Chapter : 545

Iffrit, standing silent and immense on the pristine green grass, seemed to take in the scene. The two points of white-hot fire in his helm flickered, and Lloyd could feel, through their new, nascent bond, a wave of what could only be described as… profound, almost divine, contempt. These pathetic, jiggly, insignificant lifeforms were to be the first test of his apocalyptic power? It was an insult to his very being.

Fang Fairy, beside him, seemed to feel it too. He is not impressed, Master, she noted, a hint of amusement in her mental voice.

“He will learn the value of a target-rich environment,” Lloyd replied dryly. He looked out at the endless, bouncing sea of blue. The last time he had faced this horde, it had been a tedious, soul-crushing grind. A battle of attrition, won through sheer, stubborn endurance. This time… this time would be different. This would not be a grind. This would be a glorious, beautiful, and comically one-sided, slaughter.

“Alright, team,” he announced, his voice ringing with the authority of a general about to unleash a new, and devastating, super-weapon for the first time. “New rules of engagement. Iffrit,” he focused his will on the massive, silent demon, “you are primary assault. Your objective is… everything that jiggles. I want you to carve a path of fiery destruction through the center of that field. Do not worry about finesse. Do not concern yourself with strategy. I want a demonstration of pure, overwhelming, and deeply satisfying, force. Annihilate them.”

Through their new bond, he felt a flicker of what could only be described as eager, bloodthirsty joy from the silent, armored demon. It was a being forged for destruction, and it had just been given its first, glorious command.

“Fang Fairy,” he continued, turning his attention to his other partner, “you are support. Flank security. Anything that escapes the primary kill-zone, anything that tries to scatter, is yours. Your speed, your precision… clean up the edges. Leave no survivor.”

A task I shall perform with the utmost efficiency, Master, she replied, her ethereal form already crackling with a low hum of anticipatory lightning.

“Good,” Lloyd said, a final, predatory smile spreading across his face. “Let the harvest begin.”

With a thought, he gave the command. “Engage.”

Iffrit moved. The earth of the Soul Farm did not just tremble; it groaned in protest. Each of his massive, magma-forged feet slammed into the pristine green grass with the force of a meteor strike, leaving deep, smoking footprints in his wake. He did not run. He charged, a nine-foot-tall, unstoppable avalanche of fire and rage.

He reached the edge of the teeming slime horde. And he swung his sword.

The colossal, twelve-foot-long zanbatō, its blade a roaring, chaotic inferno of crimson and orange flame, scythed through the air with a sound like a hurricane. It was not a cut. It was an event. A moving wall of pure, elemental annihilation.

The instant the flame-wreathed blade touched the first rank of bouncing, oblivious slimes, the world dissolved into fire.

The impact was not a series of individual pops, but a single, catastrophic, and deeply satisfying, FWOOOOM. A massive, rolling wave of incandescent fire erupted from the point of impact, a fiery tsunami that consumed everything in its path. Dozens, scores, perhaps a hundred of the slimes in the front rank were not just boiled or melted; they were instantly, comprehensively, vaporized. They vanished in a flash of brilliant, orange light and a cloud of superheated, sugary-smelling steam, leaving behind only blackened, scorched earth.

The kinetic force of the blow alone was immense, a shockwave that sent the slimes further back tumbling through the air like discarded, jiggly toys. But it was the fire, the all-consuming, world-ending fire, that was the true weapon. The flames did not just burn; they spread, leaping from the initial point of impact, a hungry, roaring wildfire that flowed through the densely packed slime horde, turning the serene green plain into a vision from a particularly spectacular, if slightly gooey, hell.

Iffrit did not stop. He was a whirlwind of destruction, a demon of the forge letting out millennia of pent-up destructive fury. He roared, a silent, spiritual sound that was pure, triumphant rage, and swung his massive, flaming greatsword again, and again, and again. Each swing was a masterpiece of brutal, artless, and overwhelmingly effective, carnage. He carved a massive, smoking, and ever-widening swathe of black, scorched earth through the heart of the slime horde, his flaming blade a blur of crimson and orange, a moving apocalypse that left nothing but the smell of burnt sugar and evaporating despair in its wake.

Chapter : 546

The slimes, their simple, amoebic consciousness finally registering the sheer, overwhelming terror of their situation, began to scatter. The orderly, bouncing horde dissolved into a frantic, panicked chaos, thousands of individual blue blobs bouncing desperately in every direction, trying to flee the unstoppable, fiery doom that had descended upon them.

They were fleeing directly into the storm.

Fang Fairy moved, a silent, silver-grey streak against the backdrop of the fiery cataclysm. She was the scalpel to Iffrit’s sledgehammer, the lightning to his inferno. Her movements were a blur of precise, deadly grace. The escaping slimes, scattered and panicked, were easy prey.

Chirp-SLICE. A shimmering Lightning Dart, a smaller, more energy-efficient variant of the Spear of Justice, shot from her hand, piercing three fleeing slimes in a single, perfect, instantaneous line. They popped, dissolved.

FZZZZ-T. She appeared in the midst of another fleeing cluster, her Lightning Cloak flaring for a fraction of a second, a contained, azure nova that instantly vaporized the dozen slimes closest to her.

She was a ghost, a storm, everywhere at once. Her Thousand Chirp Strike, which had once been their primary weapon, was now almost laughably unnecessary against such weak foes. She relied on speed, on precision, on small, efficient bursts of her immense power to clean up the edges of Iffrit’s fiery rampage, her movements a beautiful, deadly dance of death that was a stark, elegant contrast to the raw, brutal carnage her new partner was unleashing.

Lloyd watched from a safe distance, a silent, white-masked conductor overseeing his symphony of destruction. He felt a thrill so profound, so potent, it was almost a physical thing. This was power. True power. The perfect, brutal synergy of overwhelming force and surgical precision. Iffrit was the hammer, shattering the enemy’s main line. Fang Fairy was the cavalry, running down the routing survivors. And he… he was the general, the mind, the will that commanded the storm and the fire.

The kill counter in his mind, which had once been a source of such tedious, slow-moving frustration, was now a blur, a frantic, exhilarating cascade of numbers ticking upwards at a dizzying, almost unbelievable, pace.

[Slimes Killed: 121… 157… 214… 309…]

It was a glorious, beautiful, and comically one-sided, harvest. The Slime Plains were being cleared, not in hours or days, but in minutes. The sheer, overwhelming efficiency of it was intoxicating. He had spent what felt like an eternity grinding to earn his first 200 Farming Coins. Now, he was watching that same amount being generated in the time it took to have a cup of tea.

He let them work, his two magnificent, terrifying spirits, his partners in this strange, new war. He saw Iffrit, a silent, indomitable demon of flame, cleaving a path of black, smoking ruin through the heart of the plains. He saw Fang Fairy, a graceful, silver-and-azure goddess of the storm, dancing at the edges of the inferno, her lightning a final, beautiful, and utterly lethal, full stop to any who dared to flee.

They were his. His power. His creations. A testament to his will, to his vision, to the strange, impossible journey that had led him here.

He looked out at the burning, crackling, and rapidly emptying plains, at the rising sun of his own, personal dimension, at the two magnificent, deadly gods who served his will. And for the first time since his return, the Major General, the drab duckling, the soap-maker, the professor, the man of three lifetimes, felt a surge of something that was not just confidence, not just satisfaction, but a deep, profound, and almost terrifying, sense of absolute, unshakeable, power. The ghosts of his past were still out there. But for the first time, he did not just feel like he could survive them. He felt, with a certainty that was as hot and as real as the flames that now consumed his private world, that he could hunt them. And he could win.

—

The slaughter on the Slime Plains was a masterpiece of overwhelming, elemental violence. The air, once so pure and neutral, was now a thick, almost unbreathable haze of smoke, steam, and the sweet, cloying scent of incinerated gelatin. Lloyd stood amidst the quiet, smoking devastation, the thrill of the battle slowly receding, replaced by the cool, satisfying hum of a mission accomplished. He had unleashed his new arsenal, and the results had been… definitive.