Chapter 198: Rossias Resolve

Chapter 198: Rossia's Resolve

On the Blue Planet, in Rossia, countless soldiers gathered atop the capital's walls, while supernatural beings stood ready for battle in heavy armor. Edward naturally could not hide his massacres from the rest of the world. Once people realized that surrender offered no chance of survival, they had no choice but to fight back. After all, even a cornered rabbit would bite.

Unfortunately, every other nation's resistance had failed. Edward was now approaching Rossia at terrifying speed, and everyone in the country knew that a battle to the death was unavoidable.

No one had any confidence that they could stand against Edward. But since death awaited them either way, all they could do was fight with everything they had.

Tsar Peter stood atop the city wall and gazed into the distance. Edward had yet to arrive, but vast storm clouds were already surging toward them, blanketing the sky and rapidly plunging the world into gloom.

Peter issued his order. "Nikolayevich, clear the clouds."

The burly man beside him, clad in heavy, black iron armor, nodded and raised a hand. A whirlwind gathered in his palm, and he fired dozens of compressed-air projectiles into the sky. The invisible projectiles struck the storm clouds and exploded immediately, scattering the clouds and revealing the blue sky once more.

A young man in leather armor saw his eagle land on his shoulder and said, "He's here!"

Peter closed his eyes and sighed softly. A moment later, he opened them and declared with determination, "Commence Plan One. Attack!"

Far off in the distance, several cities away from the capital, Edward halted at the edge of an abandoned city. Looking over the deserted streets, he sneered, "They evacuated?"

He shot into the air and flew toward the capital of Rossia. Before he had gone far, however, he abruptly looked up at the storm clouds overhead. Piercing the clouds, nuclear warheads rained down one after another.

Edward let out a cold laugh. Fools!

He wrapped his cloak around himself while the Devil Cross erupted with powerful crimson energy, shielding him within it. When the nuclear warheads struck the ground, blinding white light swallowed the landscape and mushroom clouds rose one after another.

In the capital of Rossia, Peter and the others felt the faint tremors traveling through the ground. Although the mushroom clouds were too far away to be seen, everyone knew that the first wave of attacks had begun. None of them had expected the nuclear warheads to succeed in the job. Vitalia had tried the same tactic, and the fact that Edward appeared here said everything.

However, the people of Rossia had never intended to kill Edward with nuclear weapons. Their goal was merely to weaken him and drain his energy.

To drain as much of Edward's energy as possible, they had already set up formations beneath the designated strike zone. The nuclear explosions would not damage the environment or trigger a nuclear winter. They would only affect living beings. As long as Edward remained within the strike zone, Rossia could launch every nuclear warhead it possessed into it.

Ever since supernatural powers came into play, nuclear weapons could no longer be considered the ultimate weapon of humans. In many cases, they were not even an effective deterrent. If a supernatural being from a hostile nation infiltrated an underground arsenal, the nuclear warheads could instead become weapons threatening the country that owned them. Therefore, nations around the world had been steadily reducing their nuclear stockpiles. Rossia had just over a hundred nuclear warheads in storage, and it launched every last one of them.

At the center of the nuclear bombardment, Edward had never expected the country to have gone insane. He had assumed they would follow Vitalia's example and launch only four or five warheads to test him. But here he was, facing more than a hundred warheads in a single barrage.

Explosion after explosion erupted around him. Shock waves, thermal radiation, and searing flashes relentlessly battered his energy barrier, and even he began to struggle to withstand them. Human technology clearly possessed a formidable side of its own.

Gritting his teeth, Edward controlled the Devil Cross and continued flying forward through the blasts. Warhead after warhead detonated around him, and the tremendous impacts repeatedly distorted his energy barrier. For a moment, he even had the illusion that it would shatter in the very next second. So, he increased the energy output as he flew.

After wasting a considerable amount of energy, Edward finally escaped the strike zone. He immediately hovered in the air and could not help looking back. The strike zone resembled the true end of the world, with blinding light seemingly erasing everything in its path. Even Edward felt a chill of fear at the terrifying sight.

"Madmen! They actually dropped that many nuclear warheads on their own territory!"

Edward had to admit that Peter was a terrifying man. He clearly had no intention of obediently waiting for death. But aside from nuclear weapons, what other measures could he have prepared?

Edward gazed toward Rossia's capital and murmured, "Peter Yegoreyevich Turgenev... let me see just how far you can go!"

He enveloped himself with his cloak once more and sped forward. However, he had not flown far when he spotted a man standing in the center of a circular clearing. The man raised his hand and drew his index, middle, and ring fingers downward through the air. The gravity around them suddenly intensified, causing even Edward to dip slightly in the air.

Edward was surprised at first, but that surprise quickly turned into delight. "Your abilities can actually affect me? Then hand over every last drop of your blood!"

He dove toward the man, baring his fangs. Ordinary beings were not even worthy of having their blood taken through his fangs. He would simply drain them with his abilities. This man, however, was worthy of his fangs.

Ivan watched Edward descend toward him, and a faint smile appeared on his face. He was one of Rossia's most powerful supernatural beings. Abroad, he was famously known as "Crusher" because he never showed his enemies mercy, using gravity to crush them completely.

As Edward drew closer, Ivan took a deep breath, plunged a pen injector into his neck, and shouted at the top of his lungs, "Long live Rossia! Hurrah!"

A massive tumor suddenly grew from his neck. Then his body rapidly expanded and distorted before rupturing.

The surrounding gravity instantly skyrocketed. Edward was slammed into the ground as the landscape collapsed downward, layer after layer, becoming increasingly compressed and solid. Edward's energy barrier buzzed and trembled violently. The gravity was simply too overwhelming.

A hundred times, a thousand times, ten thousand times...

Edward gritted his teeth. His cheeks shook violently along with his trembling energy barrier as he continually increased the Devil Cross's energy output, yet he still struggled to rise.

Madmen! They are all madmen!

Edward had never expected Ivan to be so ruthless. The man had clearly intended to drag him down with himself, and he did possess a deadly trump card.

Edward had no idea what Ivan had injected himself with, but it was clearly no ordinary substance. The fact that it could amplify Ivan's ability to the point of threatening him was terrifying.

However, this only strengthened Edward's resolve to slaughter everyone in Rossia. He would never allow such war-crazed madmen to remain on his Blue Planet.