Chapter 385 - 374: 126,000 Missiles
Chapter 385: Chapter 374: 126,000 Missiles
On an ice field a hundred kilometers away.
Inside the central control room of the Cybertron Half-Plane, Allen stood before a massive, ring-shaped screen of light, with no intention of personally going to the battlefield.
His figure was illuminated by countless streams of pulsing data and real-time battlefield footage, his ice-blue eyes devoid of any emotional fluctuation.
Two main screens displayed the divided battlefield.
On the left screen was Gabriel, five hundred meters in the air.
[Target: ’The Whisperer’. Threat Assessment: Medium.]
[Suppression effective. Conforms to projected model.]
On the right screen was Cyclops, locked in a furious melee on the ground.
[Target: ’Bloodline Wizard’ Herman. Threat Assessment: High, and continuously escalating.]
[Enemy bloodline regeneration efficiency exceeds initial model by 347%. Energy level increasing by 4.1% per minute. Limit projected to be not yet reached. Cyclops armor damage at 12%...]
His Mechanical Mind coldly processed the massive amounts of information. The spear and shield he had single-handedly forged were both facing their trial.
The advance flying units were still twenty-seven kilometers from the battlefield, and the ground forces were even farther.
They needed more time.
...
The battle high in the sky had reached a fever pitch.
The Whisperer’s figure grew erratic, constantly flickering in and out of existence through teleportation and phasing.
He had abandoned his ineffective Spiritual Attacks and switched to another plan.
He began to set up countermeasures in the gaps between his teleports and phases.
Each time his form solidified, his fingertips would trace another purple Rune, silently pinning it into the void.
One, two, five, twelve...
The Runes linked together, weaving an invisible net.
The surrounding space began to grow hazy. Light distorted as if an oil painting had been soaked in water, its colors bleeding together. Even the air filled with a cloyingly sweet scent that induced drowsiness.
He was constructing his own domain—a dreamscape.
The ultimate home turf for a Mind School Wizard.
Once he completed it, the line between reality and illusion would blur, and he would become the rules themselves.
Any being dragged inside would become a plaything for him to manipulate at will.
Gabriel’s chanting core captured the anomaly.
Not through perception—it had no Sea of Spirit, nor could it "feel" such a subtle spatial change.
It was the data.
The refractive index of Magic Power in the surrounding space had deviated by 0.7% over the past forty seconds, and the direction of the deviation matched no known natural phenomena.
Gabriel marked this anomaly with the highest threat level and generated a countermeasure in 0.3 seconds.
’Can’t drag this out any longer.’
Gabriel ceased its pursuit.
Its eight golden wings broke from their attack trajectory. Instead of tracking the Whisperer’s body, they streaked at high speed past the purple Runes pinned in the void.
Wherever a wing passed, a tear was ripped in the hazy "veil" that had formed in space.
The Whisperer’s expression changed.
His dream domain hadn’t even been fully enclosed, yet its nodes were being destroyed one by one. ’How could this construct possibly identify my preparations?’
"Dammit—"
But the purpose of the wings wasn’t annihilation, but harassment.
The true killing blow was now brewing.
Gabriel hovered high in the air, bringing its arms together before its chest, palms facing each other. From the T-shaped visor of its Corinthian-style war helm, a milky-white brilliance suddenly became blinding.
Its chanting core was already operating at full power.
It did not choose a flashy combination of spells.
Instead, it selected the most fundamental piece of Witchcraft a Wizard Apprentice learns—the Magic Missile.
But when this simple Witchcraft was infused with an astronomical amount of Magic Power, it underwent a qualitative change.
Gabriel’s Magic Furnace began to overload as its entire reserve of Magic Power was unleashed at once.
The chanting core’s output surged to 300%, compiling the same command three thousand times per second, compressing and shaping the influx of Magic Power.
It slowly raised its hands, palms facing each other. A miniature Magic Ball, radiating pure white light, formed between them, spinning and compressing.
The next second, this Magic Ball abruptly burst apart.
Not into a single beam of light, but into... an endless multitude of light motes.
The instant each mote of light left its palms, it swelled in size, transforming into an apple-sized, rapidly spinning Magic Missile.
One became ten, ten became a hundred, a hundred became a thousand, and a thousand became ten thousand!
A total of one hundred and twenty-six thousand rounds!
The countless Magic Missiles formed a deathly canopy that blotted out the sky. They had no fixed trajectory, no uniform direction, yet they instantly engulfed every inch of space within a one-kilometer radius, leaving no blind spots!
[Witchcraft: Starfall]
This basic, first-level Witchcraft, "Magic Missile," when empowered by Gabriel’s terrifyingly powerful chanting core and its immense Magic Power, was executed with godlike might.
The Whisperer finally panicked.
He felt an overwhelming, inescapable pressure.
Every single orb of light had locked onto his Magic Power signature, and each one was autonomously correcting its flight path.
They bore down on him simultaneously from every angle, every direction, and every inch of space.
Teleport! Phase! Teleport!
The Whisperer activated his phasing ability.
The first wave of missiles passed through his body.
In the 0.4-second interval it took for him to solidify, the second wave had already arrived.
Phase again, pass through. Solidify. The third wave came!
Teleport! Phase! Teleport!
His Spiritual Power was being consumed at a rapid rate.
Every dream-shift burned a massive amount of Spiritual Power, and he had already performed it twenty-seven times in a row.
The twenty-eighth time.
His figure solidified again.
He didn’t phase.
At that moment, his Spiritual Power was depleted.
He saw a sky full of white light, so dense it obscured even the aurora, like an inverted blizzard pouring down from the heavens.
The Whisperer only had time to utter a single syllable.
"You—"
In that instant, the white light consumed everything.
Countless Magic Missiles converged on the same point in mid-air. The continuous chain of explosions lasted for a full six seconds, and the dissipating Magic Power dyed the sky a pale blue.
A moment later, that patch of sky was empty.
Nothing remained.
A Second-level Wizard had been utterly erased from this Plane by the simplest, most brutal form of saturation attack.
Gabriel slowly lowered its arms, its eight wings automatically returning to their positions.
But its movements were noticeably slower—the golden light on its Rune Arrays had dimmed until it was almost invisible, and its Magic Power reserves were nearly depleted.
It slowly descended from five hundred meters up, finally kneeling on one knee on the ice field and entering a low-power standby mode.
A hundred kilometers away, Allen watched Gabriel’s status change from "Combat" to "Standby" and closed the data window with a blank expression.
"That’s the second one."
His gaze shifted to the other screen.
The situation depicted there was far from optimistic.
...
Cyclops’s Earth-Splitting Hammer swung with full force, smashing into Herman’s side.
The sharp CRACK of a breaking spine was clearly audible. The giant was sent flying, plowing a two-hundred-meter-long trench through the ground, pulverizing the building ruins in his path.
But this time, in less than five seconds, the broken spine grew back.
Herman stood up, now even larger than before.
Cyclops’s single eye locked onto its target. The barrel of the volcano cannon on its flank slid out, and a searing white-hot jet stream struck the giant’s upper body. Skin scorched and muscles carbonized, the acrid stench of burning flesh spread for several kilometers.
Just seven seconds later, the charred husk cracked from within, and fresh, pink flesh surged out. Herman broke free from the burnt shell like some kind of monster bursting from a cocoon.
"Exhilarating!" he roared, slamming a backhand punch into Cyclops’s chest plate.
BOOM!
The Earth Vein Tempered Steel let out a dull groan, and the dent in the chest plate visibly deepened.
The punch sent Cyclops staggering back three steps, its right foot crushing the remaining foundation of a school building behind it.
Herman gave it no chance to breathe.
He roared and lunged forward, grabbing Cyclops’s right arm with both hands. Planting his feet and putting his whole body into it—
he lifted the fifty-thousand-ton steel body clean off the ground, swung it in an arc through the air, and slammed it violently back down.
The ice field fractured, and the shockwave sent shattered ice flying everywhere.
Cyclops slowly rose to its feet. Overload warnings blared from its right arm’s drive module, and its shoulder joint had suffered an irreversible displacement.
And Herman was still growing!
Eighty meters.
Ninety meters.
A black, chitinous exoskeleton began to grow all over his body, covering his torso and limbs.
The bones on his head extended upward, forming three curved bone spikes, like a twisted crown.
Two fleshy wings were slowly taking shape on his back, and a black-and-red mist of Magic Power steamed from every pore of his body, blanketing an area several hundred meters wide.
He was no longer an "Ancient Giant," but was on the verge of becoming a true "Abyssal Demon God."
He lowered his head, looking down condescendingly at Cyclops, which was now only half his height. A twisted smile stretched across his lips.
"Not enough! Your toy isn’t hard enough!"
"Now, it’s my turn!"
Herman bent his knees slightly. The frozen earth beneath his feet instantly spiderwebbed with cracks. He leaped up like a mountain, bringing his fists together, and—wreathed in black-and-red Magic Power potent enough to tear space itself—smashed down violently on Cyclops!
BOOM—!
A piercing screech of twisting metal.
The blow sent Cyclops crashing to the ground. The thick plate of "Earth Vein Tempered Steel" on its chest was now horribly caved in with a massive fist print.
A hundred kilometers away, Allen’s eyebrow twitched involuntarily as he watched Cyclops’s armor integrity drop from 92% to 78%, then to 61%.
He looked at the deep fist print on Cyclops’s chest on the light screen and subconsciously calculated what would happen if that punch had landed on him...
’I probably wouldn’t even be reduced to a pile of meat paste. I’d be instantly vaporized.’
"Tough bloodline barbarian..."
He muttered a curse, grateful for the path he had chosen.
Golem Wizards rarely put themselves on the line, because their own lives are their final trump card.
The distance between the vanguard flight formation and the battlefield ticked down from 12 kilometers to 11.
There wasn’t much time left!
Allen’s voice, transmitted via a Magic Power link, poured directly into the core hub of the distant Golem:
"Cyclops, thirty seconds!"
"Hold on for thirty seconds!"
Before the words had even faded.
From the edge of the ice field, a sharp, high-pitched whistle, like a blade, sliced through Herman’s roars and the groaning of metal.
Immediately after, the thick layer of gray clouds on the horizon was brutally torn apart by countless black dots descending from the sky!
The dense swarm of black dots left white contrails in their wake, forming a storm cloud of steel that dove toward the battlefield.