The wind screamed past his ears.
At five times the speed of sound, the air itself seemed to be tearing apart.
Joren stood firmly on the broad back of the Golden Dragon Falcon, his feet planted as though they had taken root.
The ruler of the skies beneath him was trembling violently.
Not from anger.
From fear.
Fear it could no longer suppress.
Half a minute ago, the three beast kings had still looked down on Norcrest as though it were an open buffet, with Joren nothing more than another meal waiting to be eaten.
This human might have possessed a few strange abilities, but what did that matter before the gulf between realms?
The three of them together could force even a Half Step Rank Six expert like Kyo onto the defensive.
What could some human who had only just entered Rank Five possibly do?
Reality had answered with a slap hard enough to leave their ears ringing.
The Abyssal Blackscale Python was dead.
No struggle. No narrow defeat.
Joren had cut it apart with a single blade.
A peak Rank Five beast king, one of the rulers of the Voidbeasts around Norcrest, had been butchered as easily as livestock.
"Why are you shaking?"
Joren’s teasing voice passed through the roaring wind and reached the Golden Dragon Falcon clearly.
He crouched and placed his left hand lightly against the feathers on its back.
Those feathers were harder than refined steel.
Hiss.
The instant his palm made contact, the Golden Dragon Falcon felt as though something from the deepest abyss had crawled onto its back.
A deathly cold force poured through the point of contact.
The golden protective glow it had always trusted began to melt away beneath that dark green energy like snow dropped into boiling water.
[Netherbane].
The might of a purple Talent was finally beginning to show.
"Screech!"
The Golden Dragon Falcon’s cry broke into a distorted shriek.
Its life was draining away.
Golden feathers that had gleamed only moments ago dulled before its eyes, turning dry and gray as though years of decay had passed in seconds.
Death.
Never before had that word felt so close.
Run.
It had to run.
The dignity of a beast king meant nothing.
Its territory meant nothing.
Its ambitions meant even less.
Only survival mattered now.
Boom!
The Golden Dragon Falcon went mad.
The crystal core inside its body, brilliant as a miniature sun, contracted violently before erupting with destructive energy.
Blood Ignition.
Its final method of preserving its life.
Once used, it would lose at least one minor stage of cultivation. There was even a chance it would never advance again.
None of that mattered anymore.
If it did not gamble everything now, there would be no future realm to worry about.
Bang!
Blood mist exploded from both wings.
Its speed surged beyond anything its body was built to withstand, reaching five times the speed of sound.
The enormous overload made its bones crack beneath the strain.
But the violent acceleration finally tore it free from Joren.
Whoosh!
The beast king became a thin golden streak and shot toward the horizon without looking back.
No threat.
No final insult.
It did not even dare turn its head.
It knew Joren was still behind it, yet only one thought remained in its mind.
If I run fast enough, death cannot catch me.
At almost the same moment, the frozen prison on the ground finally cracked apart.
The Shadow Fiend was even more decisive.
The instant it escaped the ice, it ignored the Golden Dragon Falcon completely and made no attempt to retaliate.
Instead, both of its arms shattered into blood mist.
Using them as the price, it activated a forbidden shadow escape technique.
Buzz.
Its body flickered once.
Then vanished completely.
Not invisibility.
It had escaped directly into a shadow dozens of kilometers away.
Among the three beast kings, none surpassed the Shadow Fiend when it came to assassination or survival. Its instinct for danger was sharper than either of its companions.
Norcrest was finished.
It had to leave.
It would flee somewhere humans could never reach.
Even serving as a watchdog beneath a Rank Six beast emperor would be better than staying here with this madman.
The three beast kings who had arrived with complete confidence in their killing formation were already broken.
One dead.
Two fleeing.
Across the battlefield, the remaining Voidbeasts froze.
"Roar?"
A Rank Four Blazing Brutebull gave a confused grunt and looked toward the figure in the sky.
Then Joren’s eyes fell on it.
The beast stiffened.
It remembered him.
The monster who had once chased it until there had been nowhere left to run.
Back then, Joren had only carried a blade and hacked away at anything he caught.
Now...
"Moo!"
The Blazing Brutebull screamed and bolted.
It did not even bother turning properly. Its huge body smashed through several Rank Two Voidbeasts behind it before charging wildly in the opposite direction.
That single retreat broke the entire horde.
Panic spread faster than fire.
Tens of thousands of Voidbeasts turned at once, trampling one another as they fought for a path to escape.
Some clawed their own kind aside.
Others bit anything blocking the road.
Smaller beasts disappeared beneath the feet of the larger ones and were crushed into pulp before they could even scream.
The Beast Tide collapsed into chaos.
Joren had no intention of letting the two peak Rank Five beast kings escape so easily.
"Run?"
He hovered above the battlefield and watched the black tide scatter beneath him.
The curve at the corner of his mouth widened.
Normally, once tens of thousands of Voidbeasts broke formation and fled in every direction, even a Rank Six expert could only kill a fraction of them. The rest would vanish into ruins, tunnels, and broken streets before anyone could stop them.
Today was different.
Joren had just obtained [Netherbane].
And [Feast of the Dead] carried one particular effect.
Kill an enemy.
Reset every skill cooldown.
For an ordinary Awakened Warrior, that alone would have been an incredible endurance ability.
For Joren, who possessed multiple elemental powers, Mental Force, and could replenish himself through killing, it meant something much more ridiculous.
Unlimited firepower.
"Voidshard Array, scatter."
The ring of blades surrounding him broke apart.
Thirty six psionic weapons separated at once and spread over the battlefield, each moving independently.
Then violet lightning crawled across every blade.
[Ruinous Radiant Thunder].
Pure destruction against flesh.
Dark green ghost fire followed through Joren’s Mental Force, coating the lightning with the killing power of [Netherbane].
The weapons now carried both thunder and death.
Whoosh!
The sky filled with streaks of violet and green.
Thirty six blades descended into the fleeing horde at supersonic speed.
Thud.
Thud.
Thud.
This was no longer a battle.
It was slaughter.
A Rank Four Ironback Bear smashed one of its own allies aside and tried to flee.
A flying blade entered through the back of its skull and burst out between its eyes.
Lightning destroyed its brain.
Nether Venom extinguished what remained of its life.
Before the corpse even struck the ground, the weapon curved sharply through the air under Joren’s Mental Force and pierced the throats of three Shadow Leopards nearby.
Still not enough.
Joren spread both arms as though embracing the battlefield.
"Winter’s Burial."
Buzz.
The temperature within a hundred meters plunged to absolute zero.
Hundreds of fleeing Voidbeasts froze midstride.
Legs raised.
Mouths open.
Bodies trapped forever in the instant before escape.
Joren slowly closed his right hand.
"Shatter."
Crack!
Hundreds of frozen bodies exploded together and became a storm of glittering ice.
[Ding! Rank Three Voidbeast killed. Skill cooldowns reset.]
The ability had barely entered cooldown before it became available again.
And then the battlefield turned into something absurd.
Joren became a tireless magical point defense cannon suspended above the ruins.
[Winter’s Burial].
Reset.
[Extinction Thunder Prison].
Reset.
[Winter’s Burial].
Reset again.
For several kilometers around him, the battlefield shifted endlessly between a frozen graveyard and a sea of thunder.
One moment, everything was buried beneath killing cold.
The next, lightning poured from the sky.
Frost, thunder, poison, and flying blades tore through the Beast Tide without pause.
His Bloodstars climbed faster and faster.
The balance crossed 50000.
Then 80000.
Then 100000.
Only five minutes had passed.
Joren’s Bloodstar balance had already broken through one hundred thousand.
"Whew..."
He looked toward the distant darkness where the two beast kings had fled.
Now it was time to deal with the real business.