Chapter 389: The Dark Knight

“Jambavan, I trust you with the protection of the army,” Taranis said before moving forward on his horse toward the incoming soldiers of the empire.

The long white hair tail on his helm swayed in the air as he began increasing the pace of his horse. Moving his hand to the side, Taranis pulled the Vajra from his inventory.

While he was advancing, Taranis felt someone gazing at him from the high tower of the fortress. The moment he looked back, the gaze instantly vanished. He did not give much thought to the unknown watcher and shifted his focus toward the army of thousands rushing at him.

Taking a deep breath to prepare himself for the upcoming slaughter, Taranis laced his sword with Soulforce. Golden lightning began dancing around the blade as sharp energy poured into the steel.

As the empire’s soldiers drew closer, Taranis swung his sword in a horizontal arc.

“Sword Aura: Lightning Slash!”

A sharp, wide arc of golden lightning erupted from the blade. The enemy soldiers instantly raised their shields to protect themselves from the attack. However, their attempt resulted in complete failure against the strike infused with the Sword Aura of Sovereign Class lightning.

The arc cut through the shields like butter before striking the soldiers.

Screams of agony echoed across the battlefield as the soldiers at the forefront were cut down like vegetables, their torsos split in half. Pools of blood followed, turning the land crimson.

The soldiers following behind staggered to a halt, chills surging through their bodies as they witnessed the horror before them.

Taranis closed his eyes for a moment, calming himself as the deaths of the hundreds of soldiers he had just killed weighed upon him. True, Taranis had already killed more than a thousand beings, including demons in the Sentinel Line, and beasts and humans in the Abandoned Lands. However, every individual he had killed before was a heinous being deserving of death.

But what now? These soldiers had done nothing to him. They were merely following the orders of their lord. Some of them might have even lived their entire lives with honor and dignity.

Taranis had already hardened his resolve to prepare for such feelings. Still, the moment those soldiers’ screams fell upon his ears, he could not help but feel shaken.

And then the unconscious face of Nymeria appeared in his mind.

“This is war,” he murmured inwardly.

Opening his eyes, he pushed aside all useless emotions and began moving forward, his horse riding over the slaughtered corpses of the empire’s soldiers.

Soren, who witnessed the attack firsthand, realized how dangerous this knight was. Even he, as a Late Stage True Sage, would likely lose an arm or two to bring down this dark knight.

Turning to the soldiers standing on the towers of the fortress, he ordered,

“Load the ballistas and aim them at that knight.”

The soldiers instantly loaded the ballistas with arrows the size of spears and aimed them toward Taranis, who was slaughtering his way through the soldiers below.

Once their aim was fixed, the soldiers pulled the lever that held the arrow in the ballista.

Nothing happened.

The arrow did not fire.

“What are you all waiting for? Shoot the damn arrow!” Soren shouted, his voice laced with desperation and annoyance.

“M-my Lord, the ballista is not working,” one of the soldiers said.

“Tsk, you are all useless,” Soren muttered as he rushed to one of the towers to check for himself.

His eyes narrowed at the lever of the ballista as he detected the problem.

Someone had meticulously cut the connecting ropes on the lever of the ballista, rendering it useless. Not just this one, the other ballistas were also broken in the same way.

First it was the array, and now the ballistas.

It did not take much time for Soren to understand what was happening.

The veins on his forehead bulged, and his knuckles turned white from how tightly he was clenching his fists in anger.

’There is definitely a traitor.’

He could not say those words aloud as it would only cause chaos among the soldiers.

His eyes moved to the battlefield below, where the soldiers from the Hundred Sky Mountains had also joined the battle, with Jambavan and Robert fighting at the front just behind Taranis, acting as the absolute shield of their soldiers.

Until now, Soren had only released fifty thousand of his soldiers onto the battlefield. But after witnessing the might of these warriors from the Hundred Sky Mountains, he decided to go all out. If he did not, he might even lose this battle and the fortress as well, a result far worse than death itself.

“All the infantry and cavalry, march forward!” Soren roared. “Wipe them out before they reach the fortress!”

After giving the order, Soren turned to one of his soldiers.

“Bring Madam Doom.”

—

The ground began rumbling. The valleys shook as hundreds of thousands of soldiers began marching outward from the broken wall of the fortress.

Seeing the approaching army, Taranis gave an order while patting the belly of his horse.

“Retreat now. Your work here is done.”

After giving the order, Taranis hurled himself into the air from the horse. Meanwhile, the horse instantly moved back, obeying Taranis’ command as an absolute order.

While airborne, Taranis clenched his fist. A sphere of golden lightning materialized around his knuckles, and he hurled it downward toward the soldiers who intended to gang up on him the moment he landed.

“Lightning Bolt Version: Galactic Punch!”

A deafening boom echoed as the battlefield where Taranis launched his fist turned blinding gold. Soldiers, along with dust and debris, were flung in all directions.

Once the dust settled, what the empire’s soldiers witnessed was a dark knight standing at the center of a large fist-shaped crater.

The soldiers who faced the attack head-on were pasted to the ground, burst like balloons with blood splattered in all directions.

Yet the relentless attacks upon Taranis did not stop.

As soon as his figure was revealed, thousands of arrows were already raining down upon him. From the ground, he was bombarded with long ranged Soulforce-laced attacks from all directions.

Some manipulated the ground beneath him, turning it into mud. Some cast debuff spells upon him, while others launched mind invading skills.

Yet Taranis remained unfazed by most of the attacks.

He sliced the incoming arrows with swings of his sword, formed glass particles in the mud by releasing lightning through his feet and turning the ground solid. He did not bother with the debuffs and mind invading skills, as the Unshakable Mind easily protected him from them.

In a calm motion, he began moving forward and murmured,

“Vivi, activate the Eyes of the Fallen.”

Source: Webnovel.com, updated by NovelKeep