Damian could sense the witch in the middle of the explosion, so he didn't wait for it to clear up and opened a waygate in her path where she was moving blindly. He also quickly took out two steel cubes he had made extra—to inscribe waygates or other spells—and inscribed the Mini Sun spells into the two cubes, handing them to Worldscribe and Lifewarden, who were staring at the explosion. The heat radiating from it was effectless against their fireproof suits, though the shockwaves were still felt.
"It's the same spell I just launched. Now go.." Damian put the cubes in their hands and pointed towards the slight glimpses of a blue waygate that could be seen in the middle of the fiery mushroom cloud.
They both nodded with determination and flew at high speed towards it. They had to hurry so the witch couldn't come back. Damian could sense whether she was returning or not—and was ready to welcome her if she did.
The witch looked like a human, just like those cultist fire-caster monsters they had fought on the way here. But they were not human—a type of monster.
Damian had quickly sent everyone away from this place—not just because it was the plan and all the Lords had to be separated—but because thousands upon thousands of monsters were coming in this direction. The red sky was filled with black figures in the distance. Hundreds of those magma golems, much bigger and wider than before, were making their way towards Damian on land surrounded by monsters of all shapes and sizes. All kinds of giant flying creatures—Emperor rank and lower—had filled the sky all around them.
That roar of the Dragon King was not just a simple warning or intimidation tactic.
Standing atop the ruins of the obsidian castle, Damian breathed in. Capturing the scenery that could only be described as horrifying in his eyes, he closed them. If he survived this, there wouldn't be anyone more powerful than him in this whole world.
Opening his eyes, Damian raised his hands and opened a massive waygate in a horizontal position over 1200 meters above. Seconds later, a towering titan made of steel fell down from high above, shaking the land with its mountainous weight. The oil-based hydraulic dampers for impact reduction did their jobs spectacularly, making for a graceful yet intimidating landing.
Damian had no idea if the Dragon King could see it or not—but he must have felt it. Damian flew up from the black ruins and entered the chest of the colossal steel titan. The metallic sound of gears rotating and hydraulics pushing echoed as Damian powered on the entire golem, releasing mana from the full mana tanks to flow into enchanted pipes and power up all the necessary support spells to make movement and control easier.
The seven mana tanks were also connected directly to the huge metal chest compartment Damian was inside. All around this compartment, 3-meter-long windows connected to steel frames were placed for a full view of the outside, each inscribed with a meter-thick see-through air shield spell for protection.
In the middle of this compartment was a circular control panel, all podiums having different functions for monitoring and instant access to spells. Many of these were waygate spells connecting different compartments of the golem—and even extending outside—so Damian could pass his head through and assess situations or get an overhead view of his surroundings.
Above the circular control panel were hundreds of empty pipes through which Damian could extend hundreds of mana threads connecting from his back into the titanic golem, giving him perfect control of it. The seven giant generators and mana tanks were located below him around the waist area. Through an open circular cylinder directly in front of him, the mana tanks were connected with a mechanical hatch—the hundreds-of-meters-deep and wide well of mana was in Damian's front, ready to be used as he wished.
Damian stood in the middle, the windows showing the monsters, now even closer. He used over a hundred mana threads—all coming out of his chest—to establish a connection between the liquid mana well and himself. Done with that, Damian produced another hundred mana threads, this time coming out of his back, using the same mana from the mana well, channeling it through his body and into all the hundreds of pipes above him to reach every corner of the gigantic steel golem.
Thirty seconds to reach full control. The eyes of the golem lit up with two intense golden lights. It was just for aesthetics—no real use. The two massive glowing runic circles covering each sides of the steel golem, however, were not for aesthetics.
Damian straightened the massive golem body, moving its arms and legs to check for any malfunctions—all while thousands of flying monsters approached at an alarming rate. Everything worked perfectly. Satisfied, Damian nodded and looked out the window, a smile creeping onto his face as he rotated his massive right steel hand, palm down. On the back of the hand facing the black-and-red land was a big steel cube holding the spatial storage runic circle.
Damian activated it, and a massive, sharp weapon fell freely onto the land below, its tip burying deep into the ground with a loud bang.
The giant sword Damian had stolen from where he picked up Einar and Evrin.
Damian turned his hand back and, with a simple movement, held the golden handle and picked up the heavy sword effortlessly. The hordes of flying monsters had reached under 500 meters from him.
"Let's see what these alien runic inscriptions do.." Damian muttered and supplied over a million points worth of mana into the sword through his giant steel hand.
The runes covering the mysterious sword started lighting up with a bright, powerful black glow, a humming sound accompanying it. Seconds later, Damian saw over five layers of massive black runic circles forming behind the sword.
Damian raised the sword up, and before the spell could activate, swung it with full force in a wide, sweeping horizontal slash, cutting high-level Emperor-ranked monsters effortlessly—like a knife cutting through butter. That was nothing, though. What followed was even more horrifying.
An intense, uncontrollable pitch-black—yet somehow glowing—fire spread along the arc of the sword attack, a wave of scorching, boiling flame spreading into the distance, incinerating anything that came into its path.