Earth's Greatest Magus

Chapter 2988: Final Strike

The chaos went on for several seconds before Hubert flicked his golden coin into the air and caught it again without ever looking down.

”This is the auspicious moment.”

Something shifted.

Not on the battlefield.

In fate itself.

It was as though countless invisible threads had finally aligned across the heavens, and Emery’s eyes narrowed at the precise instant they did.

He felt the change land in him like a long-held breath finally being let out.

He raised Excalibur.

”Now!”

High above, Parasite X remained protected within a dense defensive shell. Dozens of corrupted Magus and more than ten corrupted Grand Magus surrounded the creature in concentric layers, every yellow eye facing outward, every weapon ready to intercept any attack.

To reach the parasite, that wall had to be broken first.

Julian moved immediately.

He thrust a hand toward the Randhal Guardian Golem and issued a single command.

The construct’s eyes flared with golden light.

Ancient runes ignited across its massive frame, racing through channels carved into its armor and illuminating every spirit circuit hidden beneath layers of restored metal. Energy rapidly accumulated within the giant construct, causing the surrounding air to vibrate.

Then both colossal palms rose toward the heavens.

A beam of golden radiance erupted from each hand.

The twin pillars tore upward through the sky before crossing paths high above the battlefield. The two streams of energy twisted around one another, merged, and transformed into a single blazing column of destructive light.

The attack struck the parasite’s defensive ring head-on.

BOOOOM!

The corrupted bodyguards were hurled outward in every direction, their formation broken. Half of them were slammed into the waiting insectoid swarms outside the ring; the rest were forced to defend themselves against new threats descending from above and below.

For one precious heartbeat, a path was open.

Unfortunately, Emery could not simply blink himself across it. The spatial area surrounding Parasite X was warped under the creature’s own dominion — every rift route within that bubble belonged to it.

He would have to cross the distance himself.

Five hundred meters.

And the instant the opening appeared, Emery moved.

Three figures shot forward simultaneously.

The true body charged from the front, Excalibur blazing with white light. The shadow avatar swept in from the left, wrapped in distorted space and writhing darkness. The light avatar attacked from the right, dozens of flying swords trailing behind him like a comet’s tail.

A perfect three-pronged assault.

All converging on the small creature at the center of the shattered formation.

Parasite X seemed almost amused.

A shrill chittering echoed across the battlefield.

The response was immediate.

The parasite remained almost amused.

Every corrupted Grand Magus and infected elite nearby abandoned their own fights and threw themselves back toward their master. Dozens of yellow-eyed figures accelerated from every direction, hurling themselves into the gap with complete disregard for their own survival.

They intended to rebuild the wall with their bodies.

That was when Duke Damien struck.

The old Spirit Champion lifted both arms toward the parasite, and the last of his soul-power gathered between his palms — not the radiant pillar of his prime, only a single thread of golden light, less than a candle next to a star.

But it was aimed.

[Soul Pin.]

The thread crossed the five hundred meters between them in less than a heartbeat and struck Parasite X dead-center on its swollen head. The creature froze — body locked, single forehead-eye locked open, the chittering pressure cut off at the source like a held breath. The same wave of pinning law caught the surrounding infected magus and grand magus, freezing them mid-motion.

It was the gift the old man gave— likely the last clean spirit-strike he could contribute in this battle.

Three hundred meters of undisturbed sky.

Damien’s pin, however, was not nearly as effective on the parasite itself. Its body was stunned for only a split second — and it was not blind. The forehead-eye flared open, and its defenses began to rise even before it could move again.

Two hundred meters.

A great cloud of corruption dust erupted outward in every direction, the violet haze condensing into roiling tendrils and lashing webs that filled the space between it and the three converging attackers.

Emery struck first.

Excalibur flashed.

White light tore down the sky in a single clean stroke — not at the parasite, but at the dust. The sacred steel sheared through corruption like flame through paper; whole sections of the shadow-shroud screamed and dispersed where the blade passed, opening a long, clean gash straight through the defense from one side to the other. Excalibur was a divine weapon. To corruption, it was acid.

In the same instant, the parasite unleashed two techniques at once — a concentrated mental lance from its forehead-eye aimed straight at Emery, and a desperate spatial slip meant to wrench itself away.

Neither landed.

The light avatar moved into the mental lance’s path. A translucent wall of pale golden light bloomed in front of it — a mental-domain barrier woven from soul-affirmation rather than spirit-energy. The attack soaked into the golden plane like ink into thirsty paper and dispersed.

The dark avatar, at the same heartbeat, raised both hands and seized the air around the parasite. Spatial law clamped down across five hundred meters of sky in every direction, sealing every rift-route the creature would have reached for. Tiny ripples of attempted spatial-blink fluttered around its small body like the wings of a trapped insect.

None of them opened.

Not one.

With both avatars holding the parasite’s exits and senses closed, Emery surged forward. His thirty-two willow swords erupted from his back, flashing into being around him as a streaking jade halo of blades, and together they tore through the remaining corruption-dust like a wedge driven through a curtain. Within heartbeats, they had closed.

One hundred meters.

The parasite’s forehead-eye twitched violently, fighting to wrench loose of Damien’s hold — and a heartbeat later, the old man’s pin shattered.

The parasite was free again.

Dust dispersing, rifts denied, mental attack absorbed, with three Emerys closing the hundreds of meters at full speed.

Its forehead-eye flared blood-bright. Its claws spread.

It chittered with what might have been fear — and unleashed one last desperate strike.

The remaining corruption-dust exploded.

It tripled in size in a single instant, no longer a defensive haze but a living engulfing tide that surged outward and swallowed Emery’s true body whole. He felt thousands of small blades cutting into him from every direction at once, and at the same time, the corruption poured in through every wound, every pore, every breath.

It was an attack that would have stopped or killed a Three Cosmos cultivator.

It did not kill Emery.

The new-batch resistance pill cycling through his meridians took the first wave. And the second was answered by something deeper.

Khaos’ aura erupted out of him in a violent unfurling burst.

A great shape unfolded around his body — tentacled, dark, primordial — the half-dragon, half-cephalopod silhouette of Cthulhu wreathing him like living armor. The corruption that poured in struck the Khaos-shell and was eaten, devoured back out through the same wounds it had entered, dissolved by ancient power.

Fifty meters

The dust failed. The blades blunted. The corruption ran out of places to take root.

And Parasite X understood, in a single cold instant, that it had lost the initiative.

Its small body jerked backward as spatial energy gathered around it. Every instinct, every calculation, every fragment of its swarm intelligence screamed the same conclusion.

Leave.

Now.

Emery saw it and smiled.

”Trying to flee now?”

”It’s too late for that.”

Its small body convulsed and pushed backward through the sky, every scrap of strength turned toward retreat now that the attack had failed — and it did not move.

Something was holding it from behind.

A wild shrieking chitter burst out of the parasite as it twisted in mid-air, and a figure phased into being directly behind its back. Not human. Not corrupted. White ceramic armor, golden runes blazing across every plate, two great arms already closed around the small body in a crushing bear-hold.

The Randhal Super Golem.

Hidden by a Tier 8 Concealment Talisman — the one Klea gave before he left for Baeldum. The talisman had clung to the construct’s chest, masking its aura, its weight, its presence from every kind of perception.

The golem’s grip tightened.

Holding.

The parasite thrashed.

Corruption poured out of it across the golem’s white-gold armor and slid off like water off heated steel. Its forehead-eye flared red and struck the construct’s mind — and found nothing, no consciousness, no soul, no door to push at. Its small claws raked at the golden plates and could not get through.

The perfect weapon to fight against the parasite.

It spatial-blinked once, twice, three times. It tried to fold itself out of its own body.

Every escape was already closed.

The parasite’s single great eye flared crimson one last time.

”KIKIKIKI!!”

Violet energy gathered around its trembling body as it desperately prepared some final technique. Whether it was a defensive art, a last attack, or an attempt to escape, no one would ever know.

It never got the chance.

BAMMM.

A streak of pure golden light struck the side of its swollen head — straight through the seam Excalibur had opened, between the white-gold plates of the Super Golem’s grip — and detonated against the great forehead-eye dead-center.

The eye shattered.

It was Hubert.

He had taken the shot a full second before the Super Golem even revealed itself — predicting the moment, calculating every angle, every shifting line of fortune, until his finger pulled at the precise instant all of it converged. And the bullet itself was no ordinary round.

Fortune Essence Bullet.

A round whose effect was not penetration or damage, but fortune-twisting. Whoever it struck would, for one critical breath, be the unluckiest being in the heavens. Their defenses would fail. Their reflexes would slip. Their next desperate gamble would not land in their favor.

Yellow light bled from the broken socket. The swollen head jerked violently in the golem’s grip. The body convulsed once, twice, the whole frail abomination spasming as though something inside it were unraveling at the seams.

The parasite screamed.

It would not scream for long.

Emery had already broken through the last several meters of sky.

Ten Meters.

By the time his true body crossed the final distance, Excalibur was no longer in his hand. He had sheathed the divine blade in a single fluid motion and drawn another from across his back — a massive dark blade nearly his own height, edge like cold iron, weight that bent the air around it.

The Gravestone Ruler.

The weapon given to him by his master, the Beast Emperor.

”Now, DIE!!!”

Emery hauled it back over his shoulder in both hands. Primal energy surged up through his arms and into the blade, sinking into its dark surface until the entire weapon hummed with a deep, ancient note. The Khaos shell of Cthulhu still wreathed his back.

[Star Rending Cleaves.]

Three great arcs of darkness fell across the broken sky, all of them landing on the parasite’s swollen head one after another.

BAMMM!!!!

The first cleave smashed the great forehead-socket clean apart.

BAMMM!!!!

The second sheared the swollen skull in two.

BAMMM!!!!

The third struck what was left and shattered it.

The parasite screamed once more — a high, broken, soundless thing — and its massive head burst apart in a shower of dark purple gore and broken corruption.