CHAPTER 198: DESTRUCTIVE MIGHT

"It actually worked... Gods above..."

Kevan—formerly the outpost captain of Sighing Gorge, which had since been overrun by Selwyn's forces—stood at the heart of Aleisterre's frontline encampment. His voice was barely a whisper, drowned in awe as he stared at the distant heavens along with countless others, where a burning meteor was falling from the night sky.

"This power..." he murmured, his eyes wide. "It's inconceivable. Is this truly the might of magic?"

Beside him, Nurse Jenny, head of the frontline infirmary, could only nod with awestruck reverence and fear.

The meteor, suspended in the firmament, burned with apocalyptic brilliance. Its radiance pierced the darkness even far into the distance. It descended not with the furious speed, but with terrifying deliberation, as if it were judgment made manifest.

It was colossal, as vast as a mountain, but hardly a celestial object. It was a culmination of mortal ingenuity, a spell created by the hands of Aleisterre's own mages.

A miracle forged in flame and fury, this pseudo-eighth-tier spell. Its structure was crude compared to the refined elegance of most high-tier magic, but its raw strength was powered by an almost obscene volume of mana, rare materials, and sacrifice. It had been assembled at the heart of the battlefield, ignited in blood, and unleashed with purpose.

If such a meteor—this weapon of pure destruction, a force that rivaled the divine—fell on Aleisterre's capital, would even the legendary barrier of Themis' Shroud be able to withstand its wrath?

No soldier on the battlefield could answer that question, and few dared to contemplate it.

"All soldiers, prepare to move out!" A voice like thunder rolled across the camp, cutting through fear and awe like a blade.

"When that meteor hits, we strike! This is the moment we'll drive those Selwynian bastards from our land!" The voice grew louder, carried by sheer will. "This meteor was born of sacrifice. Our mages gave their lives to see it fall—and we'll honor them with victory! Leave no invader alive!"

One by one, the Aleisterre soldiers straightened, their fists clenched and their jaws set. Fear turned to fury.

"Yessir!"

"We're ready! For Aleisterre!"

"For our homeland!"

Shouts rang out from every direction, a tidal wave of defiance booming across the ranks. At the center of it was their commander—Black Benn, Flame Marshal.

He smiled. This was precisely what he needed: fury strong enough to bridge the gap between Aleisterre's and Selwyn's armies.

His gaze shifted skyward, toward the burning meteor still falling ever so slowly. He could already feel the heat, the fury, the promise of annihilation. His potential, Blazing Raze, stirred within him in anticipation.

"Heh... you feel it too, don't you?" Tiny wisps of fire danced across his shoulders.

"Soon. Soon we'll turn this whole damn battlefield into cinders. Every last one of them."

A red light gleamed in his eyes. Flames licked at his skin like a second soul. To Black Benn, mercy was treason, and vengeance justice.

The meteor crackled as it descended.

It was no wind nor fire, but the sound of magic itself unraveling. The energy that fueled it was so dense, so concentrated, that it no longer obeyed the usual rules. Magical barriers layered across its surface cracked under the strain. Elemental mana no longer mattered. The sheer weight of the spell had begun to distort reality itself.

The energy poured into the spell had been siphoned from a stack of mana crystals, then amplified by the ritual array inscribed on a foundation of pure colchite, one of the few materials capable of conducting magic at such magnitude. Dozens of mages had sacrificed themselves to power this spell. Their life force became kindling, and their minds its circuitry.

The spell was loosely based on the seventh-tier Flaming Meteor, but rewritten, layered, and embellished with terrifying precision until it had advanced almost a tier in conceptual might alone.

The result was a brute-force incantation that achieved what finesse could not: a beacon of might built from sheer magical mass.

The meteor loomed so large that it seemed poised to swallow up Selwyn's army whole. It was formed of hundreds of seventh-tier Flaming Meteors compressed together at its core.

The meteor's surface burned with white-hot fire. The temperature neared the core heat of Stevenson Academy's legendary Mountain Forge—but the meteor was larger by orders of magnitude.

And though the meteor fell, it did so slowly. This was no ordinary descent. It was so impossibly heavy that it had distorted even gravity itself.

The air beneath it had condensed into a sea of mana—glowing, syrupy, and tangible.

Pushed past its critical density, mana was starting to condense in physical reality. It thickened like gel and formed primitive mana crystals.

And still the meteor fell.

The pressure from its descent compressed the world below. The land fractured before it even made contact. Tremors rippled outward. Trees cracked. Stone splintered. The earth itself groaned.

Then came the first impact—not from the meteor itself, but from the sea of solidified mana beneath it.

The world shattered.

Buildings crumbled like parchment. Knights were flattened, flesh and bone compressed into formless pulp. Armor buckled and swords snapped.

This was no battlefield. It was pure annihilation.

The Aleisterre mages at the heart of the Selwyn camp had perished long before as the meteor reached supercriticality. Now the Selwynian knights died too—crushed not by heat or flame, but by pressure.

Despite their enhanced physiques, not a single one of them could resist. Strength and rank made no difference. Trainee and grand knight alike were all insects beneath the boot of falling divinity.

A few grand knights arrived at the command center just as the meteor descended. Their potentials flared in defense, resilient and stubborn as they were.

None of it mattered.

One knight, his body enhanced through magic, his skin hard as steel, let out a howl of rage. Blood burst from his nose and ears. His bones cracked under the strain. His chest collapsed inward as he dropped to one knee, then both.

The last thing he felt was his own rib cage folding like paper.

His body ruptured. And like that, another warrior of Selwyn vanished—claimed by a force not born of malice, but of inevitability. A spell with no heart. No hatred. Just power.

"Why? What is this...? Is this divine punishment? Is Selwyn truly fated to fall here...?"

A scream laced with despair echoed beneath a web of cracks that marred the knight's protective shield. Through his fracturing shield, the knight glanced desperately at the sky, where the falling meteor blazed ever brighter. The searing glare of its flames bleached his eyes white with heat before darkness claimed his vision.

The unbelievable heat bypassed his translucent shield, searing through the last vestige of divine protection gifted by the god of his faith and branding his flesh, a final cruelty for one who had survived this long by the grace of his faith.

Hair burst into flame. Skin blistered and split. His final cries—part rage, part disbelief—echoed through the shield that had become a cocoon of fire.

Then, the shield itself shattered under the crushing pressure. With it, the grand knight's torment came to a swift, agonizing close.

At last, the meteor struck earth. In that instant, its blazing surface collided with the ground. The sheer impact tore through the boundary separating this world from the elemental plane of fire, rending open a gash in reality itself.

A spatial rift flared for a heartbeat before the meteor's own mass caused it to collapse.

A handful of fire elementals, each powerful enough to rival a grand knight, briefly emerged from the rift—only to be obliterated before they could so much as roar. Reduced to drifting embers, they scattered in a flash.

The meteor's heat alone melted bedrock. Then came its core, an impossibly dense structure forged from earth mana and compressed beyond natural limits. As the meteor's outer shell disintegrated in the collision, the core came into direct contact with the ground.

The thunderous shock rippled across the plains like the voice of a wrathful god. Even Aleisterre's army, stationed dozens of kilometers away, heard the rumble as if it had struck at their feet.

The meteor's core crushed the land as it plunged deeper and deeper into the earth, carried by its own monstrous weight.

Shockwaves radiated outward, splitting the crust below. Fissures snaked underground like lightning forking across the sky.

Mountains trembled and hills writhed. The land itself surged like an ocean in a storm, heaving under the meteor's assault.

And this—this was only the beginning. In Aleisterre's camp, fragile items tumbled to the ground and were smashed apart. Temporary wooden structures groaned, then collapsed altogether as beams split under the strain.

"It's shaking—the ground is really shaking... This power—it's terrifying. And we're still so far away..."

The soldiers of Aleisterre stared into the horizon, faces pale. The joy over their enemies' destruction faded quickly and gave way to dread.

If the meteor had struck them instead—that thought alone chilled the blood. For now, they could only be grateful that the meteor had been directed at an enemy: at Selwyn's forces.

They pacified their startled horses and turned back just in time to witness the true crescendo of the meteor's might.

Most of the meteor's mass had already buried itself deep into the land. Yet the fire mana and raw magical power it carried continued to surge, wild and unchecked. Trapped between the earth and the meteor's own weight, it had nowhere to go.

And thus, a final eruption was unleashed.

A flash that illuminated the sky brighter than day erupted from the point of impact. The detonation ripped outward, displacing air, matter, magic—everything. It was not the sound of an explosion, but something far deeper, more primal—an unearthly resonance that bypassed one's ears and was conveyed straight at the soul.

On the trembling plain, shattered trees and upturned stones were caught in the shockwave. Clouds of dust as dense as stormfronts billowed into the sky, cloaking the land.

The final blast swept away what little had endured. It was slow and deliberate.

All was lost beneath the choking veil of dust. Nothing of the meteor's landing site could be seen—but Selwyn's army couldn't have survived such destruction.

It had been utterly annihilated by a marvel of magic made manifest through the curio known as the Silent Forest.

What the soldiers of Aleisterre felt was not triumph, but an uncanny chill. A silence that sank into the marrow. A dread that whispered of something beyond mortal reckoning. Something ancient, vast, and merciless.

Even Black Benn's twisted grin seemed stiff. He stood in silence for a long time before roaring, "Reform the ranks! Cancel the follow-up assault—we're not striking the Selwyn camp now! Everyone, ready yourselves for their last counterattack! We'll crush every damned one of them if they dare to crawl out from that crater!"