Round 18: Thunder Roars Across the Heavens (Part 1)

O’Sullivan drove his right-hand rapier downward to block the elf’s sweeping scimitar, then twisted his wrist to disrupt the opponent’s defense, exposing them. He stepped forward instantly, sliding a short dagger from his left sleeve to slash at the elf warrior’s neck in a flash.
It still wasn’t as smooth as he’d hoped. Frowning, O’Sullivan glanced at the scratches on the shoulder of his intricate armored half-plate from the blade’s strike.
Though he knew Yatu had sent him to fight the elves despite the favorable situation with ill intentions, he still felt a sense of pleasure and satisfaction at returning to the battlefield he knew best and excelled in.
It would have been perfect if Atlas were here. O’Sullivan elegantly dodged an arrow. The teleportation stone the mage had given him before departing allowed him to return to the Armory Tower at will—whenever he wanted. But O’Sullivan wasn’t done yet.
The elf druids had already extinguished the raging fires caused by the Deathlight. Pago angrily threw stones at the towering iron tower, but the boulders, as big as tables, were easily deflected by the invisible barrier surrounding the tower, doing nothing.
Jolice kicked aside a punch from a steel-armored warrior and plunged her longsword into the gap between its shoulder blades. Using the “Sharp Edge” spell, her blade severed the internal joints of the armor, disabling half of its mobility. She found it strange that the tower, after briefly displaying its seemingly unstoppable power, seemed inactive, sending only soldiers and armored warriors to fight the elves, with not a single mage in sight.
Out of caution, Jolice stopped the treefolk from joining the battle and ordered the elves not to approach the forest of metal spikes radiating from the tower—who knew if Agus’s tower still had the strength for such destructive attacks?
O’Sullivan moved through the battlefield as if strolling, carefully staying away from those strange armored pillars. From previous attacks, it was clear the white light nets couldn’t distinguish friends from foes, and getting hit by one would be painful.
The armored warriors moved heavily, attacking anyone who attacked them. These metal creatures skipped the step of descending via the tubes along the tower’s structure and simply jumped down, creating craters in the ground—unfazed by the shock.
They feared neither the elves’ arrows nor the earth elements and animal allies summoned by the elf druids, and only a few spells like “Fossilize into Mud” and “Rusted Hands” could cause them trouble.
That female elf was quite good. Watching Jolice precisely knock down an armored warrior and disable it, O’Sullivan couldn’t help but admire her—should he challenge her?
A blast arrow interrupted his thoughts. Unlike ordinary magic arrows, it resembled an armored weapon. The spinning arrow pierced the head of an armored warrior not far from him, blowing its steel skull to pieces.

The headless warrior still hadn’t fallen, but he was now stumbling around like a headless fly. He waved his arms wildly and even charged at Sullivan—there was no choice; Sullivan ducked, and with a flash of cold light, the warrior’s legs, just like its head, were severed from its body.

He raised his head to locate the source of the arrow.

A black elf stepped out of thin air, her red eyes blazing. She held a strangely shaped steel longbow, its back lined with uneven serrated blades, and its string glowed with a faint cold light—resembling an extremely thin steel wire, making it impossible to imagine how it could be drawn.

A mecha warrior rushed at her, swinging its fists. The black elf showed no intention of dodging; she caught its iron fists with one hand—a feat even a brown bear might struggle to accomplish. As they moved, the elf silently slipped behind the mecha warrior. Sullivan saw that the string-like bow had already wrapped tightly around the warrior without anyone noticing, tightening further—along with a grating friction sound. Just as Sullivan worried the string might break, the steel warrior shattered into pieces.

In the next instant, the longbow was slung over the black elf’s back. She walked toward Sullivan, carrying an aura of death as thick as ink.

“Hello, beauty,” Sullivan said, ready with his sword.

“They’re coming!” Dagulas shouted, clapping his hands.

Had he really arrived? Morriel frowned slightly as she watched those ghostly black figures.

“Ignore them! Let that Sullivan brat deal with them!” Yatu seemed fully prepared and ready for action. “Search for that strange mecha!”

Just as they spoke of him, 47 appeared.

“Due west!” Morriel called out first. It was impossible to hide him—his forty-seven massive wings flapped as if he were a steel eagle charging headlong forward, unrelenting.

The reason 47 hadn’t used his usual mecha cannon was that after fumbling around for a while, he realized he couldn’t assemble the aggregate heavy cannon he had “invented” the day before. Frustrated, he even skipped using the smaller ones.

A deafening explosion rang out. 47 crashed into the reinforced force field shield of the mecha tower, as if a hundred mages had simultaneously cast Roar. He was flung backward, the recoil knocking him off balance as he fell to the ground. But in just a moment, he flew back up to a level parallel to the mecha tower, full of fury.

The control panels in front of Yatu and the others flashed with electric lights.

“Just one hit and the mecha tower’s shield is almost overloaded… Good! Good!” Yatu repeated those words twice, his eyes flashing like lightning. “Let me show you Agus’s true strength!”

Powerful syllables came from Yatu’s mouth, like thunderclaps. The sound waves forced everyone in the control room to cover their ears or cast protective spells to withstand the unbearable noise.

Numerous holes on the structure tower emitted large amounts of silver-white balls at once. Forty-seven reached out and grabbed one, squeezing it tightly—finding that these silver balls were extremely hard yet seemingly weightless. He tossed it aside, and it floated upward into the sky along with the other balls.

What was this? Festival fireworks? Forty-seven circled the structure tower half a time, pondering how to break through its defenses—

The weather changed abruptly.

Forty-seven felt the air currents around him become chaotic. A sudden storm formed around the structure tower, instantly pulling Forty-seven into its turbulent skies.

A thunderbolt that pierced the heavens struck the top of the structure tower, causing it to emit intense light as if melting. Massive electric currents flowed down the tower and into the ground, lighting up the metal spikes surrounding it.

The earth and wind elements summoned by the elf druids vanished in an instant—not destroyed, but because there was no longer any elemental force to sustain them.

Looking up, the sky was suddenly filled with thunderclouds. Rolling air masses and storms carried white lightning, producing deafening thunder with each collision.

Another column of light appeared between the silver balls in the high clouds and the spikes on the ground—a discharge phenomenon. Within Yatu’s spell range, the elemental balance of the material world was severely distorted; heaven, earth, wind, and clouds were all imbued with the power of lightning.

“Let’s see how you handle this, tin kid,” Yatu sneered. “Yatu’s Floating Thunder Array!”

It was already dark, but moments of brightness akin to daylight grew more frequent. The thunderclouds gathered by the structure tower constantly reacted with the ground, lightning igniting the earth, lighting up the sky, and even heating the air to the point where it emitted a slight foul smell.

Forty-seven maintained his balance, marveling for the first time at the power of the Agus people.

Even though he had once been easily defeated by that old bastard Agus, Forty-seven had never thought much of it—he had seen high-energy particle arrays fired from star destroyers and nuclear bombings that covered entire planets in mushroom clouds. On the eve of his last battle, he had even heard through the internal network that the United Government was developing practical super-gravity weapons capable of rapidly turning a large star into a neutron star!

Regardless of humanity’s uncontrollable tendency toward destruction and self-destruction, Forty-seven, who had somehow ended up here from a nearly perfected mechanical civilization, felt a sense of superiority—not only for his usual admiration of nature’s wonders but also because he believed that if he were to travel there in full combat gear, sweeping the entire world clean wouldn’t be difficult, of course, if he had enough energy and ammunition.

But the magic lightning array at this moment completely changed 47’s thoughts. 47 was certain that without special demagnetization equipment, any aggressive combat mech would suffer irreversible damage in such a strong electric field—how could these primitives muster such extreme power from nature?! Sparks crackled all over his body as electricity surged through him, and once again, he was glad his body lacked any complex components or integrated circuits. He moved closer, drawing his black greatsword, and examined the construct tower, which appeared distorted due to the shielding effect of the force field. How dare this bastard not run away? Morriel watched the apocalyptic scene outside the construct tower—comparable even to the arrival of the Flame Lord of Hell! Dagulas also frowned slightly. Yatu didn’t pay attention to the expressions of the others. Standing proudly in the control room, surrounded by the thunderstorms he had summoned, he resembled a thunder god perched atop the clouds: “Come on, tin kid!” It was as if an overloaded bomb barrel had been detonated the moment 47’s greatsword struck the shield. Lightning flashed and thunder rumbled across an area covered by spikes on the ground and silver balls in the sky. Hundreds of lightning bolts flashed simultaneously, forming a massive cylindrical lightning zone. The intense light seemed to bring the forest edges, which had just gone dark, back to daylight. Each silver ball or spike sent one, two, three, or even more lightning bolts toward the opposite end. This lightning array, which could be easily created in a mage’s laboratory, scaled up to a giant size in nature, giving the impression of complete destruction. O’Sullivan and Philegas’ brief fight was interrupted by the overwhelming lightning strikes. As a result, O’Sullivan cursed those mages who disregarded their own lives while secretly feeling relieved—Philegas’ almost invisible attacks had already torn through half of his chainmail. He wasn’t sure if she would cut his neck if they fought any longer. If Atlas were still his… O’Sullivan ran away without looking back toward the open area; he didn’t want to get too close to those trees engulfed in lightning and suffer the same fate.

In fact, both the humans fighting in the forest and the elves were so shocked by this devastating spectacle that they stopped fighting. “Thunder Call” was considered a basic natural spell that every druid knew, but they had never imagined that human power could bring thunder to such an extreme degree. The night elves still didn’t know that the ones inside the construct tower were Yatu, who was recognized as the strongest fighter in the Mage Council of Agus. Yet this overwhelming power was enough to leave them stunned. The only ones unafraid of the torrential lightning were those foolish construct warriors, whose task was to attack all living elves. So they attacked every living elf. Other than that, neither volcanic eruptions nor floods concerned them. It was precisely for this reason that the lightning favored their immobile, mechanical steel bodies. After a storm of lightning that seemed deliberate, not a single construct warrior remained standing—either shattered into scrap by explosive electricity or lying on the ground, fumbling uselessly at their limbs without being able to get up. It was hard to imagine how much astonishing energy lay hidden in that lightning.

If those merely affected by the aftereffects were in such a terrible state… what about the forty-seven people at the center of the lightning storm? Moriel couldn’t find him at all. The lightning outside was no longer individual flashes but formed a silver curtain of thunder that completely enveloped that bastard’s figure, making it seem extremely unlikely he would survive.

“Don’t worry; it’s absolutely safe inside the tower,” Daguras seemed to misunderstand Moriel’s gloomy expression, but even she had a hint of concern in her eyes: “But outside… well, it’s hard to say.”