Tarian knew he was going to die. In fact, he should have died a moment ago, but the Rune Wolf by his side gave its life for him.
Instead of feeling relief, Tarian felt rage. While it was the purpose of his subjects to give their life for their future lord, this price must be carefully weighed to see if it was worth it.
Maybe the Rune Wolf would be able to escape if it chose to, and yet it had given up its life, and Tarian would not be far behind.
"What a waste, you laid down your life for me, and yet your sacrifice was worth nothing in the end."
Tarian began to wonder if it was the right time to unleash the lightning in his blood, but he knew that doing so was admitting defeat, and Tarian had sworn to himself that he would die rather than allow his bloodline to win.
He was too tired at the moment, and if he unleashed the power of the lightning in his bloodline, it would save his life, but since he was not the one controlling it, then he would have lost, and he would never improve again. He could get stronger as a Siphon, but his control over his lightning would become fixed.
By letting his lightning take control, he had told his proud bloodline that he was not worthy of it, and he would no longer be Emperor in the future.
For so long, there had never been an Emperor who wielded lightning; the last died a hundred and twenty thousand years ago, defending the continent from a war against other Great Royal Houses, and from that point it had been hard to find who could control their lightning until they reached the seventh stage, and became worthy of becoming Emperor.
Did he want to live a life of eternal disgrace or die as he was, pure and untainted by failure?
As he was inside his head, Tarian never stopped moving; he had stopped wielding his lightning and was just focused on using his blade to hack his way through the endless horde.
Perhaps only three hundred remained, and soon it would be his turn.
He swung his blade in a wide arc, killing five spawns, and then he heard a sickening crack as his blade snapped, and Tarian's hand fell to the side. He had given everything, and there was nothing more to give. He would die with the dream of an Emperor still in his heart.
He watched dozens of fangs-filled mouths fall upon him, and suddenly they all froze, and the sound of combat swiftly ended as the entire river of abomination stopped moving.
Tarian's eyes widened in surprise as he looked at the vast tides of bodies that began to recede like a wave returning to the depths.
"What… what just happened?"
®
With so many bodies emerging from the pit, and the fact that each of them was at the peak Fury Forge level, the entire city had been flattened, and there was hardly any structure left standing higher than two feet. It would not be long before even those were pounded to dust.
With the eyesight of Siphons at the Fury Forge level and above, they should be able to see all corners of this sealed off district, but the tides of bodies that now comfortably numbered in the hundreds of thousands had blocked off all sight for a while, and because they were all fighting for their lives, they were not focused on what was happening in the distance, and now they saw… something.
It was hard to see at first, because there were so many bodies in between them and Elias, but whenever he used his bloodwhips, his surroundings for dozens of feet glowed red, and for a moment, it was almost as if it was a large red blinking eye in the center of the storm, but that was not a storm… it was something much worse.
Clearly, these creatures must have thought the same thing as they all retreated to snuff out that one light, and in this instant, the surviving candidates saw the full scale of this conflict, and half of them collapsed to their knees.
Ⓔ
Elias was maybe three thousand meters away from the pit, a distance he could cross in seconds if he set himself to it, but now that could as well be the far side of the moon.
There was a loud sound as if the world was moving, and the ground shook all around him, but it was not an earthquake or the world tilting on its side; it was the sound of a hundred thousand abominations directing their focus to the only real threat here.
And as if that was not enough, there was a loud booming sound from the pit as if a volcano had erupted and bodies burst out of it like a geyser in a continuous, unending column that rose from the depths and arced through the air like a fountain of flesh.
He was now surrounded on all sides, and as if that was not enough, they fell on him from above, their bodies twisting, their claws extended, and their mouths open in silent screams.
Elias glanced up, like the spawns, he was silent, but even in his gray eyes of stone, there was a spark of hunger so profound that it was nearly impossible to describe.
Inside his head, the Passenger suddenly roared, "More! I want More! More! More! More!"
He squared off his body and raised his shield, absorbing the impacts from hundreds of bodies that were coming at him from all directions, and he was driven a step back, as their bodies exploded into ash from the impact alone when they were crushed into paste.
The next wave hit his shoulders, his helmet, his arms with devastating impact, and Elias absorbed all that punishment, and he swung his blade, cut five out of the air, but ten more took their place, and it was at this point that the majority of the spawns falling like rain reached him.
"Fwoosh… Boom!"
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