Chapter 484 - 484: Invasion [50]

Wes froze.

"What the hell does that mean?"

"I am not so sure," Raghul responded.

The moment they were pulled into this strange space, Raghul realized his undead were no longer connected to his mana. Whatever this place was, it had severed the connection between him and the undead he had created.

That alone was a problem.

Normally, even if one of his undead was destroyed, he could supply it with more mana and force its body to regenerate. That was what made his undead so troublesome to deal with. Killing them once wasn't enough.

But here, that connection had been cut off.

Meaning that if any of his undead were killed now, they wouldn't regenerate.

And judging by what he was sensing...

That was exactly what had happened.

However, losing his direct connection to them didn't mean Raghul had completely lost his ability to sense them. The undead were still his creations, and he could normally feel their presence even from a considerable distance.

But that presence had vanished.

Not one after another. Not gradually. All at once.

Raghul's eyes narrowed.

The only explanation was that every single undead orc had been killed at practically the same moment.

That was the only explanation that made sense.

BOOM!

The sky suddenly cracked open.

A figure shot downward from the opening with enough force to make the air tremble around him, his descent so violent that the ground below seemed to brace for impact. He struck the earth a moment later with a heavy thud, dust and loose debris bursting outward from the point of impact.

Wes instinctively jumped toward Raghul's side, his eyes locked on the figure through the settling cloud of dust.

Raghul tightened his grip around his staff.

There was something about the aura coming from this person that made the atmosphere feel heavier. It wasn't merely powerful. There was a pressure behind it, something that made even Raghul's instincts scream that whoever had just arrived was not someone they could afford to underestimate.

The figure slowly rose from the crater.

As the dust began to clear, his appearance became visible.

Raghul's eyes widened.

Recognition struck him immediately.

"You..."

Eli straightened, brushing the dust from his clothes as he looked at the two of them.

Then his gaze moved past them, toward the battlefield they had turned into chaos while he was gone.

A faint smile appeared on his face, but there was nothing warm about it.

"Did you have fun?"

He stood upright, his eyes settling on Raghul.

"Turning my home into your playground while I was gone?"

The air grew heavy.

Raghul and Wes felt it the moment Eli's aura spread through the space, pressing down on them with a weight that was impossible to ignore. It wasn't merely the overwhelming presence of a powerful being. There was an intensity to it, a pressure that seemed to settle against their bodies and make every instinct they had scream that something dangerous was standing in front of them.

Raghul was shocked.

The only other being who had ever made him feel this way was the goblin he was now partnering with, yet Eli was now giving off an aura that evoked the same instinctive sense of danger.

How had he gotten this strong this quickly?

Raghul had seen Eli's strength before, but this was different. The aura coming from him now felt denser, more oppressive, as though whatever limit Eli had possessed before had been shattered while he was trapped inside the Folded Prison.

"Chief, who is this?" Wes asked, his voice noticeably shaky.

"Who do you think?" Raghul replied, his eyes remaining fixed on Eli. "He's the leader of the enemy."

"Oh," Wes uttered.

His expression changed as the memory returned to him.

While he had been strangling Zarah, he had sensed someone's gaze watching him from somewhere nearby. It had been impossible to pinpoint at the time, but there had been something unsettling about it, a presence that had made the back of his neck prickle despite everything else happening around him.

There was no doubt about it now.

That gaze had belonged to the goblin in front of me.

Compared to Wes, however, Raghul wasn't nearly as shaken by Eli's presence.

He took a step forward, tightening his grip on his staff as he studied Eli with a mixture of caution and curiosity.

"How did you get rid of my undead?" he asked with curiosity in his gaze. "It happened so quickly."

"How?" Eli gave Raghul an odd look. "Does the answer to that question matter?"

"You're right. It doesn't." Raghul laughed awkwardly, the sound coming out more forced than he intended. "I was just trying to make conversation."

What is this? Why am I suddenly so chatty?

Even Raghul found his own behavior strange.

Normally, he wouldn't waste words on someone he considered an enemy, especially not someone who had just demonstrated the ability to wipe out his entire army of undead in an instant. Yet, despite the danger standing directly in front of him, he found himself filling the silence with pointless questions, as though some part of him was desperately trying to delay what he already knew was coming.

Eli took another step forward.

"Conversation?" he asked, his voice calm as his gaze remained fixed on Raghul. "Do I look like I'm here to talk?"

Eli raised one hand.

Flames immediately gathered around his fingers, spreading across his palm and curling around his forearm as the heat distorted the air nearby.

Raghul's expression changed the moment he saw the flames.

His body shuddered.

That aura...

It wasn't ordinary fire.

There was something else woven into it, something that Raghul could feel even without understanding exactly what Eli had done to obtain such power.

It's divine.

His eyes narrowed as he stared at Eli.

No one should possess an aura like this unless they had received a special blessing from Lord Drugar.

So why?

Why did this goblin possess such power?

It was power Raghul had striven to possess.

Power he had longed for, power he had spent countless years chasing, and yet Eli was wielding it so casually, as though such divine strength was nothing more than another weapon at his disposal.

"Raghul, what do we..."

Wes barely had time to finish his sentence.

Eli disappeared.

The movement was so sudden that Wes's eyes couldn't properly follow it. One moment, Eli was standing several meters away, and the next, he was already in front of him.

Wes's instincts screamed at him to move.

He tried.

But he was too late.

A flash of flame cut across his body, and the force of the attack tore through him from the waist up toward his shoulder, splitting through flesh and bone with such terrifying speed that Wes didn't even understand what had happened until his body began to separate.

"What the hell?"

The words escaped his mouth in disbelief.

He didn't even have time to process the pain or wonder how Eli had moved so quickly before Eli's hand shot forward and seized him by the head.

Wes's entire body tensed.

"This is for messing with my wife."

"What are you..."

Flames erupted from Eli's hand.

The fire engulfed Wes's head in an instant, burning with such intensity that his remaining words were swallowed before they could leave his mouth. A second later, his head was gone, consumed completely by the flames as though it had never been there in the first place.

Eli released the lifeless body.

It dropped heavily to the ground.

Then Eli turned toward Raghul, who stood only a short distance away, frozen in shock as he stared at the spot where Wes had just been standing.

For the first time since the battle began, Raghul had no words.

Eli's eyes settled on him.

"Next."