CHAPTER 202: CHAPTER202-THE EMPIRE’S NEW SPATIAL POWER

"What the hell?!"

"What is happening?!"

Wolfgang couldn’t help taking a step forward, his eyes locked on Aurek.

The sheer ferocity of the power on display sent waves through his normally unshakable heart.

Even allowing for the element of surprise, to reap divine aspects so easily meant only one thing—Aurek’s strength was unfathomable.

Blood seeped between Jacob’s clenched fingers, and he didn’t even notice.

"Aurek... Is this the monster birthed by that dying royal line?"

A chill cut straight to his bones.

Boom!

A grandmaster rank, level 6 powerhouse finally erupted in fury.

Light blazed from his body as three divine aspects manifested at once—the Ancient Maple Staff, the Wheel of Blood Sacrifice, and the Guardian Spirit of the Mountains. Terrifying force battered the boundaries of the spatial ward imprisoning them.

"Aurek!"

"You damned butcher!"

He roared and brought his hands together in an archaic mudra.

The Ancient Maple Staff divine aspect projected ten colossal staff-shadows that spanned heaven and earth, plunging down like mythic wedges meant to pin titans, aiming to nail Aurek to the very world.

All around, other divine aspects surged, mana cranked to the limit.

Law-visions flooded the sky; the elements of the world keened, and the fabric of space groaned under the strain.

"In the name of the mountains—judgment!"

"Heretic—die!"

Sanity buckled beneath rage. The grandmasters who had recovered their wits fixed all hatred and killing intent upon Aurek.

Divine aspects drew upon deeper layers of law, unleashing flaming meteors, frozen realms, thunderous annihilation—an onslaught pouring down on Aurek like the end of days.

Some turned their fury upon the reassembling void warlocks, Doomsday Warriors, and elemental assassins, launching strikes strong enough to tear mountains asunder.

A heritage of ten millennia lost in a day.

More than a dozen divine aspects already annihilated in moments.

The battle had not yet reached its true climax—

and the Crimson Hills’ top-tier strength was already nearly halved.

How could they remain calm?

Their only thought was to tear Aurek to pieces and wipe those uncanny legions from existence.

"Run—run for your lives!"

The remaining thirty thousand-plus master-rank cultivators broke completely and scattered in all directions.

If even grandmasters could not resist the slaughter, staying meant death.

Faced with the saturation strike of nearly forty divine aspects,

the hundred-thousand-plus summoned units who had just completed their first wave of kills were under immense pressure.

But then—

the void warlocks again displayed superb tactical mastery: Spatial Fracture flared open, sweeping their allies into the rift.

In the same breath, the radiance of Transdimensional Leap flashed; a heartbeat before the combined strikes landed, the entire formation vanished.

Even as they withdrew, the current of space dragged away more than ten thousand of the fleeing master-rank enemies—

who, an instant later, were shredded to fragments by the turbulence of the void.

BOOOOM—!

With their targets gone, the divine aspects’ combined attacks slammed into one another, triggering a chain of cataclysmic detonations.

A storm of energy rolled downward and hammered the land; hundreds of city-states across the western territories shook with violent earthquakes.

Even in the Endless Glacier and the Anubichi Mountain Range, distant powerhouses felt the tremors underfoot.

The sky outside the Crimson Hills split with crisscrossing spatial fissures.

"Mass spatial translation?! How can they—"

"Why are those strange imperial warriors so adept with the laws of space?!"

A grandmaster from Blade City cried out, aghast.

Envoys from Skypeak Tower wore the same horrified look.

The unified strike of dozens of divine aspects... evaded perfectly—like smoke slipping through fingers.

Spatial power at that scale skirted the very frontier of the Stellar Rank.

"These are nothing like any imperial soldiers we’ve faced before," Sainette said, eyes nailed to the reappearing void warlocks, her tone grave.

She had crossed blades with Doomsday Warriors, elemental assassins, and Mountain Shieldbearers—

but a force of spatial specialists this large and this practiced? She had never even heard of such a thing.

Her gaze returned to Aurek, now bright with wary curiosity.

"Damnable tricks!"

Their attacks wasted, the Crimson Hills grandmasters flew into a rage and moved to relock their targets and pursue—

And at that moment, the long-hidden Mountain Shieldbearer legions erupted into view.

Together they unfurled four thousand layers of holy light barriers; bulwarks of earth and mana stacked upon each other until they held the grandmasters’ energy storm at bay through sheer, grinding force.

War Bear loosed a roar that shook the ranges, charging straight at a sky-piercing Maple Colossus divine aspect.

He unleashed Shatter the Range in a heartbeat and, entering Berserker’s Wrath, swelled in size to meet the towering maple avatar head-on in the most primal, bone-crunching contest of strength.

A detachment of Shieldbearers surged to encircle him, their adamant shields absorbing the brunt of law-pressure and psychic shock crashing down from the grandmasters.

Freed of that outer burden, War Bear’s assault grew even more savage and domineering.

Across the field, attribute soldiers split: one wing swept the broken master-rank remnants from the field;

the main body cut back into the primary melee, partnering Aurek in the harvest.

A grandmaster was fundamentally different from a peak master; numbers alone could not guarantee victory.

Even hundreds of attribute soldiers trying to mob a single grandmaster could easily be cut to pieces.

But when the count rose to a thousand or two—

and when every one of them was a peak grandmaster unit—

and when void warlocks provided immaculate control, Doomsday Warriors and elemental assassins delivered killing blows, and Mountain Shieldbearers granted absolute protection—

the quantity transformed into a new quality entirely.

They could not merely pin down a divine aspect—

they could pressure even those grandmasters bearing multiple divine aspects.

Overthunder and Golden Armor led an elite strike team, locking onto and tangling up a divine aspect that had tried to strike at Aurek.

All of this choreography served a single core aim:

to buy their sovereign the priceless time and space needed to decide the war.

The two most ancient monsters of the Crimson Hills still lurked at the range’s heart, wary of the Stellar-rank calamities their full power might provoke.

Aurek understood: this was the moment to cut away their wings.

He swung the Glamer Holy Sword once more.

Boundless mana fused with the weapon’s ancient spirit-will, surging into a world-rending torrent that spanned the heavens.

The ten colossal "nailing-staves" hurtling toward him—annihilated.

The Ancient Maple Staff divine aspect—nearly torn to tatters.

The grandmaster rank, level 6 howled in fury,

driving the Guardian Spirit of the Mountains to conjure a phantom realm woven of a million peaks.

From it, those mountains massed into a single stone titan’s hand, a palm that blanketed the sky and crashed down toward Aurek.

Aurek’s eyes did not change.

"King’s Verdict."

The Glamer Holy Sword seemed to wake and breathe; wherever its edge traced, space itself parted.

The stone giant’s palm—cleaved down the center and shattered to gravel that dissolved into nothing.

In the next instant—

Aurek vanished from the ordinary world and reappeared behind the grandmaster.

The sword’s tip slid, silent and sure, into the back of his skull.

Devastating sword-qi detonated outward, reducing the man’s head—and the soul-core within—to pulverized ruin.