Chapter 612 – Tier Four Battle.

Roland and the others fled to the sides in horror as the wave of malevolent energies surged toward them. The scale was immense, and most of them were already exhausted. Any magical shields would have been useless, but just as the blast was about to strike, a strange flash of white filled the area and was followed by a resonant sound.

The explosion should have swallowed everyone whole. It should have erased the Duke from existence, body and soul. Instead, white light poured from his rapier and split the monstrous ray cleanly in two. What had seemed like an unstoppable tide of annihilation became two rivers of energy that parted around him and curved upward to avoid the castle behind. The force struck the protective barrier instead, causing it to ripple violently.

Everyone froze, staring at the Duke as his aura burst to life. It was still aura energy, yet its coloring was different. For most, it was crimson, but here it shone silvery white. For a moment, all eyes were fixed on the miasma clearing and the Duke standing tall with his weapon raised. Then a massive wail erupted from the transformed witch.

The monster reeled back, her countless eyes wide with disbelief. A circular wound opened across her torso, burning with the Duke’s advanced white aura. It was not a wound caused by a physical strike but by the overwhelming surge of energy and the shockwave that followed. Her flesh boiled away while her wings were torn apart by the torrent.

Yet she did not fall. Her body screamed as it knit itself back together, spawning endless tendrils and vomiting clouds of poisonous vapor. Tentacles lashed at the Duke faster than ballista bolts, but each one crumbled to ash as it collided with his sword aura. Poison spread through the courtyard like a storm, but it evaporated against the white flames that spread around him and created a strange shimmering phenomenon.

‘I have to record this. ’

He forced himself to focus while the malignant blast fizzled out against the shield. Most of his golems had been destroyed, though he could still restore a few. At his command, they rose into the air and kept their distance. Using his senses and enchanted armor, Roland detected something unsettling about the two tier four beings locked in combat. He had dealt with the Headmistress and had crossed paths with the witch in the swamps, but this was his first time witnessing a true battle between entities of such power.

‘There is a distortion around their bodies, as if each one carries its own region of warped reality.”

His display revealed a strange phenomenon, a pair of circular energy zones surrounding the two combatants. They differed in size and density, yet both collided again and again, with the Duke’s steadily overwhelming the one generated by the malformed creature. It was valuable data, but difficult to gather. Before long, another blast of abyssal energy rippled outward in all directions, disrupting his golems’ recording devices and forcing many of the soldiers nearby to groan in pain.

The battle was far from finished, and Roland realized it might be wiser to think first of his own safety and of Arthur’s.

“Lord Arthur, we need to get down from this wall before it collapses.”

“Agreed.”

Arthur was not alone, for his brother Julius, still clutching his shield, stumbled closer. Bernadette helped steady him, but her golden aura had completely vanished. The wall beneath them groaned as cracks spread through the stone. Dust rained down, and the shrieks of the monstrosity drowned out nearly every other sound.

Anzeneus, the mage, staggered forward. His old body had reached its limit, and he had exhausted all his mana. Just as he was about to collapse, a magical force lifted him up and carried him forward.

“Ah, this is embarrassing. You had better keep your promise, and you must never mention this to anyone.”

“Don’t worry, I’m sure the Headmistress will be willing to share her knowledge.”

The old man found himself slung over Roland’s shoulder, drawn in by the mage hand spell. With the Duke fighting the monster, the suppressing hold she held over the soldiers weakened, allowing them to move on their own. One by one, they abandoned the crumbling wall.

The courtyard was no longer a battlefield. It had become an apocalypse contained within crumbling stone walls. The air bent and screamed under the pressure of colliding powers. The Duke advanced in flawless rhythm, each thrust of his fencing blade carrying that strange silvery aura. His strikes appeared ordinary to the naked eye, yet every one of them unleashed a shockwave that tore the abyssal cultist’s body apart.

The witch shrieked with all her mouths. Tentacles rained down like spears, each one dripping venom that hissed as it touched the air. None of them reached him. The white flames surrounding his body shielded him from their corrosive effects, and his speed defied belief. His form shifted constantly. Whenever a tentacle seemed certain to pierce him, his body vanished, leaving only an afterimage that burned with white fire.

Roland’s display flickered again, struggling to process what it was witnessing. The distortion around the combatants blurred the sensors, which failed to track the Duke’s rapid movements. To the runic HUD, it seemed as though he were teleporting across the battlefield. His presence dominated the entire field, and his opponent appeared powerless, as if he were merely toying with the witch.

‘Unbelievable. Those tentacles lose part of their strength once they enter the Duke’s field of influence. It is as though the very laws that empower them are being crushed and rewritten. Is this what a battle between tier fours looks like?’

It was quite fascinating to behold this high-speed battle, even though it was one-sided. The abyssal witch survived only through her extraordinary regenerative powers, but even those were failing. With every passing second, her body diminished. The tentacles that composed her form dissolved into dust as the Duke’s aura consumed them.

The abomination’s scream rose higher, splitting the night air and shattering glass. Hundreds of voices shrieked in unison, words layered over one another in maddening tongues, each a call to despair. Yet the Duke moved forward, unshaken. His fencer’s blade traced a straight line, glimmering with silvery-white light. With each thrust, the abomination’s colossal body convulsed, holes opening faster than her regeneration could mend.

“Disappointing…”

The Duke finally spoke before the monster. The witch spat venom and exhaled black mist that should have corroded stone and flesh alike, but it curled and burned away against the Duke’s aura, unable to harm him. Tentacles shot up from the ground beneath him, sharp as spears, yet they pierced only air as he vanished before they could strike.

“Pathetic creature.”

“N-no, the dream must begin, I was chosen by the great lord! I cannot fail!”

By now, the witch’s form had diminished greatly. Once towering at twenty meters, she had shrunk to only five. Each time her body was seared by the flames, her size dwindled further, and it was clear the Duke was about to end it all.

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Roland stopped in his tracks. His group had descended from the broken walls and now gathered below. Soldiers and even servants who had awoken stood in awe of the man with the fencing blade. Throughout the battle, his left arm had remained fixed behind his back, and his posture stood tall like an unbreakable pillar.

The Duke moved again. His rapier flickered forward. A single thrust, almost casual, as though he were dueling an apprentice. But in that moment, something impossible unfolded. The silver-white aura coating his weapon did not stop at the blade’s tip. It surged outward, splitting into thousands of spectral lines of light, each one a phantom thrust carrying the will of his strike.

Every line of aura struck the abomination simultaneously. The horror’s flesh rippled as if pierced by a thousand invisible lances. Holes erupted across her twisted frame faster than her regenerative powers could respond. Each thrust carried not only piercing power but also his authority that denied the witch’s existence.

The monstrosity’s many mouths shrieked again, but this time the sound no longer affected the nearby soldiers. Her power was gone, overwhelmed by the sheer force of the Duke’s technique. His rapier stayed steady while the storm of aura around him grew fiercer. The monster staggered back, collapsing beneath the invisible torrent of thrusts. Tentacles were shredded into mist, and hundreds of eyes burst and dissolved into nothingness. Her cries shifted from madness to horror as her life slipped away.

“No… no, I was chosen! The everlasting dream cannot…”

The words never finished. The Duke’s aura pressed harder, and her body collapsed inward. The countless thrusts of energy converged until the grotesque shell could no longer hold together. The abomination imploded in silence, leaving only a fine black powder carried off by the night wind.

When the light cleared, nothing remained. No flesh, no abyssal energy, no trace of the witch. The barrier that had enclosed the courtyard flickered and went out, letting the natural moonlight spill through.