Chapter 439: Might of the Flame Emperor

“Your cheap tricks will not work on me,” Aethon replied, swinging his spear at Sebastian.

Slash!

“Then how about this?” another voice came from behind Aethon as a blade slashed across his back.

The voice also belonged to Sebastian. There were two of them, one in front and the other behind.

“An illusion?” Aethon murmured inwardly. “But both of them possess the Soulforce signature of Sebastian.”

“You seem confused, Flame Emperor?” another voice came as a blade suddenly reached Aethon’s temple.

He ducked low to dodge the incoming strike, but at the same time, another blade came toward his legs and stabbed into his right leg.

“Another one?”

There were four Sebastians surrounding him from every direction.

With a sudden swing of his spear, he struck the one whose sword was lodged in his leg.

The attacker pulled the sword out and instantly moved back, dodging Aethon’s strike. A splatter of blood followed the sudden removal of the blade.

Without giving him a moment to recover, the four of them launched deadly sword strikes from every side.

Aethon blocked their attacks with relative ease, swinging his spear with unbelievable precision around his body. The speed of his spear was so great that it seemed as though a spherical barrier completely covered him.

He was not merely blocking the incoming strikes. His spear was laced with nearly perfected Sword Aura, with only a thin layer of blue flames visible along the shaft of the spear.

Each clash with the multiple Sebastians forced them farther back, cracks appearing on their blades due to the intense collisions with Aethon’s spear.

Once he had created enough distance between himself and Sebastian, he struck the ground and hurled himself into the sky.

As an Eternal Sage Realm expert, he could defy gravity and remain suspended in the air.

The close-range combatants could not reach him in the sky, and the archers were afraid to fire, fearing their arrows would strike their own soldiers on the ground if they missed.

Aethon’s fiery amber eyes moved across the battlefield below as he scanned the ground.

Sebastian was once again nowhere to be found.

“Are you looking for me?” Four voices rang out at the same time, accompanied by four swords thrusting toward him from different directions simultaneously.

As the blades drew closer, Aethon leapt upward and landed gracefully upon the four swords as they collided at the center.

“Hah, the great Flame Emperor is forced to battle in the sky because he is afraid to face the armies of Ravenmoor and Stormhold,” Sebastian mocked, all of them speaking in perfect synchronization.

Aethon did not react to the provocation. He understood that unnecessary bravado would only lead to injury and exhaustion. He needed to remain calm and take advantage of his higher realm in any way possible.

“You must be thinking you can avoid getting ganged up on by moving into the air,” Sebastian laughed.

Suddenly, all four of them had their right eyes glowing, their irises taking the shape of spherical mirrors. A blinding light enveloped the surroundings, and when it faded, numerous synchronized voices echoed,

“On the ground, you struggled against an army of True Sages. Do you dare face us now?”

The entire sky was filled with hundreds of clones of Sebastian, each appearing to be at the same level of an Eternal Sage.

Aethon’s expression remained unchanged. His fiery eyes stayed narrowed, as though piercing through everything before him, his face carrying the same intimidating aura of restrained fury he always wore.

His amber hair fluttered violently as his Soulforce surged even higher. His form turned radiant white, glowing like a blazing sun in the heavens. An intense heat descended upon the battlefield as he murmured in a low voice,

“Pure Yang Transformation!”

It was the same transformation Ignis had used during his battle against Taranis, but on an entirely different level. Two amber tails of light shimmered within Aethon’s eyes, and the upper half of his robe burned away, revealing the majestic brilliance of his body beneath.

The knights on the ground gasped for air. Their lips cracked under the scorching heat, and their sweat evaporated the moment it appeared on their skin.

“Come at me,” Aethon murmured, swinging his spear.

Sebastian, momentarily stunned by Aethon’s bizarre transformation, snapped out of his daze when Aethon spoke.

He had only ever known Ignis to possess the Pure Yang Body. It was obvious, given how his hair constantly shone like sunlight. However, Aethon had never displayed such characteristics, making this transformation deeply shocking.

In truth, the glowing hair was never a natural side effect of the Pure Yang Body. It only manifested during transformation. Ignis had always burned his Soulforce to remain in a semi-activated state, flaunting his special constitution and imitating the divine beings whose hair and skin naturally radiated light.

“What if you possess the Pure Yang Body?” Sebastian retorted. “You still cannot face hundreds of us.”

With that, a catastrophic clash erupted between Aethon and Sebastian’s clone army in the sky.

Half of them engaged him in close combat, while the rest attacked from a distance. At close range, Aethon wielded his spear with deadly precision. Against distant enemies, he unleashed meteors of devastating heavenly fire.

However, each Soulforce-infused attack he launched was reflected back at him the moment it approached Sebastian.

He was being injured more by his own power than by Sebastian’s strikes.

The fierce clash continued for over an hour. Throughout the entire battle, despite suffering multiple wounds from his own reflected attacks, Aethon remained eerily composed, his focus unshaken.

“Give up and accept your defeat, Flame Emperor,” Sebastian laughed. “You cannot defeat—”

“There you are,” Aethon murmured suddenly, thrusting his spear forward like a javelin.

A tail of flame erupted as the spear shot forward, burning the very air around it.

“No! Klaus, dodge!” Sebastian shouted, his eyes widening in horror as he realized where the spear was heading.

Multiple clones rushed desperately toward the spear, attempting to alter its trajectory, but it was already too late.

The spear struck empty air at the far end of the clone army.

Cracks spread in all directions like spiderwebs, as if the very air itself were shattering like glass.

“Aghhhh!!” A deep groan echoed.

Behind the fractured illusion, Klaus was revealed, the spear piercing through his throat. His lavender eyes flickered like fading fireflies before going dim as he began falling toward the ground.

At the same moment, the identical Soulforce signature that had made all the Sebastians appear real began to fade. Their strength dropped instantly.

“So this is where you were hiding,” Aethon murmured, pointing toward one of the Sebastians among the many.

Goosebumps surged through Sebastian. The hair on his neck stood on end as Aethon pinpointed him.

“H-how did you f-find us?”

From the moment Aethon ascended into the sky, he had been carefully analyzing Sebastian’s attack patterns. The right eye of every Sebastian glowed constantly, enabling their reflection technique. Through it, he created clones and deflected Soulforce-infused attacks.

However, the clones, though identical in appearance, did not possess the same depth of Soulforce signature or strength as the original.

That was where Klaus came into play.

Though weak individually, he possessed illusion and support techniques that perfectly complemented Sebastian. His illusions made it appear as though all Sebastians carried the same Soulforce intensity, while his support spells amplified their strength to match the original.

Aethon also noticed that Sebastian never used his reflection technique to block physical spear attacks. He only used it against Soulforce-infused strikes, indicating a weakness against purely physical attacks. That was why Aethon chose to throw his spear instead of coating it in Soulforce once he detected Klaus.

Under normal circumstances, Klaus would have remained undetectable, concealed by both Sebastian’s reflection attribute and his own illusion techniques.

However, during the Pure Yang Transformation, Aethon released his Soulforce outward to regulate the surrounding temperature. Yet there was one spot where the temperature did not drop, where his Soulforce was being reflected.

That was where Klaus was hidden.

“The reason for your defeat is not your weakness, Sebastian,” Aethon said calmly, forming a series of hand signs. “It is your inexperience and your reliance on incomplete knowledge of my true strength.”

“W-what makes you think I am defeated?”

All the clones shouted in unison.

“There are still hundreds—”

Before he could finish, Aethon murmured softly,

“Heavenly Star Descend.”

—

“Ha-haha… this must be a joke, right?”

“N-no way…”

“Is there even a way to block something like this?”

“Mistake… raising weapons against the Hundred Sky Mountains was a mistake. The heavens themselves are descending to punish us.”

The empire’s knights whispered in terror, their eyes fixed on the sky as their weapons slipped from their hands in utter despair.

—

“F-father, he is just an Eternal Sage like us,” Hector muttered, his widened gaze locked on the sky. “How can there be such a difference in power between us?”

“Sect Masters of the Hundred Sky Mountains are talents that appear only once in a thousand years,” Kharos replied, his voice carrying both envy and reverence. “Each of them is a monster in their own right, blessed by the heavens.”

After a brief pause, he declared,

“Sebastian has lost.”

—

“Oho~ You finally decided to go all out, Aethon,” Barbatos murmured with a playful smile, watching the sky as he slaughtered the remaining knights of Thornwall on the other side of the battlefield.

“I suppose I should become serious as well. At this rate, he might soon catch up to me.”

—

Every soldier on the battlefield, from both Banes and the Empire, had their eyes fixed on the sky.

A gigantic meteor of fire was emerging through the clouds, large enough to destroy an entire country.

The more of it that appeared, the larger it seemed, as though the sun itself had descended upon Vyoman.

“W-what kind of illusion is this?” Sebastian whispered, frozen in place, his body refusing to move under the weight of absolute fear.

Only when more than half of the meteor became visible did he regain his senses.

There was no possibility of blocking such a natural calamity.

He did what any sane person would do.

He ran.

However, the meteor’s sheer size made escape impossible. Even with the speed of an Eternal Sage, he could not outrun its range.

The meteor crashed into Sebastian and his countless clones. The impact forced his body downward as he was crushed beneath its immense weight, his form consumed by merciless flames.

The destruction did not stop there.

The meteor descended further, crashing into the battlefield where the armies of Ravenmoor and Stormhold stood.

A cataclysmic explosion followed.

Dust and debris erupted in all directions. The temperature of the entire battlefield rose to unbearable levels. Within seconds, hundreds of thousands of soldiers were reduced to nothing but ashes.

In their place remained a colossal crater, vast enough to contain the entire Ironvale Duchy itself.

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