The Invincible Full-Moon System

Chapter 1941: Prey Inside the Trap

On the other side of the settlement, the forest gave way to a low, creeping mist—that swirled like a storm in the middle of the ocean. A pair of men emerged from the white; hunters, from the looks of them.

Broad-shouldered and weathered; their leathers were stained with rough marks.

It was clear that they were a pair who had worked hard for all their lives.

Between them was the carcass of a deer dragged behind them by ropes that wrapped around its antlers. Its hide still shimmered faintly with the opalescent sheen—that marked the creatures of the deep wood.

A clean kill.

Even compared to their normal days, this was a good haul.

One that would feed several families and earn them both almost a week of easy sleep.

"Eurgh..." the hunter on the left, Gael, let go of the rope once he stepped outside of the mist and stretched his arms. He inhaled deeply, filling his lungs with the night air and then exhaled with the satisfaction of a man who had earned the right to relax. "It’s good night to lie in bed and cuddle with my wife."

"Your wife is dead," the other hunter, Rick, said as he stepped out; the mist curled around his boots like a living thing, almost like it was reluctant to part with him. "It’s been five years, and you’re still hung up on her?"

"Heh. I can still feel her inside Teresa."

"You and your whores... God help us all."

Just as Gael opened his eyes and was about to continue, his breath was caught in his throat.

Above, the sky wasn’t the sky he had left behind when he entered the mist. A disk of starlight hung above the world like the eye of an unknown God1a perfect circle of cold white fire that had swallowed the night sky.

"What in the world is that...?" Gael rasped in shock.

Rick looked up and narrowed his hunter eyes, noticing smaller, suspended shapes dangling underneath the disk of starlight. "I don’t know what it is, but it’s certainly not something good for us," He said and then pointed at the shapes he saw. "Those small things are corpses."

"Corpses? Shit, is it the apocalypse?!"

"If it really is the apocalypse, I’m blaming you for this."

In the distance, they heard the sound of prayers from the religious people in their village. All of them had lived based on God’s will—so the sight of this terrified them more than it did Gael and Rick, who were hunters above everything.

"Gael," Rick pointed at a yellow hue in the distance. "Do you see that?"

"See what?" Gael’s eyes were still fixated on the disk of starlight. He missed the yellow light, thin and serpent-quick, slithered past them and disappeared into the mist behind them. "I’m rather busy assessing the situation here."

"You idiot, something rushed past us!"

"Something? Like what?"

Ignoring Gael, who didn’t seem to be taking him seriously, Rick knelt and pressed his palm into the earth. The wetness was barely there, a very thin sheen of flowing water. It moved with a current.

All of it, as far as he could sense, flowed in one direction.

Straight toward the mist.

’Something like this can only be done by a wizard,’ Rick thought inwardly, and then quickly shook his head. ’No... A wizard would leave behind energy,’ He looked to either side and saw the flowing water was stretching as far as the eye could see. ’And there’s no wizard that was even remotely strong enough to encompass a large area as this.’

’Even the Great Wizard of Light, the strongest wizard in history, from the Grisian Empire, isn’t as strong as this.’

Splash—!

Just then, out of nowhere, Rick flinched; a thunderous splash rang behind him.

A concussive boom displaced the air, and roaring water struck his back, sending him and Gael rolling forward. It doesn’t hurt. Just a violent push that they couldn’t resist. Once they caught themselves and raised their gazes, they saw the misty area they had walked through was gone.

Completely gone.

In its place was a thick wall of water.

And with each second that passed, the wall of water rose and rose. It climbed from some unknown source beneath the earth; a column of churning liquid that swallowed the entire stretch of the misty area, and it kept climbing as if defying the disk of starlight.

Once it reached its apex, it bent inward.

Both hunters watched with their mouths wide open and their hearts hammering inside their chests as the wall of water created a massive dome. A hemisphere of impossible size, covering the entire misty area in darkness.

Sealing it away from the world.

Gael subconsciously drew his sword.

It was a good blade, well-forged even by the high standard of powerful kingdoms, etched with the simple wards his grandfather had taught him to carve. He stepped forward, walking towards the dome with curiosity in mind.

"Hey, Gael! Come back! What are you doing?"

"Come on, don’t be a wuss. If it wanted to attack us, then it would’ve."

"You stupid idiot! You don’t even know what it is!"

Gael waved his hand dismissively, ignoring Rick’s warning as he plunged the sword into the water dome. He placed the tip right on the surface and thrust with one strong motion. Almost instantly, the blade snapped at the hilt.

It shattered without a fight.

And the steel pieces spun away into the dark, and Gael pulled back with nothing but a leather-wrapped handle clutched in his white-knuckled fist. "Holy shit..." He stared at his sword in complete disbelief. "It’s a current in there... Anything that got in it would be crushed."

"Huh..." Rick straightened his posture. "It looked calm on the outside."

Meanwhile, within the water dome.

A sheet of liquid was spat out from the water dome and struck the ground.

It was a splash that should’ve scattered into a thousand meaningless droplets, but it did not. Instead, the water gathered itself, coiled upward like a serpent reversing its strike, and in the span of a breath he stood whole again.

Manvac—His featureless fish-skin face caught the mist-choked light.

He has the Major Law of Life Water, so any water that could contain life is under his control.

Behind him, the dome’s skin rippled, and hundreds of bulbous droplets punched through the exact same way he did. They hit the ground in a rolling thunder of impacts. Each one collapsed and rose, reforming into soldiers armed with weapons of hardened coral and blades of abyssal bone.

An army materialized from the water without a single voice raised.

It was a perfect infiltration.

Now, inside this water dome, nobody could disturb them.

Even if the Red Skull Elite Force was right outside now, it would take days for their Demigods to break through the water dome. High Millinar Alexander would not be able to change that stalling method even with all his strength.

And the people inside wouldn’t be able to go outside, as dismantling it would take time.

"Secure the area." Manvac turned his head and fixed his gaze upon the largest of his captains; a blue-skinned giant—whose scarred torso looked like a reef battered by centuries of currents. "Make sure there’s no trap nearby."

"Thirty of you, come with me," the captain said and dashed away.

Manvac glanced to the other side, and his other captain also did the same thing.

A single gesture of his clawed hand sent the giants loping leftward and rightward alongside a third of the army. In an active battle like this, especially against the Red Skull Elite Force, the words that came out of Manvac’s mouth were treated like a God’s words.

None of them questioned his words, as that’s how an army loses.

Because of hesitation.

Kalkan was directly following behind Manvac; his senses flared wide.

He tasted the air for foreign energy, listened for heartbeats that didn’t belong to them, and felt the subtle vibrations of the earth for any footfall that wasn’t their own. Nothing stirred; it was a good sign.

"I can sense the influence of divine strands in the air," Manvac said as he inhaled deeply.

And this made it clear that the Divine Source was nearby.

He continued toward the center, walking past the thick mist.

Behind him, the core army closely followed in unison—the fog parted for them, or perhaps it simply didn’t dare cling because of the heat of a Demigod coming from their bodies. Manvac’s strides were unhurried and absolute, each step devouring distance with the certainty that the Divine Source was located at the center of all of this.

Soon, the mist thinned, then peeled away entirely.

And the army stepped into a clearing where no mist touched as if the air itself had been cleanly sanctified against intrusion. Manvac signaled for the army to stop before he walked forward, eyes darting around sharply in search of any threat.

He then lifted his hand and immortal energy coiled around his fingers.

For a few seconds, she let it follow the flow.

And soon, reacting to the immortal energy, a massive cubic structure flared into visibility.

It was the Divine Source that rose ten stories high; a perfect geometry of light and stone fully wrapped in roots thicker than a man’s waist. At a fixed interval, it pulsed with a heartbeat that radiated an immense number of divine strands.

Radiantly, the light bled outward, and it painted the faces of the soldiers in shades of blue.

Such a big and powerful Divine Source meant it was a high-quality Divine Source.

One that could only belong to a powerful entity in the God Realm.

Manvac didn’t pause to admire it. He swept his hand forward; a sharp gesture that carried the weight of absolute command. His army surged past him; tools and claws and raw energy were already flaring to life and set upon the Divine Source like a swarm.

In order to dismantle the Divine Source, they need to disconnect the roots first.

And only then can they start uprooting the Divine Source and then move to gathering all of the divine strands that it had produced over the generations. Kalkan remained alert, "Are you not worried about this, Lord Manvac?"

"Do you feel anything?"

"No..."

"Then what’s your reasoning for being worried? The Red Skull Elite Force thought we were focusing on the inhabitants first, which we normally would, and focused their main forces at the central continent. We scanned the area multiple times already. And the water dome is now erected. What’s there to be worried about?"

Since they planned this well, Manvac wasn’t worried at all.

As long as the plan was solid, there’s no need to think about the negative.

It would only hinder the real work.

"High Lord Rashal is known to be cunning, and his informants are everywhere," Kalkan said, still looking around while trying to advise reason into Manvac. "I know that he sent the Red Skull Elite Force, his private army, to handle this, but this is big for him. I don’t think he made any preparations."

"Our High Lord is also as cunning and resourceful as High Lord Rashal; in fact, he might be even more resourceful," Manvac replied firmly. "Our countermeasures are immaculate. Right now, I doubt the Red Skull Elite Force even knew we are here."

Even though he said that, he’s not that close-minded.

Manvac reached out his arms and summoned a thousand droplets of water across the entire water dome. "But no matter how small, there’s a chance; I’ll use my power to sweep this area clean."

With a nonchalant motion, he sent the droplets to scour every inch of the area.

Some droplets seeped into the ground, checking whether the Red Skull Elite Force was hiding underground, though he doubted it. One droplet crawled through the earth, going deeper by the second.

It reached an area that was not dirt.

A figure saw the droplets seeping out, and his eyes flashed with malice.

Alexander smiled inwardly.

Around him was the entire Red Skull Elite Force that had been hiding underground.

"Seems like our prey has come."