Infinite Range: The Sniper Mage

Chapter 763: 763: This Is My Home

“Godslayer… Godslayer is here!”

Vincent shrieked, collapsing to the ground, wailing in panic. For all his family clout, his Forbidden Magic gear, and a commander-tier level, he was still a toddler crawling in front of the iron-blooded veterans of the Godslayer Legion.

“Yeah. We’ve come back to finish what we started.”

Bradley exhaled softly. He had been taken here once. He would wash away that shame.

“Protect Vincent, get him out!” an offworld enforcer barked, choking down his fear. The magi-skiff’s guns spun up to cover their retreat, belching a wall of flame hot enough to shred a Domain Master boss.

Bradley only drew a breath. His gaze went cold as he slipped into advanced precognition. “Awakening skill, Luminous Z-Cut, revised.”

He moved.

A meteor flicker. Cain’s mechanized cervical servos twinged as he tracked the blur. “Brutal burst speed…”

The elemental blade came down. He slipped through the cannon barrage and traced a single blinding arc.

Instant kill.

Critical hit.

Critical hit.

The skiff ruptured into scrap. A dozen offworld heavies froze where they stood, then fountains of blood rose from their necks. When their heads hit the stones their eyes were still confused. He was too fast.

Orson’s eyes lit and he smiled. “The big guy’s honed it.”

Bradley’s S-rank awakening had a tight damage footprint now. He was clearly focusing everything into pure burst. Once your motion outpaced the eye, it no longer mattered if you minced a man or touched his throat. Heads rolled either way.

He had learned what Orson already knew: Infinite Dimensions skills were not straightjackets. Grind your craft hard enough and you could grasp the principles inside. Start rebuilding. Create your own.

“Don’t kill me. I’ll pay you. Name a price.”

“Wait, I am a clan heir of the Wildrealm. You cannot kill me…”

The onlookers from the luxury quarter dissolved into chaos. Anyone Bradley fixed his gaze on died. He had promised his big brother a welcome mat woven from enemies’ skulls. He meant to deliver.

“Collaborators die.”

“Traitors to the Legion die.”

“Those who defiled my brothers’ bones die.”

Bradley’s voice was ice. Orson could not find a trace of the once-goofy kid in him now, and it cut. He should have been here when everything broke. He should have carried the weight with them.

He passed close enough to Vincent to brush his sleeve, whispering as if he were chanting a benediction for the dead. He carved from the gates through the shrine spires. The last screams of those who died wrong echoed in his ears.

The bodies piled higher. He knew gods could not be dragged back by blood. Still, if he could splash the steps of the underworld with enemy gore, the fallen would grin in Hell.

“Broadcast everything,” Orson told SirLagsALot. “Every world. Let them see the cost of poking Godslayer.”

“Ladies and gentlemen, what a lovely day,” SirLagsALot said, lifting off on his battle mount, stream live. “On behalf of Earth, good morning.”

His voice pitched higher, almost gleeful. He handed their old mockery back line for line. “And good afternoon. And good night. Go to sleep, alien scum.”

A roar answered him. A magic battleship punched out of the clouds, only for Velorith to spear it and drive it flaming into the spired rich quarter.

“How did they breach the holy city? Why do the gods not show a sign?”

“Relax. That butcher got captured last time. Let him strut. He will not strut long.”

“Vile butcher. Breaking the truce. Filthy Earth rats.”

The eleven allied worlds erupted. Still, most did not panic. The City of the Gods was the gods’ keystone on Earth. This sanctum would not be desecrated. The trap was here somewhere.

The bells began to pound. The whole city tensed. Purge regiments drawn from the other worlds surged in. Rooflines and porticoes crawled with armed silhouettes, a black net dropping to smother Bradley.

“What kind of vermin howls in the City of the Gods?”

“Stay. Run no more, Earth trash.”

They were elite, faces and species all different, eyes bright with fury. They roared down at the man atop the hill of corpses.

“Stay?” Bradley laughed softly, standing. Blood lacquered him to the shoulders, and his grin was pure wildness. He looked up at the wall of bodies closing in and bared his teeth.

“This is my home.”

The city vibrated. Power flared in a dozen places. Sixteen suns rose into the sky, sixteen God-adventurers and divine weapons manifest together. Sixteen domains unfurled. Bradley felt a knife-edge of real danger.

“Godslayer, enough,” said a man who was all gold, every inch a blinding idol. His face was lost in the glare. “The gods can be patient with your rage. We do not seek civil war. We must join hands against the true enemy, the Aurora Goddess.”

Many had crossed blades with this one. Hobilarze. A God-adventurer forged into a divine weapon, his power all but brushing Lower God. His defense was obscene. Magic guttered against him. Steel broke. No Forbidden Magic could crack him. Bradley had eaten bitter lessons trying. His best runner and blade, Shenfa, had died at those golden hands.

“Stand down,” Bellara said quietly. “That is a true god-weapon. Ten thousand years old.”

She stepped forward, a storm of blade-phantoms blooming at her back. Hobilarze went rigid. Even with a god’s benediction, could he endure the apex striker among gods?

Bradley only glanced back. “Below a Lower God, I am strongest.”

He fixed on Hobilarze, hatred burning clean. “He crushed my brother’s head with his left hand. I swore I would pay it back tenfold.”

Bellara blinked. She had underestimated how far he would go. She shut her mouth.

“Velorith.”

At his whisper, the dragon behind him surged, wings unfurling. Lightning crawled over her scales as her body dissolved into living storm. “By my rider’s will, to war.”

Bradley’s smile turned simple and fierce. He nodded to Orson. Orson’s mouth curved. “Send them off in thunder, brother. I will hold the line for you.”

Two shouts tore the sky. The clouds twisted and the world tilted. Elemental ocean gathered like a cloak.

Bradley’s silver hair burned like starlight. Lightning wrote itself in his eyes. Armor locked around him like a god’s hand.

“Sweep everything aside.”

Velorith’s voice rolled like a judgment. Amethyst arcs spun in her pupils as her dragon body became pure electricity.

Steel sang.

The silver-haired man stood like a monument. Dragonplate clicked into place. He was at his peak.

He would become a reaper and offer a grand death to his fallen friends.