Earth's Greatest Magus

Chapter 2999: Dawnstar Strongest

Behind Klea, six Grand Magus stepped out of the fading mist.

One of them was an elderly Three Cosmos cultivator—Soltz.

The other five radiated the unmistakable pressure of Two Cosmos experts: Morgana, wreathed in primordial flames that distorted the air around her; Feanor, the Fey Deer, his towering antlers crowned with emerald spirit light; Kayelin, the master apothecary, whose serene expression concealed terrifying power; Varrek of the Midnight Brotherhood, his dark robes fluttering like living shadows; and beside them stood a newcomer—Kazrik, an insectoid half-blood who had recently settled in Neo Terra, his chitin-plated arms folded calmly across his broad chest.

”Earth Faction,” the masked man said, genuine surprise creeping into his voice. ”I thought you had refused the princess. I thought you wanted no part in Dawnstar’s squabbles.”

Klea met his gaze without the slightest change in expression.

”You’re correct,” she replied calmly. ”I have very little interest in Dawnstar’s internal affairs.”

A faint smile touched her lips.

”I’m here for you... and your Syndicate.”

For a brief moment, the battlefield fell deathly silent.

One Three Cosmos and five Two Cosmos Grand Magus. Such a lineup was worthy to be the strongest faction on Dawnstar, and by every indication, they had come to stand with the Dawn. Their arrival struck the battlefield like a basin of cold water, shattering the confidence of one side while rekindling the hopes of the other.

The shaken Grand Magus of the Dawn clans came back to their senses all at once.

They rose.

The Marquess’s five generals let out thunderous roars as they forced themselves back to their feet, and behind them, thousands of Dawn soldiers surged up with renewed determination. Across the battlefield, the Valmont and Korrath armies answered in kind as their commanders barked fresh orders.

”KILL THEM ALL!”

The two armies collided.

The Dawn remained at a severe disadvantage. Even after combining the Marquess’s five Grand Magus with the princess’s twelve, they still faced thirty enemy Grand Magus—a gap that courage alone could never overcome.

Klea issued her orders without hesitation.

The six Grand Magus scattered across the battlefield.

Morgana shot toward Cassius Valmont, primordial flames trailing behind her like the blazing tail of a comet. The silk-robed lord answered by raising a towering wall of condensed spirit steel, only for the inferno to crash against it with explosive force.

Feanor slammed into Maela Korrath, his spectral claws blazing as emerald spirit beasts roared into existence around him.

Varrek and Kazrik split off toward opposite fronts, diving directly into the thickest fighting to reinforce the collapsing Dawn lines wherever they threatened to break.

A single Two Cosmos was worth five of the One Cosmos cultivators struggling around them. Two of them, dropped into the right seams, were enough to drag the whole balance back level.

Which left three figures standing untouched at the heart of it all.

Klea. Kayelin. And Soltz.

Facing the masked man

Soltz cracked his knuckles and stepped forward without waiting to be told. This one was his—the Three Cosmos cultivator, the prize, the battle he had been denied in the mountain laboratory. He had no intention of standing on the sidelines a second time.

Klea reached out and caught his sleeve.

She said nothing.

She lifted a finger and pointed toward the shattered sky, where the Marquess continued battling two Syndicate masters at once. Even from below, it was obvious he could not hold them off forever.

”What—!”

Soltz’s face twisted with raw indignation.

With a grumble that could curdle milk, the old man shot into the heavens, his aura exploding as he joined the battle beside Roland. In an instant, what had been one against two became two against two.

Below, the masked man watched the two women standing before him.

”So...” he said quietly. ”Here we are again.”

His gaze lingered on Klea.

”You were no match for me before. What makes you believe you are now?”

There was no longer any doubt who he was.

He was the very same masked figure they had cornered within the hidden laboratory.

Klea’s eyes shifted away from him and settled on the small boy trembling in the crook of his arm. The child’s frightened sobs rose faintly above the chaos of the battlefield.

”How about you let the boy go first?” she said evenly.

”This boy?”

The masked man chuckled softly beneath his mask.

”Very well.”

”Let me show you why I brought him.”

What happened next, Klea would not forget.

The masked man raised one finger to the child’s forehead — and a thread of crimson tore free of it. The boy’s cry spiked into a shriek of pain, then cut off as he went limp, fainting in the space of a heartbeat.

”What are you doing!”

The man tossed the unconscious child aside like a husked fruit. Klea lunged and caught him before he struck stone.

”You can keep him.” The violet flame of the Stardust Lantern was already rising in his other hand, fed by the floating bead of stolen blood. ”I no longer need him.”

The blood essence of the Dawn kings. That was all he had ever wanted from the child. Not a face. Not an heir. A key.

Klea’s jaw tightened. She flicked her wrist, and a spectral bird of pale spirit-light unfurled from her sleeve, gathering the limp boy gently against its breast before sweeping him up and away, far beyond the killing ground.

”You’re a monster!!”

There was no more time for words. Klea’s hands were already moving, slapping a row of prepared talismans across Kayelin’s shoulders.

Beside her, the master apothecary changed.

Her robes split as her body swelled, and intricate runes of silver and gold ignited across her skin like a second skeleton forged from living light. Her hair rose in a windless current. Her eyes burned into two molten suns. With a low, rolling growl, she dropped into the towering shape of the Fey Lion.

Two fairies spun up from the light around her, one cloaked in wind, the other in flame, their small hands clasping as ribbons of rainbow radiance bled out to shield the two women.

Then the fight began in earnest.

It took only seconds to understand the problem.

The masked man had not shown them his true strength in their previous battle. He showed it now. Crimson moonlight bled from his frame as the full and terrible weight of a mid Three Cosmos cultivator settled over the ruin — a tier above the two masters dueling Roland overhead, a tier above anything Klea or Kayelin could hope to match.

He lifted one hand, and a ring of fire bloomed across his fingers.

A storm of blazing stones erupted from it like a falling meteor shower, screaming across the courtyard.

Kayelin met them head-on. The great Fey Lion surged forward, golden claws sweeping in wide arcs that shattered the molten stones out of the air in bursts of sparks, her roar rolling out with force enough to flatten the lesser fighting beyond. The two fairies streaked in her wake, their rainbow barrier flaring to catch what slipped past — and cracking from edge to edge beneath the barrage.

Then the crimson light around the masked man split into wings.

Magma birds.

Dozens of them, each the size of a warhorse, molten feathers trailing fire as they tore from the glow and scattered into the sky. Klea answered the only way she could — silver feathers erupted from her back as the Icarus Wings unfurled, and she shot upward, threading between the burning flock while talismans bloomed behind her, Tier-Six barriers detonating one after another as the birds slammed into them and burst.

For a few breaths, the two women actually held.

Kayelin’s claws drove the masked man back a step. A fairy’s barrier turned aside a killing blow. Klea’s talismans found the gaps in his rhythm, and one ranged strike even scored the hem of his robe.

It did not last.

With a contemptuous gesture, the masked man gathered his cosmic power, and the air itself seemed to ignite. He brought his hands together, and a colossal sword of blazing crimson fire condensed above him, its enormous blade stretching toward the heavens.

The giant sword descended.

The world split apart.

Kayelin hurled herself upward to intercept it, golden claws colliding against the burning blade. The impact erupted into a deafening explosion that blasted both women backward and tore a fifty-meter scar through the ruined battlefield.

Molten fire rained from the sky, crashing against the fairies’ rainbow barrier, which held by the narrowest of margins. Blood already stained the corner of Klea’s lips as she swallowed one of Merlin Apothecary’s highest-grade recovery pills, forcing herself back into the air before the masked man could press his advantage.

The masked man dominated the battle.

Every exchange forced the two women farther onto the defensive.

He was steadily driving them toward defeat.

Yet, despite his overwhelming advantage, the masked man never stopped observing the battlefield.

His divine sense swept across the entire ruin.

What he sensed made his triumph sour.

Morgana had already forced Cassius Valmont completely onto the defensive.

Feanor had Maela Korrath pinned beneath an unrelenting assault.

The Dawn clans, who should have collapsed beneath superior numbers, had stabilized under the support of Earth’s Grand Magus.

Worst of all, high above the battlefield, the arrival of Soltz had completely reversed the Three Cosmos battle. What had once been a desperate struggle had become a one-sided suppression. The Marquess and that maddening old monster were steadily overwhelming his two strongest lieutenants.

Only then did he realize what every passing second had truly cost him.

A low, furious growl escaped from behind the mask.

”I see... buying time again.” His gaze locked onto Klea, and his voice turned ice-cold. ”No... not this time. I’ll kill you first.”

He abandoned Kayelin entirely and shot toward Klea like a blazing comet.

Klea responded as she always did—not with overwhelming power, but with preparation.

Throughout the battle, she had secretly been constructing a massive formation beneath their feet. The instant the masked man charged, dozens of hidden arrays awakened simultaneously. Walls of spirit light burst from the ground while binding chains and suppression seals activated one after another, locking down the surrounding space. At the same time, she unleashed her Aeons from within the formation, each one emerging from a different array to launch relentless waves of attacks.

It was a meticulously prepared trap.

The formation might not be able to kill a Three Cosmos cultivator—but it was more than capable of restraining him and buying the precious time they desperately needed.

The masked man’s eyes widened in surprise.

He immediately understood the formation’s weakness.

The fastest way to destroy it was not to break the arrays one by one, but to kill the person maintaining them. And to lure him inside, Klea had remained inside the formation, trapping herself alongside him.

Without hesitation, he lunged straight toward her.

Yet before he could close the distance, Klea calmly activated her newest treasure.

The invisibility talisman.

Her figure vanished completely.

The masked man snarled in frustration.

He could not afford another drawn-out battle.

Time was no longer on his side.

For the first time since the battle began, he reached for the treasure he had intended to save until the very end.

The Stardust Lantern.

It had been his trump card from the beginning.

A weapon prepared specifically to challenge opponents stronger than himself—whether that irritating old Soltz or the rumoured halfblood Three Cosmos, Earth faction said to possess.

He had never intended to waste it on a mere One Cosmos cultivator. But circumstances had changed. His eyes swept across the battlefield once more. He no longer had a choice.

Raising the Stardust Lantern high above his head, he flicked it lightly with a single finger.

The tiny violet flame exploded outward.

A vast ring of starfire swept across the battlefield, expanding in every direction. Wherever the violet light passed, illusions dissolved, concealment techniques failed, and hidden formations revealed themselves beneath its radiance.

Klea’s invisibility shattered instantly.

Her figure flickered back into existence directly within the expanding wave of violet fire.

The starflame engulfed her whole body.

Klea was burning beneath the legendary Starflame—an attack said to possess enough power to kill even a Three Cosmos Grand Magus

”HAHAHA DIE!!”