Chapter 791: Dunes of Hope & Despair 4
"And why the hell should I listen to you?" Damian shot back.
After becoming a second-ranker, his presence was widely known. It wasn’t a surprise that the man recognized him.
"Believe me, you do not want to experience the wrath of my lord. If you have any intelligence at all, you shall back away."
The knight took a few steps forward. Even though his red armor was bent and broken, the guy was acting like it didn’t affect him at all. There was no blood either. No active runic spells or enchantments either.
Damian narrowed his eyes, "Know your place, blind follower. You are in the presence of the Keeper of Sanctuary - These three are in my protection. We do not look kindly on people who make demands on lives."
"Before the lord almighty’s wish, every power is false." The knight tightened his grip and raised his sword.
Damian had to give the guy points for his bravery, whatever the reason for that faith might be. He flew towards the knight, landing at the other side of the crater. The long sword was charged fully with a powerful aura, all the while the knight chanted at incredible speed. Damian had several defensive spells active, along with many runic accessories holding other similar spells.
But he didn’t activate any of it. Simply summoning his dark soulbound spear into his hands.
The red knight changed his stance as the red and gold runic spell completed, and charged towards him with the speed only a peak-level transcendent seed could manage.
Whatever trick the guy was using, he had truly maximized what a second ranker could possibly do. Both in the grade of his spells as a spellsword and the pure physical strength almost matching a same rank pugilist.
The land cracked slightly wherever he stepped; the charged aura was enhancing his whole body. That was really difficult to do without the aura enhancement spells. Halfway through the charge, the spell was activated by the knight; over a dozen red, meter-thick rope-like lasers were shot towards Damian from the runic circle, and they were even zig-zagging and rotating around the charging knight with no clear path of attack.
That was some Grand grade level of spell; if the red lasers truly held the penetration power, Damian assumed it did.
The first of the seven lasers arrived before the knight did. Damian spun his spear at full speed, blocking the laser from reaching his body. The force behind the laser was indeed impressive, even greater than his assumption. It only struggled to get across for a few seconds, after it exploded in an enormous mushroom cloud.
’Even better than my guess..’
Damian activated a wind spell in a second, clearing all the fire and smoke away from him. It did no damage to him at all. Even his clothes were enchanted to resist damage.
The knight reached him just then, and the long sword swung at full force in an overhead arc. Damian blocked the sharp, red edge with the tip of his aura-less spear. The knight roared again, channeling even more aura, putting even greater power behind his attack, but before Damian’s overwhelming stats, it barely registered as an attack worth noticing.
The lasers bent at different angles and came straight towards either his heart or head. Damian had already seen what they could - he was not interested in them anymore. Damian activated one of his active spells; it was a wormhole spell modified by Damian in the last second to suit his needs.
The wormhole took the shape of a hollow ring, surrounding his whole body from the sides. All lasers had ended up coming from the sides in the end, which required this weird modification of the simple spell.
The end of the wormhole was set two kilometers above them, in the sky. Way out of the range of a second-ranker spellsword’s mana thread. That’s what the guy was using to change the directions of the red lasers.
A loud explosion took place high above them. The knight was surprised by the sudden disappearance of his lasers, but it did not weaken his sword attack. But Damian had enough of the guy; he overpowered him with a simple push back with the black spear. The armored knight stumbled back, the aura surrounding his armor and long sword dissipating in the light breeze.
"Impossible.."
The knight muttered, his red, veiny eyes widening.
"Looks like your lord has underestimated my abilities." Damian smiled. "Now tell me, why is it that your lord requires a simple girl who has done nothing to your kind?"
"She is a devil spawn!" The knight shouted with zealotry repulsion. "Her very existence is an insult to my lord!"
Damian was about to activate his divine seeker chains spell when suddenly he noticed, at the edge of his vision, a bright, powerful white pulse coming down at a super-fast speed along the seven thin mana threads. Even with his super-fast reflexes, the pulse only registered as a fast blur that disappeared inside the head of the red knight in a fraction of a second.
Meters away from him, the knight’s head enlarged unnaturally - Damian immediately activated a wormhole below his feet and reached near Reize and the two kids. The head of the knight exploded with enormous red, orange, and white flames. The shockwave crashed into the meter-thick barrier Damian had activated from his emergency spells.
The intensity behind the explosion was even higher than what the mana inside the knight could power.
’It’s that white pulse!’
Damian instinctively looked up at the sky. The threads had disappeared. But it had managed to shake Damian’s belief.
Did the followers of the Sun God truly receive some kind of boost in their strength from their so-called lord? Was there truly a higher existence hidden away from all eyes? The pigmen sun god could not interfere in the matters of the lower existence plane directly..
Were the gods from this world also beholden to such limitations?