Wandering Knight

Chapter 473: A Two-Man Army

"How strong..."Sif's voice trembled with awe, her expression dazed. The Utopia's spire, something that demanded the combined might of countless legends for them merely to withstand, had been obliterated in an instant by Wang Yu, who had appeared out of nowhere.

She still remembered fighting alongside him in the Sorensen Mountains. Back then, he had been nowhere near this formidable. To grow so much, so quickly, was a mythical feat. Still, as his friend, she could only feel relieved and proud.

"The Tree of Life agreed to lend him Kasimir? Ah, forget it. If it's him, of course the Tree wouldn't refuse to loan out the holy spear."

Gewen exhaled, then shook his head slightly. Such a loan went utterly against elven law, but given that Wang Yu had once saved the Tree of Life and had just demonstrated such overwhelming strength, even the weight of laws and customs seemed to mean little at such a time.

The earth at the edge of the Forest of Origin split apart. Something enormous writhed beneath the soil, lifting whole layers of earth upward. Then, right where Wang Yu stood, a colossal root burst from the ground. Resting upon it was a massive spear, its wooden material deceptively plain, yet unmistakable: the Primeval Lance Kasimir.

"Much appreciated. Make sure you clear out the voidspawn around the other Utopia spires. Even if a tower falls, its spawn won't vanish right away. Deal with them all. As for the other two spires nearby, leave those to me."

Wang Yu lifted the lance, several heads taller than himself, with the power of the Chariot. He offered his thanks, along with his plan of action.

"Mr. Wang Yu, do you require Liaheim's assistance?"

Sif's voice reached him through the Prayer Network.

"No need. Just stay alert in case anything else pops up nearby."

He shot a thumbs-up toward Gwen and Sif atop the Tree of Life, then turned and sprinted toward the remaining Utopia spires. His speed blurred beyond anything the eye could track.

"If I can't use a launcher to boost myself, I won't be able to punch through a spire in one hit... but this lance does suits me perfectly, haha."

Wang Yu chuckled as he spoke with Avia, who remained in his domain in the void. He explained the principle behind his one-punch demolition of a Utopia spire, and his... interest in the elven weapon of legend.

"Then why not bring it back with you? I might be able to figure out how it converts life force into destructive power. In any case, I doubt the elves would dare cause any trouble with you now. I've locked the coordinates. You can open the gate whenever you're ready."

Avia spoke in a serious tone that only partly hid a joke. If he wanted Casimir, he might as well carry it home. It wasn't as if the elves could stop him.

"Ahem—no, forget it. Open the gate once I'm done charging the first shot. Those magitech swords are all prepared, right?"

"Of course."

"Good."

At the moment, Wang Yu could only manage his one-punch spire-buster once. Reaching that speed required help from the launcher stationed near the cursebinding spire.

The Harmony Express was the name he had given the launcher. As he described earlier, it served as his transport system for rapid travel across the continent, hence the train-inspired nickname. Its second purpose was to make anything he hit become very... harmonious.

In essence, the Harmony Express was a projectile launcher Avia had built by modifying the Archangel's artillery. The "projectile" fired was Wang Yu himself. Through mana-guided propulsion and resistance-free, multi-stage spatial acceleration, he could be shot to twenty times the speed of sound before being hurled toward a destination.

Naturally, anyone else would die instantly using such a thing. Even if wizardry and spells nullified gravity and drag, physical forces still acted directly upon the body. Only someone with Wang Yu's physique, monstrous even among legends, could survive it.

Traveling through the air at twenty times the speed of sound, Wang Yu quickly reached the sky above another Utopia spire outside Liaheim. Avia opened a spatial rift for him; with a slight adjustment of direction, he rocketed straight toward the spire with a supersonic punch.

His fist, wrapped in the power of his golden light, pierced through the void barrier with remarkable ease. Twenty-fold sonic momentum slammed into the spire, his unyielding iron fist driving straight inside without the slightest resistance. Then the Chariot's strength ripped through the interior, tearing apart what seemed to be the core.

Without the Harmony Express, he could no longer destroy a Utopia spire in a single blow, but dismantling one by force was still child's play for him.

Avia's Gate of Phases opened before him. Dragging the elven spear behind him, Wang Yu stepped through. In the next instant, he emerged high above a battlefield tens of kilometers away.

Below, another Utopia spire and its summoned forces were locked in combat with a mixed battalion of orcs and humans. But the alliance was being utterly crushed, battered by rampant void energy and relentless spellfire. Though they fought desperately, their casualties mounted with every passing moment.

"Elder Gewen has already warned them to fall back."

Sif's voice reached him just as Wang Yu arrived. The alliance force began retreating in perfect discipline, leaving the battlefield to the Utopia spire and the troops it had summoned from the void.

"Let's go, then..."

Murmuring to himself, Wang Yu tightened his grip around the holy lance and leveled its gleaming point at the vast Utopian army below. More than half of his bloodpool had already been consumed by Cursed Fire.

The high-energy blood that remained, he offered to the lance. It drank deep. The weapon swelled with Wang Yu's life force, brimming fuller than it ever had, even in the hands of the World-Eater or Sieg.

Every leaf-shaped blade along the lance lit with a vivid green radiance. The wood-like exterior transmuted into a gilded metallic sheen. The entire spear blazed with impossible brilliance, overflowing with power.

A thunderous boom split the air. From the heavens, a colossal column of light plunged into the battlefield. That shimmering, golden torrent differed from any simple flow of energy, with uncanny vitality that modern scholars still failed to explain.

There was no earth-shattering explosion upon impact. Instead, after a single resonant thrum, a radiant tree burst forth from the ground—the Tree of Life in miniature.

The next instant, countless streams of light surged out from the tree. They shot outward at the Utopian voidspawn. Destruction incarnate, they erupted against flesh and barrier alike, melting and piercing through them with merciless fury. They tore through defenses and impaled target after target, reaping lives at impossible speed.

Wang Yu fell from the sky. Throughout his descent, the lance continued to pour torrents of energy into the radiant tree, feeding its massacre. By the time he landed, the vast ring of foes around him had been completely annihilated; only the tree—now larger still—remained rooted triumphantly in the sundered ground.

A sharp whistling filled the air. The power of the Utopian spire had begun to surge the moment he unleashed the lance's might. Now, an endless tide of wizardry crashed down upon the space surrounding him. The density of void energy spiked wildly, slipping out of anyone's control.

From afar, other Utopian operatives arrived in force, unleashing spells that converged on Wang Yu's lone figure.

In an instant, the power of the Chariot flooded the field. Control shifted to Avia, secure within the void. Avia seized every strand of power with ease. With Wang Yu as her perfectly wielded "weapon," she remained utterly unshaken in the face of the overwhelming, battalion-grade bombardment.

With her Perfect Fractal linked to the Tree of the Night, Avia borrowed its terrifying computational might to determine the optimal response.

What followed was instantaneous: nearly half of the wizardry aimed within a kilometer of Wang Yu abruptly spiraled out of control. Their trajectories warped, their functions twisted, and they collided with neighboring spells. They detonated, swallowed one another, and birthed vast zones of chaotic void turbulence.

Those turbulent zones then disrupted more incoming spells, shattering structures, consuming formations, unraveling magic in mid-flight. The void twisted and distorted everything.

Around Wang Yu, the world became a kaleidoscope of deafening explosions. Void energy and raw magic erupted in blinding torrents, yet the man at the center remained utterly untouched.

The collapsed spells dispersed mana in abundance. Avia would never ignore such riches; with the Chariot's authority, she grabbed all of that scattered mana and fashioned a hypermagic spell with it: Repulsive Shockburst.

A devastating ring of force, aimed at everything except the void itself, erupted from Wang Yu's body. Magnified by the sea of mana around him, it shredded the spells in the vicinity. In an instant, land and sky alike fell quiet, bare and silent.

While Avia had been neutralizing every assault sent his way, Wang Yu pressed the lance against the radiant tree. Its energy flowed backward into the spear—carrying with it all the "vital weaknesses" harvested from the enemies the tree had slain.

The moment the space cleared, Wang Yu swept the titanic spear in a wide arc. From its point unfurled a vast green beam that lengthened into a blade-like extension far beyond any sword. It washed across the parts of the battlefield the tree had missed.

The green beam passed through the Utopian army like a hot knife through butter. There was no resistance, no weight. Entire ranks were erased in a heartbeat.

In the blink of an eye, a vast, empty plain stretched between Wang Yu and the second Utopian spire. But this spire, sensing the immeasurable threat posed by the not-quite-human figure advancing upon it, immediately drew upon reserves of power from the damaged network.

Void energy erupted. Rifts tore open in midair. From within surged a fresh tide of Utopian soldiers, unleashing attacks at the charging Wang Yu.

"Come on, then," he said lightly.

Despite the overwhelming forces headed his way, Wang Yu seemed completely unconcerned. Above his head, a rift opened up into the Seed of Eden. An uncountable host of longswords poured out from within. Each magitech blade bore impossibly intricate runes, and each was seized by the force of the Chariot.

A storm of swords rose skyward, coalescing into a churning, living thundercloud that cast a massive shadow upon the ground. Then came the rainfall. A boundless storm of blades came crashing down, each one imbued with dazzling magic under the Chariot's command. Tens of thousands of swords fell upon the enemy ranks in a relentless deluge.

"One man is an army" was a phrase meant to extol the power of legendary knights. It wasn't meant literally—not until now. In Wang Yu's hands, the phrase became literal truth: by his strength alone, he matched and even surpassed the destructive power of entire battalions.

No, not quite. He wasn't just one man, after all. This was an army of two.