Chapter 294: Under the Divine Strike
For short-lived humans, "Divine Strike" was a legend more distant than mythology itself. It was the ultimate magic, whose true power they couldn't even imagine a fraction of.
And now, they were witnessing this legend with their own eyes?
But the price... would be their lives!
"Stop them! At all costs! Or we all die!!!"
The powerful mages went completely insane.
Disregarding mana backlash entirely, some even used secret arts to burn their own life force. They hurled the highest-tier, strongest spells they had ever learned, along with every magical item on their persons, at Serie as if they cost nothing.
For a moment, the sky was filled with multicolored destructive energy.
However, all attacks were isolated by absolute power before they could even touch Serie.
Serie stood proudly on the ground. The Holy Right Sword Athos floated before her, blossoming with brilliant radiance.
A spherical barrier flowing with countless ancient runes enveloped her perfectly.
Let the magic thunder and energy rage outside; the barrier remained immovable. Only tiny ripples of energy appeared on its surface, narrating the dying struggles of these mages.
The world's strongest defensive magic displayed despair-inducing hardness in this moment.
Meanwhile, Serie continued to cast the Divine Strike. The battle intent in her golden eyes was gone, replaced by a near-divine focus as she guided the ultimate power capable of rewriting the battlefield.
Now, she held both the strongest offensive magic and the strongest defensive magic in the world.
She lacked nothing.
As for the attacks unleashed by the legion soldiers, Rhodes adopted a different approach.
Under countless terrified gazes, he completely ignored the restrictive barrier above his head—cast by dozens of mages, theoretically strong enough to ground even a dragon—and floated up lightly, ascending straight into mid-air!
"He... he is flying?!"
"The restrictive barrier has no effect on him?!"
"Monster! He is a monster!!!"
Desperate screams erupted from the soldiers on the ground.
Archers fired upward in vain. When their arrows approached within a few meters of Rhodes, they seemed to hit an invisible, distorted mirror. Their trajectories became instantly chaotic.
All arrows and javelins collided with each other, and some even reflected back into the camp, causing widespread confusion.
A magical shield that distorted the laws of space had long protected him flawlessly.
This was only possible because there were no powerful mages in the legion below. Otherwise, Rhodes wouldn't have used this chaotic magical shield.
This shield was exceptionally effective against ranged physical attacks—something Rhodes had created on a whim in the past, akin to granting himself protection against projectiles.
But its weakness was also obvious.
Against powerful elemental offensive magic, this chaotic effect was completely useless.
In other words, this shield was specifically designed to counter ordinary attacks like arrows from an army.
Although there were some mages hidden in the legion below, they were clearly unlike the group besieging Serie who could use various high-ranking spells. These mages were obviously support types leaning toward weapon enchantment.
Thus, their participation in the siege against Rhodes wasn't strange.
In the center of Rhodes's palm, a point of extreme white light was condensing and compressing frantically.
The energy contained within that light caused the air of the entire battlefield to solidify.
Serie was slightly different. Instead of a point of light in her palm, a pillar of light appeared directly in her hand.
But without exception, the aura emitted was identical; only the manifestation differed slightly.
The aura of death shrouded the hearts of every Imperial soldier and mage like a physical weight.
No matter how they attacked or screamed, they could not stop the descent of the ultimate judgment.
"Divine Strike."
Two calm words were spoken simultaneously by Rhodes and Serie.
Their voices weren't loud, yet they transmitted clearly into the deepest part of everyone's soul on the battlefield.
This was the sound of death, and the last words they would ever hear.
The world lost its sound, leaving only an expanse of extreme white!
The first to erupt was Serie's side.
In the next instant—
A white pillar of light, its color indescribable, seemed to burst forth from the earth. It wasn't a simple energy beam but carried a special law of holy purification. It rushed brazenly toward the sky, then fell like the sword of divine punishment upon the mages.
Where the pillar passed, space was thoroughly torn apart.
All resistance was futile. Even the highest-ranking defensive magic possessed no ability to resist for even a split second before this pillar of light.
All matter—whether specially crafted mage robes, flesh and blood, or magical items—vanished the instant it touched the light.
Like filth purified by Holy Magic, they began to decompose and dissipate completely.
After all, Divine Strike was a type of Holy Magic.
There were no screams, not even struggles. These powerful mages didn't even have time to react before being utterly erased.
Almost in the same instant, the point of light in Rhodes's palm reached critical mass.
A blinding white torrent surged from his hand.
Unlike the purification in Serie's Divine Strike, the version Rhodes released was slightly different.
This torrent had no attribute. Or rather, its only attribute was Annihilation.
Everything it touched was thoroughly annihilated.
A bottomless ravine of absolute vacuum, its sides dark from shattered space, spread madly across the earth as the white torrent advanced.
Two forces of destruction representing different aspects swept across the entire battlefield side by side, at a speed surpassing perception.
Imperial soldiers raised their shields in vain; the shields and their bodies were annihilated instantly under the light.
Mages erected their final barriers, but the usually sturdy shields evaporated instantly like water drops under a blazing sun.
The light lasted for several breaths, then slowly dissipated.
When vision returned, the battlefield no longer existed.
The vast grassland where the Empire's vanguard legion had been camped had disappeared completely. In its place was a scorched black wasteland, as if branded by a giant iron.
And on this dead plain, two massive scars were branded side by side.
Two gigantic ravines, dozens of meters wide and bottomless, stretched all the way to the end of the horizon.
The Southern Unified Empire's most elite vanguard legion, the strongest army the Empire had spent countless resources to build, and the formerly high-and-mighty Court Mages...
Everything had been thoroughly, cleanly, and absolutely wiped from the world under the legendary Divine Strike magic.
No wreckage. No bloodstains. Not a single trace that they had ever existed.
Only a human and an elf remained.
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