Jareth’s body hurtled through the air again, crashing into the broken remains of another siege engine.
The impact sent wooden splinters flying as he tumbled across the bloodstained dirt, groaning as he tried to push himself up.
His vision swam, and pain throbbed in his ribs, but the battlefield’s chaos was deafeningly clear.
"Support the captain!" a knight shouted.
"If we kill the Emperor, this war ends!" a mage cried.
With desperation, the knights charged forward, shields raised, swords glinting with aura light. Behind them, the mages chanted, arcane sigils glowing beneath their feet.
A heartbeat later—
BOOM!
Black iron chains erupted from the earth, snaking around Arkanos’s limbs, coiling around his torso, pulling him down.
The ground trembled from the sheer power of the Third Circle binding spell.
The mages poured every ounce of their mana into the restraints, the strain was visible on there faces.
Jareth, still coughing up blood, forced himself to look up.
"This is it. This is our chance!"
The knights roared as they charged in—
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But then—
A low chuckle.
"You fools believe this to be a chance? An opportunity?"
"Don’t insult me."
The chains trembled.
"The coul of a mythical serpent once could not hold me..." His green eyes shon brightly as his muscles flexed.
"This is nothing."
CRACK!
The chains shattered as if they were made of brittle glass.
The resulting shockwave sent the mages flying collapsing to the ground, gasping for air.
"H-He broke it?! Just like that?!" one of them stammered, his hands shaking.
"A Third Circle spell... that should’ve locked him down completely!" another mage cried.
"His level—his level isn’t even in the hundreds! HOW?!"
The knights charging toward him hesitated, panic creeping into their eyes.
"This isn’t normal," one of them whispered.
"We underestimated him!" another shouted. "He’s not just strong—he’s monstrous!"
"Captain! What do we do?!" a knight pleaded, his grip on his sword unsteady.
But before Jareth could answer, another knight screamed, his voice shrill with horror.
"It’s not just him! Look at the others!"
Their eyes darted to Arkanos’s knights—each one cutting through enemy soldiers with ease.
"One of them just took down an entire squad on his own!"
"And they don’t seem to be getting tired!"
"How?! We have the numbers!"
"Why... why are they so much stronger than us?!"
Fear spread like wildfire. Their strategy—their entire battle plan—was crumbling before their eyes.
Arkanos slowly began walking toward the knights standing before him, his green eyes glowing with intensity as his voice rang out,.
"They are men of Valor," he said, each word carried tye weight if his pride.
"Men of pride. Men who have decided they would gladly die for the empire they swear to protect. Men who have gone through hell and will go through it again if I ask them to."
As he walked his body was slowly engulfed in a golden flame like aura.
It was holy power.
"You see it in their eyes, don’t you?"
"Not a trace of fear, not a flicker of doubt. Only certainty. That is why they charge forward with confidence. That is why their blades strike true."
Arkanse pointed his holy sword to the wnomes before him.
"These are true warriors. Not some ragtag group assembled for the sake of numbers, who’s morale now crumble because the victory they were promised now seems beyond reach. These are MY men."
"And they shall bring me victory."
Arkanos’s voice thundered as the air seemed to pulse with his presence, every syllable burning into the hearts of the knights and mages who dared oppose him.
Jareth gritted his teeth, his body still aching from the previous blows, yet his will to win refused to falter. He lifted his sword, shouting hoarsely to the knights,
"Take him down! All your might! We will end this today!"
The knights, though weary, responded with battle crises. They charged forward, their swords raised high as they charged toward Arkanos.
But Arkanos simply stood, the golden aura around him intensifying, his green eyes locked on the advancing knights.
His lips curled into a smile beneath his helmet, cold and mocking.
"Such fools," he said.
With a single, thunderous stomp of his foot, the earth quaked beneath them.
"Bloom," he commanded.
The ground responded. Massive, spiky roots burst from the soil, shooting up with a sudden burst of speed, piercing through the knights.
Screams filled the air as the roots impaled multiple knights, tearing through their armor and emerging in the other side of their bodies, and then retracting just as swiftly as they emerged.
Those unlucky enough to be caught in the brutal attack were left impaled, their blood draining quickly as they slumped to the ground, twitching.
Jareth gritted his teeth as he watched his men fall, but he didn’t care.
With desperation, the surviving knights charged through the carnage, reaching the Emperor with sword in hand.
One knight, desperate, raised his blade and swung at Arkanos with a battle cry.
In one fluid motion, Arkanos sidestepped the attack, his golden aura rippling around him as his sword flashed forward.
The knight’s chest was cleaved open in an instant, the sword cutting through armor and bone.
Blood sprayed across the battlefield as the knight fell, his body twitching violently before it went still.
Another knight, roaring, rushed in, his sword aimed straight for Arkanos’s head. The Emperor didn’t even flinch.
His left hand moved like lightning, catching the blade between his fingers with ease, as if it were no more than a twig.
The knight’s eyes widened in horror as Arkanos’s grip tightened, the blade snapping in his hand with a twart sound, the metal shattering into pieces.
With a mocking smile, Arkanos twisted his hand, throwing the broken pieces aside like trash.
In the same motion, his leg lashed out, a brutal kick landing square in the knight’s chest. The knight flew backward, crashing into the dirt with a sickening thud, his armor shattering under the impact.
He tried to stand up, but in the next instant Arkans stood before him, proceeding ti stomp and cruse hi head with his armoured boot, blood splattering all over.
Arkanos turned his gaze toward the remaining knights, his eyes glowing.
"You’re all the same."
"Lambs to the slaughter."
He said coldly. "You fight for a cause you can never hope to win. And yet... you persist. Why?"
Before any of the knights could respond, one tried to rush in from behind. Arkanos’s sword moved before the knight could even blink.
The knight’s head rolled from his shoulders, his body crumpling in a heap, the blood spurting from the wound in a bloody arc.
The splat of blood hitting the dirt was drowned out by the screams of his comrades.
The remaining knights hesitated, fear creeping into their hearts as Arkanos effortlessly dispatched another warrior with a brutal slash to the stomach.
The knight’s intestines spilled out, and he crumpled to the ground in agony, his screams gurgling in his throat as blood pooled around him.
Another knight tried to attack with a horizontal slash, but Arkanos was faster. His blade met the knight’s sword with a loud clang before twisting his sword around. The knight’s weapon was sent flying from his hand, and in a single fluid movement, Arkanos grabbed the knight by the throat, lifting him off the ground.
He tried to beg, but his was choking.
With a sickening crack, Arkanos twisted, the knight’s neck snapping like a dry twig, his body going limp in the Emperor’s grasp.
Arkanos tossed the lifeless corpse aside as though it were nothing more than a ragdoll, his face cold, his eyes scanning for the next target.
As the knights fell like leaves before a storm, the mages began their assault, throwing earth and lightning spells in desperate attempts to halt Arkanos.
One mage hurled a massive boulder toward him with a grunt.
Arkanos raised his sword, a golden wave of holy power surging from him. The boulder shattered on contact, disintegrating into nothingness with an ear-splitting.
BOOM.
Another mage, trembling, summoned a bolt of lightning, hoping to strike him down. Arkanos didn’t even flinch. With a single motion, he waved his sword, and the lightning was absorbed, dissipating into the air with a crackling sound.
"Is this really an attempt to stop me? The more you all try I don’t know if I said feel sorry or just insulted."
Arkanos said, stepping forward.
One mage, desperate, cast an earth spike straight at Arkanos’s chest. The spike drove toward him with a sudden burst of speed, but Arkanos merely swayed to the side, the spike missing by mere inches. Find your next read on Freewebnovel
Without even breaking stride, Arkanos swung his sword sideways, cutting through the mage’s torso in a single, clean stroke. The mage’s body split open, blood spurting from the wound in a horrifying spray. The mage collapsed to the ground, his mouth open in a silent scream as his life drained away.
As another knight attempted a charge, Arkanos met him with a brutal backhand, knocking the knight’s sword out of his hands and sending him stumbling.
The knight’s eyes widened in panic, but before he could recover, Arkanos’s foot slammed into his chest with a sickening BAM, cracking ribs as the knight’s breath was knocked from his body.
The knight struggled to rise, but Arkanos was already there. He stepped forward and, with an exaggerated motion, stomped on the knight’s head, the crunch of bone under his foot.
Many more tried.
All failed and met their end.
Arkanos’s eyes looked over the battlefield.
The air was filled with the smell of blood, the cries of the dying, the scattered bodies of men.
With a casual glance toward Jareth, Arkanos began to approach him as he spoke once more.
"Is this really the best your forces could muster? And you planned to take my head? Pathetic."
Arkanose glanced at a sword on the bloody ground, and kicked it over to Jareth.
"Pick it up, let us finish what we started, your wife and unborn child await you in the afterlife."
His green eyes pulsed with his mana.
"I shall send you to them soon."