Chapter 400: WAR (12)

Both armies watched in absolute silence, faces frozen in shock as the thick cloud of dust slowly settled.

For hundreds of meters in every direction, there was nothing but destruction.

Terrifying claw marks carved deep furrows into the earth, intertwined with scorched trails left by lightning, gashes that yawned open dozens of centimeters wide.

The black mud still smoldered, hot from the residual energy of the skills. Scattered across it lay the corpses of orcs, trolls, goblins, and kobolds, all torn apart, some reduced to little more than unrecognizable chunks of flesh and bone.

Many of those men had never witnessed a clash between fourth-stage experts. To them, it was as if a battle between demigods had just unfolded before their very eyes.

Even the Lords accompanying Zael—the same ones who, until just moments before, had held open contempt for Ethan in their eyes—were forced to quickly compose their expressions.

A third-stage warrior, standing eye to eye against a fourth-stage warrior.

Regardless of the tricks the young man might have used, it was simply absurd.

However, the respect that had begun to form on their faces was slowly devoured, replaced by utter disbelief.

They saw a broken blade lying on the ground, and next to it, a body lying just as still, its chest pierced by a horrific wound, its armor reduced to tatters of twisted metal.

That body was not Ethan’s.

Ethan still stood upright, visibly drained. Thin trickles of blood seeped through the gaps between his helmet and neck, staining the blackened metal of his armor in dark rivulets.

He was gravely wounded—that much was undeniable—but countless healing spells were already washing over him in a gentle cascade of light, though no one on the battlefield could identify the source of that magic.

Slowly, the young Lord turned his face toward the Lords gathered beside Zael.

"Mother... clear the field."

Ethan’s command came out almost as a whisper, and in the next instant, forty thousand men trembled to their very bones.

Not only because the Lord’s Aura crashed down upon them like a mountain of lead, choking the air from their throats, but also because, behind them, the trees where tens of thousands of their soldiers still hid began to move.

The trunks trembled, colossal amounts of mana coiling around each one, glowing like golden veins on the verge of bursting.

In the next instant, hundreds, perhaps thousands of trees were ripped straight from their roots, a deafening crash of splintering wood echoing throughout the forest.

Soldiers froze in sheer terror. Some wet themselves where they stood, while others collapsed to their knees, letting out terrified screams.

With the trees ripped away, the forty thousand soldiers stood exposed to the world. Overhead, those massive trunks drifted more than ten meters above the ground.

Trunks weighing tens, perhaps hundreds of metric tons, hovered in the air as if they were mere feathers.

"A fifth-stage mage..."

The words had barely escaped the dwarf’s lips before his head parted cleanly from his shoulders, spinning through the air before rolling to a halt in the blackened mud.

The same fate befell every noble in that army. Dozens of corpses collapsed simultaneously, blood gushing from severed necks and pooling darkly on the churned earth.

Only the knights and rank-and-file soldiers remained standing, faces as white as wax, overcome by a shock and terror no words could describe.

They felt as if they had defied the will of the gods themselves. Many were already kneeling, weeping uncontrollably, their hands trembling as they begged for divine mercy.

Ethan let out a heavy sigh.

At first, his plan had been to retreat and let his own army deal with the remaining forty thousand men. Now, however, he was too exhausted to drag things out any longer.

Keeping those forty thousand soldiers alive would benefit Goldenveil and considerably reduce the hostility of the population in the settlements he needed to absorb.

On top of that, the fact that Goldenveil had not yet suffered a single casualty was more than enough reason to call it a day.

They had already dealt with ten thousand green skins, and that was battle enough for a single campaign.

"Your leaders are dead. Every last one of them." Ethan’s voice echoed coldly across the battlefield. "I could kill you too without the slightest effort, but I’m going to give you a choice."

He took a step forward, intensifying the pressure of his Lord’s Aura on the enemies.

"Kneel before me, bow your heads, and accept the rule of Goldenveil. Those who kneel will be returned to their families, lay down their weapons, and live as respected and proud citizens of Goldenveil. Those who resist... will have nothing but death awaiting them."

The forty thousand men shuddered as one, exchanging hurried glances, fear overflowing on every face.

Those in the vanguard stared at the decapitated bodies of their own leaders scattered across the mud, while those in the rear needed only the memory of those gigantic trees being uprooted like straw to make their decision.

Many of them had families.

Children, wives, girlfriends, brothers and sisters, fathers and mothers.

They all wanted to go home.

Their lords lay dead, and they no longer had anything left to fight for.

The humans were the first to give in. Hundreds of knees buckled to the ground, followed by hundreds more, quickly turning into thousands, and soon into tens of thousands.

The dwarves and elves hesitated for a moment, their eyes scanning the two legions of Goldenveil—composed of elves and humans—backed by a good number of dwarves in the auxiliary ranks.

In the end, they too forced themselves to bow, dropping their weapons to the ground in a collective metallic clang that rang across the field.

Fewer than a hundred soldiers dared to remain standing. Their heads, too, fell to Amelia with nothing more than a simple snap of her fingers, their bodies crumpling into the mud together.

"Ah... this woman is truly terrifying," Ethan thought, a weary smile curving his lips as a strange anxiety filled his chest.

He knew full well that the gulf in power between the third and fifth stages was enormous, but that... that was simply absurd.

His mother, still hovering among the clouds, looked little different from a deity descended to earth.

He could hardly wait to reach the fifth stage himself.

Ethan turned slowly, his gaze falling first on the fallen Zael, then on Doran.

"Heal him and make sure he lives. Also, place restrictions on his power. Order the men to tie up all the surrendered soldiers. Weapons and armor—both those of the soldiers and the green skins—must be gathered into a single pile," Ethan said, each word coming out heavier than the last.

Countless system notifications began to flash before his eyes, but Ethan could no longer read them.

His vision was already fading, darkening at the edges, while his body, finally succumbing to exhaustion, began to slump.