Chapter 483: Raj vs Death Knight
After giving the historical order, the President placed the handset on the desk and leaned back in his chair. He turned off the TV and began massaging the bridge of his nose in frustration.
Suddenly, his phone rang out in frantic tones. He grabbed the phone from the table and answered the call.
"Sir, we have an emergency report from Oakland."
The President frowned. "Report."
"Sir... Mr. Raj, along with his companions, has vanished from inside the containment house."
"All the mana-detecting devices around the house suddenly began fluctuating before dropping to zero. When we entered the house, it was completely empty."
The President immediately rose from his seat.
"Teleportation?"
"The possibility is high, sir. According to Mr. Raj’s testimony, he possesses the ability to teleport."
Another voice suddenly cut into the line, filled with disbelief.
"Sir, we have visual confirmation from San Francisco. Please take a look at the live stream of the Lord of the Oceans."
The President immediately grabbed the remote again and turned on the TV.
In the stream, Raj was standing face to face with the very anomaly that had destroyed the strongest raid team in human history within seconds.
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Across the entire world, mobile phones, televisions, and advertisement screens embedded in buildings, anything with a screen, was performing one single task: broadcasting the live stream of the dungeon at San Francisco.
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"Can you really do it, Raj Singh!?" Reyaan, the chairman of the Indian Awakener Association, cried out in excitement, leaping from his seat.
"If he truly emerges victorious today, we must inform him of Operation Last Stand," said a breathtaking woman with long, straight black hair and eyes as deep as the night, seated before the chairman’s table. "He may prove to be a key figure in the coming calamity." Saya, the black-haired woman, ranked S-Class on record and SSS-Class in true ability, declared with certainty.
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"I have heard enough of you," Raj muttered, standing behind the Death Knight.
"Come forth, Devouros Prime," he ordered, thrusting his hand upward.
His shadow beneath him stirred, turning a molten black. From within its depths emerged the dark figure of a troll, clutching a massive mace etched with several intricate white patterns across its body.
"Hold it for a few minutes."
Prime gave a single nod before charging at the Death Knight. As it ran, a squad of armoured trolls forged from pure darkness ascended from its shadow, rallying behind it into battle.
Ding...
"Your Summon, Devouros Prime, has used the skill: Shadow Summon."
While the unit of shadow trolls engaged the Death Knight, Raj closed his eyes and commanded, "Vivi, activate the Extreme Yin Transformation."
"Initialising Host’s request..."
"Activating the Extreme Yin Transformation..."
From somewhere deep within Raj, an ominous coldness began spreading across his body. The hair band holding his hair loosened and untied itself, spilling his hair free. It rose upward, shifting from black into an even darker shade, a tail of black energy bleeding into the sky from their tips. The sclera of his eyes turned a deep, hollow black, his eyes resembling a pair of dark comets hurtling through the void. Behind his head, an abyssal ring as large as his torso materialised, carrying six black orbs connected at regular intervals across its circumference.
The ominous voices that had continuously gnawed at Raj’s sanity melted into a soothing lullaby. They no longer hammered at his skull with a throbbing headache. He had not felt such profound inner peace since the Second Ultimate War had ended. It was as if he had become one with death itself.
Raj fixed his terrifying gaze upon the Death Knight, which had already torn through every last shadow troll. Prime, too, appeared to be nearing the edge of its limits.
"Return, Prime," Raj ordered, his voice deep and absolute.
Prime instantly dissolved into its shadow, narrowly dodging a sweeping slash from the Death Knight’s sword, before reappearing silently at its master’s side.
Raj rested his hand on Prime’s head. A thick, dense dark energy flowed from his palm into Prime’s body. Its shattered form began to knit itself back together, turning whole once again.
"What have you done?" the knight demanded, its voice carrying an unmistakable edge of shock and unease.
"Preparation to beat the hell out of you," Raj said, tightening his grip around his sword.
The moment the words left his mouth, Prime let out a guttural roar, as though it was wholeheartedly agreeing with its master’s declaration.
It launched forward, splitting the ground beneath its paws as it surged ahead. At the same instant, Raj vanished completely from his position.
Mid-stride, Prime’s body began to enlarge, swelling past twenty feet within the span of a few seconds. It descended upon the Death Knight, driving its mace downward with its full weight like a falling meteor. The Death Knight raised its longsword to block the blow, but the sheer force of the impact fractured the ground beneath it, sending massive chunks of debris hurtling in every direction.
In the same breath, Raj materialised on the knight’s shoulders and drove his sword into the gap at the knight’s neck.
The knight twisted its body at the last moment, narrowly avoiding a fatal wound. However, in doing so, its focus shattered.
Prime seized the opening without hesitation, slamming its massive foot squarely into the knight’s chest and sending it launched into the air.
While it was still airborne, Raj appeared directly before it, seized its head with both hands, and commanded,
"Absorb!"
Dark energy began tearing itself free from the knight and flooding into Raj’s body.
"Graaaghhh!!" A scream of sheer agony ripped from the knight as its Yin energy was forcibly stripped away. In desperation, it swung its longsword at Raj, the blade blazing with Sword Aura.
Down at the ground behind them, Prime swung its massive mace at the empty air.
"Shadow Switch!"
In a sudden blink, Raj vanished and in his place appeared the enormous body of Prime. The mace that it had already swung connected squarely with the knight’s head. A shockwave of air rippled outward from the sonic boom as the knight crashed into the ground with a thunderous impact.
"Breath of Grave!"
Raj was already standing inside the crater formed by the knight’s fall, exhaling a vapour of ice-cold breath. For just a moment, the breath locked the knight completely in place, frost crawling across its armour.
From the sky above, Prime came plummeting down and landed directly upon the knight, smashing it into the ground with earth-shaking force.
"How could you!!!" the knight roared, its body erupting with a violent surge of dark energy that hurled Prime into the air. Before the shockwave could reach Raj, he had already teleported well outside its range.
"How could you possess such power!" the knight demanded, its armour cracking apart and falling away piece by piece, black blood pouring freely from beneath. "It’s so unfair!!!"
It seized the longsword with both hands, holding the blade parallel to its body with the tip pointing toward the sky.
"I am Ezekiel Silverhart, the last sword of the Valtorian Empire," the knight declared in a thunderous roar that shook the very air around it. "I must destroy this world at all cost. I will not be defeated again."
A tremendous torrent of energy poured into the longsword, the blade igniting and stretching upward into a towering pillar of dark energy that tore through the clouds above.
"Sword of Valtorian: The Final Stand!"
From the pillar, razor-sharp discs of pure condensed energy began expanding outward at various heights, spinning and slicing through everything in their path. Buildings, rocks, and debris were cleaved apart without the slightest resistance, as though the world itself was made of paper.
"I cannot let your rampage continue any further," Raj muttered, levelling his sword toward the knight.
A spiral of vibrant yang and abyssal yin energy coiled around his katana, intertwining like two opposing forces finally colliding, materialising into something sinister and terrifying.
Blade of Death:
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An abyssal black soul took form around the tip of the katana. Though its face could not be clearly seen, it radiated an expression of raw, unfiltered fury so overwhelming that even the mightiest of warriors would have trembled in its presence.
With a horrifying screech that split the air, the soul launched itself forward, weaving through the chaos like a phantom unleashed from the deepest abyss. At the same moment, Prime landed and planted itself before Raj, swinging its mace to intercept one of the incoming spinning discs, and shielding its master.
The soul Raj had unleashed pierced through the knight’s chest and tore out from the other side. But it had not come alone. Clenched within its jaws was another soul, writhing and struggling. With a terrifying, echoing screech, the angry soul consumed the soul of the Death Knight whole and vanished without a trace into thin air.
The longsword slipped from the knight’s fingers. Its knees buckled beneath it and it collapsed to the ground, utterly lifeless.
The towering pillar of dark energy that had blazed from the longsword extinguished itself in an instant, the sword clanging heavily against the ground as silence finally swallowed the battlefield.
