༺ The Three Wells (1)༻
The 1.2-kiloter-tall giant was able to threaten the army just by reaching out.
“Create barriers! Stop its fist!”
Mages imdiately created barriers to stop the incoming fist. Working together, they were able to make dozens of layers of high-grade barrier spells, which could individually stop most attacks while only sustaining a single crack.
However, Wickerman’s punch was like no other.
– Kaduk!
The barrier scread like a pane of glass before a hamr and shattered to pieces. Unhinged, the punch continued through the barriers and ca striking down towards the ground.
“U, UAAAAAHKK…!”
Everyone scread as the fist ca closer and closer, and at last reached the ground.
– Kuung!
The soldiers that were right below the fist saw no way out and thought they had been flattened to death.
“Huh?”
“I, I’m… alive?”
Their bodies were still fine and there was not a single injury in sight. Turning their eyes around in confusion, they sought the answer, which ca from the girl wearing black nun clothes.
“S, Sister Hua Ran?”
She stopped the heavy fist, and was carrying it all by herself with nothing but her bare body.
“Heavy.”
It was definitely more threatening than just ‘heavy’. The gigantic Wickerman reaching 1.2 kiloters in height was dozens of tis bigger than a normal Wickerman, and yet Hua Ran was withstanding that with her sheer strength.
Heavenly Yaksha Hua Ran.
She was proving why she was at the pinnacle of the innurable superhumans that were in the expedition. Soon, she proved herself even more by slowly pushing the fist up.
– …!
However, the opponent was a 1.2-kiloter-tall giant. It added its own bodyweight into the fist, trying to push her down into the ground.
“Kuht…!”
Even Hua Ran was being pushed back a little by little.
But that was when soone darted forward while covered in radiant light.
“In the na of the lord…!”
While speaking of the na of the false god, the Saintess was swinging the weapon of a different god.
The Club of Dagda in her hand violently struck the Wickerman’s arm.
The Wickerman faltered a little but its body was rooted deeply into the ground. One arm straying away for a mont served no threat.
“I, it’s coming again!”
Seeing the arm being pulled back for another punch, the soldiers couldn’t help but lant in despair. Although their numbers were many, it was aningless at the face of such a giant.
“They’re looking down on our firepower too much. Mages, set your coordinates.”
It was then. The slave mages at the rear and the countless mages allocated across the army ca together.
They shot fireballs, the bane of trees, straight at the enormous target.
– Kwagagang!
Yggdrasil Wickerman was struck from left and right by the onslaught of spells.
“A giant that’s rely big is nothing but food for small elite knights. Knight squads, get ready to climb up.”
Korin quickly led the knights onto the roots and dashed up the body of the Wickerman.
– Grrrh…!
– Gyaaah…!
There were nurous Shadow Demons erging from the body of Yggdrasil Wickerman, but Korin sneered at the sight.
“Don’t be afraid,” he reassured the knights. “In a small area where the Shadow Demons can’t make use of their numbers advantage, they are nothing to be afraid of. Alicia, Hua Ran. We’re going ahead.”
Hua Ran responded by over-feeding aura into the chains suppressing her body.
Her chains rapidly grew in size and weight. They beca whips that struck down at the demons erging from the Wickerman’s body.
Hundreds of them lost their footing and imdiately fell to their deaths. In the anti, Hua Ran and the knights pounced at the remaining Shadow Demons.
“Kill them all!”
“We’ve hunted enough demonic beasts already!”
Shadow Demons.
They were the ancestors of demonic beasts and spirits – an ancient monster and the origin of demons.
However, each of them individually were no match to the higher-grade demonic beasts and spirits. Their small bodies that were barely able to materialize were too weak and light to have a chance against demon-hunting specialists.
“We broke through!”
“Aim for the target!”
“Find the weak spot of the Wickerman!”
Shadow Demons and the Wickerman.
Although it would be a lie to say this wasn’t a threat at all—
“The size is impressive, but it’s an old-fashioned technique reeking of mold. It’s not much compared to the new-type super robot on our side.
Wickerman.
Fundantally, it was a gigantic golem made by rging a tree with a sacrifice. Just by removing the sacrifice which served as the core, it was possible to neutralize a Wickerman.
“Ti to get going.”
Korin activated his Sun, Claiomh Solais. Although divine energy would work on the tree giant, it was more to deal with the next moves of the opponent.
– GUWWWOOOOOH…!
In the next instant, the entire body of the Wickerman was starting to be covered in flas. On the brink of its defeat, it was burning the sacrifice at a quicker pace to turn into a flaming giant.
“Be caref…!”
However, it served to be a futile attempt. The mont the flas were about to soar into the skies, it started being absorbed sowhere.
Above the Wickerman, a large Sun had appeared, displaying its majestic appearance while absorbing the flas.
“Ohh…”
“T, the Sun.”
“Sir Korin…”
The soldiers and the knights turned their eyes of awe to the person behind this unimaginable feat. The person in question commanded the Sun to fall towards the Wickerman.
“You might be able to offset so of it, but can you, a wooden puppet, survive this?”
Quickly the Sun ca pressing down from above the Wickerman.
– Flick!
The Wickerman’s body started the burn imdiately upon contact with the Sun. Despite being made from the branches of the World Tree, which could absorb divine energy, that alone wasn’t enough to fend off the Sun.
In fact, Kranel and Yuel’s Union Wicker Warrior might have been able to react with more agility, because they had the power to cool itself down, and heat-protection on its core.
– Tadak!
The 1.2-kiloter-tall giant was slowly breaking apart, but Korin didn’t let his guard down because the real threat was still looming.
[Yggdrasil Wickerman – Ejecting the Core]
Right before the head of the Wickerman was about to completely burn down from the Sun, sothing popped out of its chest where the sacrifice would usually go into.
– Huh? Sothing ca out…
– What’s that light?
– S, shoot it down!
The mages and archers each imbued mana into their attacks and targeted at the core.
Thousands of them were shooting arrows and spells of magic. All the consumables and magic items that were prepared for this war were being used unsparingly.
However, the core showed off a miraculous path of flight as it dodged every single attack coming its way. Despite giving off light on the black canvas of darkness, none of the attacks were able to land on it.
“What… is with that mobility…”
One of the knights in the army and a graduate of the academy found the movent to be very similar to what he rembered.
Right – it resembled the infamous shooting practice targets, the elental bodies that would mock the shooter every ti they missed.
It was showing a miraculous pathway in the air that seed to disregard all laws of physics… in fact, it seed even more liberated than an elental body…
“Wait…”
The flying core, the source that allowed that gigantic Yggdrasil Wickerman to move in the first place…
– Kung!
It was incomparable to the likes of elental bodies, a re object that earned the ability to move after a contract with low-grade elental spirits.
This was the materialized form of a pure elental. A feat of miracle, only made possible through the elental willingly listening to a request and not through the ans of a contract.
Only the representatives of nature, druids, were able to materialize elentals just by request.
“Damn it. What elental is it? It seems to be a wind-type…”
“Anti-elental formation. Get ready.”
They readied themselves and got in ranks. Although they didn’t know what elental it was, it would be aningless against an army this big, or so they thought.
“I agree that it is fast, but what insolence, trying to fight against a squad of knights and mages all by itself.”
Despite being with the larger army, Yuel the Druid couldn’t help but feel ominous, as her body shivered from uneasiness.
Until now, she had encountered countless elentals, all the way from low-grade elentals to powerful high-grade elentals.
So of them looked like midgets with wings; a few looked like beasts, and others simply took on their pure elental form.
However, none of them were glowing this bright, and none of them ever looked so-distinctly human before.
“Dumnorix…”
A druid, who didn’t enjoy concerning themselves in the matters of human society, was siding with Tates Valtazar.
He wasn’t just a normal sage of the forest either, and was one of the greatest sages of all ti among druids.
Considering all that…
“Ah…”
Recalling the existence that was passed down among the legends of druids, Yuel imdiately yelled out loud.
“Everyone be careful! That’s the Elental King—!”
In an instant, a tempest gushed past the soldiers.
“Huh?”
“Hnn?”
The breeze felt normal albeit being on the slightly stronger side. The knights and mages tilted their heads from the strange feeling it left behind, before realizing that their heads were continuing to tilt past a natural threshold.
– Drop…
It was a shocking and surreal sight.
Humans were crumbling down in fragnts of flesh.
“W, what?!”
“What the…!”
Hundreds of them lost their lives with just one attack. With the Sun radiantly displaying the sight from above, the horror was all the more clearer for everyone to see.
[Yggdrasil Wickerman – Elental King of Wind]
Elental King.
Normal elentalists couldn’t even dream of encountering them, and only the greatest sages among druids were able to co across those legendary existences.
That Elental King was here, and had decided to bury every human it can see following the request of its long-ti friend.
“Old King.”
A knight stopped him in his path. Standing before the Elental King who had just sliced apart hundreds of soldiers and superhumans was a spearman with a silver arm.
“You can punch people until they’re almost dead, but you can’t kill them like that.”
The Elental King did not bother waiting for the knight to finish his words. Controlling the surrounding environnt and syncing it with his will, the king created tens of lethal blades.
– Karuruk…!
The blades of wind were blocked by the Silver Arm of the God King, Airgetlam. Korin Lork blocked all the lethal attacks using his Silver Arm and closed the distance in a flash to push his spear forward.
– Kwaah!
A wall of compressed wind stopped the spearhead in its tracks. As if there was an invisible wall, the spear could not move a single inch forward.
Instead of ending the failed spear attack there and then, he twisted it ever so slightly to pierce up from below. The Elental King couldn’t see through the profound mysteries of that attack and allowed a scratch to his thigh before he could even react.
“…?”
Feeling threatened, the Elental King pushed the entire dinsion away from him. Due to the burst of wind from the front, Korin was pushed back but nonchalantly gazed at the king, as he carried the Silver Spear on his shoulders.
‘It feels like a spiritual body, but the compressed wind surrounding it lets it actively defend itself. Like a constantly activated barrier on all fronts.’
While fighting the enemy hands-on, Korin was trying his best to see through the opponent.
“I wanted to fight against the Elental King of Fire, but… this isn’t bad either.”
Rooting his legs into the ground, he stared at the Elental King of Wind that was standing at the center of an enormous tempest.
One of his spear techniques included one that allowed him to absorb the incoming energy of the opponent and reverse it upon the attacker.
As such, when a tornado of wind blades ca flying his way, he simply drew a circle with the spear despite the wind threatening to cut his body down into pieces.
He absorbed the rampaging wind with the spear. By sending off a wave of aura, he altered the incoming attack ever so slightly.
Using the sa principle as getting rid of a tornado by setting off a bomb at the eye of the tornado, Korin parried the attack with the tiniest amount of energy required.
“???”
Seeing that mysterious display of martial arts, the Elental King of Wind gave a confused frown. His compressed wind had disintegrated just from a few swings of a spearman, and he was rightfully confused.
“Being so lofty and esteed, you don’t co out to the material world so often, do you? A higher-grade elental might have been more annoying because of its experience.”
“…”
The Elental King sensed that the human was mocking him right now. Right when he was about to pour his fury on the pitiful mortal.
“Sorry, but we’re a ‘group’. We’re not interested in a fair one-on-one battle.”
Flinch!
The Elental King felt goosebumps.
It was a feeling that he could feel only because he manifested into a material body to co to this world. Before the king could make sense of the feeling it had just felt, the attack was already looming before him.
Arden, Alicia-style Thousand Swords—
Eyes that could see through even the cracks of the dinsion.
With those eyes, she saw the true body of the materialized Elental King. Her sword was flying forward at what should normally be left unseen.
“We wouldn’t have bothered coming here in such a large group if we were going to let a single Elental King hold us back.”
— Infinity. Exceeding the Domain
The core that should be unexposed was revealed, and the Elental King was expelled from the real world after losing its core.
****
After defeating the Yggdrasil Wickerman and the Elental King, we advanced for two more days before finally arriving at a well.
There were two Elental Kings that could appear in the World Tree setting, and the Elental King of Wind was the only enemy we saw before arriving at the well.
– It’s there!
– Look around!
The soldiers carefully patrolled the area around the well. Although they were feeling thirsty, none of them dared to approach the well itself.
These past few days, they were made painfully aware that they couldn’t let their guards down for a mont in this world under the World Tree.
It was understandable considering they had encountered Shadow Demons, tribes under Valtazar as well as all sorts of monsters from mythologies.
Besides, there was also the command we had given them beforehand about never touching a well directly unless told to do so.
I looked around the surroundings of the well.
The roots of the World Tree were covering the center from all sides as well as the ceiling, and underneath was a golden pond that was giving off light by itself.
We knew what this radiant and beautiful pond of gold was called.
“Korin-ssi, this is…”
“Fuu… We got lucky.”
And paradoxically… It was also unlucky for us.
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