City of Sin

Book 6, 110

Disintegrator

Far in the distance, Tzu remained motionless as she saw monster after monster pile onto Richard. Her eyes narrowed as red light started leaking through the mountain, and even she took a subconscious step backwards as dark flames burst out from within. The abyssal flames quickly broke the hill apart, freezing everything within a dozen metres. Even the demons outside of the range froze up; these constructs did not know fear, but their instincts still reacted to the destructive power.

*BOOM!* Just as it seemed to be done, another explosion rang out as a conflagration that was a hundred metres wide burnt everything in range. Flesh was visibly torn off bone by the raging flames as the fireball slowly rose into the sky, floating above it like a mushroom cloud.

Richard stood at the eye of the inferno, no enemies left nearby. He was bathed in the dark flames and all of his clothing and equipment lay melted on the floor, but the blaze seemed to be a layer of armour unto itself.

He slowly focused his gaze, revealing lava flowing in his once-emerald eyes. As the fiery glare scanned through the monsters dozens of metres away, the enemies subconsciously retreated from his might. Moonlight flew to his arm as he held it out, a strange flame of green, red, and black running across the entire blade.

The sword’s tip touched the ground and dragged out a fiery line behind it as Richard walked forward, dragging the blade on and ambling towards his countless enemies. An enormous rhinoceros made the first move, charging right at him, but seeing the thick-skinned opponent that would normally take a level 10 warrior to even scratch, Richard only smiled. His fatigue seemed to vanish along with his body as he reappeared over its head, sword burying itself into the ground right in front of the giant beast.

The creature suddenly changed directions, only brushing against Richard as it dashed a hundred metres away, but its legs quickly went weak and it collapsed. Its huge body slid ten metres along the ground as a bloody line on its head opened up, pouring brain matter all over the earth.

Iskara’s warriors finally came to their senses, surging over to pile up on him once more, but another mushroom cloud rose into the sky right after. Tzu finally made her own move, appearing by Richard’s side with only a few steps. Patting him once more on the head, she passed him by and continued forward. The flying ponytail danced in front of his face, a few of the strands even brushing against his nose and making it itch.

Dazzling green rays lit up the grey world, almost like little green flowers blooming on a blank scroll. Deafened by the two explosions he had caused, Richard could only appreciate the time-stopping beauty. He stopped walking and just held onto his blade, gazing at the graceful figure in the distance. His body itched to fight, but his mind was completely devoid of thoughts.

...

It felt like he had spent hours killing in the silent world until Tzu’s voice broke through it all once more, “Is it all you can do to hide behind your troops?”

Booming laughter rang out as a mountainous figure appeared on the horizon. The creature had a reptilian lower body with a demonic upper one, possessing a pair of tattered wings so small it was almost laughable. The four stout legs were extremely small, but they managed to carry its weight without issue.

The creature stood nearly ten kilometres tall. Compared to it, even the largest beast in the legion only looked like an ant!

Was this Iskara? On this battlefield, numbers and size were a vague representation of strength. At the very least, Iskara’s legion had been obeying this rule all this while. If even the army was this powerful, what about the demon god who was larger than half his army combined?

However, Tzu didn’t seem to care as she raised the Skylance, “Wait right there, let’s have a duel to the death.”

Iskara wrapped his arms in front of his chest and chuckled, “Alright, I’ll wait right here!”

A keening cry rang out as the Skylance filled up with golden-green, charging straight for Iskara like a dragon. Tzu cut through wave after wave of soldiers, but no matter how much space she opened up it was reoccupied in only a moment’s time.

Richard stood quietly and watched as she burnt herself out for the last time. His mind was still empty; he was still empty. When he’d already lost track of the battle, Tzu’s voice rang out in his ear, “It’s time for you to go back.”

“What about you?” he asked subconsciously.

“Me? I’m going to see that bastard father of yours.” A sharp cry tore apart the grey world, the Skylance flying from the horizon at an unthinkable speed to land right past Richard’s head. An enormous hole was torn in the void, shattering the laws of the world and opening a path back to the Forest Plane.

Looking at the rift, Richard knew it was time to return. He had already accompanied his aunt as far as he could and seen Iskara with his own eyes, knowing the target of his future vengeance. The forest elves had brought this upon her, and that would be met with freezing rage, but this was the one he would have to kill so he could make peace with her demise.

He walked towards the spatial rift, but right before passing through it he turned back to see Tzu’s final moments. To him, this was still a silent world; Iskara seemed to be shouting something in the distance as hundreds of eyes shot out rays of energy towards the portal, but she just chuckled recklessly as she spread out her arms and held off the energy with her own. The golden-green light looked extremely fragile, but it held strong. It even stopped the tens of thousands of mages in Iskara’s army from jumping through space to follow.

In that instant, Tzu had stopped Iskara and the entire army with her own strength! Endless light surged out of her now-translucent body, but that ponytail continued to wag up and down in the sky. Her back turned to Richard, she merely waved an arm in farewell.

“STAY!” Iskara finally lost his calm, thunderous void breaking through the silence of the world and causing Richard’s soul to tremble.

This was a direct soul attack. Richard could have crossed through the rift before it struck, but in the last moment he turned around to glare at the monstrosity across him and bellowed with all his fury. An invisible hand seemed to grab hold of his soul, but the connection was quickly burnt apart. Richard almost lost consciousness from the collision, but he had already jumped into the portal. Looking back at the battlefield of reality and illusion, all he could see was green light illuminating the entire world.

......

“...chard! RICHARD! RICHARD” A panicked voice brought Richard to consciousness. Someone helped him sit up as he struggled through the mind-numbing pain, collecting his thoughts and regaining his focus.

“W-What happened?” Melia stuttered, “This is the Grand Elder’s spear!”

He didn’t even hear her question as he looked around, slowly getting to his feet and taking a look at his surroundings. There was a huge hole where Tzu’s bedroom once was, and another hole in the ceiling of the treehouse. The Skylance was stuck into the ground below, the ancient divine weapon of the elven empire now dull with several sections of its shaft melted away. Cutting through Iskara’s world of laws took a great toll even on something so powerful.

Richard reached out to pick up the spear, his eye caught by a glint in the floor below. Freezing up and reaching out to touch, he found a dark gold fruit the size of a fist embedded below. There were many tiny runes carved upon it, the most beautiful of handicrafts.

Weighing the fruit in his hand, Richard instantly knew what it was: the seed of a golden world tree. This was the final gift Tzu had left for him, something that she had not planted when she originally came to the Forest Plane.

Holding this fruit that was reserved for the royal palace of Silvermoon, Richard’s blank mind finally started working once more. He shook his head in pain, turning towards Melia, “Huh?”

“Where’s the Grand Elder?” Melia asked once more.

“We fought Iskara,” he said softly, slumping back against the tree. There was nothing else that needed to be said, and even though she tried to ask more questions he waved her off. Feeling the moonforce, he could tell that only a moment had passed in the plane since he had left. However, even ignoring the time spent on the battlefield he knew at least a month had passed as he tumbled through the torn space to arrive back here. He had woken up on occasion in that time, but the sheer exhaustion had been too great to ignore for more than a few hours at a stretch.

“I’ll be gone... Few days...” he huffed out as life energy surged into him from the tree of life. Before Melia could even respond, he shot into the night sky and disappeared.

......

It took seven days for Richard to condense everything he had seen in that battlefield. With Lifesbane forming the core, he had channelled his rage into crafting a new rune for himself, one that finally connected everything else and formed a set of his own.

That set was called the Disintegrator.