CHAPTER 112: MIRACLE OF THE STORM

0% Was today the end of the world? Or did the volcano finally erupt?

Everyone who saw it was left speechless. Pillars of flame streaked across the sky in crisscrossing diagonals. It looked like fire itself was raining from above.

It was far too overwhelming to have been caused by any living thing. Pope Nergal shouted to the cardinal beside him.

“I’ll take care of that creature. You handle the Blessing of Flight!”

“You old man! You always go for the easy jobs!”

The cardinal groaned as he was suddenly burdened with a critical task. But given the situation, he didn’t hesitate. He placed his hands on the sky-stone.

Thanks to the blessing infused in that crystal, this massive ship, Artabus, could soar freely through the skies with so many aboard.

It devoured divine energy in absurd amounts, but in return, it gave the airship the agility it desperately needed. In times like this, such mobility was priceless.

The Artabus zigzagged through the air, dodging fireballs. Just as it made a sharp turn, a beam of light shot from the bow. That first shot triggered a cascade, and beams began to fire in succession.

“If we could just blow that bastard to pieces, it’d be perfect.”

The wizard manning the arcane cannon muttered something terrifying under his breath.

“With these mass-produced cannons from the Mage Tower? I’m afraid not.”

The weapons had originally been installed on Vales City’s defensive wall, then hastily stripped off and loaded onto the airship.

They might’ve been effective against an army of demons, but they were useless against volcanic ash, so no one had hesitated to bring them instead.

Now, everyone regretted the trouble it took to move those heavy things. The phoenix was too far away, no shot landed cleanly.

“We’re firing nonstop and still missing! I thought these had tracking magic?”

The Duke’s face reddened with fury as he shouted. If this wasn’t procurement fraud, what was it?

They’d spent a mountain of budget on these weapons, only for them to miss everything in sight.

Of course, the head of the Mage Tower’s Vales branch had something to say in his defense. Fighting off airsickness, he snapped back.

“These cannons are meant to be used from a solid, stationary platform! You can’t just,whoa!”

The Artabus, making another evasive maneuver, jolted violently. He had to grab the nearest handle, leaving his sentence unfinished.

This ship wasn’t built to dodge fireballs like a mad beast. It was originally designed to observe celestial movements, not outrun flame storms. That meant it had virtually no safety measures for its passengers. You had to survive by holding on with your own body.

“Firing from a moving airship like this? No tracking spell could hit!”

“Then why are we still missing when that thing’s just floating there?!”

“Because we’re the ones who can’t stop moving! In a situation like this, even the granddaddy of all cannons couldn’t hit it!”

Fwoosh! A beam of light suddenly struck the phoenix dead-on. Not the result of a precision shot,more like a lucky hit after firing blindly.

Even the mage operating the cannon looked amazed at his own aim. But as the magic shot reached point-blank range, the phoenix casually batted it away with a talon. The sound of its mocking scoff seemed to reach them from afar. The projectile exploded midair, hitting nothing.

“Hey! Are you kidding me?!”

The Duke exploded with rage.

“You still think this isn’t corruption? And you call yourself human? Who paid you?! How much money did you take to make a cannon that shoots blanks?!”

“You’re mistaken, Your Excellency! We may take money, but we always do the work!”

Director Corinel of the Tower branch, now grabbed by the collar, shook his head furiously in protest. He truly looked unjustly accused. If this had been fraud, the magic core shouldn’t have even detonated.

Yes, they’d inflated prices, taken absurd profits, and distributed a good chunk of the payout to the higher-ups in the Cidatel Republic’s government and military. But the cannons themselves? They weren’t defective.

They were just overpriced. Low cost-performance, perhaps, but not faulty. The Mage Tower, for all its corruption, still took pride in quality.

So this wasn’t a defect. And to prove that, the second cannon hit the phoenix head-on. This time, it exploded before the creature could even deflect it.

But the blast was swallowed by heat. It didn’t even reach the Phoenix. It bounced off as if an invisible barrier protected the beast.

“The sheer heat radiating from its body acts as a barrier on its own. That’s what the King of Monsters is. Your Excellency, we’re talking about the King of Monsters. If we could kill it with just these cannons, our Tower would’ve conquered the continent long ago.”

In short, the problem wasn’t the weapon. The opponent was simply too much.

It was a being born at the apex of the food chain. The kind of strength humans could only gain through agonizing years of training, this thing could earn just by shedding feathers as it grew.

That innate unfairness was real. Even as it floated still in the air, offering itself as a target, they hadn’t managed to land a single decisive hit.

“Are we done yet?! I swear my brain’s about to melt!”

The Artabus had avoided real damage so far, but that was only thanks to the desperate effort of Cardinal Omen.

Never mind the sky-stone’s output; human stamina had limits. Steering this massive vessel with constant evasive maneuvers wasn’t something anyone could do for long.

“Wait.”

The Pope silenced the cardinal’s frustrated, desperate cry with a single word.

“Wait for it. Until the time is right.”

“And when exactly is that?! After all my hair’s fallen out?!”

“If you’ve still got the energy to joke, you’ve got more left in you.”

Everything had to be accounted for. Air pressure. Temperature. The flow of the atmosphere. The currents of thunder.

The Pope was nearly certain. That creature underestimated humans. Spreading its wings wide, firing flame bombs without caution, it was too relaxed.

That made sense. All the humans it had known so far were nothing but pitiful things running away or dying at its feet. That arrogance would give them only one shot.

Even a cornered rat bites the cat. If this creature sensed real danger, became desperate, panicked,what then?

A wounded beast was terrifying. But a wounded phoenix?

At least the battlefield is deserted.

Balls of fire dropped and exploded on the ground with a deafening boom. Volcanic ash leapt skyward, reaching even the Artabus.

If this had happened in Vales City or the capital, it would have been hell incarnate.

Even the rising air currents were part of the Pope’s calculation. Anything that rose to the sky belonged to the sky. He turned to the roiling heat around him and began to pray.

“Heavenly One who rules the sky. Lord of Heaven we dare to seek. Call forth the northern winds to scatter this inferno. Steal away the burning heat. Let the winds swirl unsettled, and the quiet dread remains.”

As if answering the prayer, a stream of cold air began to descend from beyond the stratosphere. The heat rose. The Pope’s divine power intertwined with the upper atmosphere. A hissing sound filled the air as winds surged from every direction.

Heat and cold clashed violently. Turbulence swept through the skies. Just as the smoke parted and blue sky returned, dark clouds gathered again.

The rising warm air fed them, and the storm clouds unleashed rain and lightning on every side.

“Is that... weather control?!”

Director Corinel, who was also the chief mage of the Tower headquarters, cried out.

“No... no, this is...”

Even the high-level magic known as Weather Control could only cause temporary rain in clear skies. This went far beyond that.

At the center of the storm, the wind twisted into the shape of a long dragon.

The whirlwind swallowed the heated air from the ground and then began to spin faster and faster. Only now did the phoenix seem to realize something was wrong. It flapped its wings and looked down in alarm.

“Praise the storm! May evil be shredded and vanish on the wind!”

A tornado rose, so massive it made the giant phoenix look small. Its diameter couldn’t even be measured in meters anymore, it had to be kilometers.

The wind devoured everything on the ground.

There was nothing left below but ash, so the swirling gray powder gave color to the otherwise invisible wind.

The ash-gray vortex engulfed the phoenix entirely. It could no longer hold its position, swaying in the currents.

“Heaven’s wrath descends!”

The Pope raised a fist and brought it down. Lightning sparked from the clouds, grinding against one another.

Cloud to cloud. Then, from cloud to cloud again.

Each time it jumped, the bolt grew stronger. With every strike, the surrounding thunder faded. Lesser lightning scattered elsewhere lost its strength and vanished.

“Oh... ohhh!”

The Duke gasped in awe, and the priests of the Aldehir Church stared wide-eyed at the thunder rumbling through the heavens.

The bolt had become a massive pillar that looked ready to swallow the phoenix whole.

So this,this was their Pope?

A hush of reverence fell over the watchers. Even Cardinal Omen kept his mouth shut.

“Fall!”

With a thunderous cry, the bolt finally struck.

It wasn’t lightning; it was the fist of a god descending from the sky.

The divine-charged pillar of lightning wrapped around the phoenix and burned white-hot. The flash was so blinding that no one could open their eyes.

“Damn it...!”

But even then, the Pope clicked his tongue. He muttered bitterly.

“I thought I’d held nothing back, yet my strength is still not enough?”

Had he underestimated it?

No. If anyone had, it was the phoenix.

But even striking while it was off guard hadn’t destroyed it.

As the light faded, they saw it, glowing nearly white-hot, the phoenix still hovered, and inside it, a power none had seen before began to surge.

It was now ablaze with pure white fire.

“Is it... is that thing immortal?”

“It’s not unscathed. Your Holiness’s attack hit cleanly.”

Even Omen, no one remembered when he last called the Pope “Your Holiness”,spoke in solemn respect.

But he didn’t release the sky-stone. He turned the bow of the Artabus and began to flee through the wind.

“The problem is, we didn’t kill it. We just woke it up. Even for a deathless beast, this is pushing it. That was too much energy—”

He didn’t finish.

A sound unlike anything they had ever heard drowned out every voice. Heat swept through the world.

The tornado was blown apart. The storm clouds evaporated. Moist air turned desert-dry in an instant.

And in the void left behind, panting, scorched, hovered a single bird.

—Kuurk. Kek.

Perhaps thanks to divine protection, or maybe distance, the Artabus wasn’t completely destroyed. It was scorched, but still intact.

The monster’s eyes gleamed with fury.

Never in its life had anyone ever pushed it this far. It had never taken such damage since the day it first grew feathers.

Goooo...

Smoke billowed from its body. Its flames were gone, and only raw feathers remained. The phoenix was no longer a flaming godbird, just a massive bird.

White-hot combustion was a technique even it could barely use. The energy cost was catastrophic. But even so.

—Krrk.

That mutated monkey dared to challenge it? Never.

Its venomous eyes fixed upon the woman standing alone in its path.

“Come.”

Hands gripped tightly around the lunar-forged dao, ready to swing at any moment.

Roka no longer ran from any enemy.