Chapter 282: The Enforcer And The Array

BOOM!!!

The ancient stone archway at the entrance of the wilderness ruins shattered into a thousand flying boulders as Woolie crashed straight through it like a meteor.

"Stop right there, you son of a bitch!!"

Raiden’s roar echoed off the crumbling stone pillars around the valley as Woolie skidded to a halt in the centre of the courtyard, carving two ten-meter-long trenches into the flagstones with his hooves.

Ahead of them, at the elevated centre of the ruined temple, stood a massive circular platform over twenty meters wide.

Raiden recognised the design instantly. It looked just like the black-level teleportation platform Areon Goldwyn had used to send him to the Egg Compendium in Silver Peak City, except this one was three times larger, powered by dozens of blinding, high-purity spatial crystals embedded around its rim.

Complex silver-blue runes were already spinning rapidly across the stone floor, humming with a deep, space-warping vibration that made the air above the altar twist like a mirage.

And standing right in the middle of that glowing circle was the man in pitch-black tactical gear, holding an unconscious Sylvia over his shoulder.

"Thirty-eight seconds," the masked man murmured, glancing down at a silver pocket watch in his left hand before looking up at Raiden with a pair of cold, indifferent grey eyes. "You actually made it out of that warehouse in under four minutes. It seems Bai Zheng and those three fools from the outer branch were even more useless than the Elders predicted."

Raiden didn’t stay on Woolie’s back. He hit the ground running, two razor-sharp scythes of condensed blood materialising in his hands as his half-silver hair whipped around his face.

"Put my sister down," Raiden said, his voice so low and hoarse it sounded like two pieces of rusted iron grinding together. "Put her down right now, and I swear I’ll make your death quick."

The masked man let out a dry, humourless chuckle.

"A Gold-Tier Battle Master threatening to kill an Enforcer of the Main Clan? Living in this backwater mudhole has truly rotted your brain, boy."

The man didn’t even bother drawing a weapon. Instead, he tapped the spatial platform beneath his boot once.

HUMMMMMM!!

A translucent, hexagonal barrier of silver spatial energy snapped into existence around the twenty-meter altar, encasing both the Enforcer and Sylvia inside an airtight dome that shimmered like a soap bubble made of solid diamond.

At the same time, the space directly in front of the dome tore open like a zipper.

"KREEE-SHAAAA!!"

A chilling, metallic screech ripped through the night air as a monstrous creature stepped out of the spatial rift.

It looked like a cross between a praying mantis and a wyvern, standing twelve meters tall with four scythe-like arms forged from silvery-white void metal. Its body had no eyes, only a smooth, mirror-like faceplate that reflected the twisted space around it, and its wings were made of tattered dark purple dimensional rifts that cut through the stone pillars nearby just by fluttering!

Raiden didn’t even need to ask the system to appraise it.

The suffocating aura rolling off that silver mantis was miles above Lola’s Diamond-Tier beasts. It was at the absolute peak of the Diamond Tier, standing a full half-step into the Mythical Realm, just like Old Man Sol’s Black Phoenix and Tobias’s Garuda!

"Allow me to educate you on the gap between someone like you and The Main Clan, boy," the Enforcer said calmly, resting a gloved hand on Sylvia’s unconscious shoulder as the teleportation runes beneath his feet spun faster and faster.

"The array beneath my feet only requires thirty more seconds to lock onto the spatial coordinates of The True Capital. The barrier surrounding this altar is woven from the Space Law of my Void-Cleaver Mantis. Even if three standard Diamond-Tier Battle Masters attacked it together for an hour, they wouldn’t leave a single scratch on it."

The Enforcer’s eyes narrowed into mocking slits above his black mask.

"So stand there like a good little dog and watch. Watch as I take your sister back to the clan, where her bloodline will finally be put to proper use!"

"Twenty-five seconds," the Enforcer added softly.

Anyone else in this world would have felt despair hearing those words. Facing a Half-Step Mythical Enforcer, a Space-element monster, and an unbreakable spatial barrier with less than thirty seconds on the clock was an impossible checkmate.

Raiden didn’t say a single word.

He didn’t waste half a second on banter, threats, or questions.

His eyes simply locked onto Sylvia’s pale, scarred face hanging limp over the man’s shoulder, and the blood inside his veins ignited.

"Woolie. Neva. Rose."

Raiden’s voice was dead calm, yet the killing intent pouring off his body made the temperature in the ruined valley plunge below freezing.

"Target the exact centre of that barrier. Don’t save or preserve any kind of energy. Break it open right now!!"

"WOOLIE WOO!!"

"SHAAAA!!"

"HISSSSS!!"

All three of his partners erupted at the exact same millisecond!

"Woolie!!" Emperor’s Domain!! Open to the max!!

BOOM!!

Woolie slammed all four hooves into the flagstones, and a thousand-meter ring of black-and-violet lightning exploded outward across the valley! The crushing gravity of his domain slammed straight into the twelve-meter Void-Cleaver Mantis standing outside the barrier.

Even though the mantis was a peak Diamond beast, its silver carapace creaked violently as fifty per cent of its speed and power was forcibly suppressed by the bloodline tyranny of Fenrir!

"What?!" The Enforcer’s calm expression cracked for the first time as he saw his prized Void-Cleaver Mantis stumble half a step under the pressure of a Gold-Tier sheep. "A domain skill on a Gold-Tier beast?! Void-Cleaver, cut that sheep in half!!"

"KREEE!!"

The giant silver mantis crossed its four scythe-arms and slashed forward, unleashing four hundred-meter-wide crescents of silver Spatial Blades that tore the very air apart as they screamed toward Woolie and Raiden!

"Hiss!!~" Get out of the way, ugly bug! Rose is busy saving Sister Sylvi!!

Before the spatial blades could even cross half the courtyard, thirty-meter-long EX-Tier Rose coiled upward like a crimson dragon!

"Hiss!!" Crimson Monarch Hands!!

Four colossal hands forged from purified, ashen-gold-veined blood rose from the earth and slammed head-on into the spatial blades!

CLANG! CRACK! BOOM!

Three of the four spatial blades shattered against the sheer density of Rose’s purified blood, while Rose whipped her physical tail around and wrapped her thirty-meter coils directly around the Void-Cleaver Mantis’s torso, pinning all four of its scythe-arms against its sides and dragging the twelve-meter monster away from the altar!

"Twenty seconds!!" Raiden roared, sprinting straight toward the glowing hexagonal barrier as his twin blood scythes merged into a single, massive two-handed Executioner’s Greatsword of Blood.

Above his head, Neva expanded into her full fifteen-meter true form!

All eight of her pink-and-gold eyes blazed like miniature stars as the crown pattern on her head lit up the night sky. She didn’t waste time firing small spears or hammers.

"Sha Sha!!" Give Sister Sylvi back to us!! Reliquary of Heaven’s Fall!!

KRRRRK—CLANG!!

A hundred ancient, rusted gates of light snapped open in the sky above the temple all at once! Instead of raining weapons separately, every single gate poured its divine golden-pink light into the centre of the sky, forging the exact same colossal, fifty-meter Golden-Pink Poison Greatsword that had crushed the Stormwind Clan’s Diamond guardian!

At the exact same time, down on the ground, Woolie’s black coat vanished beneath a blinding shell of fused crimson hellfire and violet thunder.

"WOOLIE WOO!!" Twin Thunder Annihilation!!

From the sky, Neva’s fifty-meter blade of divine light plummeted downward like the wrath of heaven.

From the ground, Woolie launched himself like a reverse meteor of crimson-violet lightning.

From the flank, Rose detached a massive stream of her purified blood and fired a spinning, twenty-meter Ashen-Crimson Blood Drill straight at the exact same coordinate!

And right behind all three attacks, Raiden leapt into the air with every muscle in his body tearing at the seams, swinging his Executioner’s Greatsword down on the exact same spot!

"Try blocking all four of us, you bastard!!"

"Impossible... How can four Gold-Tiers generate power at the Half-Step Mythical threshold?!" The Enforcer’s grey eyes widened in genuine shock behind his mask as he hastily slammed both palms down onto the altar, pouring his own spatial energy into the hexagonal barrier. "Hold, damn it!! HOLD!!"

BOOOOOOOOMMMMMMMM!!!!!!!!

All four ultimate attacks struck the exact same point on the hexagonal spatial barrier at the exact same microsecond!

For a moment, the entire ruined valley went white, and the deafening sound of cracking space echoed across the night sky!!