Chapter 484
Metal Forest
Chapter 484 Metal Forest
On the gray wasteland, the wind howls.
This pieced-together abandoned dimension is essentially the remains of dozens of worlds whose resources have been completely drained. Apart from endless gray-white dust and occasional exposed rocks, there is nothing else.
But at this moment, somewhere in this maddeningly monotonous wasteland, an extremely abrupt scene appeared.
black.
It was a "dense forest" composed of countless sharp black metal clusters, growing wildly on the gray-white earth.
Each metal cluster is over ten meters tall, entirely black, with a surface covered in fine spiral patterns and sharp barbs, reflecting an ominous glow in the dim light.
They huddled together densely, intertwined with each other, forming a black jungle with a diameter of over ten kilometers, a sight to behold.
This is clearly not a creation of nature.
Any experienced wizard could tell at a glance that this was the residual effect of some kind of large-scale witchcraft.
It is likely a product of witchcraft of the "metal proliferation" or "matter transformation" type, capable of forcibly transforming the soil and rocks within a certain range into a specific form of metal structure, and maintaining it for a considerable period of time.
In the heart of the dense forest, atop the thickest metal cluster, a wizard from the Chaos Cult was busy at work.
He wore a deep red robe that looked as if it were woven from congealed blood, and his face was covered with crisscrossing stitches.
The loose threads were still wriggling slightly, like living things.
At this moment, he was humming a tuneless tune in a hoarse voice, fiddling with the corpse of a wizard from the Norn Workshop.
The body was in a terrible state.
The limbs were twisted into unnatural angles, the chest cavity was cut open, and the internal organs were exposed but not completely separated.
The skin was covered with fine cut marks, each one cutting open a blood vessel, clearly done intentionally.
His eyes were gouged out, and two black beads that were still slowly rotating were stuffed into his eye sockets.
His mouth was torn to the roots of his ears, revealing an eternally frozen, silent scream of pain.
But this wizard from the Chaos Cult didn't seem quite satisfied.
He manipulated the corpse's position, trying to "hang" it on a horizontal spike at the very top of the metal cluster.
However, because the body was already stiff, it was difficult to adjust its position, so he had to break the body's joints again and again to reshape it.
Click.
Another crisp cracking sound of bone breaking.
"Tsk tsk, what a hassle..." the wizard of the Chaos Cult muttered, his voice like sandpaper rubbing, "Even in death, he doesn't give us any peace of mind."
At the edge of the dense forest, another figure stood there.
He was a wizard from the Tower of Annihilation, his entire body wrapped in a tight-fitting gray-white robe, and his face wearing a pure white mask without any facial features.
At this moment, he was frowning as he looked at the "work" of his perverted companion in the center.
If it weren't for the fact that the two forces were now allied, he would have even wanted to take action directly and eliminate this madman on the spot.
"Hey."
He finally couldn't help but speak, his voice coming through the mask, sounding muffled and suppressed:
"Is this... really okay for you?"
The Chaos Cult wizards didn't even turn their heads, continuing to manipulate the corpses:
“What’s wrong with it? It’s such a beautiful work of art. Once I hang it up, I’ll carve a few emotion-related runes on it so that the resentment it emits can travel for dozens of kilometers… Tsk tsk, the expressions of those scumbags from Norren Workshop who pass by will be quite interesting.”
“That’s not what I meant.” The wizard from the Tower of Annihilation’s voice grew even colder. “I meant…aren’t you afraid of completely enraging the people of Norn Workshop by openly torturing and desecrating the corpses of enemy wizards, and then deliberately setting them up as conspicuous landmarks?”
"If they send an elite squad specifically to hunt you down because of this, I will be implicated as well."
Click.
Another bone was broken.
The wizard of the Chaos Cult finally stopped what he was doing and slowly turned his head.
The eyes beneath the sutures revealed an almost naive confusion:
"Provoke them? Wouldn't that be better?"
He grinned, revealing a mouthful of uneven teeth, as if they had been deliberately polished into a serrated shape:
"That way they'll come to me on their own, and I won't have to go out and look for them. It'll save me so much trouble."
The wizard of the Tower of Annihilation remained silent for two seconds.
Then, he rolled his eyes—though his expression couldn't be seen through the mask.
"You madman..." he muttered under his breath, "Didn't you consider that they might send a level six wizard? What would you do then? Kneel down and beg for mercy?"
"Level six?" The wizard from the Chaos Cult tilted his head, as if deep in thought. "Hmm... if it's a level six expert in direct, head-on attacks, that would indeed be a bit troublesome. However..."
A sly glint flashed in his eyes:
“My ‘Painful Metal Forest’ isn’t just for show. Besides…”
He hadn't finished speaking.
A sudden change occurred.
The wizard of the Tower of Annihilation suddenly changed his expression: "Enemy attack!!!"
He only had time to shout those two words before his body instinctively lunged to the left, his hands rapidly forming hand seals in front of his chest. Three layers of gray-white shields instantly unfolded, enveloping his entire body.
Almost at the same instant...
The sky brightened.
A beam of blazing white light, over three meters in diameter, fell vertically from a gap in the leaden-gray clouds, striking precisely the center of the black metal forest.
boom!!!
The booming sound of the explosion lasted for a moment and then disappeared.
Or rather, the sound was completely drowned out by an even more violent release of energy. Where the white light landed, everything began to melt, vaporize, and annihilate.
The black metal clusters instantly transformed from a solid state to a plasma state upon contact with white light, turning into boiling metal vapor that sprayed outwards.
The ground vitrifies under high temperature and pressure, then continues to sink and melt, forming an ever-expanding lava pit.
The shock wave spreads outwards in a spherical shape from the point where the light beam hits.
Wherever it passed, the metal clusters that were not directly hit were broken and thrown into the air like stalks of wheat pushed down by an invisible giant hand.
The grayish-white dust was kicked up, forming a wall of dust hundreds of meters high, which swept outwards like a tsunami.
The entire attack lasted for quite some time.
When the white light dissipated, the black metal forest that was originally ten kilometers in diameter had turned into a scorching lava basin.
The magma churned at the bottom of the pit, emitting a dark red glow and scorching heat waves.
And attacking the very center position...
"Cough...cough..."
A violent coughing sound came from the lava.
The wizard of the Chaos Cult was in a miserable state at the moment.
His deep red robe was mostly burned off, revealing his charred and cracked skin covered with stitches underneath.
The left arm disappeared cleanly from the shoulder, and instead of bleeding, it flickered with unstable, dark red energy sparks.
He deliberately severed his arm at the last moment, transferring most of the damage to the limb he was abandoning.
His right leg had also disappeared below the knee. He was kneeling on the scorching, solidifying lava ground, his exposed flesh stuck to the burning ground, his body swaying precariously.
The sutures on her face were writhing frantically, trying to repair the damaged tissue, but the repair speed was far from keeping up with the continuous burns and energy erosion.
Even with such severe injuries, he was still smiling.
It was a twisted, perverse smile, a mixture of pain and euphoria.
He looked down at what he was still clutching tightly in his only remaining right hand.
It was half a charred remains, the remains of a wizard from the Norren Workshop.
In the instant the white light descended, he used the corpse as a "substitute" to absorb some of the attack's power.
Now, the half-corpse has been carbonized beyond recognition, as if it would crumble into powder at the slightest touch.
"That was ruthless..."
The wizard of the Chaos Cult raised his head, looked up at the sky, and laughed in a hoarse voice:
"Don't they even care about the remains of their own people? The 'gentlemen' of Norren Workshop?"
Two figures slowly descended from the sky.
They were all wizards from the Norren Workshop, dressed in standard grey battle robes with the Norren Workshop emblem embroidered on their chests.
Both were level five, one male and one female, and they were currently hovering about fifty meters above the lava basin, coldly looking down at the enemies below.
Hearing the Chaos Cult wizards' mockery, one of the male wizards snorted coldly:
"Killing you will avenge that colleague. A corpse... is nothing but material remains."
"Oh? So ruthless?" The wizard of the Chaos Cult licked his cracked lips, a dangerous glint in his eyes. "I like it."
Before the words were finished...
"side!"
The female wizard suddenly shouted sternly.
Almost at the same moment she spoke, a grayish-white "annihilation beam" that seemed capable of swallowing all light shot out from the shadows at the edge of the lava basin, its target the male wizard.
It was that wizard from the Tower of Annihilation!
He escaped the core area the moment the white light appeared and is now lurking on the edge, waiting for this opportunity to launch a sneak attack!
The male wizard reacted extremely quickly, forcibly twisting his body in mid-air and making a sweeping motion with his left hand in front of him, instantly unleashing a pale blue water curtain shield.
However, the attacks from the Tower of Annihilation wizards were clearly not something that could be blocked by ordinary water curtains.
laugh……
The instant the annihilation beam touched the water curtain, a large section of the water curtain silently "disappeared" like a pencil mark erased by an eraser.
The beam of light pierced through the gap and continued towards the male wizard's body.
At the crucial moment, the female wizard intervened.
With a flick of her right hand, a metal disc engraved with intricate runes flew out from her sleeve, exploded in mid-air, and transformed into countless fine golden threads that intertwined to form a large net, blocking the annihilation beam.
The golden threads collided with the gray-white beam of light, emitting a piercing shriek.
The two forces were locked in a stalemate in mid-air, canceling each other out.
And taking this opportunity...
"hey-hey……"
The Chaos Mystic Wizard below let out a low laugh.
His only remaining right hand suddenly made a strange gesture.
From the fingertip, a nearly invisible dark red thread quietly drifted out and silently disappeared beneath the lava ground.
He then suddenly leaped into the air and attacked the two of them.
(End of this chapter)