CHAPTER 73

  THE EXISTENTIAL CRISIS

  Hans knew the foes he had felled in Stormad were merely fourth or fifth circle mages and a few grade forty knights—lowly tormentors sent by Aerandir to terrorise citizens. But now, he stood before Aerandir's true army.

  “One, two... hmm... so many warlocks, yet they used cowardly tactics,” Hans muttered, his gaze fixed on the central figure. A blonde man with shoulder-length hair, lean and clad in leather armour adorned with countless enchantments. “That must be the commander.”

  Hans locked eyes with the commander and demanded, “State your name.”

  “It's none of your business, Parvian. Just Lord Aerandir will suffice—"

  “You’re one cocky bitch, aren’t you, Aerandir?” Hans's voice, echoing with many tones, cut through the air. “Hmm.. I agree. Hiding behind thousands of sixth circle mages and a handful of warlocks. Anyone would be cocky.”

  Hans glanced behind him, seeing Rudolf approaching at incredible speed, just moments away. “Hmm… I do have an army of my own too—Roar!"

  Rudolf landed with a deafening crash, creating a crater beneath his feet. “I asked you to stop, brat,” he whispered, checking if Hans was still the child he raised. And seeing Hans snickering, his worries melted away.

  “Phew! Get some rest, kid. Let the grown-ups handle this,” Rudolf said, his sword aimed at Aerandir.

  One by one, more allies landed beside Rudolf, until Sierra arrived with Delimira and Chris. All eyes were on Hans and his transformed demeanour. They were few—barely a few hundred—against Aerandir’s thousands of elites.

  Aerandir taunted, “I thought you said you had an army. I only see old men—"

  “I’m the army, you elven scum,” Hans interrupted. He glanced around, on his side, seeing only three warlords, five warlocks, and a slowly approaching warship. “This is doable,” he muttered as his confidence soared against the outnumbering odds.

  He began to shine even brighter. The light coming from within overexposed him and swallowed his limbs and head, turning him into a bright sphere of light. The already split ground beneath Aerandir's army began to quake as the cracks grew wider and creatures as if undead came crawling out from below.

  Hans's green golems, mixed with soil and rocks, surfaced, their eyes glowing eerily and their mouths rustling.

  In the unified state of Hans where many consciousnesses are acting independently, his golem creation ability shone in multitude. The previous night when he woke up in this unified state, he had planted many dormant golems underground. The initial cracks under the Aerandir army were solely due to them moving from city to here. Now, they were ready to be used for what they were created.

  “I’ll take the numbers, you take the heads.” Hans declared in the old Parvian words, “May the god be our judge. We’ll do our deeds. Decimate them.”

  The rustling humanoid creatures that just spurt out from the cracks beneath lunged towards the Aerandir mages like suicidal maniacs. However, their enemies weren’t some chump changes; they were best from a noble family of elves. They rid the green golems of holes, but what Aerandir boasted before came back to bite him as Hans’s golems never ceased to come up.

  They were endless, and as Lord Aerandir glanced at Hans, he understood that Hans was not going to exhaust his mana anytime soon. “Just what is this power?” He thought and ordered two of his world mages, aka the eighth circle powerhouses, to sneak an attack at him.

  But it wasn’t stealthily; neither Lord Aerandir aimed it to be. He needed a quick and precise attack that would end the life of his problem.

  While one was quickly obstructed by Delimira and Chris, the other failed as Sierra swatted him down. “Don’t you dare touch him.” She got infuriated.

  Hans, on the other hand, never cared for incoming attacks; he poured his immense focus on the rapid generation of a golem army, and it was soon going to overwhelm Aerandir.

  The lurking ghost wasn’t one of cowards; he wanted to join in, but the two mysterious persons halted him. “Stop you transparent bastard. That kid is way over his head, and he has the power to back it up now. That power will disappear when it fulfills its purpose, leaving a miserable child behind. So, why make your life… I mean your limbo or whatever state you are in—harder.”

  These three were still hidden, invisible to not even Hans, observing and waiting. Meanwhile, Aerandir had been engaged in another problem. Rudolf was raining down barrages at him, not even giving him a chance to make a magic circle.

  It was true that in a fight between a warlock and a warlord, the latter would win. The only exception to this scenario was when a mage was prepared.

  However, as cautious as Lord Aerandir was, this wasn’t a battlefield he had in mind. All of his preparations were around the Stormad walls. He didn’t expect the southern remnants to attack him in the open. It would have been true if Hans hadn’t been present, but the Parvian prince was there. Being the pivot of this ambush and overcrowding the battlefield.

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  While two out of seven warlocks of Aerandir were engaged in a battle of life and death with Duke Reinhardt and Duke of Utar, who was saved later by Sierra in the Warship.

  The remaining four of seven were locked with the four warlocks of Stormad. The only remaining warlock, Lord Aerandir, was showing off his incredible evasions against Rudolf.

  Hans, on the other hand, continued to butcher or at least struggle with the thousands of sixth-circle mages, specifically pinpointing the weakest and aiding in the culling of their numbers.

  “This won’t do.” Lord Aerandir managed to sneak some time from Rudolf. He ordered his last ten remaining world mages, “Blast these green turds from our sides.”

  He was quick to order, and his elves were even quicker to follow, but Hans’s ears, enhanced severalfold currently, picked up those words, and the bees, like seedbullets, started raining down like a hailstorm, not differentiating between his own green army and Aerandir’s.

  The remnant few hundred of mages of Stormad, helped by providing necessary support from afar. They weren’t strong enough to be on the stage. So, instead of becoming dead weight, they aided by using several spells to confuse the enemies, providing a small window for Hans’s relentless seed bullets to hit the mark.

  The cries of Aerandir’s troops began to echo through the battlefield. His forces were running low, his warlocks were stuck in a stalemate with Stormad’s allies, and it seemed like Rudolf and others weren’t even trying to win. Instead, they kept the elite busy while Hans and others went on a rampage through their army.

  Tsunamis were called on, volcanos erupted, someone even summoned a classless beast, a two-headed stag, while it was killed by a descending meteor. This battle was on a whole other scale. Both sides poured their everything except the summoning of magic towers. Everything was present.

  As the Aerandir forces took a massive hit, even the mages from Amarathiel, the healers of the council, couldn’t keep up, all because their opponent was the divine mana user who made the remnants of Stormad almost immortal.

  Only their sides were dying. “Tsk!” Clicking his tongue, Aerandir was forced to call for retreat. They had held the line long enough for the main force to reach the central royals.

  “The central force only needed to kill Reina Clandor to send this whole struggle led by the Clandorians in vain,” Lord Aerandir thought, even if Thalorians had fastened the plan by ruining it. Celebryn had quickly prepped their plan. “Yes, there is no need for my people to get annihilated,” he convinced himself. “RETREAT.” He shouted.

  “No way you bastard,” Hans interjected and dived at the centre of chaos, surrounded by thousands of mages.

  Before he was unreachable, but not now. They saw an opportunity, but Hans was also seeing one, and his was way bigger than theirs. “Grandma!” He shouted, making Sierra notice him from afar. She was busy fighting with three world mages simultaneously, so she failed to notice him before.

  A cold shiver ran through her. “No,no,no, what are you doing there, child?” She cried.

  “Make sure no one dies from our sides,” Hans screamed back as the mage assassins, trained in close combat, lunged with several spells on their hands.

  “Come to the flame, Moths—”

  ~Sunfield sanctuary~

  With the unified state, what became of Hans’s heated killing zone was something else entirely. It was the full power Samson once had envisioned for Hans to have. A sanctuary like no other.

  A surface of sun, summoned on his command, that even turned the skeletons of the dead army into dust. In an instant, Hans had annihilated everything around him. All soldiers of Aerandir, including his own golem army, turned to dust and settled in the ground as their final resting place.

  Several escaped his radius, while the world mages managed to survive the extreme heat, but they were in no shape to even crawl. “There will be no loose ends, no survivors, and definitely no tormentors of the innocents,” he declared like a god and sharpened bamboos or more spears hung above their heads and bashed their skulls to smithereens.

  The cruel scene terrorised the lucky ones who were outside Hans’s range. Loyalty, love, duty, they couldn’t see anything but a nightmare in front of them. They scattered, running like the headless chicken, but Hans didn’t bother; the Stormed mages were handpicking them, putting them to rest.

  His eyes were solely searching Aerandir, who was nowhere to be found. “Damn, that bastard ran.” He cursed, and the power he had been holding in finally freed itself and disappeared.

  He wasn’t exhausted or anything; he wasn’t even gasping, just looking at the chaos he had caused. “This was really overpowered. How can I use it again? What were the conditions?” While he pondered, the people of Stormad saw a monster among them.

  A boy in his early teens came up to their lost city, saved the lives of citizens, and got angry at their torture. Infuriated, he massacred their enemies with a sanctuary of a world mage.

  They thought it was a dream, but the heat waves still radiating from the battlefield were screaming that this wasn’t. It was real, an ally for now but an enemy of the future, was not only strong but strong enough to gain their envy of why he was born in a foreign nation instead of theirs.

  “See, I told you, his power is psychological. It will go away if he thinks there is no need to hold it.” A man with a peeping interest in his wise face appeared in plain, loose clothing, an attire of an old mage. But Hans couldn’t see anything; his manaVision was telling him there was no one but the man was talking, and everyone apart from him was hugging the grounds with their bellies.

  “Thank you for saving me.” Aerandir, the only one who survived the Sunfield sanctuary because of one of these two mysterious people, showed pity towards him.

  “Tsk! tsk!” The other, greedy-looking mysterious person clicked his tongue, “I wasn’t asked to protect your life. Just think of it as a deed you’ve to pay later, elf.”

  These two looked like elves but turned into humans as they finally undid their concealment magic. Even Aerandir was shocked, but that didn’t concern these two.

  The first one, with peeking curiosity, spoke, “Now shall we give our ethereal friend a chance at revenge?” He turned to the ground-hugging army, “You others, won’t you interfere, right?” The immense pressure that Rudolf and others were feeling suddenly increased severalfold, even creating a blood pool of weak individuals.

  Hans looked terrified; there was no one in these lands who was strong enough to turn Rudolf this miserable just by a glance. He couldn't speak; he tried his best, but the voice didn’t come out. He was feeling an overwhelming fear.

  “Hans… run.” Delimira, being a little exception, tried to stand up; her scales were more visible, so did her stag-like horns. She warned again, “Run away, idiot, and don’t look back. These people… They are the Ancients.”