The localized Fire Realm was a dinsion of suffocating hostility. It possessed no sky, no earth and no horizon. It was a self-contained sphere of churning fire and rivers of molten rock. For Sovereign Ignis and Beast King Corva, it was a battlefield tailored to their apocalyptic natures.
"You should have let the rot consu your child, Ignis!" Beast King Corva roared with her voice echoing through the plasma like the screech of tearing tal. "It would have spared your entire city from the ash!"
Ignis did not reply with words. Her fury had transcended the need for speech. The Sovereign of Fla raised her hands and the rivers of molten rock suspended in the realm violently shifted and braided themselves together to form a burning whip of compressed magma. She lashed out, the crack of the whip instantly vaporizing a massive swath of the plasma sea.
Corva barely managed to evade the strike. She quickly realized her human form was proving too fragile to withstand the concentrated wrath of the Fire Realm. Realizing that maintaining a human guise was suicidal against the absolute master of volcanic fire, Corva let out a piercing cry. Her flesh rippled and expanded as she reverted to her true form.
The Beast King swelled into a monstrosity of towering proportions. She beca a colossal, three eyed crow. Her feathers were overlapping, condensed flas that radiated a crimson heat. The third eye in the center of her massive skull glowed like a dying star. It was pulsing with ancient and destructive mystic fire.
"I will roast you in your own domain!" The massive beast telepathically roared while flapping her wings. Each flap was like enduring a solar flare. The heat was intense and utterly destructive. The sheer kinetic force of the wings unleashed a hurricane of crimson fire. A wave of heat so intense that it actually began to burn away Ignis’s realm.
Even though this was the case, Ignis stood her ground. Her long hair whipped wildly around her face. She thrust her hands forward and was creating a multi layered aegis shield to weather the firestorm. The crimson flas battered against her defenses and were slowly lting the outer layers of the shield.
Suddenly, the massive ruby eye on Corva’s forehead flared with a concentrated light.
It was a beam of annihilation. A mystic fire that ignored physical barriers and sought to incinerate the very laws of the target's foundation. A special fire that only Three-Eyed Crows could command. The beam pierced straight through Ignis’s shield.
Ignis was surprised by the attack as she had never fought a Three-Eyed Crow before. She desperately twisted her body and sacrificed her stance to avoid a lethal blow to her core. The beam of mystic fire swept across her lower half.
The Sovereign of Fla let out a sharp and agonizing gasp. The intense and esoteric heat sheared through her defenses. It instantly incinerated her flesh and bone. Both of Ignis’s legs were cleanly severed at the mid-thigh. The wound cauterized in a fraction of a second by the blinding beam.
Ignis tumbled backward through the plasma with her balance completely shattered. Corva let out a triumphant and deafening caw. She folded her massive wings to dive toward the falling Sovereign and was aiming to crush Ignis’s head in her burning talons.
But Ignis was the Lord of The Eternal Crucible. She did not know how to yield.
Fighting through the unfathomable pain of her missing limbs, Ignis stabilized her descent using her Sovereign Qi. As the colossal crow descended upon her, Ignis did not retreat. She channeled every remaining ounce of her wrath, every spark of her world ending fire, into her hands.
She did not create a shield to defend. She created a spear for attack. It was a javelin of compressed white hot plasma. It was burning at an extre temperature. Just as Corva’s talons reached for her throat, Ignis hurled the spear directly upward.
The plasma spear did not just pierce the Beast King; it detonated. The explosion of white fire caught Corva at point blank range but Corva was able to defend with one of her wings at the last mont. The shockwave tore outward with cataclysmic force. The blast sheared perfectly across the Beast King
Corva’s agonized shriek shattered the ambient silence of the Fire Realm. One of her colossal wings was violently ripped from her body and dissolved into chaotic sparks as they were separated from her body.
The one winged crow plumted helplessly past Ignis and crashed into a suspended river of molten rock. Ignis hovered in the air above with her chest heaving. Her fiery aura flickered erratically as she looked down at her own severed thighs.
The stalemate was brutal. Both Sovereigns were maid. They were both badly injured. Corva thrashed in the magma river and was desperately trying to right herself without the balance of one of her wings. Ignis struggled to maintain her altitude and she quickly fell into a river of molten rock as well.
Before either could launch a final and desperate strike, the fabric of the Fire Realm violently distorted. A tear ripped open the dinsion of pure heat. Through the tear stepped Sovereign Morven.
The Lord of the Violet Deep looked like a demon dragged straight from the depths of hell. His left arm was completely gone and the shoulder stump a ruined ss of burned and bubbling flesh. He had taken a few pills after his own battle and was able to at least close his wounds.
His iridescent blue scales were scorched and scarred by Jareth’s wind blades and his aura was ragged. But his pale eyes burned with a terrifying lethality.
"Morven!" Ignis gasped in happiness as she recognized who it was.
Morven’s gaze swept the realm and instantly took in Ignis’s horrific injuries and the one wing crow thrashing in the magma below. He gripped his heavy trident with his remaining right hand.
"Attack the bird!" Morven roared with his voice echoing through the steam.
Ignis did not hesitate. Drawing on her mastery of the realm, she burned so of her own blood and used everything that she had left to thrust her hands downward. The river of molten rock that Corva was thrashing in instantly solidified. Stopping and slowing down the crow just enough.
Corva shrieked, her third eye glowing as she prepared to fire another beam of annihilation at the newly arrived threat. But Morven was already moving. He dropped from the sky like a falling mountain and channeled the entirety of his remaining Qi into the tip of his weapon.
Corva was able to counter at the last possible second. She fired the mystic beam.
Morven violently twisted his massive body in mid air. He intentionally took the beam of mystic fire directly through his right side. He sacrificed a massive chunk of his ribs and scales to maintain his trajectory. He ignored the catastrophic damage with his montum carrying him forward.
With a deafening and wet crunch, Morven drove his trident directly into the center of the Beast King’s glowing third eye. The acidic tide instantly injected into the wound and surged directly into Corva’s brain and soul. The massive crow stiffened from the impact as well as the poison. Soon after she let out one final, gurgling cry before her massive head slamd down against the ironstone chains.
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The Beast King’s soul was extinguished.
Morven ripped his trident free and was breathing heavily as he stood atop the massive corpse. He looked up at Ignis, who was slowly floating down to join him.
"Jareth?" Ignis asked with her voice tight with pain.
"Defeated. Chained by Thorne," Morven grunted while leaning heavily on his trident. He looked at Ignis’s missing legs, a rare flash of sympathy crossing his brutal features. "You look terrible, my love."
"You are missing an arm and half your ribcage, you abyssal brute," Ignis retorted. Though she was very weak right now, a genuine smile touched her lips.
With the threat neutralized, the localized Fire Realm began to dissipate. It would slowly return them to the sky above The Eternal Crucible.
Before they fully materialized in the real world, Ignis reached into her spatial ring and produced a pair of supre tier healing pills. They glowed with a soft and restorative erald light. She tossed one to Morven and swallowed the other herself.
"We do not have weeks to regrow these limbs right now," Ignis stated pragmatically as the pill instantly went to work and began sealing her arteries and numbing the burning itch of nascent flesh attempting to form at the stumps.
The bodies of Sovereigns were extrely powerful and resilient. It was a battle between peers so the result was similar to how any two random cultivators would fight. However, even with their bodies crippled to this extent, they could easily survive after removing any residue Qi from their enemies' attack. Not only that, they could still wipe out just about everyone else that was still fighting over and around the cities.
Morven was swallowing the pill and planning the next steps. The bleeding by his ribs stopped and the jagged flesh knitted itself into a temporary and stabilized scar. "The invading army is still laying siege to your city. The generals are fighting. The wedding is definitely delayed but the slaughter is not."
Ignis’s eyes flared with renewed fire, though it wasn’t as intense as before. She was much too weak for that. She stabilized her hovering form and was utilizing her Sovereign Qi in place of her missing legs. "Then let us remind these invaders why they fear us."
The Fire Realm shattered completely and the two maid but furious Sovereigns reappeared in the sky, ready to rejoin the war.
While the Sovereigns had been locked in their isolated duels, the sky above The Eternal Crucible had beco a chaotic at grinder of warfare. The generals of the Aegis of Fla and the Violet Deep were locked in brutal and desperate combat with the elite commanders of the invading forces.
General Karr was currently a blur of violent and sweeping strikes. His opponent, the molten rock demon, swung a massive hamr of hardened basalt and was attempting to crush the scarred general.
Karr ducked beneath a sweeping blow but the heat of the hamr nearly seared the top of his scalp. He didn't retreat though. He stepped entirely inside the molten demon's guard and channeled his Qi into the serrated edge of his blade.
"Burn in your own slag!" Karr roared while driving the serrated blade directly upward, under the demon's chin and into its molten brain. Karr twisted the hilt and unleashed a point blank explosion inside the demon's skull. The invading general’s head detonated like a geyser of magma and the headless body toppled out of the sky and crashed into the streets below.
Not far away, Admiral Vark was demonstrating the terrifying power of the deep ocean. The avian commander from the Crow’s army was swooping down and firing razor sharp feathers. Vark bared his teeth and utterly ignored the projectiles that embedded themselves harmlessly into his thick, blubber lined scales. He raised both of his massive hands.
The air around the swooping avian commander suddenly compressed. A massive spherical do of heavy water materialized out of thin air and completely trapped the bird demon mid flight.
Vark was about to clench his fists together when he was struck by the spear of another general. The spear drove from his back and out of his chest. Even with this wound, Vark was still finished with the task at hand. He clenched his first together.
The water pressure inside the sphere instantly multiplied.. The avian commander didn't even have ti to scream. The crushing depth of the abyssal tide imploded the demon. It turned the mighty general into a compressed, bloody pulp of shattered bones and feathers within the floating water sphere.
Vark was stabbed several more tis as he finished his attack. He fell from the sky but was caught by another mber of his team. They hurried him away but whether or not he would survive was unclear.
The human disciples of Thorne were proving equally devastating.
Hovering near the western gates, the disciple who commanded the ethereal silver wolf was facing off against two enemy commanders simultaneously. The massive wolf spirit bounded through the air as if it were solid ground. Its jaws snapping shut on the arm of a heavily armored beast rider and instantly freezing the limb solid before shattering it like glass.
Just as quickly, the disciple himself was struck by a fire beam and impaled by several feathers from other commanders. It was a bloodbath with attacks flying everywhere and people getting ambushed. It was extrely chaotic and even hard to identify friend from foe in those split seconds. The disciple was able to escape fatal injuries with the help of another disciple coming to his aid.
Across the battlefield, the clash of techniques, the detonation of magical treasures and the raw, visceral roaring of thousands of combatants created a symphony of absolute destruction. And weaving through it all like a phantom reaper, was Li Yu.
Li Yu utilized his Void Step to perfection. He did not engage the enemy generals. He left the peak tier combat to Karr, Vark, Thorne's disciples and the like. Instead, Li Yu targeted the elite troops, the mid tier commanders and the horde of invaders attempting to breach the city’s defensive arrays.
All of those are much weaker than himself. Normally, he would have been caught up by so stronger enemies at this point to stop the bleeding he was inflicted. But because he kept disappearing and appearing all over the place, it was tough for the enemy to keep up. Forces from the borders continued to pour in and the enemy had been put on the defensive. Li Yu was also fighting in the most dishonorable way imagable but he thought nothing of it.
How many tis have much stronger beings randomly co after him? Those that he targeted were also just as unlucky as he was. He was passing on that unluckiness he thought to himself though he didn’t try to justify it in any way. This was war and they attacked, he cared not about honor or pride. Only survival and victory.
He was a pragmatic slaughter. Appearing instantly on the flank of a charging formation of fifty enemy beast riders, Li Yu brought his staff down upon them.
The strike carried the unyielding density of the Devouring Abyssal Leviathan Physique. The air rippled as the staff slamd into the front of the formation. A kinetic shockwave erupted outward and carried the crushing weight of an ocean. The entire formation of beast riders was instantly pulverized. Their armor flattened like tin foil under the localized gravity of the blow.
Void Step.
Li Yu vanished and reappeared directly above an enemy warship that was firing concentrated Qi cannons at the inner palace.
His Sentry Art clone was already there. The clone was summoning a localized blizzard of freezing mist that blinded the warship’s gunners. It was also coating the cannons in a thick layer of ice that was rendering them entirely useless.
Li Yu landed lightly on the deck of the ship. He spun his staff in a rapid, blurring arc, stepping effortlessly through the panicked crew. Every strike was calculated and aid perfectly to shatter cores and crush skulls with clinical efficiency. He then ran into the commander of the warship. A being whose cultivation was roughly at Mid Level Divine Transformation. Upon encountering the commander, Li Yu Void stepped away imdiately, disappearing like a ghost.
Li Yu might have been able to defeat the commander but that would take ti and risk injuries. That wasn’t his goal and wasn’t his role in this battle. There were more powerful combatants that could and should take care of it.
Li Yu appeared beside another warship. He raised his right hand. Dozens of Abyssal Javelins humd with lethal intent. He waved his hand and was raining the javelins down upon those on the warship.
He then created more and rained down a massive concentration of invading ground troops who were attempting to break through the formation of the city walls. The javelins erased the distance instantly and were striking the troops. Entire platoons were vaporized into fine red mist. He then quickly disappeared as a general from the other side tried to pursue him.
The sky continued to burn. The rivers of the city ran black with toxic blood and ash. The generals of Fire and Tide roared in defiance and their weapons clashed violently against the remnants of the invading vanguard. The Eternal Crucible was bleeding but it was far from broken.
The true test of the battle was which Sovereigns had won their fights. Whoever won there would claim ultimate victory. The battle here, as intense as it was, was rely children fighting over marbles in comparison.
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