Wizard: I Have a Cultivation System

Murphy’s voice was impassive.

"Your so-called ’ending’ is just one of countless possibilities. And it’s the most pessimistic one at that—built on the assumptions that humanity is eternally selfish, wisdom is forever limited, resources are inevitably scarce, and change is doomed to fail."

"The failure of mutual aid and sharing isn’t a flaw in the concept itself. It’s due to a lack of proper methods, systems, and external support during its implementation. These are the inevitable setbacks and the price one must pay on the path of exploration! To negate exploration itself just because of failure, to decide that the only true path is a return to the conservative, even stagnant, track you have laid out—that is the greatest absurdity of all!"

"More importantly, none of this is actual history! This is just a fragment of a probable future, one you’ve extrapolated from your own pessimistic view of humanity and the world!"

"And you present this illusory extrapolation to me as irrefutable truth? You use it to question me, trying to prove that my Path will ultimately fail and my efforts to protect will be in vain, all to shake my will and force me to admit that your so-called ’balance’ is correct?"

"Since it has come to this—"

"Then let my sword determine whose Path is the one true way in this world!"

The Dark Gold gleam of his sword cut through the chaos of warped time and perception, finally striking the Ironspine Duke’s body.

There was no earth-shattering explosion, nor did the blade pierce his body.

Instead, there was an incredibly faint CRACK!

From where the sword’s light had struck, the first crack appeared on the Ironspine Duke’s body.

It was followed by a second, then a third... and then countless more!

Like a spiderweb, the cracks instantly spread across his entire form, covering him completely.

Beneath the cracks, there was no flesh or bone. Instead, there was only a shimmering, iridescent light, as if a flowing river of stars had been sealed beneath his shell.

"ARGH!"

A furious roar, a mixture of shock, anger, and agony, finally erupted from within the shattering shell!

BOOM!

The Ironspine Duke’s outer shell exploded completely!

Countless crystalline fragments flew in all directions, rapidly dissolving into motes of pure Energy before vanishing into the air.

What was revealed was a being that defied description.

It vaguely held a humanoid shape, but its entire body was composed of a constantly shifting, radiant light.

Its mere presence, the light it radiated, caused the stable space around it to begin to warp.

From deep within its iridescent core, a pair of brilliant yet glacial "eyes" locked onto Murphy.

"Murphy!"

"I tried to persuade you with kind words, to show you the clear Path! But you insisted on remaining lost in your delusion, shattering my barrier to peer into a domain not meant for your eyes! Since you insist on seeking your own doom—"

The humanoid figure of light raised an arm also made of radiance, pointing at Murphy.

"One minute!"

"In this one minute, I will reduce you, your ridiculous conviction, and your Path to nothing! You won’t even get the chance to make a forced jump to the New Realm! It all ends for you, right here, right now!"

Murphy hovered within the Duke’s terrifying aura, his dark robes fluttering gently. His expression was serene as he looked at the Ironspine Duke, who had now completely revealed his inhuman nature.

"Glimpsing the Dawn?"

Before the words had even left Murphy’s lips, the arm of radiant light vanished!

By the time Murphy perceived the attack’s trajectory, a massive fist of pure light had already slammed squarely into his torso!

...

「Blackstone Fortress.」

Only a minute had passed since the cataclysmic event that had sent sand and stone flying as if it were a natural disaster.

The sentry who’d been fiddling with his Copper Coins asked hoarsely, "Wh-what... what in the world was that just now?"

The soldier who’d been whittling wood looked away from the horizon. "How should I know?" he snapped, trying to find his little wooden bird, which had been blown away and was now half-buried in the dirt.

Just then!

BOOM!

A massive, muffled explosion, far more terrifying and deafening than any sound before it, erupted without warning from the seemingly placid blue sky overhead.

The two of them looked up again in horror.

High in the distant heavens, space itself looked as if it had been smashed by an invisible sledgehammer, forming a visible, Rapidly expanding, transparent crater!

At the center of that crater, a streak of Dark Gold light shot out, tumbling backward toward the southwest at a speed that defied perception.

The light’s brightness and speed were easily ten times greater than what had caused the first sandstorm.

A shockwave, far more violent than the last, followed in its wake, spreading out in all directions with the spatial distortion!

"No—!"

The two soldiers only had time to let out a desperate cry.

The next moment, a terrifying sandstorm several times more violent than the one a minute ago descended again!

This time, even some of the less-sturdy structures were torn from the ground by the devastating shockwave and the ensuing hurricane.

The world was instantly plunged into a murky yellow haze, with visibility dropping to near zero.

The gale shrieked like a banshee, a sound like a billion sheets of sandpaper grating together. It hammered against the fortress walls and the soldiers’ Armor, creating a deafening, rapid-fire staccato like a torrential downpour on a metal roof.

The two soldiers pressed themselves flat against the base of the parapet, clinging to the cracks between the stones with all their might. They buried their heads, wishing they could force themselves into the rock itself.

Their armor CLANGED and rattled in the gale, threatening to be torn to shreds at any moment.

In an instant, their mouths, noses, eyes, and ears were once again choked with sand. Every breath was a searing pain, thick with the smell of dust and earth.

An unknown amount of time passed—perhaps only a dozen seconds, perhaps a century—before the devastating shockwave and the ensuing sandstorm finally began to subside.