The Heaven-Earth Spirit Qi froze. It did not merely settle; it solidified, turning the air into a crystalline prison of sheer pressure. The arrival of Alaric Chenwongo had fundamentally altered the laws of the battlefield. His golden hair, shimmering like a river of molten sunlight, defied the chaotic winds of the 48 artifacts hovering above. His eyes, blacker than the deepest void, remained fixed upon Thrain Ironhand, reflecting neither fear nor hesitation—only a cold, apex-predator focus.
Jai, standing at the precipice of consciousness, felt a surge of ancient pride. He looked at the back of the man who had forged him in the fires of discipline.
"Uncle Alaric..." Jai whispered, his voice barely a rasp. "The beast... he is using the 'Destroyer' sacrificial state. It is a Tier 2 echo... a God-Seeker's burden on a Tier 3 body."
Alaric did not turn. He simply chuckled, a sound that carried the weight of a falling mountain. "I see it, Jai. Aunt Beatrice once spoke of this madness. It seems the Dwarf Kingdom is so desperate they've started burning their own souls to keep the lights on." His excitement was palpable, a vibrating frequency of battle-thirst that pushed back the black flames of Thrain's aura.
Zayn Stone, witnessing Alaric's casual defiance in the face of a God-State General, felt his worldview shattering. He grabbed Jai's shoulder, his fingers digging into the tattered cloth. "Arthur... who is this man? To stand before the Iron Hand as if he were a common beggar... is he truly capable of suppressing a God-State?"
Jai's lips curled into a bloody smile. "Zayn, do you remember the history of the Great Bandit Calamity? Twenty years ago, a host of four lakh—four hundred thousand—bandits and rogue cultivators swept across the northern borders. They had a Tier 3 Overlord as their leader and dozens of Tier 4 commanders. They moved like a locust plague, erasing kingdoms in a single night."
Zayn's eyes widened. "I was not yet born, but the stories... they say the Human Kingdom sent a single battalion to stop them."
"No," Jai corrected, his voice filled with a fanatical reverence. "The Human Kingdom sent one man. Lord Beatrice appointed her nephew to eliminate the plague. Alaric Chenwongo was only a Tier 4 master at the time. He walked into the heart of the four lakh army and didn't emerge until the ground was a swamp of blood. When he returned to the Capital, he didn't have a single bruise. Not a drop of his own blood had touched his skin. He didn't even use half of his true power to erase four hundred thousand lives."
Zayn stood paralyzed. To slaughter nearly half a million warriors at Tier 4... it was a feat that defied the very Dao of cultivation.
"The Chenwongo bloodline is a lineage of monsters," Jai continued, his vision beginning to blur as his internal injuries finally caught up to him. "My grandfather, , had two wives, Uncle Alaric is the eldest and the son of first wife, and the true heir to the Sovereign Path. My father and my other uncle are second wife sons and also shadows compared to him."
Suddenly, Jai's knees buckled. A sharp, searing pain erupted from his waist where Thrain's void-energy had clipped him. He looked down to see his robes soaked in gold-tinged blood. The spiritual feedback from witnessing a Tier 3 clash was too much for his Tier 9 vessel.
"Arthur!" Zayn shouted. But as he reached for Jai, James also collapsed, his eyes rolling back. The toll of the battle was complete. Zayn, barely holding on, signaled the medical teams. "Get them to the ward! Now! If they stay here, the shockwaves of Alaric's movement will shatter their Dantians!"
Alaric Chenwongo rose into the sky, his ascent so smooth it seemed the air itself was lifting him in worship. He stopped a mere ten meters from Thrain.
Thrain, his face now a mask of demonic violet veins, hissed through the storm. "Another Chenwongo brat? You think because you slaughtered common bandits you can face a God? My 48 artifacts are fueled by the souls of kings!"
Alaric tilted his head, his golden hair catching the violet lightning. "48? That's a bit meager for a 'Legend,' don't you think? In the Human Kingdom, we don't just collect artifacts; we breed them."
Alaric spread his arms. From his spatial void, a torrential flood of spiritual light erupted. Eighty-nine artifacts—Tier 3, 4, and 5—manifested in a colossal rotating array behind him. There were jade pagodas, crimson dragon cauldrons, celestial frost bells, and obsidian mirrors that seemed to drink the very sunlight.
The "Eight-Nine Sovereign Array" resonated, creating a golden dome that instantly neutralized Thrain's storm. The Ministers on the ground watched in stunned silence, their mouths agape. "Now I understand..." one whispered. "If the nephew is this monstrous... how high was the wall that Beatrice built? We truly were frogs at the bottom of a well."
The clash began not with blades, but with the screams of artifacts. Thrain's 48 relics were systematically suppressed, their internal spirits whimpering under the superior resonance of Alaric's 89 tools.
"ENOUGH!" Thrain roared. He lunged forward, swinging The Destroyer. The black stone sword cut through the spatial fabric, a strike so powerful it bypassed Alaric's artifact shield and cleaved the air in front of the palace.
The top spires of the Royal Palace were instantly sliced off, sliding into the abyss. Alaric didn't dodge. A deep, wide gash appeared across his chest, blood spraying into the air.
Thrain laughed, a hollow, rattling sound. "I see! Your power is merely in your tools, not your blood! You are a hollow shell!"
Inside the medical ward, Jai felt the shift in Alaric's aura. Despite his fading consciousness, a shiver ran down his spine. "He did it... the fool... he actually drew blood from Uncle..."
The atmosphere changed. The golden light of Alaric's aura turned into a dark, suffocating violet. His "Sovereign Vortex" expanded, causing the remaining soldiers in the plaza to fall unconscious instantly.
"You dare... mark this body?" Alaric's voice was no longer calm. It was a growl from the deepest pit of hell.
Thrain lunged again, the legendary black stone sword aimed at Alaric's throat. But this time, Alaric didn't use an artifact. He used his bare hand.
CRACK.
The sound echoed across the entire kingdom. Alaric caught the blade of The Destroyer between his thumb and forefinger.
Thrain's eyes nearly bulged out of his head. "Impossible! This sword... I sacrificed a lakh of souls! I tempered it in the blood of ten Tier 4 masters! It is the Black Stone Legend!"
"It is a piece of trash," Alaric spat.
With a simple flex of his wrist, the legendary sword snapped into two pieces. The black flames died instantly as the soul-shackles within the blade were shattered by Alaric's raw spiritual intent.
"How?" Thrain whimpered, his God-State beginning to flicker. "How can a boy 600 years my junior possess such physical divinity? The Chenwongo bloodline... Dominatrix... King DD... Beatrice... and now this?"
Alaric didn't answer. He drew his own weapon—a blade of pure, translucent gold named "The Almighty." "Divine Art: Sovereign's Final Slash!"
Alaric swung. He didn't aim at Thrain; he aimed at the horizon.
The strike was not a wave; it was a conceptual erasure. A line of golden light divided the world. The plaza, the surrounding forest for fifty miles, and the distant Split-Peak Mountains were cleaved in a single motion. The pressure of the swing caused the entire Dwarf Kingdom to tremble, yet Alaric's control was so precise that the Palace—and the people within it—were left untouched in the center of the destruction.
Thrain stood frozen. He felt nothing. Then, slowly, his head began to slide from his shoulders. His violet blood, now depleted of its divine glow, poured onto the marble.
"So... this is... the end of the Iron Hand," Thrain whispered as his consciousness faded. In his final moments, the demonic rage vanished. He saw his mother, his brother Denson, and the quiet moments he had shared with Gronak before the war. He smiled, and then, the Tier 3 Legend of the Dwarf Kingdom was no more.
The death of a God-State master is never quiet. Thrain's body began to swell, the infinite essence within him seeking a final, catastrophic release.
"Tsk," Alaric grunted. He slammed his palms together, creating a Tier 3 Divine Border. The golden cage constricted around Thrain's body, absorbing the explosion. Alaric himself took the brunt of the shockwave, his own meridians groaning as he siphoned the essence to protect the city.
As the smoke cleared, something terrifying occurred.
The ground beneath Thrain's corpse didn't just break; it liquefied into a pool of burning, red lava. From the depths of the earth, a massive, charred hand—larger than a horse—erupted. The heat was so intense that the nearby marble pillars turned to glass.
The hand grabbed Thrain's body and his shimmering white soul, which was attempting to flee into the cycle of reincarnation.
Alaric, seeing the act that was happening before him and remembered the forbidden texts of King DD.
"When the Destroyer Technique is invoked, the user signs a contract with the Abyss. Upon death, the debt is collected. The Warden of the Seven Hells shall rise to claim the vessel and the spirit, dragging them to the Eternal Forge."
The hand dragged Thrain into the fiery fissure. With a final, echoing scream of the damned, the ground sealed shut as if nothing had ever happened. The story of Thrain Ironhand was ended, erased by the very power he had sought to wield.
Far above the atmosphere of Aetheleon, on a desolate, blue-tinged planetoid orbiting the star-field, two figures stood amidst the craters.
King Borin and Gronak had watched the entire battle through their spiritual senses.
"That human kid," Gronak said, his voice deep and gravelly. "He's a monster, Borin. He'll be the King of the Humans soon. Your son chose his allies well."
Borin nodded, his eyes glowing with the blue light of the God-Seeker Tier. "The era of the old legends is over, Gronak. Our subordinates have finished their business. It is time we finish ours."
Gronak didn't respond with words. He drew his obsidian sword that Thrain give him before he teleported to this planet, the air around him shattering. Borin unsheathed the Dwarf King's Greatsword, the blue flames of his Tier 2 aura igniting the vacuum.
They lunged.
The final showdown of the Kings had begun.