The swirling darkness behind the red slits shifted a little, looking straight at them. Damian gulped down real hard—Lifewarden was also frozen still on his feet. The second they blinked, the abyssal figure was standing right in front of them!
Lifewarden fell on his knees, and Damian couldn’t even lift his finger as the sheer presence of Land Breaker forced him to fall flat on the stony peak—even though he had coated his entire body with a thin layer of mana! Increasing the amount of mana made no difference either. This was not simply the pressure of the aura. The energy in Land Breaker was something entirely else. Enjoy new chapters from freewebnovel
Instead of the bright, warm baseball-sized mana core he was used to feeling in people, Land Breaker was a power core itself! The inside of its body was just mana. It was darker than the abyss, but it still burned brighter than anything Damian had ever seen. The quality of mana far surpassed what his liquid mana could achieve.
The difference in their status was astronomical.
After a few seconds of Damian staring at the black figure’s half-metallic, half-mana armor boots, he was lifted in the air with his body frozen—he had no control over himself. An outstretched sharp bony hand with thin, long fingers and sharp animalistic nails was raised by Land Breaker as a twisted, harrowing smile appeared on his face.
A broken, deep, demonic voice pierced his ears. "Pathetic.. Weak.. Offspring of Brightest Light.. Your cowardly tricks have failed.. I am free again, and you are still a broken abomination.. But fear not.. Let me end this suffering of yours.."
A dark metallic sword appeared in Land Breaker’s hand, and with one final soul-freezing look in Damian’s eyes—those bright red smoky twisting slits—Land Breaker pushed the sword towards his chest.
In his demonic eyes, Damian saw the last moments of his short-lived life. All the good memories started appearing in his mind like a slideshow. Why the fuck was he dying first when there were so many other Highswords around him!? This shit was so unfair! For God’s sake, can’t he get a normal life with a loving family for once?! Was that too much to fucking ask!?
However, the sword clanged hard against something before it could pierce Damian’s chest. He opened his eyes at the sound and saw a gigantic, majestic, intricate golden runic circle with moving runes and multiple layers of circles. The glowing golden massive shield had stopped the sword dead center. Land Breaker snarled at him, making guttural sounds as his energy shot up once again. The black sword was covered in visible abyssal aura, and meters-wide black smoke shrouded the blade as the power behind its strike doubled.
The first layer of the golden shield strained under its weight and shattered into hundreds of shimmering golden pieces. However, in the very next second, a golden shimmering portal opened under Damian’s feet—big enough to take in even Lifewarden, who was still on his knees, not able to even lift his head.
From the side of his eyes, Damian also caught a golden light down below the stone ridge, covering the place with all the unconscious Highswords.
Damian was swallowed by the portal and, in the next second, spat out somewhere far from there. He was still paralyzed and fell face-first on a sand dune. Along with him, Lifewarden and all the Highswords also fell one by one onto the sandy desert, with no mountain or anything in sight anywhere.
Damian was breathing heavily, his heart beating so fast he could physically hear it racing in his chest. He was dead.. almost dead. But then he was saved. How?
Damian had a harrowing suspicion, and he hated even the thought of it being true.. but it saved his life today.
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’You are still here, aren’t you?’ Damian asked no one in particular in his mind.
’Yes.’ Came back a voice from the deepest part of his brain—and then the eternal silence took its rightful place back.
"Fuck my life!" Damian cursed out loud.
"I can still sense him.." Lifewarden said from a few meters away.
"Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!.." Damian pushed himself up and immediately created a light orb to see in the darkness. Then taking out his hoverboard and putting it down, he shouted, "Come on! Pile everyone on it! We need to get the hell out of here first!"
Lifewarden was shaken, but he didn’t say anything—just nodded, hurrying up to lift everyone around them and pile them on the hoverboard. Damian checked his mana containers. One was already empty. The other only had less than one-fourth in it—around 60-70 thousand mana points worth of mana.
That piece of shit had used his own mana! Well, whatever.. Getting out of here took priority. Thankfully the hoverboard didn’t cost that much mana. Damian could still sense the dark mana in the distance, but it was far—much farther. From here, the mana signature felt similar to any Emperor-rank monster. But from standing right in front of it, Damian knew.. only 50-plus kilometers could make such a vast difference! They could still sense it without even needing mana sense—that thing was just that unbelievable.
Piling everyone atop each other, no matter who belonged to what section, Damian and Lifewarden also jumped on, and the hoverboard started gliding fast over the sand dunes. Damian even removed the light orb—their eyes had adjusted enough in the slight moonlight for him to make out small boulders and stone structures.
Not waiting for anything anymore, Damian immediately pulled out his new mana generator and two massive rolls of wormhole runic scrolls and put it on one side of the hoverboard—removing Gravebreaker from there and placing the guy atop Bloodedge on the side. The materials were already inside the generator for the first batch. Damian just stabilized them and started using his aura to generate more liquid mana. The generator he had made with improved knowledge—by now he had perfected the intricate details. It just needed to continuously work for 40-50 minutes, and Damian could fill one empty mana container worth 5 liters of liquid mana fully.