Chapter 137: Chapter 102: Frenzied Stacking: 4000 Stacks of Steel of the Heart
He was facing hundreds of Destiny Weavers! An endless horde of Destiny Abominations!
He was facing him, a Demon Prince!
He was facing the eternal and undying Venerable Great Demon, the machinations and Mighty Power of the God of Conspiracy!
Stein swore that he would repay Reinhardt a thousand, ten thousand times over for all the humiliation and fear he had been made to feel on Verne Bridge! He would make him taste this world’s deepest despair!
But just as he was reveling in the mortals’ pleas and cries, savoring Reinhardt’s fury...
An inopportune voice suddenly reached his ears—the defiant roar of a soldier on the brink of death.
"The Divine Emperor’s light never fades! You damned Demons! The wrath of the Vengeful Angels will burn you all to..."
The roar was cut short, leaving only the gurgle of blood flooding his throat as he collapsed.
Stein scoffed inwardly, but an inexplicable anger surged in his chest. ’The Divine Emperor’s light is dim before the Void Storm, and your Vengeful Angels are practically drowning on Verne Bridge. And you’re still expecting them to save this world?’
’How utterly foolish!’
He had conquered one world after another for Grand Lord Kles, destroyed one Defense Army legion after another. Hundreds of thousands of Mortal Soldiers had died by his hand.
He had seen so many Mortal Soldiers kneel and beg for mercy, desperate to live.
But Seventeenth was different.
The ferocity of the Defense Army’s resistance here was beyond anything he had imagined, and it infuriated him.
’After witnessing the immense Mighty Power of the Destiny Weaver Legion, these ants should be on their knees, surrendering to their fate. Not acting like that clueless Imperial Knight, Reinhardt, who doesn’t know when he’s beaten.’
’They have no respect for me at all.’
Stein casually slew a civilian before him and sneered, "I won’t let the Destiny Weavers kill you, Reinhardt, because I will personally torture you to death."
In his mind, with over a hundred Five-star Military Rank Weaver Knights surrounding him, and tens of thousands of Destiny Abominations clogging Verne Bridge...
’Even if they all lined up to be killed, it would take Reinhardt a full day and night to cut through them. Besides, is there really any Knight who can take on more than a hundred Destiny Weavers alone?’
He refused to believe it.
Reinhardt dropped the corpse of the Weaver Knight, now thoroughly dead.
He looked up, his gaze fixed on the distant Upper City District. His eyes traveled over the towering mountains of corpses as Stein’s incessant taunts and provocations coalesced into a monstrous rage, surging through his veins.
He knew what Stein was planning.
The cunning traitor was terrified of the Divine Emperor’s Fury. He was trying to use the Demons on Verne Bridge to bog Reinhardt down, relying on sheer numbers to trap him here until he was dead.
"Stein..."
He ignored the Abominations clambering over him, trying to pull him down with their sheer numbers and devour him. The Aikacia Nozzles, like Angel’s Wings, shifted, blasting a torrent of high-temperature Energy at the ground and launching him into the air.
Abomination after abomination rained down from above.
Reinhardt whispered the name he had seared into his memory. The Flame of Blood Fury roared to life in his eyes. War Axe in hand, he became a meteor of death, crashing down among the enemies on Verne Bridge as his Blood Armor pulsed with a crimson light.
PURE! UTTER! MADNESS!
Plunging into the enemy horde, Reinhardt moved as if they weren’t there. His War Axe was an unstoppable force!
Everywhere he went, swathes of Abominations were cleaved in two.
Any Knight of Destiny Weaver who dared to stand in his way faced the simple, brutal downswing of his War Axe. It mattered not whether they wielded Demon Evil Power or Knight Power.
Against Reinhardt’s power, which now surpassed the Peak of Seven-Star Military Rank, they were fragile and pathetic, collapsing with a single strike!
Reinhardt ignored every attack that struck his Morphic Armor, weathering the onslaught with his superhuman physical limits and the sheer intensity of his Mighty Power!
With every step he took, another mangled corpse of a Weaver Knight fell beneath his War Axe, and the bodies of Destiny Abominations piled into mountains.
The crisp chime of Steel of the Heart rang endlessly in Reinhardt’s ears.
His physical limits and the intensity of his Mighty Power increased with every Weaver Knight he cut down.
But Reinhardt, completely lost to the slaughter and his own rage, heard nothing but the screams and wails of the dying.
He had only one thought in his mind: kill every last Weaver Knight, then smash Stein’s smirking face in! He would make that traitor pay an unbearable, bloody price for everything he had done!
War is a fire.
It consumes all hope.
Yet within that fire, some beings strive on, reborn from the flames.
On the front lines before Caster Monastery, the last two Battle Group Knights fought alongside Combat Priest Raphael, giving their all to protect their home as countless Mortal Soldiers sacrificed their lives in the maelstrom of death.
Half an hour.
An hour...
Every second of the battle felt like an eternity.
Raphael’s breath came in ragged gasps, his energy all but spent. Yet he remained on the front lines, a living standard, constantly inspiring the will of the Mortal Soldiers to fight on.
And on Verne Bridge...
Reinhardt’s chest heaved, scorching air billowing from his mouth and nose. Beneath his feet and all around him, on this Imperial megastructure more than twenty meters wide, there was no room left for corpses.
Rivers of blood flowed freely.
Faint blue system text flashed continuously in Reinhardt’s vision.
[Giant Devouring Current Layer Number: 7810]
[Physical Enhancement Coefficient: 7.810]
[Heart Steel Goliath Giant Current Permanent Physique Buff: 21%]
Reinhardt had no idea how many Weaver Knights and Abominations he had slain. But during that long hour of combat, his physical limits hadn’t been drained by his Blood Fury and Bloodthirsty Madness.
On the contrary, he had fueled his war with war, his power not just holding steady, but growing!
He fought until the dark red Steel of the Heart icon, unique to hero units, no longer appeared above the Weaver Knights’ heads.
It was a battle and slaughter of utter madness!
He had furiously stacked four thousand layers of Steel of the Heart!
Reinhardt could clearly feel an ever-growing power coursing through his body—a Mighty Power that had surpassed the level of an Official Knight and was now advancing into an unknown domain!
In fact, with his peerless combat instincts and Knight Talent, Reinhardt could vaguely sense that his strength had reached the absolute peak an Official Knight could achieve.
He was just one step away from ascending to the rank of Earth Knight!
But that single step felt impossibly hard to take.
And now, in the wake of his frenzied slaughter, the battle on Verne Bridge had fallen utterly silent.
The Weaver Knights, wielders of Demon Power, stared at Reinhardt as if he were a bloodthirsty madman... No! They stared at him as if he were a bloodthirsty Great Demon from the Dark Abyss itself!
It was the absolute reverence reserved only for the truly powerful!
It was an irrepressible, soul-deep, and extreme terror!
As the Flame of Blood Fury burned in Reinhardt’s eyes, and his terrifying gaze—like that of an Abyssal Great Demon—swept across the bridge, every last Weaver Knight began to tremble uncontrollably.
