Chapter 379: The Green Calamity (14)

The silence that followed Damian’s erasure was deafening.

A suffocating stillness blanketed the battlefield. Even the wind dared not whisper through the trees. The earth seemed to hold its breath. Lamit stood frozen, his eyes wide as disbelief painted his expression. Morbuan, though more composed, was still… stiller than usual. Eliv, behind them, narrowed his eyes—calculating, probing, watching the man who had just unmade a mountain and a fellow general with a single hand.

And yet, Galen simply rolled his shoulder.

The sound of fabric shifting against his coat was louder than anything else now. His gaze fell upon Morbuan.

“Let’s not waste time,” he said, voice low, steady—indifferent, like he hadn’t just vaporized a man from reality. “Your turn.”

Morbuan didn’t smile this time.

He grinned.

That hideous, crooked grin peeled across his face like a wound splitting open. His human guise began to flicker—like a mask being burned off. And then… the truth of Morbuan emerged.

His limbs elongated grotesquely, bones creaking and cracking as his arms doubled in length. Spikes of stone jutted from his shoulders, twisting like gnarled roots wrapped in sinew. His spine arched backward with a series of wet pops, and his mouth split into two uneven jaws lined with jagged earthen fangs. Emerald veins pulsed beneath a layer of cracked, obsidian skin. His eyes—once dull and human—now burned with primal, chaotic light.

He didn’t speak.

He screeched—a warped, broken sound that shattered several trees and made the ground quake beneath his feet.

Then he moved.

Faster than Galen expected.

He didn’t charge—he broke through space. He burst from the ground beneath Galen in an explosion of rock and roots, arms twisted into scythe-like blades of compressed stone. They came swinging in a furious cross-slash meant to cleave Galen at the waist and neck in the same motion.

But Galen… turned.

One casual pivot of the heel.

The scythes scraped the edge of his coat but found nothing underneath. Galen’s heat shield shimmered briefly, just enough to burn through the outer layer of Morbuan’s claws, before vanishing again.

Galen’s hand shot out and grabbed Morbuan’s face.

Then slammed him into the ground.

The impact cratered the earth.

A concussive shockwave burst outward—trees upended, roots torn free, stone shattered. The force rippled through the clearing, and Lamit stumbled back from the sheer pressure. Eliv didn’t flinch—but his eyes narrowed.

Morbuan screeched again, grabbing Galen’s wrist. From his fingers, spikes grew—rapidly and violently—attempting to pierce Galen’s arm.

But they melted on contact.

Galen’s eyes narrowed. “You’re ugly.”

Then he lifted Morbuan—dragged him up by the skull—and with a flick of his wrist, hurled him like a ragdoll into the air.

Morbuan spun, mid-air, and tried to regain control—rock wings sprouting from his back, roots forming beneath to tether him down.

Galen pointed a finger.

A red-orange glyph appeared at the fingertip.

The air screamed.

A bolt of flame—needle-thin and impossibly fast—pierced Morbuan’s abdomen. A clean hole burned straight through him, molten at the edges, his body spinning uncontrollably mid-air from the force.

But Galen wasn’t done.

He vanished in a flash of flame.

Reappeared mid-air.

His knee drove into Morbuan’s gut, bending the general’s twisted form backward with a sickening crunch. And then Galen grabbed his throat, his hand erupting in spiraling fire sigils. Symbols rotated around his wrist, each one burning hotter than the last.

“I want to see you scream,” Galen whispered.

Then the flames ignited.

Not from Galen—but inside Morbuan.

It started in his eyes—twin plumes of fire bursting from his skull like candles snuffed in reverse. Then his mouth, his chest, his limbs—all of him caught fire from the inside out. The scream that came was not a voice—it was raw, animal panic, a distorted howl of agony.

And Galen watched.

Held him there… and let him burn.

Morbuan’s body thrashed violently, limbs spasming as his corrupted flesh peeled back in chunks, his stone bones melting like wax, until he was nothing more than a half-skeleton, half-charred mess writhing in vain.

Then Galen tossed the corpse aside, and it hit the ground with a wet thud, sizzling until there was nothing left but blackened shards and embers dancing in the wind.

Two down.

Galen turned.

Eyes locked on Eliv.

“You’re next old man.”

Eliv stared back, not moving, not blinking. For the first time, he felt it—the cold, heavy presence of something unnatural.

But still, he took a slow step forward.

“Impressive,” he said. “Truly. You’ve exceeded my expectations.”

“Save your compliments for later,” Galen replied, walking forward.

“But there won’t be a ’later’ for you.” Eliv raised both hands, and the ground beneath Galen shifted.

A massive runic circle spread out—far more complex than anything before. Dozens of glowing threads of myst shot into the sky, weaving like webs. Light magic, nature magic, spatial inversion—weaved together in a sealing array older than the continent itself.

It snapped shut.

Chains of pure magic—gold, green, and white—lashed around Galen’s limbs. One around each wrist. Another around his throat. Two more around his ankles. A sixth piercing through his back.

Eliv exhaled. “Got you.”

Galen didn’t struggle.

He just looked.

And Eliv’s breath caught.

The fire in Galen’s eyes flickered—then expanded, engulfing the whites of his eyes. The chains began to hiss. Crack. Melt.

“You really thought that’d work?” Galen said.

“No,” Eliv said, backing up a step, “but it—”

The chains exploded.

Flame spiraled outward in all directions like a supernova, peeling the very crust of the earth apart. Pillars of molten rock burst skyward, twisting into infernos shaped like dragons, spewing flame as they dove into the forest.

Galen walked out.

Unbound… unburned… and untouched.

The runes were gone. The land was scorched. A third of the forest had become a flaming grave.

And Galen…

smiled.

“I’ll give you a five-second head start,” he said, flames swirling at his heels. “Five. Four…”

The countdown had barely reached “Three.”

Just as the word hung in the air, a violent tremor surged beneath Galen’s boots—subtle at first, then savage. The earth beneath him buckled with a guttural rumble, like a beast waking from slumber. A sharp spike of instinct rippled down Galen’s spine, and he instinctively halted mid-count.

And then—boom.

Lamit burst out of the ground like a missile launched from the depths, his fist cocked back and cloaked in spiraling green and brown myst. A jagged arc of earthen spikes trailed behind him like a dragon’s spine, ripping through the terrain as he soared upward from the soil. His fist screamed forward, cloaked in a vortex of stone and compressed wind.

“NOW!” Eliv shouted from the ridge, raising both hands and sending a web of razor-thin mystic chains at Galen from behind—each chain crackling with reinforced spatial distortion and temporal lag magic, designed to slow Galen’s reactions by milliseconds.

It was a good plan.

But it wasn’t good enough.

The moment Lamit’s knuckles came within a foot of Galen’s head, the air distorted—waves of heat shimmering like desert mirages. Galen didn’t flinch. His thermal force field flared—a brilliant wave of orange and crimson igniting in a sphere around him. The flare extended outward this time, tripling its radius, catching Lamit mid-swing.

The scream that tore from Lamit’s throat wasn’t human. His skin blistered, charred black in seconds. The stone armor he wore hissed and crumbled like wet sand tossed into lava. He was sent flying backward, tumbling mid-air with trails of smoke wafting from his limbs. At the same time, Eliv’s mystic chains melted before they even reached Galen’s coat.

But Lamit didn’t die.

Instead, he began to change.

He expanded.

His body cracked open like a cocoon, revealing a monstrous figure within. The flesh underneath peeled into something darker—coated in bark-like scales infused with emerald veins. Thick cords of muscle twisted with vines and stone plates, forming armor across a frame that ballooned in size. His once-handsome face stretched and split into a horned, beast-like mask. From his back erupted tree-like appendages—roots mixed with tendrils, swaying like serpent tails.

He hit the ground with a quake, now towering over Galen at thirty feet tall.

His voice boomed with a distorted snarl. “This is what Lord Sylvathar gave me… Gaiamorphosis. You’ll burn trying to melt this, flame boy.”

Galen’s lips twisted into an annoyed frown.

The demon Lamit charged.

Each step shattered the ground—craters forming beneath his feet with every stomp. He lunged forward, his massive fist like a wrecking ball wrapped in nature’s wrath. Galen tilted his head once and blinked to the side, vanishing in a flicker of flame and reappearing twenty feet away.

But Lamit wasn’t done.

He slammed his fists into the earth, causing jagged spikes to erupt in all directions like a blooming death flower. Dozens of thick root-vines shot from his arms, aiming to ensnare Galen. One came within inches—but was severed mid-air by a stream of fire that arced from Galen’s palm like a whip.

Still, Lamit was relentless.

He charged again, this time with both arms crossed before slamming them down in an X pattern, trying to crush Galen beneath the force.

Galen raised a brow.

The twin limbs struck—

—but hit nothing.

Where Galen once stood, a pillar of fire erupted, lancing straight into the sky. From above, Galen descended like a meteor, boot-first into Lamit’s shoulder. The impact staggered the behemoth, causing him to stumble back several paces.

“You’re tall,” Galen muttered, landing gracefully and brushing dust off his coat. “I hate tall enemies.”

Lamit roared, his emerald eyes blazing.

“I hate looking up,” Galen continued as the roots curled again to strike. “And I hate when my enemies look down on me.”

He batted away another root-tendril, sending a pulse of heat down the vine and snapping it off at the source.

“Worst of all,” he added, his voice calm but venom-laced, “big guys like you… always think size makes them tougher.”

A bead of flame gathered in his palm.

“But you know what it really makes you?”

He raised his arm, hand aimed dead center at Lamit’s chest.

“Easier to hit.”

An orb began to form.

It started as a spark—then swelled rapidly into a blinding sphere of spiraling orange, gold, and red. Rings of glyphs rotated around it in orbit, each sigil burning hotter than the one before it. The wind picked up violently, forming a cyclone around Galen as the orb grew brighter, denser. The air ripped from the landscape, pulled toward the forming attack as if gravity itself bent to Galen’s wrath.

Lamit charged.

He bellowed in defiance, stomping forward with reckless fury, trying to crush Galen before the attack launched.

Galen’s eyes narrowed.

Then he thrust his hand forward.

“Fall.”

The orb launched.

Not like a projectile—but like a star being born. A beam of condensed flame, as wide as a wagon and long as a dragon’s tail, erupted from Galen’s palm. It struck Lamit dead center in the chest.

Time froze.

Then the upper half of Lamit ceased to exist.

One moment, it was there—roaring, lunging, defiant.

The next—it was gone.

Obliterated.

The beam carved a path through the sky, parting the clouds in its wake. The pressure alone flattened trees miles away. A distant mountain caught in the blast’s tail end crumbled—the entire peak disintegrating as if struck by the gods themselves. A deafening boom followed seconds later, rolling across the landscape like thunder wrapped in hellfire.

Only Lamit’s legs and lower torso remained, standing for a moment like a monument of arrogance—before they toppled and crashed into the ground.

Galen lowered his hand slowly.

Ashes drifted around him like black snow.

His eyes locked on Eliv.

“Now… where were we?”

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