The 50-meter Abyssal Steel-Back Gorilla didn't move like a beast; it moved like a runaway freight train made of enchanted iron. Each time its massive knuckles hit the frost-covered earth, a shockwave rippled through the valley, threatening to shatter the Mid-level mages' Star Orbits.
"Brace! Earth mages, anchor the formation!" I roared, slamming my own feet into the dirt.
Li Han stepped to the front of the High-level strike team. His eyes glowed with an intense ochre light as he completed the Earth: Mountain Peak constellation. Huge, jagged pillars of bedrock tore through the permafrost, rising like the teeth of the earth to cage the Gorilla. The beast slammed into the first pillar, its metallic fur shrieking against the stone, but it didn't stop. It raised its massive fists and pulverized the rock into dust with a single blow.
"Mind: Control!" Li Zhu countered immediately. He stood perfectly still, his psychic energy invisible but palpable. The Gorilla's forward momentum suddenly faltered; its eyes rolled back as Li Zhu flooded its primitive brain with a localized nightmare of drowning in a void.
Capitalizing on the hesitation, Lin Yao unleashed Light: Judgment Spear. A dozen shafts of solid, holy light rained from the sky, aiming for the soft tissue behind the Gorilla's metallic shoulder plates. The beast roared—a sound like grinding gears—and tried to swat the spears away, but Zhao Feng was already weaving Space: Rhythm. He warped the air around the Gorilla's limbs, making its massive arms heavy and sluggish, as if it were moving through thick syrup.
"Now, end its mobility!" Xiao Yan signaled. He channeled Lightning: Tyrant's Strike, sending a web of violet electricity across the Gorilla's back. Because the fur was metallic, it acted as a perfect conductor, carrying the high-voltage current directly into the beast's spine. Mu Bing finished the sequence with Poison: Scorpion's Sting, a concentrated emerald mist that seeped into the Gorilla's joints. The massive beast's legs finally buckled, and it crashed into the earth with a deafening metallic thud, paralyzed and dying from the inside out.
Phase II: The Execution of the Tundra Overlord
With the Gorilla suppressed, the focus shifted entirely to the 100-meter Tundra Bone-crusher Wolf. The three Super-level leaders hovered in the air, their Star Palaces casting a terrifying light over the valley.
Li Shen initiated the final execution. Using the Heavenly Seed of his Ice element, he manifested Ice: Frozen Coffin – Hell's Descent. A singular, colossal slab of absolute-zero ice, large enough to crush a small village, plummeted from the stratosphere. It struck the Wolf's spine, the impact sending a frost-wave that instantly brittle-fied the "indestructible" bone armor. The Wolf tried to exhale its frost-breath in a desperate counter, but Li Jun was faster.
"Wind: Devouring Tornado!"
A horizontal hurricane manifested directly in front of the Wolf's maw, acting as a high-speed grinder that shredded the beast's frost-shards before they could travel ten meters. Simultaneously, Li Jun used Space: Gravity Collapse to increase the pressure on the Wolf's head by a hundredfold, forcing its snout into the dirt.
Li Wei provided the killing blow. He ignored all defense, his Fire Star Palace turning the air into a shimmering heat haze.
"Fire: Gates of Hell – Fire Burial!"
The ground beneath the Wolf's torso didn't just melt; it turned into a pressurized volcanic vent. Huge plumes of crimson fire erupted through the cracks in the Wolf's brittle bone armor, cooking the beast from within. To ensure the brain-matter was destroyed, Li Wei followed up with Lightning: Silent Judgment. A singular, massive bolt of violet lightning descended, piercing the Wolf's skull without a sound.
The 100-meter Overlord shuddered one last time. Its glowing blue eyes flickered, then dimmed into a cold, lifeless gray. The massive frame, once a symbol of regional terror, now lay as a scorched, frozen monument to the power of the 128 mages.
The pack of Warrior and Servant-level demons, seeing both their King and his General fallen, broke rank and fled into the mountain passes. The battlefield fell into a sudden, eerie silence, broken only by the crackling of dying fires and the heavy breathing of the survivors.
"Check the count!" Li Shen commanded as he descended, his robes singed.
I looked around at the eighty-six Mid-level mages and the forty-two High-level mages. They were exhausted, bloodied, and drained of mana, but they were all standing.
"One hundred and twenty-eight, sir," the scout reported, his voice shaking with relief. "All present."
The crunch of crystallized marrow under my boots was the only sound in the crater, a sharp, brittle reminder of the absolute-zero temperature Li Shen had unleashed. The steam rising from the wolf's cooling blood created a thick, metallic fog that clung to my cloak.
As I reached the center, where the Silent Judgment lightning had fused the bone armor into a jagged glass monument, my vision swam with the sharp blue light of the system interface.
[System Notification: Regional Overlord Slain]
Target: Tundra Bone-crusher Wolf (Small Monarch Level)
Kill Multiplier: 10x (Legacy of the Sovereign Effect)
Rewards: * 10x Monarch Soul Essences (Pulsing with a deep frost-silver light)
10,000x Monarch-level Bone Fragments (Crystallized)
[System Notification: Sub-Monarch Neutralized]
Target: Abyssal Steel-Back Gorilla (Sub-Monarch Level)
Kill Multiplier: 10x
Rewards:
10x Sub-Monarch Level Soul Fragments (Gleaming with a dark metallic sheen)
1,000x Abyssal Steel-Back Hides (Enchanted Ore-Attribute)
I stared at the "10x Monarch Soul Essences" entry, my breath hitching. In the world of magic, a single Monarch Soul Essence was the ultimate treasure—a catalyst that could be forged into a Star-Sea Magic Tool capable of supporting a Super-level mage's cultivation. To have ten of them... it was enough to turn our private force into a regional power that even the Magic Association would have to respect.
"Yuzi? What are you staring at?" Li Wei called out, his voice raspy. He was leaning on his staff, his face charred and his mana breath coming in ragged gasps. He couldn't see the screen, but he could see the way I was looking into the empty air of the crater.
"The loot," I said, quickly closing the interface as I felt the weight of the Soul Essences settle into my mental space. I pointed toward the wolf's chest, where the Monarch Soul Seed—the physical drop—was glowing. "The materials here... they're enough. We can arm the entire vanguard with Advanced-level equipment now."
Li Wei let out a weak, triumphant laugh. "Advanced-level? Kid, with this bone armor and that Gorilla's steel fur, we're looking at top-tier gear. We didn't just survive; we struck gold."
I looked back at the one hundred and twenty-eight mages. They were already beginning the grim work of harvesting the carcasses, their movements slow but filled with a new, quiet pride. We were no longer just a group of mages on a mission; we were the survivors of a Monarch-level siege.
"Load it all," I commanded, my voice gaining strength. "We leave nothing for the scavengers. Everything in this valley belongs to us now."
To Be Continue....
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