Chapter 408: Overwhelming Disparity
’Who is this human? She simply stopped one of my strongest attack with a single finger?’ The Lion thought, its instincts flaring with a cold spike of panic as it stared intently at the calm, unbothered Lady standing before it.
"I won’t ask twice." The lady started, her voice cutting through the ringing silence of the battlefield. She was staring at the towering creature with a small, dangerous frown.
"How did you enter this planet? If I am right, all the global gateways in this world should have all been completely destroyed... Then, how can you still invade?" She asked, her tone demandingly absolute.
"Hmph! Do you think I came from a pathetic mortal gateway?!" The Lion roared back at her, its pride as a warrior wounded by the implication that it relied on basic structural portals.
"So you aren’t from the gateways, meaning, the entity who attacked earth from the start, didn’t send you guys... Tell me, who sent you, and why?" She asked again, her mind immediately restructuring her understanding of the creatures.
"I can’t tell you who sent us, but I can tell you one definitive thing." The Lion’s predatory eye glowed with a blinding, blood-red light.
"By destroying the one hundred and ninety five Gatekeepers of this world, you heavily angered some very powerful beings in the higher worlds... Now, they want this entire world completely erased! My name is Zayn!! I am the 20th Aeon!! Soon, the entirety of the 20 Aeons will formally descend and wipe out this planet to the last soul! As the 20th, I was merely sent ahead to test your true strength!! And honestly, I am disappointed."
Zayn aggressively pointed his massive, vibrating sword directly at her chest:
"Tell me, who was the one who brutally killed the one hundred and ninety five Gatekeepers?!!"
"I am a bit lost." The Leader said, her expression remaining entirely flat, completely unfazed by the threat of a planetary purge.
"You just said someone else sent you, and you explicitly didn’t come from the gateways, then why are you so deeply concerned about the fate of the Gatekeepers?" She asked, probing for the fractures in his narrative.
"Hmph! I said we aren’t from the gateways, but I didn’t say the Gatekeepers are from it too."
"So you mean, these elite Aeons, and the Gatekeepers are ultimately serving under the exact same Master?"
"Don’t you dare compare us to those weak Gatekeepers... Those guys are just lowly slaves serving under the Dragon family! They aren’t on equal standing with us, the Aeons!" Zayn growled, spitting on the blackened soil at the mention of the guardians.
"Alright, why don’t you show me why you’re any different." She asked, tilting her head slightly to the side in a casual, mocking challenge.
"Hahaha!! Seems I don’t have to hold back my true form anymore!!" It yelled, its voice vibrating the atmospheric moisture.
The very next moment, a colossal, blood-red wave of destructive energy violently burst out from its core, shooting straight into the high sky like a volcanic eruption. The terrifying display of power instantly stunned Tang Lu, who was just awkwardly landing on the fortified city wall in his underwear. Not only him, but every single surviving soldier on the battlements was completely dumbfounded by the suffocating weight of the pressure. Even the Leader raised a sharp eyebrow in mild curiosity.
"AHHHHHHHH!!"
The Lion screamed in agony and triumph as more raw energy violently burst out from his muscular frame. A long, prehensile tail tore through his flesh; then, it was rapidly followed by a massive surge in his height and the dense thickening of his dark mane. In less than two minutes, a terrifying, 5 meters tall humanoid Lion stood proudly before her, the spatial fabric around him warping from his sheer density. His sword rapidly melted and reshaped itself, expanding its blade to perfectly match its Master’s new, titanic proportions.
"A King stage monster... Is this your true strength?" She asked, narrowing her purple eyes slightly at the gargantuan creature, evaluating its raw power output.
"Compare to the others, I am incredibly weak... I am only at the early King stage. But as I said before, this planet is absolutely doom."
BOOOOM!!
With a localized sonic boom, it shot forward with terrifying velocity, instantly appearing directly before the lady, and slashed its massive sword downward with the force of a falling moon, aiming directly at her head.
"This world is doom? Who exactly gave you the courage to spat such utter nonsense?!"
BOOOOM!!!
The earth-shattering attack squarely met its target, sending a catastrophic wave of absolute destruction ripping all over the place, tearing through the landscape in every single direction.
BOOOOM!!!
The violent sonic shockwaves smashed right into the city’s grand defense wall, the concussive force forcefully throwing all the elite soldiers to the hard ground.
"This?! That monster was holding back from the very start!" Tang Lu muttered, horrified as he pushed himself up from the stone ramparts. His chest tightened with a sudden wave of guilt; if the Lion had used its full, unrestricted strength from the beginning of their duel, he would be a corpse by now.
"The Leader?!" His eyes went wide as he stared frantically through the billowing smoke, which finally made way in the morning breeze.
"...?!!"
Everyone on the wall was instantly stunned into a paralyzed silence. Even Zayn was completely dumbfounded, his jaw dropping in sheer disbelief as he stared down. There were two tiny, pale fingers, effortlessly pinching the razor-sharp edge of his massive, two-handed sword, stopping it dead in its tracks right above the Lady’s head.
"You?!!"
"When you reach the fusion stage, each individual level, no matter if it is the Early, Mid, or the peak stage, the difference in sheer strength is simply too wide to bridge by effort alone. So tell me." She asked, her voice dropping to a freezing whisper as her purple eyes flared:
"How dare you, a mere Early king stage monster, blindly attack me, a Peak King stage cultivator?!"
With a simple, casual movement of her fingers, she flexed her energy. The legendary class sword instantly shattered into a thousand useless pieces of flying shrapnel.
Zayn violently flew backwards from the massive energetic backlash, his giant 5-meter frame smashing heavily onto the scorched ground, coughing and vomiting a massive mouthful of dark, viscous blood.
"Impossible... How can a mere human from this small, backward world reach such a ridiculous level? It’s fundamentally impossible." Zayn said, his eyes entirely filled with deep, existential disbelief as he desperately struggled to stand back up on his trembling legs.
"Nothing is impossible... You are simply too arrogant." She said coldly, her arms folded serenely behind her back as she looked down on the fallen Aeon.
"Arrogant?! Are you absolutely sure about that?"
Suddenly, the temperature plummeted to absolute zero. Everyone on the battlefield froze, their instincts screaming of an even greater anomaly. They slowly raised their terrified heads to the sky as a rotting, decaying hand covered in ancient cloth firmly grabbed the spatial fabric of space itself, and violently tore it aside like old parchment.
Instantly, the terrifying Aura of a true Peak King stage entity violently burst out from the spatial rift, spreading an suffocating, deathly pressure all over the entire city. From the dark void, a Zombie dressed immaculately in a pristine butler outfit calmly walked out into the sunlight. Its glowing red gaze was fixed entirely on the Protectors’ Leader, completely ignoring any other lifeforms.
’A Peak King stage?!’
The Lady’s flat expression finally vanished. Her gaze hardened and she finally got serious, dropping into a flawless combat stance as she stared directly at the undead butler.
The real war for Earth had just begun.
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