Earth's Greatest Magus

Chapter 2987: Took Command

A lone figure hovered above the abandoned city of Maren.

Supreme Dunadan’s expression was grim as he looked down at the wasteland below.

The city had become a graveyard.

Broken walls stretched for miles across the desert. Entire districts had been reduced to rubble. The battlefield where thousands had fought and died only hours earlier was now covered by an endless moving sea of infected.

Hundreds of thousands of them.

The horde flowed across the desert in a single living tide, spreading from horizon to horizon. Parasite hounds, corrupted Magus, and twisted abominations marched together beneath the violet haze, all moving in the same direction.

East.

Toward Dravos.

Dunadan clenched his jaw.

Only moments ago, he had been locked in battle against Supreme Marc. Their clash had shattered mountains, frozen rivers, and split the clouds across half the continent. Then, in the middle of the fight, the corrupted Hunter Supreme had simply vanished, dragged across the continent by a spatial force so powerfull that even Dunadan had failed to stop it.

He had reached for the prepared teleportation array near Maren’s outer ridge — and found it gone, broken apart hours ago beneath the swarm.

Which meant he would have to fly.

Even at Supreme speed, a thousand miles took several minutes.

”Hold on, everyone,” he muttered, the wind tearing the words from his mouth almost before he had finished them.

He flew.

####

A few thousand miles away, the third python of living flame slammed into Dravos’s western barrier head-on.

BOOOOM.

The impact shook the entire city.

A web of fractures exploded across the dome in a single heartbeat, spreading from the point of impact like cracks racing through glass. Hundreds of Magus feeding spirit energy into the formation coughed up blood simultaneously, while dozens collapsed unconscious as the backlash tore through their meridians. Formation pillars shattered. Supporting arrays flickered wildly.

The barrier began to fail.

For one terrible moment, destruction seemed inevitable.

Then Arctus moved.

The formation master shot into the sky above the collapsing dome, blood already streaming from his mouth.

Not ordinary blood.

Essence blood.

The foundation of any cultivator’s life.

Without hesitation, he bit down on his tongue and forced out another mouthful. The crimson liquid glowed brilliantly in the air, radiating life force so dense that even nearby Grand Magus felt their hearts tighten.

Arctus’s hands blurred through dozens of seals.

Six golden talismans materialized before him, each one forged from his own essence blood.

His face twisted from the strain.

”STABILIZE!”

With a roar, he hurled the talismans toward the spreading fractures.

The six seals streaked across the sky and embedded themselves into the barrier at different points. For a brief moment, nothing happened.

Then light erupted.

Golden radiance surged through the formation lines, racing across the dome faster than lightning. The spreading cracks shuddered, slowed, and finally stopped. One by one, they began to close as the damaged formation forcibly stitched itself back together.

A collective sigh of relief spread throughout the city.

The barrier held.

But Arctus paid the price.

The formation master dropped several meters in the air before catching himself. His body swayed unsteadily, and half his face had turned gray, as though decades of age had been stolen from him in a single moment.

The aura surrounding him weakened dramatically.

Even from a distance, the Grand Magus on the walls could see it.

A faint mental message reached every member of Group Nine.

[That is all I can do.. The barrier will not survive another such attack.]

The words settled like a cold weight across all of them.

In the same instant, somewhere on the eastern rampart, Anderson fell. Colonel Garran’s blow had caught him across the back, and the Lieutenant General — already wounded, already half-poisoned from the haze — collapsed forward onto the broken stone.

He was not the only one. Across the walls, defenders who had been holding for hours were beginning to falter under the slow, patient bite of the violet mist.

This was the true danger of the battlefield.

The arrival of the insectoid reinforcements had restored the numerical balance, but the violet mist hanging over the city had never stopped working. Minutes by minutes, it seeped into flesh, blood, and spirit alike. Some cultivators resisted better than others, but every defender was being worn down.

Grand Magus, who had stood firm since the battle began, found their breathing growing heavier. Others staggered as waves of dizziness swept through them. Dark purple veins had begun appearing beneath the skin of some of the weaker defenders.

The corruption had never truly failed to affect cultivators with Cosmic Bodies.

It had simply waited.

Waited for them to exhaust their strength.

Waited for their resistance to weaken.

Duke Damien slowly rose to his feet.

His robes hung in tatters. His aura remained frayed and unstable from the soul-probe, while his face looked years older than it had only hours ago. Yet his eyes were fixed firmly upon the swollen shape of Parasite X hovering above the battlefield.

”We need to kill it,” he said, his voice low but firm.

”And we need to do it fast.”

He took a single step forward — and swayed, almost dropping to one knee as the lingering damage from the parasite’s earlier mental strike flared back through his head in a sickening wave. Hubert caught him by the elbow without comment, set him upright again, and let him stand on his own.

”What about Supreme Marc?” the Star Tower Lord said.

He had two fingers pressed against a point along his own sternum, working his meridians by hand to force a band of corruption back out through his pores.

Across the sky, the Hunter Supreme was already charging toward Queen Phyllis, whose Golden Hive Domain was visibly straining; even from this distance, it was obvious she could not contain him alone for long.

Seeing Duke Damien and the others’ condition, Emery finally stepped forward.

For the first time since the battle began, he took command.

”This is what we’re going to do.”

His voice echoed directly into their minds through a mental transmission.

Emery swiftly laid out the plan.

Under normal circumstances, Emery would have been the last person anyone looked to for leadership. He had been the final member invited into Group Nine, the youngest and least established among them.

But circumstances had changed.

The resistance pills, the unexpected arrival of three Cosmos Grand Magus hybrids, and the insectoid reinforcements.

His decisions had altered the course of the battle.

More importantly, many of their strongest were exhausted, wounded, or struggling against corruption.

In desperate times, results carried more weight than seniority.

Even so, all eyes ultimately turned toward Duke Damien.

The Spirit Champion took only a single second before giving a nod of affirmation.

That was enough.

The Star Tower Lord immediately turned toward the heavens. Stellar fire erupted around him as he shot upward in a blazing streak toward the corrupted Hunter Supreme.

The Sword Demoness followed a heartbeat later.

A curse escaped her lips as she accelerated.

She had wanted Parasite X.

Ever since her dear friend, Monk Ru Lai’s death, she had wanted nothing more than to carve the creature apart with her own hands. Being assigned to delay Marc instead was the last task she desired.

Yet she was a veteran.

She knew her current condition.

The corruption still lingered in her body, and she was in no state to fight its source; she would likely become another victim.

Against Marc, she could still be useful.

Together with Ayla and Queen Phyllis, the four of them would hold the corrupted Supreme until Dunadan arrived.

At that moment, the infected Colonel Garran and Elder Ravik moved simultaneously, breaking away from the battle to intercept the departing Three Cosmos experts.

They never reached them.

Typhon dropped into their path with a thunderous roar.

White qilin flame erupted around both of his enormous arms, forming twin pillars of compressed cloud-fire that illuminated the battlefield. Garran and Ravik crashed into him a heartbeat later, their combined assault powerful enough to shatter mountains.

Typhon did not move.

The impact rippled through the air like a tidal wave striking a cliff face.

A moment later, Morgana descended beside him, crimson divine flames wreathing her body as she joined the blockade. Together, the two sealed off the path, forcing Garran and Ravik back into battle.

Around them, everyone moved according to Emery’s instructions.