Chapter 149: Steel Catastrophe (6) King Engine
The blazing flames in the sky gradually dissipated, and Gael's figure slowly emerged.
The Fiery Fiend King watched his opponent's form and tentatively flicked his wrist, hurling dozens of fiery spears.
Yet those dozens of spears pierced straight through the figure without encountering the slightest resistance, though the Fiery Fiend King could sense that the fiery spears had actually touched nothing at all!
"That's definitely spatial magic, but what is going on here?" The Fiery Fiend King frowned, feeling somewhat bewildered. "Why isn't he coming out?! Is there no end to this?!"
"Ah!" After a full dozen seconds, Gael suddenly let out a shout and materialized. His sturdy body collided with the fiery spears superimposed in the same space, shattering them instantly without a shadow of a doubt!
"I'm not dead! I'm not dead! Thank goodness..." Gael patted his body with lingering fear and looked toward the Fiery Fiend King in the distance. "Well? You can't kill me, so we might as well live in peace. Let me tell you..."
"Although I don't know what kind of trick this is, you can't do anything else while in that state, right?" The Fiery Fiend King had figured it out by now. The temperature on the surface of his body rapidly climbed once more as a ball of fire slowly gathered in his raised right palm. "Then let's do it again."
"Ugh!" Gael frowned deeply, feeling a surge of intense anxiety in his heart. *No, if I choose 'to run away' this time, my comrade is dead for sure...*
Gael breathed heavily. That previous move was actually the "escape" ability native to his innate system.
It was just that his move made him escape to a "dimension" so abstract that even he himself couldn't describe it. Yes, that wasn't spatial magic; it was a form of self-inflicted dimensional reduction.
It was much like how no matter how powerful you are, you can only tear up a comic book, yet you cannot destroy the "existence" of the characters within that comic. Once Gael deployed this move, temporarily no attack could touch him, because in that state, Gael had become a mere "concept."
Yet while in that state, Gael possessed neither the ability to think nor the capacity to observe the outside world, and the duration of the dimensional reduction was entirely random—he couldn't control it himself at all.
"Hiss~~" Gael raised his head with a twitching shoulder, sniffing as if trying to clear a runny nose.
At the same time, the radius of the faintly trembling air around him began to expand, and the distortion grew increasingly violent.
Gael's innate system was quite unique; it was named "Coward."
When he was first summoned, he was also labeled as trash. Of course, he wasn't the same kind of trash as Zhao Tianhe.
Zhao Tianhe was ability-trash, but his mindset was still good; although he was a bit scared, he still dared to step up and fight. But Gael was different. His abilities were quite decent, but he simply didn't dare to take action.
During the first year, Gael made mistakes time and time again, repeatedly running away from his squad in an attempt to stop being a hero. On average, he fled once every two days.
Until one time after he ran away, his teammates and partners didn't come looking for him.
When he returned to the town of the dungeon where he belonged, the guild did not blame him, instead thinking that he had done a great job and was extremely lucky.
He was indeed very lucky, because the dungeon his squad was responsible for had undergone a rare mutation, and the entire squad was wiped out without a single survivor.
Upon learning the news, he ventured alone into that mutated dungeon...
After that, Gael never teamed up with anyone again, always clearing dungeons solo.
No one knew what the process was like, but weeping, slapping sounds, and curses often drifted from the entrances of those domains.
A slender figure walked on trembling legs, trying to redeem his sins...
"As for courage, I honestly don't have any..." Gael looked at the Fiery Fiend King, tears streaming uncontrollably, his tone growing increasingly despondent. "But I still have to do it! Even if it kills me, I must! You bastard! Charge on! Cry or scream all you want! Charge! Get in there and go, go, go, go, go~~~"
Gael couldn't change his nature; no matter what, being scared meant being scared.
Fighting people was simply too much for him to bear. Therefore, the mere thought of fighting a monster like the Fiery Fiend King without being able to run away made his body tremble more and more violently...
And this was also the most formidable ability of the Coward system: The Ultimate Tremor!
Which, in reality, was just shaking very, very hard!
It was a powerful vibration so intense it could trigger landslides and tsunamis, and as he forced himself harder and harder, the frequency and force of this shaking would grow ever stronger.
"Ahahahaha~~~~" Gael screamed as he charged toward the Fiery Fiend King. He was forcing himself to rush forward, or rather, another version of himself was forcing him to rush forward.
Ever since that accident, Gael had developed mild schizophrenia. Once a critical moment arrived, a certain inexplicable will would force him to charge ahead! This will completely ignored Gael's nature and true heart, compelling him to take action.
So although Gael appeared to be charging bravely forward, the sense of fear was actually no different from being forcefully pinned to a guillotine by an executioner. Of course he was terrified!
Because of this, for every step he took closer to the Fiery Fiend King, the distortion around him expanded manifold. Viewed from the ground, it seemed as though the entire sky had been veiled by a layer of frosted glass, hazy and indistinct.
The Fiery Fiend King was even more alarmed, because that spreading vibration treated his sturdy physique as if it were nothing, seeping directly into him and causing him to shake uncontrollably as well. Even the spell structure of the fireball above his head began to grow unstable; amidst the violent trembling, the distorted giant fireball actually showed signs of collapse!
"You bastard!" The Fiery Fiend King roared with irrepressible fury, his right hand gripping tightly as the giant fireball instantly shrank to the size of a basketball!
***
The Fiery Fiend King reinforced the structure of the fireball, increased the power contained within it, and hurled it toward Gael!
Faced with the terrifying fireball that made him feel as though his very insides were burning even before it drew near, Gael nearly wept himself unconscious, but another will within his body forced him not to black out.
Because once he lost consciousness, he would automatically undergo dimensional reduction and enter the "evasion" state.
In its place came an increasingly violent distortion!
A warrior of the Skyfire troops directly under the Fiery Fiend King looked at the distortion gradually creeping toward him, yet did not walk away because he could sense neither killing intent nor malice.
However, the moment he was engulfed by the distortion, everything vanished.
Bang!
The Skyfire warrior behind witnessed a horrifying scene that chilled him to the core!
Every single warrior enveloped by the distortion instantly exploded, their bodies shattering into a fine blood-red mist!
Their entire bodies burst into a uniform blood-red mass, which then gradually expanded, faded away, and finally disappeared without a trace.
Not all matter could withstand vibrations of such unmeasurable frequency and intensity. Within the air enveloped by the distortion, various atoms and molecules failed to bond properly, leaving everything in a state of formless chaos.
Although this distorted phenomenon always looked relatively unchanged on the surface, while the distortion initially stemmed from the air being violently vibrated, it was now caused by the differing light transmittance of the material structures within it.
In front of this seemingly inconspicuous distortion, the formidable warriors directly under the Fiery Fiend King clan were no tougher than a piece of tofu...
Under the stern orders of the Skyfire army, all Fiery Fiend warriors retreated outside the barrier of the Forest of Broken Halberds. Staying here in the current situation was simply throwing their lives away for nothing.
Under the control of the Fiery Fiend King, the fireball crept toward Gael with extreme difficulty because the trembling was far too violent. The Fiery Fiend King was already struggling to maintain his own physical structure while simultaneously sustaining the structure of the spell.
As the fireball closed in, Gael shook even harder. The closer the fireball came, the more severe the distortion became.
The scorched earth was vibrated and decomposed by the distortion, grain after grain of dust turning into formless chaos.
Snap!
The fireball stopped one meter in front of Gael.
No matter how the Fiery Fiend King manipulated it, the fireball remained utterly motionless.
Because a crack had appeared on its surface.
And at this moment, it wasn't just the fireball that had cracked; a multitude of fractures had also appeared all around Gael...
Space itself had been shattered to its core!
The space of the Land of Infinity was extremely stable, and the larger the region, the higher its overall structural integrity. The massive barrier known as the Forest of Broken Halberds was even more extraordinary; the space within it was interconnected and twisted by array formations, equivalent to an ultra-giant space that practically eliminated all attempts to bypass it and directly transmit into the interior using spatial magic.
If the space annihilated by Death previously could be likened to a speedboat, then this Forest of Broken Halberds was equivalent to a space carrier—yes, the kind the S.H.I.E.L.D. used.
To shatter a portion of space of this intensity, while not quite matching that single punch of Death's, still amounted to at least eighty percent of that level of power.
"You..." Veins bulging in his eyes, the Fiery Fiend King scrambled backward in a frantic retreat!
The fireball and the space surrounding Gael collapsed and shattered together, turning into utter chaos...
Gael stood tall amidst that unnamable chaos. Having lost his footing due to the shattered space, he dropped hundreds of meters before steadily coming to a halt in mid-air.
The Fiery Fiend King, who had retreated outside the Forest of Broken Halberds, transformed into a streak of purple radiance that shot straight into the sky, ripples of violent distortion surging around him.
The Fiery Fiend King's face was distorted, his skin constantly cracking and reforming as massive amounts of blood and shattered bodily tissue turned to dust and dissipated into the air.
That final space-shattering blow had been truly vicious; taking that kind of impact head-on at close range was deadly, even if one wasn't hit directly.
Flying for hundreds of kilometers, the Fiery Fiend King finally managed to restore his original form.
His body was still trembling slightly, though this time it wasn't because he had been injured, but because he was terrified.
"A monster like this... is he comparable to an upper true king?" The Fiery Fiend King calmed his emotions and began to descend. "Fighting a guy like this... there is absolutely no hope. But resisting holds no hope either... Heh... Hehehe~~~ Then let's play!"
High up in the deserted skies, the Fiery Fiend King clutched his face and chuckled lowly, his madness laid bare.
Inside the Forest of Broken Halberds, the chaos surrounding Gael began to contract, and he slowly descended to the ground.
Although the amplitude was no longer violent enough to decompose matter into chaos, his landing still caused the ground to collapse and vibrate.
Ring after ring of depressions, shifting from deep to shallow, appeared in successive layers. Finally, when his feet touched the earth, the spots where he trod resembled a mysterious, massive totem, or perhaps legendary crop circles and the landing marks of a flying saucer.
The soil beneath Gael's feet was still vibrating, though only faintly now.
"Pfft!" Gael suddenly dropped to his knees, clutching his chest and breathing heavily as a massive amount of fresh blood spilled from the gaps around his mask.
Rhythmic, heavy heartbeats echoed clearly through the empty, giant crater.
"Gulp..."
A large volume of scalding, viscous blood dripped down the mask onto the ground, its bodily fluid density comparable to various heavy metals.
"No more monsters, please. If another one comes, I'm going to die..." Gael struggled to his feet, his heartbeat gradually slowing down.
The violent vibration of The Ultimate Tremor—strong enough to shatter space—wasn't delivered by fists and kicks; it originated entirely from the user Gael's heart!
The ultimate arcana of the Coward system: King Engine - The Ultimate Tremor!
His strongest attribute happened to be strength, and his bodily fortitude was comparable to Death the Benevolent King, which was why he could unleash destructive attacks of that caliber. Yet due to insufficient control over his power, pushing it to the limit every time inflicted considerable self-harm.
After resting for a moment, Gael slowly stood up and prepared to cast a spell to contact the council army.
Within the array formations of the Forest of Broken Halberds, many special spells could be utilized, eliminating the need to rely on communication crystals.
However, ripples of space appeared once more...
On the communication spell projection, the avatar of a middle-aged man had just materialized.
"The situation here has been dealt with... Hm?" Gael was just about to report for duty when he noticed the anomaly appearing behind him.
"Is this the Fiery Fiend clan's trump card?" The middle-aged man watched the Fiery Fiend clan members stepping out of the spatial ripples, alongside several unusually tall metallic creatures.
"Yeah. Do I need to hold out a little longer?" Gael asked. "I really can't take much more of this. Fighting true-king levels is deadly; I was scared out of my wits."
"Rest assured, the War Tree will be back shortly," the middle-aged man comforted him. "Fighting opponents of this caliber shouldn't be enough to scare you, right?"
"That's true." Gael nodded and stepped forward.
When he initially shattered the purple-fire humanoid, Gael had been in a state of absolute fearlessness; even back then, his combat power far exceeded ordinary S-plus ranks.
This was entirely normal, as the Ten Supremes shared a universally recognized entry requirement:
They had to have killed at least one true-king-level entity.
Abundant combat experience, a formidable innate system, and a Hero system rendered exceptionally powerful by that innate trait—these three components were indispensable.
One had to bear in mind that even without his innate ability, Gael was still a tier-5 job holder. Having spent years clearing dungeons solo, his foundation was far from ordinary.
However, an unusually massive ripple appeared.
A steel behemoth standing over twenty meters tall stepped into the barrier—a pseudo-king-level entity.
Gael frowned slightly, but didn't take it to heart.
Yet, dozens of massive ripples appeared in succession...
Thud!
The ground beneath Gael's feet vibrated violently, and the King Engine activated...
"Hey, hey, I really can't handle this..." Gael smiled bitterly and shook his head.
Meanwhile, outside the Forest of Broken Halberds, overwhelming swarms of metallic monsters landed around the Fiery Fiend warriors, aggressively driving them forward to serve as cannon fodder entering the Forest of Broken Halberds.
A metallic monster encased in pitch-black metal armor stood beside the Fiery Fiend King, looking down at him.
"Very well, you still have your uses. Next, let the mass-produced models test the limits of that fellow," the monster, styled like a black humanoid mecha, said in a deep voice. "Let's see what else these guys have prepared."