Chapter 132: The Fall of the Sky and the Massacre of the Valois (Part 1)
The dawn over the Morningstar Citadel did not bring with it the usual relentless heat of the Dragon Bone Desert. That morning, the entire geography seemed to hold its breath. The sun peeked over the eastern horizon looking pale, almost sick, intimidated by the monstrous static pressure emanating from the heart of the Great Obsidian Plaza.
There, beneath the majestic and infinite shadow of the gigantic Star Tree, whose crystal leaves tinkled with a wind that did not exist, twenty-one figures lined up.
They were not wearing the heavy ceremonial armor of the high command, nor the formal robes of the clan. They wore something infinitely superior: their new bodies. The cellular transformation and genetic holocaust of the previous night had left indelible marks. Their skins shone subtly under the faint light of dawn as if they were polished metal or perfect microscopic scales. Their eyes, now endowed with terrifying slit, vertical pupils, captured light spectrums invisible to mortals. They exuded a predatory stillness, the heavy silence of a pack of tyrannosaurs that had just smelled blood kilometers away.
Stationed on the high walls, crystal bridges, and surrounding balconies, three thousand outer circle disciples observed the scene. No one spoke. No one even dared to breathe too loudly. Men and women hardened in survival trembled uncontrollably, their survival instincts screaming at them to run, to flee from those twenty-one calamities that, although they had human form, no longer belonged to the same species.
A deep, ancestral groan of pure bronze broke the silence. The colossal doors of the Patriarch's Palace opened wide.
Samael Morningstar descended the steps. His immense black robe, heavy and woven from the silk of shadows, was embroidered with intricate dark gold threads that seemed to tell the story of devoured galaxies. The fabric billowed around him not with the wind, but like liquid smoke that altered gravity in its wake.
To his right, Seraphina walked with the regal, sharp, and absolute coldness of a true Ice Empress. Her mere presence caused the temperature of the plaza to plummet, freezing the morning dew. She was unreachable perfection, the consort of death. To the Sovereign's left, Lilith descended, her white hair with silver and red streaks fluttering in the breeze. Her eyes, marked by time, looked at her "children" in the plaza with a pride so fierce and primitive that it seemed to burn the air between them.
Samael stopped at the edge of the command dais. His eyes, where the violent crimson and the infinite void of the starry sky merged, swept relentlessly over his troops.
"Your humanity is now just a husk, a crude facade," Samael decreed.
His voice was not a strident shout. It was a mandate. The perfect, unnatural acoustics of the plaza, designed through the clan's arrays, carried every single one of his syllables directly into the inner ear of the thousands of people present, vibrating the ribs in their chests.
"The oldest and most lethal blood in the cosmos has finally awakened in your veins. To the stupid eyes of the world, you will continue to look like simple men and women. But beneath that fragile skin, you are Dragons. You have claimed, by right of blood and agony, the undisputed apex of the food chain."
Samael paused. An exceptionally cruel smile, sharp as a guillotine, curved his lips.
"But an unarmed predator, no matter how much strength it possesses, is just a rabid beast. And we are not beasts. We are not going to go hunting in the woods. We are going to wage war on the continents."
The Dragon King raised both his hands, clad in their obsidian gauntlets, toward the pale morning sky.
Space above the vast plaza tore apart. It wasn't a smooth or magical dimensional opening; it was a brutal violation of physics. It sounded as if the very vault of heaven were splitting in two. The pocket dimension of the System's Inventory manifested on the physical plane as an immense inverted waterfall of golden, violet, and crimson lights.
Hundreds of weapons fell from the spatial abyss. Swords, spears, flails, and shields obtained through the blood of the Heavenly Roulette, from brutal pillages, and relics personally refined by Samael's touch of Void and Laws, using Saint Grade materials. The entire plaza hummed, the air vibrating with the millennial, repressed bloodlust of these artifacts waiting for their masters.
Samael lowered his left hand in a slow, dictatorial gesture. And the elite weapons slowly descended toward the vanguard, levitating, seeking the genetic signature of the newborn dragons.
Kael was handed nothing. His immense magma fang, now baptized with the Flame of Purgatory, was already the extension of his wrath.
"Violeta."
A rapier descended from the waterfall of light, spinning with deadly elegance. It was a weapon so extremely thin that it was almost invisible to the untrained eye, forged entirely from a deep blue crystal that looked like moonlight frozen in the vacuum of space. [Rapier of Eternal Cold: High Earth Grade]. Violeta raised a pale hand and grasped it with a chilling delicacy. The exact instant her fingers closed around the hilt, the Winter Void Dragon bloodline recognized the crystal. The basalt floor beneath her boots erupted in a mantle of black frost that expanded ten meters around. Violeta did not smile. She closed her mismatched eyes and exhaled a long cloud of white vapor, feeling a cold, calculating, and perfect peace. It wasn't a weapon; it was the missing piece of her own soul.
"Eris."
An abnormally heavy spear fell like a suddenly halted meteorite. With a dull thud that made the air vibrate, it stopped, levitating ten centimeters from the young woman's hand. The shaft was completely black, made of a light-swallowing alloy, covered in complex red runic engravings that seemed to move and pulse like irritated veins. The weapon hummed with a low, deep, and menacing sound, identical to a nuclear reactor about to enter critical meltdown. [Spear of Cataclysm: High Earth Grade].
Eris extended her arm and grabbed it. The weight would have dislocated the shoulder of a human master, but Eris spun it over her head with a single hand, creating a tornado of black and white flames around her. Her heterochromatic eyes became bloodshot, shining with a destructive and unhinged euphoria.
"Heavy..." she whispered, licking her lips as her Ruin blood fed the spear. "Perfect for crushing the skulls of those shitty aristocrats."
Samael descended from the dais, walking slowly among the ranks of his monsters. The weapons did not fall randomly; metal and magic reacted to the dragon genome that now ruled the Sequences.
To Cedric (The Emperor of Arrays):
Massive, square gauntlets of a matte black color that absorbed sound floated heavily toward him. [Runic Siege Gauntlets: High Earth Grade]. Cedric, his steel hair bristling, slipped his hands into the openings. CLANG-CLICK. The internal gears and mechanisms sprang to life, adjusting and biting into his forearms to anchor themselves to his skeleton. Cedric looked at the dark metal, his cold gray eyes gleaming with thousands of calculations per second thanks to his Fractal Consciousness Network. He clenched his right fist. The air in front of his knuckles literally exploded outward, displaced by pure geometric pressure. He felt capable of shattering the walls of a continental fortress with his bare fists.
To Xylia (The Empress of Thunder):
A long whip braided with threads of pure gold, silver, and an electric beast core, crackling incessantly with wild static. [Indra's Scourge: High Earth Grade]. Xylia took it, and her plasma blood greeted the weapon. Without her moving her wrist, the whip uncoiled and cracked in the air on its own, releasing a deafening thunderclap that forced dozens of disciples in the stands to cover their ears and scream. The Empress smiled, electricity illuminating her glowing skin; she finally had the right leash to subdue her rabid dogs.
To Draven (The Glacial Bastion):
A colossal tower shield, almost two meters high, forged entirely from the overlapping, gigantic scales of a millennial dragon turtle from the deep sea. [Aegis of the Sunken Continent: High Earth Grade]. Draven received it, his thick muscles covered in blue ice tensing under the extreme weight. He struck the center of the shield with his bare fist. The sound was deep, abyssal, and immovable, like the heartbeat of a mountain. A solitary tear, which froze before reaching his chin, ran down his cheek. He had spent his life breaking fragile armor; he finally had something in his hands that would not break before he did.
To Aylin and Rowan (The Children of the Wind):
For Aylin, an immense and lethal Green Jade Spear, whose edge whistled constantly even when still, slicing the molecules of the air. For Rowan, two Chakrams (sharpened combat discs) of winged silver that he did not need to hold; as they approached him, his bloodline's zero friction caught them in its orbit, spinning them around him like murderous satellites without ever touching his arms. Both cousins exchanged a look of predatory complicity; Aylin was the storm that uprooted roots, and Rowan was the cutting breeze that decapitated unseen.
Samael continued his march, reaching the second row. The Specialists, now true Semi-Dragons, trembled, but not from fear, but from an anticipation so dense it could be tasted on the palate.
To Tamsin (The Jade Widow):
A seemingly elegant fan, composed of eighteen sharp, black feathers from a thousand-year-old demonic crow. [The Toxic Sigh: High Earth Grade]. Tamsin caught it in the air and unfurled it with a soft snap. It was beautiful, a courtly work of art, but the sweet and acidic smell it gave off in that microsecond caused the tiny weeds that had managed to grow between the distant cracks in the floor three meters away to turn black, wither, and turn to dust. She let out a nervous, delighted giggle, covering her mouth with the lethal fan; it was the most atrocious death, disguised as aristocratic beauty.
To Lys (The Beacon of the Dawn):
A majestic staff of immaculate white alabaster, crowned with a floating sphere that contained a small, pulsating solar core. [The Beacon of the Dawn: High Earth Grade]. The instant her hands touched the divine wood, Lys's blinding and tyrannical internal light stabilized. The staff would act as the perfect barrel to direct the Sun's Sentence, and the ideal conduit to spread her Photonic Healing.
To Elowen (The Root of Life):
A heavy and ancient combat cauldron, forged from underworld ironwood and celestial bronze, adorned with faces of agonizing forest spirits. The artifact possessed spatial runes that allowed it to change size at will. [Iron Root: High Earth Grade]. Elowen ran her fingers over the cold bronze, caressing it as if it were a loyal pet. Thanks to her elixir blood and her control of wood, she felt the wild, hungry life throbbing inside that dead metal, waiting to devour enemy blood to synthesize poisons and cures.
To Maren (The Silent Thunder):
Armored greaves of a vibrant bluish metal, aerodynamically designed with small wings forged in solid mercury around the ankles. [Steps of Thunder: High Earth Grade]. Maren knelt and adjusted them over his boots. Upon buckling the last strap, his entire body vibrated at a quantum frequency. His electrolyte blood recognized the metal's conduits. He felt that if his mind gave the order to take a single step, his body would transmute into electrons and cross the immense plaza before his own brain registered the movement. The electrical anxiety gnawing at his mind vanished, replaced by the pathological need to run and pierce enemy chests at supersonic speeds.
To Nylas (The Event Horizon):
Two immense black chains, each link as thick as an adult man's thigh, slithered through the air like lead snakes and violently coiled around his torso and arms. [Shackles of the Horizon: High Earth Grade]. Upon feeling the impact, Nylas did not recoil; instead, he groaned with pure, grim pleasure. The chains weighed actual tons, and that cosmic weight anchored him to reality. His body, which constantly suffered to keep from sucking the entire hall into his chest, finally found a counterweight. His own gravity would no longer crush him; he would now use those chains to drag entire castles into the ground.
To Joren and Lirael (The Assassins of the Intangible):
For Joren, the Zephyr Banshee, two matte black twin daggers whose blades vibrated at a perpetual counter-frequency, absorbing all sound within a five-meter radius. For Lirael, the Broken Moon, a fine curved sword with a frosted blade that distorted light, becoming physically invisible the instant it touched a shadow. Upon receiving their weapons, both nodded in silence to the patriarch. Without making a single sound, their figures began to fade, blurry and translucent, disappearing from the sight of the anxious disciples in the stands.
To Bren (The Seismic Behemoth):
Colossal impact knuckles, forged from alloys that had withstood the core of active volcanoes. [Gauntlets of the World's End: High Earth Grade]. The muscular bald giant slipped them on. To test them, he simply slammed the palms of his gloved hands against each other. BAAAAM! The obsidian floor beneath his feet cracked in a violent five-meter radius, creating a micro-quake that made the guards on the walls lose their balance. Bren laughed out loud, a brutal, happy sound loaded with the heat of magma.
To Elian (The Mercury Tide):
A perfect floating orb of liquid mercury, the size of a man's head, which docilely positioned itself over his right shoulder, orbiting him like a heavy silver moon. [Heart of Mercury: High Earth Grade]. Elian didn't even raise his hand. He touched the sphere with his mind, propelled by his heavy water abyssal blood. In a blink, the orb flattened into an impenetrable shield; in another second, it stretched into a dense, lethal three-meter spear; and finally, it dispersed into an immense net of silver threads capable of cutting flesh to the bone. It was absolute murderous versatility, bound to a crushing mass.
To Varian (The Sky Hunter):
An imposing compound longbow, carved from the bone of a Saint Grade flying beast and reinforced with sinews of darkness. Strangely, the bow did not possess a visible physical string. [The Eye of the Supreme Hawk: High Earth Grade]. Varian grasped it with his left hand. He raised his right arm and drew the empty air. In response to his emerald plasma blood, a glowing green energy string instantly materialized along with a humming arrow. Varian's high-tech pupils contracted drastically, zooming through the morning air; he was seeing with absolute clarity the imperfections in the stones of a mountain located kilometers away on the horizon.
Finally, the march of the Dragon King stopped.
Samael stood in front of the smallest and most lethal figure of all. Elara. The girl of mist and frost wasn't looking at the spectacle of destruction and power of the others. Her silvery-gray eyes, with those terrifying vertical pupils, were fixed solely and exclusively on the face of her Master.
Samael lowered his hands, and from his own personal inventory, two short daggers emerged. They were profoundly disturbing. They did not shine. They did not reflect the rising sun. They were completely translucent, carved from the pure bone of a primeval Void Beast. Staring at their edges caused dizziness and distorted vision, like trying to focus one's sight on the bottom of a deep lake. [Fangs of Non-Existence: High Earth Grade (Bordering Heaven Grade)].
Samael leaned in, his immense presence enveloping the little assassin, and whispered to her, his voice laden with a dark affection:
"These blades were not forged to cut vulgar flesh. They are designed to cut threads, to sever the very connection between the soul and body of a Saint. They make no noise. They shed no blood. They leave no forensic scars. They are the perfect end for you, my little shadow... you, who walk eternally where mortal gods are blind."
Elara extended her small, pale hands. She took the daggers by their hilts.
The instant the void bone touched her skin, the weapons disappeared physically, fusing at a subatomic level with the constant mist emanating from her body. Elara looked up at Samael. On her childlike face, there was no warm or human smile; there was a look of absolute, religious devotion, combined with a lethality so cold it would have frozen hell. She nodded once. Samael, with a gentleness that terrified his enemies, ruffled her silver hair.
With his army of calamities finally armed and fused with their artifacts, Samael turned on his heels. He turned his back to the plaza and walked toward the immense and colossal trunk of the Star Tree. The gigantic crystal leaves on the highest branches tinkled frantically, resonating, feeling in the sap of the earth what was about to happen.
"It's been years of hiding beneath the sand," Samael declared, his voice projecting so that every soul in the citadel heard him. "It is time the Morningstar name stops crawling on the ground like snakes, and ascends to claim the skies like the fucking dragons we are."
From his personal Space Ring, Samael extracted two legendary objects destined to rewrite the geography and history of the world.
In his left hand: [Sacred Blueprints of the Floating Void Citadel]. An immense parchment that glowed with divine architectures.
In his right hand: [Core of the Celestial Citadel: The Firmament of the Stellar Dragon]. It was a sphere the size of a man's torso, heavy as a dwarf star. The containment crystal could barely hold back the enraged violet and silver gravitational storm swirling inside.
"Cedric! Elowen!" the Sovereign roared. "Open the conduit! Connect the roots on my command!"
The Emperor of Arrays and the Root of Life dashed forward at light speed, placing their hands on the trunk of the immense tree, channeling their True Laws of metal and living wood to prepare the reception of the artifact.
Samael walked up to the massive trunk and, raising the immense sphere of the Core above his head, embedded it with a brutal, sharp blow directly into the main cavity of the ancient bark.
BOOOOOOOOM!!!
It wasn't an explosion of fire, nor chemical destruction. It was a detonation of pure atmospheric pressure and spatial alteration.
A gigantic, almost solid dark violet shockwave swept the entire citadel in a circular radius. The pressure was so extreme that the three thousand disciples on the walls fell on their backs, forced to cover their ears and close their eyes as the air was expelled from their lungs.
The colossal Star Tree roared. A dull, wooden, divine sound that shook the foundations of the planet. Its colossal roots, sinking dozens of kilometers deep into the burning desert, began to glow with a pulsing, blinding, golden light, injecting the energy of the gravitational storm through the obsidian veins of the city.
Samael's System illuminated the world with burning runes.
[IMPERIAL SYSTEM: FUSION OF DIVINE ARTIFACTS SUCCESSFUL.]
[ARRAY INTEGRATION AT 100%.]
[ACTIVATING HEAVEN GRADE REVERSE GRAVITY ENGINE.]
The earth began to scream in agony.
An earthquake of incalculable magnitude, far superior to a 9 on the mortal scale, shook the entirety of the Dragon Bone Desert. The immense surrounding dunes collapsed in on themselves, devoured by fissures opening toward the center of the earth.
"Hold onto your souls!" Samael ordered, his voice amplified by Dragon Qi and the City's Array. "We are leaving!"
CRAAAAAAACK!
With a continental crunch that seemed to split the world's crust in half, the Morningstar Capital separated from the Earth's mantle.
A geometrically perfect circle, exactly ten kilometers in diameter—containing the outer obsidian wall, the inner districts, the pavilions, the Great Plaza, and the immense Patriarch's Palace—violently rose upward.
Millions of metric tons of bedrock, basalt foundations, and ancestral earth snapped the unbreakable chains of the planet's gravity as if they were silk threads. Apocalyptic waterfalls of desert sand and stone debris fell in kilometer-long curtains from the edges of the floating island as it inexorably ascended toward the heavens.
One hundred meters. The surface of the desert fell away, leaving an abyssal crater in the sand.
Five hundred meters. The low clouds were pierced by the top of the Star Tree.
One thousand meters.
Three thousand meters.
The thousands of disciples, clinging to balustrades, pillars, and the floor, looked over the edges of the walls with their eyes flooded with hot tears. Tears of primitive terror, but also of absolute, religious wonder. They were flying. The earth they stood upon had conquered the sky. Their home, the citadel where they had bled, was now a black and gold star reigning in the atmosphere.
In the center of the islet, the Star Tree acted as the structure's thermonuclear reactor, pumping pure stellar Qi through the roots to stabilize the monstrous landmass.
Then, the final defense activated. From the edges of the flying island, immense arcs of light emerged. A glowing, omnipotent golden dome closed over the entire city, sealing the internal atmosphere and protecting the inhabitants from mortal friction, lack of oxygen, and the cold void of the upper atmosphere.
[Defensive Formation Activated: The Aegis of the Twelve Golden Dragons.]
It wasn't a simple translucent barrier. Along the immense energy dome, twelve colossal projections of Golden Dragons, forged from solid light and Sovereign Laws, continuously intertwined and swam.
The Aegis possessed the Wall of Absolute Sovereignty. Any curse, any Saint Grade poison, or demonic attack that tried to touch the dome would be instantly incinerated and purified by the "Light of Dawn" exhaled by the dragons. And if a foolish army managed to besiege the city, they would suffer the Roar of the Imperial Reflection; upon absorbing enough damage, the twelve dragons would open their immense jaws to fire beams of Starlight and destructive Qi, disintegrating entire fleets in a single volley.
Samael crossed the plaza and strode toward the absolute bow of the floating citadel. The internal artificial wind furiously billowed his black and gold robe.
He looked at the holographic map floating above his gauntlet. The red dot of the target throbbed to the southeast.
"Set course," the Sovereign ordered, his voice cold as a guillotine blade. "Destination: Valois Territory. Extreme Hunt Speed."
Hours later. Southeast of the continent.
The majestic Emerald Valley enjoyed the sickly, arrogant peace of aristocrats who believed themselves to be the untouchable masters of the world.
It was high noon. The bright sun bathed the lavish white marble mansions of the Valois Family, making the countless statues of their ancestors and the meticulously polished shields of the fifteen thousand elite soldiers who formed their dreaded private army, stationed in the vast training fields, gleam.
At the top of the highest mountain in the valley, in the luxurious hanging gardens on the terrace of the Main Mansion, Patriarch Alaric Valois (a consolidated Stage 5 Saint Realm master) laughed out loud. He held a cut-crystal goblet filled with aged ruby wine, while smoothly discussing the future division of the border mines with a man dressed in violet silks, the respected Envoy of the Purple Light Sect.
"You shouldn't worry about those vulgar rumors coming from the south, my esteemed friend," Alaric said, with that disgusting, smug smile only possessed by tyrants who have never looked true death in the eye. "That so-called Morningstar Clan is nothing more than a band of mercenaries playing at being kings in the sand. The desert is a useless tomb, and we are..."
Gulp.
The sound was minuscule, ridiculous, but physically impossible to ignore. Alaric stopped his speech. The exquisite red wine inside his crystal goblet was not level; it had tilted to one side, climbing up the glass as if the entire gravity of the planet had abruptly changed direction.
The laughter of the maids in the garden ceased abruptly.
The beautiful songbirds, which seconds before had enlivened the imported fruit trees, dropped dead to the courtyard floor, falling like stones. Their little hearts had instantly burst due to a monstrous, unnatural drop in atmospheric pressure.
The bright midday sun disappeared. The shadows of the marble columns on the terrace elongated grotesquely, like the bony fingers of the grim reaper, covering the entire balcony. An existential cold, an absolute grave-like silence, suffocated the Emerald Valley.
Alaric Valois frowned, irritated by what he believed was a meteorological phenomenon or a bad joke from a rival sect. He looked up at the sky to search for storm clouds.
His pupils contracted violently, reducing to black dots surrounded by a sea of pure white terror. His muscles failed. The wine glass slipped from his inert hands, smashing against the marble floor and splashing his expensive boots with blood red. His mouth opened, but the scream of panic stuck in his parched throat.
The bright sky over the valley... was peeling away.
Like a cheap painting suddenly burned by the fire of an invisible lighter, the illusion of the diaphanous blue sky melted.
Up above, the immense and arcane [Mantle of the Void] of the Morningstar Citadel had voluntarily deactivated to announce its arrival.
Physical reality shattered over the heads of the fifteen thousand Valois soldiers.
Out of absolute nowhere, a mass of millions of tons of black obsidian and primordial gold foundations appeared floating in the air, anchored a mere fifteen hundred meters above their heads. It was an entire inverted mountain. A black and abyssal citadel, bristling with lethal runic siege cannons, from which waterfalls of stellar sand fell, and where thousands of red banners bearing the emblem of a Sun-Devouring Dragon billowed in a wind that smelled of ancient death.
The mere physical intrusion of such a tectonic mass into the valley's air displaced the atmosphere with such extreme violence that an invisible shockwave, like a concrete wall, slammed into the ground.
CRAAAAAACK!!!
The immaculate, expensive roofs of the marble mansions caved in and collapsed under the air pressure. Hundreds of polychrome stained-glass windows and security crystals shattered inward, filling the rooms with a rain of transparent daggers.
In the gardens, guards and servants dropped to their knees, clutching their heads as they bled profusely from their ears and noses, their limited, fragile human brains absolutely incapable of processing the terrifying majesty of the apocalyptic structure hovering above them.
"W-What the fuck is that?" stammered the Envoy of the Purple Light Sect, his face drained of blood, stumbling backward until he hit the balcony wall, losing all his diplomatic arrogance.
And then, came the sound of the final judgment.
"SURPRISE."
The voice didn't descend from the sky using sound waves. There was no echo bouncing off the mountains. Samael Morningstar's voice was born directly inside the skull, in the brain synapses of every single one of the fifteen thousand inhabitants of the valley. It was a freezing, intimate, invasive voice, pregnant with divine cruelty.
"OPEN THE GATES."
The Dragon King's telepathic command was a psychic battering ram. The foot soldiers dropped their spears, falling to the ground screaming in mental pain.
Alaric Valois, shaking off the stupor through sheer willpower and Saint Grade cultivation, drew his rapier of incandescent light.
"It's an attack!" the Patriarch roared, cold sweat soaking his forehead as panic dominated him for the first time in centuries. "Activate the Great Emerald Barrier! Summon all the Elders! It's them! It's the damned demon of the desert!"
Above, on the bow of the obsidian island, Samael watched the insects run in circles. Dressed in his robe of shadows and flanked by the Empresses and the founding Elders, Samael raised his hand and brought it down in a sharp chop.
He looked at the shadows cast on the citadel's jump platform.
"Malak. Close the cage."
The Shinigami, Malak (now a consolidated Stage 6 Saint, the emissary of death), didn't even nod. He simply leapt into the void, leaving the protection of the Golden Aegis and plummeting toward the valley.
As his black silhouette plummeted at terminal velocity, his physical body broke and split. A hundred immense, dense, tangible shadows separated from him in mid-air. They fell around the mountains forming the perimeter of the Emerald Valley like a rain of silent black meteorites, embedding themselves deep into the earth.
[Saint Grade Shadow Legion Art: The Purgatory Cage].
From the hundred impact craters, a cyclopean wall of solid, absolute darkness rose simultaneously from the ground to connect with the sky, forming an impenetrable dome.
The light from the outside was blocked. The Valois' emergency teleportation arrays, which had barely begun to glow to attempt the evacuation of the heirs, exploded and went dark. The Emerald Valley had been sealed on a dimensional level. It was an open-air tomb. Absolutely no one from the outside would enter to save them. Absolutely no Valois soldier, servant, or child would leave alive.
On the assault edge of the obsidian platform, looking down into the two-thousand-meter-deep abyss, the 21 Sequences of the Morningstar Clan lined up.
They were no longer apprentices. They were twenty-one Semi-Dragons. The vanguard of cosmic carnage. Their new High Earth Grade weapons gleamed and hummed, hungry and resonating with the awakened bloodlines boiling in their veins. The scales of metal, wind, and void on their skins caught the scarce sunlight filtering through Malak's Cage. Their vertical eyes were locked on the white ants running in terror in the training courtyard far below.
Samael walked behind his legion, his voice broadcasting the final execution order.
"No mercy. No prisoners," the Sovereign decreed, the ancient hatred of past lives distilled into his words. "Leave no stone unturned. I want that when the great empires of the continent send their scouts to look for the impregnable Valois Family, they find only craters, ash, and a terror that rots their soul."
Samael raised his obsidian-wrapped hand and pointed toward the immense central courtyard of the main mansion, where the Valois elite were trying to organize a defense.
"Kael. The self-proclaimed 'Holy Son' Valerius Valois, the pearl of this pathetic family, is hiding behind his shields in the south courtyard. Teach him the difference between a spoiled brat playing swords and a general forged in war."
Samael turned his lethal gaze.
"Violeta. Eris. Burn, freeze, and disintegrate every living organism bearing the white and green emblem of their army. I don't want a single bastard breathing in ten minutes."
Samael spread his arms, opening the gates of hell.
"Rest of the Sequences. Specialists. Total free hunt. Show them why mortality has been left behind."
Kael took a step forward, leaning over the precipice of the sky. His Magma Sword Physique reacted to his Crimson Dragon bloodline. His colossal Odachi of the Eclipse burst into flames, igniting with the dense, terrifying golden and black light of the Infernal King. The obsidian horns on his forehead gleamed as the liquid metal blood boiled in his veins.
"CHARGE!" Kael roared, a command that did not seem human.
And then, the event that would be inscribed in blood in the annals of the southern continent occurred.
Twenty-one figures did not descend on stairs of light, nor use magical portals, nor conjure useless flying clouds. They simply leaped into the absolute void from a height of two thousand meters.
They fell like the sentence of the final judgment. As gravity accelerated them toward terminal velocity, the atmosphere itself could not withstand the friction of their Saint Grade auras and Dragon bloodlines. Their bodies caught fire from atomic friction.
The Valois elite on the ground could only look up in horror as the dark sky rained twenty-one blazing meteorites down upon them. Meteorites wreathed in magma fire, absolute ice, electrical static, annihilating light, heavy water, and silent void winds.
BBBOOOOOOOOMMM!!!
The earth of the immaculate Valois central courtyard literally exploded when the twenty-one meteorites impacted. The concentric shockwave sent three hundred main guard soldiers flying through the air as if they were bloody ragdolls, shattering the marble and tearing the statues of the Valois ancestors out by their roots.
When the thick dust of marble debris and pulverized earth began to settle heavily, a sepulchral silence took over the battlefront.
Kael rose slowly from the center of an immense smoking crater whose walls were crystallized by the Flame of Purgatory. He dusted off his armored shoulders. Around him, the figures of Violeta wielding her moon rapier, Eris laughing with her black spear, Draven raising his turtle shield, and the rest of the Semi-Dragons stood up amidst the smoke, their eyes illuminating the darkness of the destruction.
In front of them, a mere thirty meters away, an entire battalion of two thousand elite Valois soldiers, armed to the teeth, backed away instinctively. Their spears trembled. Their knees buckled. The oppression of the twenty-one True Laws was a physical poison in the air.
Kael raised his immense dark-flamed Odachi, resting the flat side on his own magma shoulder. He looked at the soldiers, and his lips curved, revealing a row of teeth that were far too sharp, conical, and lethal to belong to a human being.
"Alright, dead meat," Kael said, the friction of his voice hissing like red-hot steel. "Let's start the fucking party."