Summoner Sovereign

Fortunately, by then, the mercenaries had successfully led most of the civilians out of the city. I was forming the rearguard, having been the last to leave Troy behind, and I quickly had Black Tortoise conjure a water barrier to protect what remained of the refugees who were still somehow within the blast radius.

Even with the water barrier, we were still sent sprawling over from the sheer force of the explosion.

"Ugh…"

Crawling to my feet, I observed the destruction. There was no sign of the city. They literally nuked it. What the f.u.c.k, they didn"t even require me to cast my nuke spells. Then again, it wasn"t as if I was the only one in the world capable of annihilating a city with a spell.

Even so, I couldn"t help but be amazed by the sheer destruction that was caused. There wasn"t anything left of Troy City. It had been literally razed to the ground, leaving nothing but a colossal crater behind, molten lava still steaming and glowing red-hot.

"Well, at least we don"t have to worry about monsters now," I murmured. Never mind the Banshees, even the rank B Gorgons wouldn"t be able to survive such a catastrophic explosion, which did Strength Destroyer hits to whatever was caught within its radius. Or mortal wounds, if you were more invested in the new edition.

On the other hand, the city was completely destroyed, and if there were still any civilians remaining inside somewhere, hiding or seeking refuge in some concealed place, they were all dead. In his effort to stop his brother, Troy"s clash with Tyrant ended up wiping out everybody unfortunate enough to still be in the city.

"Good Lord…"

I exhaled wearily, my heart already aching for Troy. He was going to blame himself for this. But he didn"t have a choice. If he didn"t finish off Tyrant once and for all, the b.a.s.t.a.r.d was going to escape to continue wreaking more havoc on more innocents, potentially destroying another city just for the laughs. The sick f.u.c.ker.

Troy did the right thing, even if the consequences proved to be disastrous. But would he see it that way?

Dismissing the water barrier, I hurried toward the devastated crater in search of my friend.

"Troy!" I shouted. "Where are you?!"

There was no sign of him or his brother. Both combatants seemed to have vanished completely. For a moment, my heart skipped a bit, and I wondered if they had both been disintegrated by the colossal forces they unleashed upon each other.

"Oh, G.o.d…no…"

Then my gla.s.ses picked up movement. It was pretty faint, and the sensors on my lenses were pretty fogged up by the glowing heat signatures that permeated the entire area, the temperatures still intolerably high, but the motion tracker still managed to pick up a very faint signal. Two very faint signals, right at the center of the crater.

I doubted they were the monsters. They had to be Troy and Tyrant. There could be no one else, nothing else.

The two brothers were still slugging it out. Quite clearly they had expended almost all of their mana, and I could sense very little traces of magic, but they refused to fall or stop. Troy punched Tyrant in the face, while Tyrant struck Troy in the gut. They exchanged a barrage of punches and kicks that sent tremors rippling across the area.

Troy parried a punch from Tyrant before ramming his knee into the latter"s gut. Tyrant doubled over, but he somehow managed to send a hook that struck Troy"s neck and sent him staggering. The younger brother retaliated by whipping out his fist and catching the older brother square between the eyes, rocking him. The two of them spun around and kicked, their legs colliding with such force that the ground shattered beneath their feet. Even from this distance, I could feel the shockwaves from their clash buffeting me.

"Ugh…!"

I tried to hold my ground, but I found myself blown off my feet. Flipping in midair, I landed in a crouch and skidded backward. Raising my head, I watched in awe as the two combatants smashed their elbows against each other with a deafening boom.

"Amazing…even though they"re not using any elemental spells, they can still cause so much destruction? Is this what the peak of physical reinforcement spells…no, the pinnacle of Ba Qi can do?"

Tyrant caught Troy in a clinch and rammed his knee into his face, but the latter succeeded in using his elbow to stop the attack. Just barely. With a roar, he rammed both hands into the sides of Tyrant"s waist, causing him to stagger – that must have struck his target"s kidneys. Throwing a knee up, Tyrant forced Troy to stumble back, and then he swept down with an axe kick that pulverized the ground when his younger brother spun away to avoid the attack.

Troy wasn"t without counters of his own, and he swung his elbow around to slam it into Tyrant"s neck. The older guy managed to bring his forearm up to block the elbow strike, but Troy pressed on, slamming his knee into his brother"s gut and causing him to skid backward. Exhaling angrily, Tyrant threw a barrage of punches that forced Troy to deflect them. One of the punches caught Troy in the side of his head and spun him, but his leg shot up and kicked Tyrant in the face, causing blood to spurt out of his mouth and nose.

"s.h.i.+tty brat…!"

"f.u.c.k you, Tyrant!"

The both swore at each other before whirling around to crush their fists against each other. The impact from the collision blew outward and shattered more of the already ruined earth, carving another crater within the colossal crater.

The two of them sprang apart, and then charged at each other again, weaving through the barrage of punches and kicks. Chunks of molten rock and debris flew, dislodged from the sheer reverberations caused by their exchange, and more than once I was forced to evade the stray projectiles.

Even as I neared them, I was aware that I couldn"t interfere in their battle. I was running pretty low on mana myself, and any spell I attempted to cast might end up accidentally hitting Troy as well. The both of them were so entangled with each other that it was impossible to strike one without accidentally drawing the other into friendly fire.

As the old military adage said, friendly fire was anything but friendly.

The two of them traded another devastating blow that almost forced them apart. Troy then spun around to kick Tyrant, who ducked under his sweeping leg and countered with a punch. Troy c.o.c.ked his head to the side, just barely evading his brother"s fist, which grazed his cheek, and slammed his elbow into Tyrant"s chest. With a roar, Tyrant"s knee came up and missed his opponent"s chest, but managed to land on Troy"s gut.

"Gah…!"

Blood coursing from his mouth, Troy staggered back, but he managed to respond with a hook that grazed Tyrant"s temple and sent blood dribbling into his eyes. Cursing, the older guy wiped the blood away while bringing his elbow up to guard against Troy"s kick.

Spinning around, the both of them rammed their elbows against each other with such force that they sprang apart, with a couple of meters between them. Debris rained down on both sides of them, and the crumbling earth groaned beneath their feet.

"Time to finish this once and for all," Tyrant declared, lowering his arms into an aggressive stance and clenching his hands into tightly balled, glowing flaming fists. The fires that wreathed them were weak, the last vestiges and final embers of his exhausted mana supply.

"For the first time in my life, I actually agree with something you said." Troy"s own fists were glowing dimly, solid stone forming gauntlets over them. He grimly adopted his own combative stance as he confronted his nemesis. "Let"s settle this right here, right now."

The two of them wasted no time charging at each other, their glowing fists colliding. I was thrown back when a colossal explosion blossomed from the center of the crater, a ma.s.sive blinding conflagration that blocked both of their figures from view. The lenses of my gla.s.ses darkened briefly to protect my eyes, but I couldn"t see them.

"Troy!" I shouted, scrambling back to my feet, even as I continued to be buffeted by tremendous shockwaves. Fissures split the earth beneath me, and I had to balance and move to avoid dropping into newly opened ravines.

My friend was still in there somewhere, along with his brother. A sense of premonition gripped my heart as I braved the continuing destruction to reach their position.

And then…the flames and dust faded, revealing the fate of the duo.

For a moment, the both of them stood. Troy"s fist had slammed squarely into Tyrant"s face, breaking his nose and smas.h.i.+ng several of his teeth. Blood dripped down the s.a.d.i.s.tic b.a.s.t.a.r.d"s disfigured face, his skull seemingly broken and warped from the blow. The stone gauntlet that once protected Troy"s hand was now shattered, shards of rock raining down on the ground and slowly dissipating into wisps of mana.

"Did Troy…win?"

I felt an immense sense of relief. It seemed that Troy succeeded in delivering the finis.h.i.+ng blow and caved Tyrant"s face in. A fitting ending for a b.a.s.t.a.r.d who experimented with so many people"s lives and indulged in ma.s.sacres.

And then I saw it.

Even though Troy did land what seemed like a decisive blow, he paid the ultimate price for it. Tyrant too had delivered an attack of his own, and unlike Troy"s, it was most certainly fatal.

His flaming fist had punched through Troy"s chest, bursting out through his back, and was clutching a b.l.o.o.d.y heart. The last embers danced around Troy"s heart, and Tyrant grinned triumphantly, despite having his face smashed in, and squashed Troy"s heart.

Troy toppled over lifelessly, only for Tyrant to catch him. He swayed for a moment, and then kicked his brother"s corpse over. Licking the blood off his fingers, his smile widened.

"It"s my win, little bro."

"TROY!"

Yelling, I bounded across the crater, my eyes bulging in disbelief. This couldn"t be possible. It just wasn"t. There was no way the invincible Troy would be defeated, not by his brother. He was supposed to prevail over his brother, stop his atrocities here once and for all, and then return with me and the rest of our friends to Jing Tian Academy. He was supposed to play a pivotal role in the national tournament, and spearhead our team as our ace.

He was the number one student in Jing Tian Academy, our biggest and brightest hope for the tournament. Screw the f.u.c.king tournament. Before all that, he was my friend. One of my closest friends, who never discriminated against me, and hung out with me, and treated with decency and respect even when I was mired in a losing streak and scorned as weak by my schoolmates. Even when everyone else ostracized me, he was the one friend who stood by my side.

And now he was dead, killed by his own flesh and blood. His very own brother.

This couldn"t be real. It couldn"t.

Yet, when I saw Troy"s open, lifeless eyes staring upward at the heaven, completely hollow and devoid of life, I knew that I was too late. Everything was over.

"Oh…? You are Troy"s friend, correct?" Tyrant turned to me, a wicked smile on his face. He raised his hand, ferocious flames blazing along his fingers and knuckles. Even when diminished, they still posed quite a threat if I wasn"t careful. Just like Troy, if I was too reckless, I might get my heart punched out of my body and destroyed. Even so, Tyrant didn"t seem to care. He looked up at me with a smirk. "Even though I"m gravely injured, do you really think you can defeat me? You"re so much weaker than my little bro. And where are your little Soul Beasts? Did you run out of mana to summon them already?"

Throwing his head back, he spread his arms and bellowed in laughter, almost mockingly baring his chest for me to hit.

"A little summoner thinks he can engage me in close combat! Hilarious! I may be badly hurt, and my mana might be near empty, but even then it"s more than enough to take care of the likes of you, a pathetic weakling…"

He never finished his sentence.

My two swords flashed out, Hei Yue and Bai Ri bisecting in black and white arcs that crossed over his neck.

"…eh?"

Tyrant"s eyes bulged for a moment, and he tried to turn to look at me disbelievingly…only to fail.

Because his head was no longer attached to his neck. A thin line of blood appeared around the circ.u.mference of his neck, thickened and swelled, and then his head fell right off. It struck the ground, rolling like a ball before coming to a stop in a puddle of molten lava. His jaw was hanging wide open, and his eyes were staring disbelievingly at the sky. Even in his last moments, right before his death, he wasn"t granted the dignity of having one last look at his killer.

I couldn"t care less.

Sheathing my swords, I picked up Troy"s rapidly cooling body and supported it. It didn"t matter that I didn"t learn healing magic. No amount of healing magic could help Troy now. Healing magic couldn"t bring someone back to life, couldn"t create a new heart from scratch. As miraculous as healing magic was, it was not resurrection magic.

Resurrection magic did not exist in this universe. Once someone was dead, he was gone. Forever.

"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!"

Screaming at the heavens, rage filling my voice, I wept. Gazing through tear-streaked eyes, I glared at Tyrant"s corpse. His headless body had finally fallen over, slowly smoldering in a puddle of molten lava.

Golden Kirin landed next to me. Taking a deep breath, I suppressed my sorrow and allowed my fury to take over. Heaving Troy"s body over Golden Kirin, I also hopped on and urged him to gallop away, to the edge of the crater.

There, we stopped. Tyrant might be dead, but I wasn"t finished with him. Not yet.

"Do it."

Golden Kirin obeyed. Charged by great geomagnetic forces, boulders levitated in the air, behaving like gauss slugs. With a thought from me, Golden Kirin launched those gauss projectiles at the site where Tyrant"s corpse and head lay, pulverizing the entire area and erasing the f.u.c.ker"s very existence from the face of the earth.

It was the least the b.a.s.t.a.r.d deserved.

"Richard!"

I could hear my friends running toward me now, asking questions, but I wasn"t paying any attention to them. My mind was so mired in the red grip of rage that I wasn"t able to pay any attention to anything for a long while.

Even though I had avenged Troy, that was of little comfort when weighed against the knowledge that he wouldn"t be coming back with us.