Terrifying Elemental Power

The instant that voice rang out, the Viking warriors on the battlefield seemed to have found someone to rely on. Their eyes lit up, and as the voice faded, they shouted in unison, "Leader! Leader!"

A squad emerged from the dense forest, led by a single man whose eyes swept over them with a dagger's chill. For a moment, the Qi Kingdom general felt as though a mountain were pressing down on him. His soldiers also stopped, watching the squad without daring to move rashly.

The pressure radiating from Idiveer's gaze made him briefly dizzy. Shocked, he instinctively tightened his grip on his bronze sword. But his opponent did not attack at once. Instead, he strolled over to the bloodied head, crouched, and laid a hand on it.

"Waldaren, rest in peace. You will go to Valhalla." After those brief words of comfort, he closed the dead man's eyes. As Idiveer rose, a terrifying aura flowed out of him.

The soldiers around him immediately felt an invisible pressure descend. To their astonishment, their steps became far heavier beneath it, as though they were sinking into a mire. This was the Earth Element wielded at will.

Ignoring those soldiers, Idiveer looked at the bloodstained bronze sword in the Qi Kingdom general's hand and asked in a low voice, "What is your name?"

"Ling Zhengjian," he said, lifting his chin slightly.

"Good. Now, please go join him." Brown flashed through Idiveer's eyes. He flicked his hand as casually as if brushing the air, yet the space before him rippled like water. Then a massive, cone-shaped rock rose from beneath his feet and shot toward his opponent like a flying sword.

The conical rock was the size of a child. It hurtled toward him with a ferocity no less than that of a long halberd, growing ever larger in his eyes.

Knowing he could not dodge, the general turned his wrist and swept his bronze sword in a circle. Then he stepped forward, charged at the approaching rock, and slashed down hard.

With a bang, the massive rock split in two. Before the general's body could drop, he used his momentum to press forward with his sword. He was clearly turning his defense into a counterattack.

"That fellow's no pushover. His resolve is frighteningly strong, too," Kanni said admiringly from a distance.

"That Viking leader seems to be an Earth Elementalist who's reached the Willful Realm. He's incredibly strong. Against an enemy that terrifying, the general has a ten percent chance of winning at most." Zeng Mu clearly understood the vast gulf between an Elementalist and an ordinary person.

Even without using elemental power, the Viking leader could take on at least ten such opponents with his physical strength alone, and his stamina exceeded that of a hundred men combined. In single combat, the general had virtually no chance of winning. Even that ten percent was something Zeng Mu had granted out of hope.

Just as he expected, the instant Ling Zhengjian reached Idiveer and brought his bronze sword down, Idiveer merely raised a hand. An invisible surge of elemental energy erupted from his palm and slammed into the blade.

"Pfft!" The general spat out a mouthful of blood. His body flew backward like a kite with its string cut, then crashed hard onto the ground.

Two soldiers beside him immediately helped him up. In the distance, Idiveer slowly walked toward him. "I must admit, you are the finest Silver-Pattern General I have ever seen. Given time, you might rise to Red Pattern and become a commander who poses a threat to my tribe."

"But I'm sorry. Today, I must send you out of this world."

"If you want to fight, then fight! Enough of your bullshit!" With that roar, the general charged out again. The soldiers around him snapped to their senses. If they did not fight now, they would never get another chance.

"Kill!" they shouted, once again clashing with the remaining Viking warriors.

Seeing this, the five leaders drew their broad axes and joined the battlefield. Without a doubt, they would dictate the course of this battle.

Ignoring the fighting around him, Idiveer watched the sword draw nearer. He reached behind his back and took down his ink-black greataxe. As his fingers closed around it, elemental energy spread across the axe, giving off a faint brown glow. He swung it at the humming bronze sword.

Clang! The greataxe, saturated with elemental energy, struck the bronze sword. The sword's exceptional material kept it from being severed, leaving only a gash on its surface.

Though the greataxe could not cut through the sword, the elemental power clinging to it surged along the blade and into the general like a tide.

Under the impact of that terrifying energy, his unarmored chest caved in. His body trembled, and his hand went limp. The instant the bronze sword lodged diagonally in the ground, he was hurled backward again, finally slamming heavily into a tree trunk.

He tilted his head back and gazed at the red sun rising in the east. A rare smile appeared on his face, bathed in the glow of dawn.

"I am not fighting alone." After saying those words, he lowered his head and went still.

Ignoring him, Idiveer turned toward the Qi Kingdom soldiers who were still fighting desperately and stamped his foot hard. The entire battlefield trembled, and the elemental power pouring out of him knocked down some of the soldiers whose steps were already heavy.

"Your general has been slain! Surrender now!" he shouted.

"Surrender, my ass!"

"Fuck your ancestors!"

"Brothers, fight your way out!"

The Qi Kingdom soldiers' fighting spirit had been fully roused. They also knew all too well that even if they stopped resisting, they would never return alive. Their best chance now was to fight their way into a retreat.

Idiveer's gaze darkened, as though only now had killing intent entered his flickering eyes.

"Then all of you can stay and die with my tribe's warriors!"

He set down his greataxe and raised both hands high. With each breath, an aura rose from beneath his feet and gathered above his head, forming a brown vortex of elemental energy. The pressure contained within it made the surrounding ground sink.

At that moment, every Qi Kingdom soldier on the battlefield suddenly stopped, unable to move. It was not that they did not want to. Their feet had stiffened uncontrollably in place, as though they had become stone fused to the earth.

There was no wind, yet the surrounding woods began to shake. The treetops swayed in every direction, making a rushing sound.

Even Kanni and Zeng Mu, lying on the ground far away, trembled all over as though caught in an earthquake.

"They're finished," Kanni blurted out.

Boom!

Suddenly, stone pillars erupted beneath the Qi Kingdom soldiers. The moment they appeared, they pierced upward through their bodies, as though a stone axe had split them vertically in two. Before they could even scream, their left arms and legs were severed. Blood sprayed like juice from a cleaved watermelon, leaving them hideously dead.

The brown mass of energy above Idiveer's head spun faster and faster. At the same time, cold sweat beaded on his forehead, and his ruddy face turned pale. Clearly, this was taking considerable effort.

The stone pillars emerged ever more densely and precisely. Even where Viking warriors stood close to Qi Kingdom soldiers, the pillars brushed past their armor without injuring a single one of them.

Had they not witnessed this wondrous sight themselves, they would have struggled to believe that a battle could be fought this way.

Even Zeng Mu's eyelid twitched involuntarily as he watched from afar. The Elementalists of this world were stronger than those of his own by an immeasurable degree. Before this leader, the so-called Willful Realm he had once attained would probably be a joke.

In just one minute, all sixty-odd soldiers remaining on the battlefield died violently. Not even a single intact corpse remained.

Having never fought an Elementalist before, they could never have imagined that one day they would die by such terrifying means.

Perhaps only in the instant before death did they understand just how vast the gulf between an Elementalist and an ordinary person truly was.

That unbelievable spectacle ended. Every Viking warrior wore a stunned expression, their vacant eyes filled with boundless reverence.

Several seconds passed before someone finally came to his senses, raised his axe, and shouted, "Glory to our leader!"

The other Viking warriors echoed the cry. At that moment, they also felt fortunate to have such a leader to rely on.

"Leader, are you all right?" a silver-pattern leader asked with concern as he watched Idiveer pant heavily.

Even as a Willful Realm Elementalist, Idiveer could not take it easy after unleashing his full strength to finish the slaughter in such a short time.

"Nothing to it."

Another White-Pattern Leader surveyed the ravaged battlefield, then turned back and said respectfully, "Leader, this surprise attack by the Qi Kingdom soldiers cost us eighty percent of our warriors. With our current numbers, I fear we'll struggle to inflict any more damage on the remnants of the knight order."

The pale-faced Idiveer nodded, his voice unsteady. "Yes. Those damned Qi Kingdom Persons were following us all along. No wonder the rearguard squad never caught up. This was my failure."

"But our losses won't affect our hunt for Knight Commander Yetos. After all, my attack left him badly wounded. He won't last much longer, so it doesn't matter if we can't ambush the knight order. You two will stay and clear the battlefield. The other three will come with me and continue tracking him." He picked up his greataxe, ready to move.

Whoosh! A sudden rush of wind sounded. Idiveer reacted first, wrapping elemental power around his body to shut out that foreign aura.

Green suddenly appeared across the ground crowded with stone pillars. It came from the green vines entwined around every Viking warrior.

The vines were tight, like pythons coiled around their bodies, compressing their muscles until they could muster no strength at all.

Amid a scattered series of clangs, greataxes fell across the ground. Even breathing had become so difficult for the Viking warriors that they could not utter a cry.

The five leaders were in the same state. Across the entire ruined battlefield, only Idiveer remained standing firmly. Everyone else had gone limp and fallen to the ground.

"Yetos!" He spun around and roared toward a certain part of the forest.

"Why so worked up? Didn't you just say you were looking for me? Well, I've come to you myself. Isn't that much simpler?" A dead tree in the forest trembled slightly. Then four figures appeared, rose, and walked toward him.

"It's the knight commander and the others," Kanni said, a trace of excitement in his voice as he watched the four figures emerge.

Watching Yetos approach, Idiveer said with an ugly expression, "You actually launched a sneak attack."

Yetos chuckled and shook his head. "What of it? Weren't you following me all this time, planning an ambush?"

"Besides, I originally only came to see how the battle was going. I never expected a brainless fool like you to wipe out the Qi Kingdom Persons without holding anything back."

"Using elemental power so recklessly might have reduced your warriors' casualties, but it cost you quite a bit, too. The elemental power in your body must be flowing very slowly now, right? Your body must feel limp, like you've exhausted yourself running."

Idiveer's eyes blazed. He straightened the arm holding his axe and pointed it toward Yetos, his voice angry. "You fled after taking my attack. Want to try me?"

"Then let's try it, you ambush-loving bastard."

"You think I'm afraid of you?" Yetos's smile vanished, and his face darkened. In an instant, a terrifying aura spread from beneath his feet.

"They're about to fight," Zeng Mu said excitedly as he watched.