal currents, locked directly onto Ignis’s chest plate.
Her eagle-sharp hazel eyes calculated the trajectory through the chaotic wind in a split second.
She adjusted for the thermal updraft with her breathing perfectly slow and steady despite the roaring inferno below.
Beside the ridge, Gunnhild slammed her massive iron tower shield into the cracked earth with a resonating thud.
Her red eyes burned with eager combat lust.
She gripped the leather hilt of her broadsword with her muscular frame tensing as she prepared to dive straight into the elemental storm.
"Hey! Rowenna!" Gunnhild bellowed over the roaring winds.
Her loud boisterous voice carried across the clearing like a warhorn, cutting through the sound of shattering ice.
"Stop playing around with those two elemental freaks!" Gunnhild yelled, pointing her broadsword toward the geysers. "Fenna and I will flank them from the left! I’ll take the fire idiot’s charge straight to my shield! You just lock the ice guy back down before he freezes the whole damn supply line!"
Up on the ridge, Fenna’s eyes narrowed as her fingers held the bowstring taut.
"I have a clear line on the freezing one’s right shoulder joint," Fenna announced. "One shot will sever his internal mana circulation. Give the order, Rowenna."
Down in the center of the storm, Rowenna didn’t turn her head.
She didn’t flinch from the roaring heat waves washing over her long lustrous hair.
She stood with her arms resting peacefully at her sides, framed against the backdrop of roaring fire and jagged frost like a queen standing in her private garden.
Rowenna simply raised her right hand, casually waving her gloved fingers in a dismissive stay-back motion toward her Vanguard sisters.
"Focus on clearing Sky’s remaining heavy infantry units along the western tree line, Gunnhild." Rowenna instructed.
Her voice was completely calm and confident, if Gunnhild didn’t see her face, it would have been hard to say that this was Rowenna at all.
"Fenna, continue moving Lupina to the medical tent at the rear," Rowenna added smoothly. "I do not require assistance here."
Rowenna paused.
Her deep blue eyes tilted toward the two glowing elemental Heroes, and a small razor-sharp smirk curved her lips.
"I am going to handle these two... completely alone."
Gunnhild blinked in surprise, her broadsword lowering a fraction of an inch.
Then, she threw her head back and let out a loud, boisterous laugh that shook her armored shoulders.
"BAHAHAHA!" Gunnhild cheered, pulling her heavy iron shield out of the dirt with ease. "Look at you, showing off just because you got that shiny new upgrade! Fine, fine! Have your fun, Rowenna! But if you leave a single drop of liquor in Sky’s command tents after blowing them up, I’m taking it all for myself!"
Up on the ridge, Fenna gave a concise respectful nod.
"Understood," Fenna said quietly. "Do not let them burn the western forest. The monsters..."
With a swift, silent jump, Fenna vanished into the shadows with Lupina over her shoulder.
Gunnhild turned with a wild grin, charging back into the main melee line, her broadsword already swinging toward a clustered formation of Sky’s heavy guards with reckless enthusiasm.
Standing entirely alone against the dual elemental storm, Rowenna finally decided to take the engagement seriously.
She reached her right hand out into the empty air beside her.
HUMMMMM!
A vertical tear in space materialized perfectly beside her shoulder.
The rift glowed with brilliant, pulsating sapphire light, radiating an aura of intense arcane pressure that instantly stabilized the chaotic winds around her body.
Rowenna reached her slender fingers gracefully into the spatial rift.
Her hand clamped around the polished, heavy metal shaft of her primary weapon.
She smoothly pulled out The Sapphire-Core World Weaver.
It was a magnificent staff forged of high-density Tier 3 mythril alloy, covered in microscopic runic engravings that detailed the fundamental laws of gravity and space.
Capping the top of the staff was a massive pristine blue sapphire core that radiated pure unrefined power.
The moment the World Weaver fully entered the atmosphere, Rowenna’s S-Rank mana core flared to life.
A massive visible deep-blue shockwave of pure mana rippled outward from her boots.
The density of her aura flattened the rising flames for fifty yards and blew the thick suffocating ash entirely out of the clearing.
"Alone?!" Ignis roared, his blood boiling at her dismissive attitude and casual display of power.
His pride as a Warden was shattered... He refused to be looked down upon by a backline caster.
"You damn arrogant bitch!" Ignis screamed, his white-hot plasma arms flaring wildly. "WE ARE THE DUAL ELEMENTAL WARDENS!"
Ignis and Frost attacked simultaneously, their movements syncing with terrifying seamless coordination born from years of shared bloodshed.
"INFERNO DRAGON!" Ignis bellowed from the bottom of his lungs.
He thrust both of his hands forward and a massive, two-hundred-foot long dragon of pure white-hot plasma fire erupted from his palms.