Soul of Searing Steel

Chapter 158: A Horizontal Sweep

When Nostradamus learned about the disappearances of Joshua, Moreila, Clyre, and Ling after he went through the secret tunnel, he immediately chose a few apprentice spellcasters from the Royal Academy. The party swiftly arrived at Moldavia in the name of apprenticeship.

This was a catastrophe that involved a count of the borderland and a leader of a legion of 300,000 dwarves. Also, Clyre was a Gold-tier druid that had been a guardian of a long history of the elf families had a prestigious status in the Kingdom of the Far South Alliance. Any mistreatment might potentially trigger international dispute.

In order to avoid the public from spreading stories about it, he could only select his own apprentices from the academy who had a clean background and certain abilities as his assistants.

With the knowledge of the old mage, of course he would naturally notice the temporal fluctuations remaining in the magic resonance detector he brought along with him. So, he led the party over to Black Steel Town as soon as they could to carry out a complete sweep over the area. The old mage wanted to check for the existence of any other possible dimensional rifts in that area.

Over the years, it seemed that the disruption of the dimensional rifts all over the world had gradually become serious. The number of hidden dimensional rifts had actually increased significantly now. Before that, the old mage and his apprentices did find a number of them. However, upon closer inspection, the rifts were deemed to be too small. It was completely impossible for three living beings to go through it. At most, the size of those rifts would only be enough for transporting rocks and stones.

Right before his eyes, on top of the Volcanic Lake, that would be the final dimensional rift in the entire gathering area of the dwarfs.

The instrument in his hand was shaking slightly. Nostradamus could not help but let out a sigh.

In the current time, the Empire had a handful of events and incidents to handle. Regardless of the incident where they just took down the orcs’ flatland back in the north-west region, and the fact that they had not completely taken care of the aftermath of the Dark Tide, there had been new strange and bizarre situations emerging right in the middle of the entire continent and the Central Dark Forest, the border of the southern Kingdom. Some strange new dragon species were escaping of the forest. It seemed that there was something terrifying pursuing them.

The last time such incident occurred was already four hundred years ago. Back in that incident, the appearance of the Ancient Dragon, Blazing Black Dragon Alatreon had caused hundreds of species of the dragons to migrate, as their lives were at stake.

Upon smoothing out his thoughts, Nostradamus shook his head. Then he gathered his magic in the palm of his hand and turned it into semi-transparent waves, rippling into the surroundings. Countless vague and yet densely powerful energy waves were purging and casting away the fire energy in the surroundings away, slowly wiping and flattening the folding of space. By doing so, the hidden dimensional rift then revealed its original form—

Phew!

With the last trace of folded space being flattened out, a dark blue door was opened. The old mage widened his eyes in shock as he was witnessing the gigantic dimensional rift gradually stretching and expanding. In just one brief instant, the door had become thirty meters wide. The old mage could not help but reach out his right hand. Three magic rings with gemstones on them were beginning to flash violently as the old mage loudly cast the spell, “Dimensional Seal!”

Blue waves were rippling from the hand of Nostradamus, turning into mystical runes, sealing down the dimensional rift that was currently expanding on. However, even so, the diameter of this dimensional rift had already expanded to approximately fifty meters. There was ferocious Chaos energy stirring within the rift, and the Chaos energy might just flow out of the rift anytime. The old mage noticed that the situation was not good at all. So he immediately used his second spell, “Time and Space Isolation!”

A Supreme-tier mage could potentially brew up a catastrophic disaster. With his strength, temporarily sealing the dimensional rift right before him was not a hard thing to do. Along with the endless light radiating and emanating on, the blue runes began to spin around the gigantic dimensional rift, forcing it to shrink its size little by little. However, there was still the presence filled with vile evil, vile Chaos. The presence of it was like terror itself coming right out from the rift, causing all creatures within a few kilometers of its surrounding to feel an intense chill up their spines, trembling in fear.

Nostradamus furrowed his brow intensely. He was looking extremely alert as he was staring straight at the dimensional rift that he sealed using his spell a moment ago. His pair of eyes that were reflecting with endless energy seemed to be able to see the existence on the other side of the rift.

“This is… what kind of presence is this?”

*****

On the other side of the rift.

Going into full power mode, Joshua flew straight towards the sky at the speed of a falling meteor.

Getting himself clear from the raiding monsters on the ground, he could finally unleash the 100% potential of his power. Behind his helmet, his red ignited eyes were currently locked on the colossal flying-type Aragami in the sky.

The flying crab Aragami that were distracted by 03’s cannon attacks had also sensed the movement of the warrior which was charging straight at them. Some small-sized creatures were unfortunate as they were bombarded by their attacks. Hence, these Aragamis had once again gathered their energies at their cannons, ready to launch their cannon attacks again.

Along with the buzzing of the atmosphere in the air, hundreds or maybe even thousands of Aragami were shooting hundreds of beams of glowing rays forward. Shapeless and untouchable fluctuating waves of beams were filling up the entire sky. Even the dark mist that shrouded the sky was torn apart and dispersed.

In the meantime, Joshua lifted his giant axe up to deflect the attacks. The dark beams had left a trail across the sky after they came through the sky. Well, Joshua was currently using a Divine Armament. So he was more than capable of breaking open the waves of intensive attacks, crushing the beams into shattered sparkles all around in the sky.

“It is futile to use this against me for the second time!”

Joshua sneered. Currently, there were no other monsters attempting to restrain him anymore. So he went into the crowd of the monsters like a hungry wolf entering a flock of harmless sheep. He was unstoppable. The waves of attacks that came from the Aragami were enough to reduce even steel into flying ashes. Even rocks would be reduced to sand and dust. Indeed such attacks could have posed certain threats to him. However, now that he could defend those attacks with his bare hands. So these attacks were naturally no longer an issue.

Even the cannon attacks that would occasionally hit his body were not enough to break through the dual layer of defense, his Combat Aura, and his armor. Those attacks could only leave insignificant scratches on the solid surface of the armor that the dwarf forged with care.

Witnessing their enemy charging at them unscratched even after the warrior was bombarded with dense and powerful attacks, the Aragami that were focused on launching their long-ranged attacks began to panic and the formation of the Aragami in the sky had descended into chaos.

Various types of rays were shot right out from them. Other than those shapeless and untouchable light beam attacks, all sorts of artillery attacks with all sorts of colors, fire, frost, acid, decay and violent wind could be seen striking down upon Joshua from all directions. The pressure that could suffocate people had filled up the entire battlefield now.

However, Joshua stood his ground like an unmovable mountain in the storm. Regardless of how ferocious and powerful the attacks of the Aragami were, they could not even shake Joshua. Joshua was charged with his red Combat Aura all around him like a red barrier. In the next moment, he charged towards the Aragami that was closest to him at a speed that was invisible to the naked eye, followed by a swift flash across the sky. That was Joshua slicing the Aragami together with its cannon in half, in a flash.

“… Master! That’s extremely dangerous!”

After the attack, through the Spirit Sense, Ling’s voice that was riddled with uneasiness rang in Joshua’s mind, “If I’m not a Divine Armament; if you were using a normal weapon to block that sort of attack, the weapon would have been destroyed. If you were hit back then, Master, you would have died for sure!”

Meanwhile, back on the ground, through the steel tree, Clyre and Moreila had completed suppressing most of the low-level Aragami. Both of them were shocked to see Joshua closing in at the heart of the army. It was like they were seeing Joshua for the very first time.

“Relax.”

His eyes glanced at the sky, Joshua grinned as he already locked on to his next target. “Nothing bad will happen.”