Chapter 694: Building The Stronghold - 1

But even if saying it was easy, doing it was completely different.

They were currently looking at the neck of the Horseshoe Bend that needed to be destroyed if they wanted the terrain to their requirements.

What stood before Leo was a 2-kilometre-tall wall that was around 100 to 200 metres wide and even wider at the base end, uniform from the centre platform to the desired place where Leo wanted the region to be empty—which was almost 1.5 kilometres to 2 kilometres away.

A total volume of around 500 million cubic metres.

Leo tried using [Earth Manipulation].

At once, a particular section at the top of the neck began to shake violently, as if a local earthquake had struck the region.

-2000 mana

-3000 mana

-4000 mana

The more Leo tried to break down the structure, the more mana started to be consumed.

In the end, it took nearly 30,000 units of mana just to break 10,000 cubic metres. It was actually higher than Leo expected, because the canyon's rocks seemed to be very durable.

Leo suddenly felt that using Earth Manipulation was a no-go because he would actually need more than 1000 times the mana he had right now to do it. Though he could be clever and just destroy the base of the wall to save mana, even that seemed ineffective.

The most effective thing that Leo could think of now was raw punches.

With his Strength stat at 8460, plus the 90% boost, his punches were already packing 15,000 times the strength of a normal human.

Though still not enough to pulverise the wall in one strike, who told Leo he was capable of simply punching once?

Those were just the normal full-force punches that he could now do for an indefinite amount of time with his monstrous stamina.

"Hmm... Leo, I think we will actually need to keep that neck and fortify it thoroughly so that nobody passes—" Kaelion's words were cut off when Leo jumped down the canyon's 2-kilometre fall.

"Leo! Wait for me!" Lily shouted and also jumped down.

She was coming down to kill any dwelling beast in the depths so that Leo could focus on the task.

The other students could only watch them without saying a word. Uraan, in the distance, only saw two people falling to their deaths.

"What the fuck are they thinking of doing? Don't tell me he will punch the whole damn wall!" Uraan shouted.

And it didn't even take a minute for them to see what Leo had done.

Down below, through the faint visibility in the darkness due to the morning sun, they saw a crater forming on the rocky surface of the wall right at the base as dust and debris covered the whole surroundings.

At that time, Leo communicated with them.

"Alright! I can destroy the wall within half a day; you all go check the surroundings in case there is any danger!" Saying that, Leo disconnected as another crater right beside the first one was created.

And after a few seconds, the sound of smashing came, along with the faint shockwave that travelled all the way up to them, created by the punch.

"Okay..." The other students only responded plainly as their hair fluttered slightly due to the shockwave, and Kaelion directed the Skyreaver toward the surrounding forest.

Down below...

BHAAAAAMMMMM!!!

A ground-shattering punch created a crater almost 50 metres wide and sent vibrations deep into the 200 to 300 metres of width at the base of the wall.

"Pryde! Keep using your Earth Element to weaken the wall structure so Leo's punches are more effective!" Lily commanded the nearly summoned Hydra, who was doing the same.

He made slight vibrations in the wall structure, so when Leo punched the wall, the damage could be greater due to the wall structure already being weakened.

Lily looked at Leo punching and then at her own fists.

"How does he do that?" she muttered, thinking about how her fist would hurt a lot even if her Strength stat was actually 6550.

What she didn't know was that women of most races had negative Strength and Agility traits that made them physically weaker in comparison to their male counterparts. But to compensate for that, they had positive Intelligence and Stamina stats, making them almost equal in importance. Though races with exceptions, and even individuals with exceptions, existed sometimes.

BAM! BAM! THAM!

Swoosh! Swoosh! Swoosh!

Leo didn't let the wall rest for even a second, punching rapidly, one after another, at 50-metre intervals to overlap the damage, as intense shockwaves reverberated through the wall and its surroundings. The shockwaves were so intense that the surrounding debris had cleared up, leaving pristine surfaces—though with craters and cracks, it didn't make things look that clean.

Lily's hair was flowing as if in an intense storm without rest, and even the few dwelling beasts had already fled after realising some dangerous individual had come here.

When Leo had punched all the way up to the 1.2-kilometre length, he simply started to punch his way through the 200 to 300 metre-long width of the wall's base.

But to make things a bit easier, he caused dangerous tremors beneath the wall with his [Earth Manipulation] to destabilise the already cracking structure and—

BOOOMM!!

A punch, and it caused a 3-metre-deep crater that was 50 metres wide, the same one he had been forming throughout the wall's length. But unlike the previous ones, he punched again at the same spot.

BOOOOMM!!

This time, the crater deepened by 2.5 metres at the point of impact.

Third punch, this time only 2 metres.

Same-intensity punches, but the effectiveness was reducing, meaning the wall was progressively denser on the inside.

But that didn't discourage Leo a bit, and he started the rain of punches that was deepening the hole as time went by.

Uraan, who was flying above the canyon—simply because he couldn't miss Leo doing something this astonishing—saw the dulling shockwaves until they disappeared, replaced by the even more gradual dulling of the loud smashes.

"Did he finally get tired?" he muttered, eyes tracing the whole cracked base of the 1.2-kilometre-long wall, which was simply unbelievable that a human could do with pure punches.

"Holy shit, should I try to become his subordinate?" Uraan was already considering his choices to come under Leo, because the earlier, the better.

What if he was a high noble? There was no shame in being under someone who might as well rival the Emperor someday.

At that moment—

DHHHHOOOOOMMMM!!!

A loud smash, and from the point of the base that Leo had been trying to dig into, a crack travelled straight up to the surface—effectively separating the neck from the joining.