Chapter 309

Chapter 309
## Chapter 309

World’s Enemy (1)

The grand clash that unfolded in the northeastern territories of the Ion Continent left behind a devastation that could not be masked.

Ancient, towering mountain ranges collapsed into rubble, scenic chasms were entirely filled with debris, and the surrounding wilderness was completely stripped of its original form, resembling a scarred wasteland.

In a realm where mystical phenomena were a regular occurrence, an upheaval of this scale was instantly flagged by diverse surveillance networks, and the ominous reports were dispatched to the prominent rulers across the continent without delay.

“Evacuate every civilian in the neighboring sectors immediately!”

“Hurry! I need an update from the observation squad right now!”

“The—the reading levels… The space itself is warping too severely, we cannot establish a clear view!”

Though it was an unprecedented catastrophe of monumental proportions, the governing leaders did not fall into total panic.

They had already received a prior warning from an exceptionally reliable informant.

The warning stated that an ‘Apostle of a Foreign God’, summoned through the machinations of the Immortal King, had manifested on their soil with the sole purpose of bringing about total annihilation.

Boom—!

Meanwhile, a select squad had managed to draw close to the vortex of the destruction.

“So that is what the High Lord was referring to. This pressure… It truly belongs to an apostle of a foreign god…?”

“Ahem, Lady Briki. This hardly seems like the appropriate moment to display such detachment.”

“Ugh, if we hadn’t received the High Lord’s protective signet… merely breathing in this vicinity would be impossible.”

These individuals comprised the vanguard forces of Hybrid, deployed under the direct mandate of Heinz the Second.

The moment they successfully integrated the newly granted 「Refined Blood Essence」, they had hurried to these coordinates and were now monitoring the conflict from a secure perimeter.

“The Hero representing the Main God Church, the renowned Fighting King of the Southern Barbarians, and a High Elf hailing from the Elven Kingdom… Fascinating, he is clearly no ordinary High Elf. Perhaps the heir to the throne? Regardless, their combat prowess exceeds my calculations. To be perfectly candid, I am uncertain if I could best them myself.”

“…Lady Briki, I implore you to take this more seriously…”

“You speak the truth. Without the backing of the High Lord’s domain, we would be utterly helpless here!”

“…That may be so. Yet the true terror is that monstrosity, which remains entirely unfazed despite enduring their synchronized assaults.”

“…”

The surrounding vampires fell into a grim silence at Briki’s detached commentary.

The sheer dominance displayed by the ‘Apostle of the Foreign God’ was suffocating.

Even with their recent evolutionary surge and their burning devotion to their cause, none of them could find words to dispute her words.

‘Necromancy and the chill of death… These are unmistakable hallmarks of the Immortal King. Looking at the residual friction, a violent clash occurred between them. It appears the summoner failed to establish total compliance.’

That piece of data was a massive relief.

Had an alliance existed between those two forces, the peril would have multiplied exponentially. The Immortal King alone was already a catastrophic threat.

‘This is our ideal window, while they remain disconnected from one another. Wait… what is that?’

Just as Briki and the vanguard of Hybrid were miscalculating the dynamic,

A fresh wave of powerful presences closed in on the warzone, moving with incredible velocity and singular focus.

They plunged straight into the tempest of violence without a shred of doubt, their countenances set in stone.

“…They have arrived. The moment is upon us. Advance.”

The momentum of the engagement began to shift dramatically.

—

“Screeech—!”

A colossal, twisted abomination with a gaping maw lunged directly toward him.

The Master of Heaven’s Turn Society wrinkled his brow in sheer revulsion.

Crash—!

A deafening shockwave reverberated, followed by a fleeting pause in the chaotic melee.

Yet he understood this respite was an illusion. His gaze remained darkened and serious.

“Tsk.”

That particular chimera, regardless of the trajectory or nature of his strikes, demonstrated an absurd immunity to every variant of force, whether physical or esoteric.

The vast majority of his techniques failed to even decelerate its advance, and on the rare occasions he managed to tear open a vital wound, the flesh would stitch itself back together in a heartbeat before the beast renewed its relentless charge.

It was an incredibly tedious nuisance.

‘Furthermore… ‘

And the chimera, Harley, was merely one piece of this intricate puzzle.

The remaining combatants proved to be just as problematic to handle.

Heinrich was pressing forward, swinging a holy blade wrapped in sanctified flames, his entire form pulsing with a blinding, celestial light.

Harris was persistently executing precise sniper shots from a concealed vantage point, each projectile saturated with the pure essence of nature.

Heinz the Second was shifting through the shadows like a phantom, fracturing his rhythm and continuously striking at his fatal vulnerabilities.

What made it worse was their flawless synchronization; they moved as a single, collective entity, dynamically covering each other’s blind spots and weaknesses.

Even as the target of this flawless cooperation, he could not help but internally acknowledge their skill.

‘And now a secondary wave… ‘

The battlefield was expanding beyond his initial opponents.

Swoosh—

Whish—!

A downpour of arrows and incantations, completely distinct from the initial elven archery, cascaded from the heavens.

Additional high-tier combatants had entered the theater of war.

“Forgive our delay, Saint! Are you unharmed?”

“…The regional space was excessively warped, which hindered our transit time.”

“And this signature… Harris-nim? Why are you present on this battlefield? Weren’t you stationed in the Enamel Continent…?”

Saintess Liesta, Archmage Isea, and the High Elf Lydia—three of the absolute pinnacle powerhouses of the continent—had reinforced the front lines.

“Hehehe, to think I would find myself participating in a crusade like this. Life is unpredictable…”

“The vanguard of Hybrid has arrived on the field, executing the decree of the High Lord!”

“We await your strategic deployment!”

Simultaneously, the vampires who had been biding their time stepped out from the fringes, committing their full strength to the fray.

Briki, a prominent Sacred Blood vampire whose capabilities had been augmented by Heinz, represented a massive reinforcement—a wild card capable of shattering the ongoing deadlock.

‘This is getting messy.’

The Master observed the shifting layout, analyzing the environment with a cold mind.

He instantly calculated his odds.

‘…Extrication is the logical choice. Prolonging this engagement yields no benefits.’

Entangling himself in an asymmetric war of attrition against an entire army was foolish.

The optimal strategy for a concentrated, elite force facing superior numbers was asymmetric hit-and-run tactics.

He required an exit from this encirclement to force them into fragmented, isolated skirmishes where he held the advantage.

However, his adversaries had no intention of allowing a clean break.

‘I allowed avarice to cloud my judgment. I presumed I could wrap this up swiftly and depart.’

He had failed to foresee that they possessed the infrastructure to aggregate such an elite assembly in mere moments.

The overt provocation from Hahoe Mask… it had been an elaborate orchestration from the very beginning.

Bzzt—

His hyper-aware senses picked up a faint, thread-like current of energy coiling tightly around his position, testing his defenses and seeking a critical gap.

It felt like a hidden viper, waiting for the perfect microsecond to strike.

“You believe you can simply walk away?”

An icy, detached voice cut through the ambient roar of battle.

It was the exact voice that had been disrupting his focus throughout the entire duel.

“Vampire.”

He shifted his eyes slightly, his prideful gaze colliding directly with the frigid expression of Heinz the Second.

Crackle—!

Throughout his vast journeys across myriad planes of existence, he had crossed paths with countless vampires, yet he had never encountered a specimen of this extraordinary tier.

Even the Duke, who served within the Master’s elite retinue, fell short of this caliber.

‘An absurd anomaly. Moreover, he is preemptively shutting down my displacement vectors using causality manipulation. Highly irritating.’

Completely unaware that Heinz had achieved transcendence by absorbing the essence of the Duke, the Master re-evaluated his tactical options.

The vampire appeared somewhat unaccustomed to the full breadth of his newly acquired status, failing to exhibit its absolute peak… yet his transcendent nature was undeniable.

Shattering through the vampire’s isolation barriers alone would be manageable, but doing so while surrounded by an army of apex combatants complicated the equation.

Naturally, he held a definitive trump card… but it was a non-renewable asset, and he preferred to reserve it for a pivotal turning point…

‘…No, looking at it differently, this presents a perfect opening. The absolute apex figures of this realm are concentrated in this single coordinate. That implies… ‘

…They had left their primary domains and strategic strongholds completely exposed to assemble here.

Furthermore, redeploying back to their home bases would require a significant amount of time.

‘Indeed. I shall conclude this farce immediately.’

He resolved to activate his hidden asset far earlier than initially budgeted.

His ‘advance payment’.

A shard of divine karma obtained via his pact with a fallen god—a legitimate deity native to this cosmic plane, albeit one currently diminished and locked away in confinement.

“………!”

Heinz the Second, whose perceptions were hyper-focused on the underlying threads of causality, detected the shift first, but all four core combatants reacted as one, their consciousnesses intertwined.

“You will not escape our grasp!”

“Main God, bestow upon me the holy light to purge this transgressor!”

“Grahahaha! Stay right there!”

Flash—!

Orchestrated by Heinz, the viper of causality snapped violently toward the Master, while a blinding radiance exploded from Heinrich, tracing a path like a devastating particle beam. Harley’s physical form turned into a blur, shattering the sound barrier as he propelled himself forward like a kinetic missile, and Harris’s projectile, carrying the concentrated wrath of nature, crossed the distance instantly to detonate against its target.

“Unleash hell!”

“Ice Nova!”

“Tear his flesh apart!”

The secondary forces, recognizing the sudden shift in the air, instantly dumped their highest-tier spells and physical techniques into the focal point.

Rumble—!

And yet—.

“An exceptionally theatrical farewell.”

It proved insufficient to anchor the Master, who had temporarily broken past the baseline laws of this reality by burning the fragment of divine karma.

He effortlessly swatted aside the bulk of the long-range artillery from a distance, and neutrally parrying the few direct impacts that breached his perimeter—including Heinz’s causality anchor—he let out a dark, satisfied breath.

The metaphysical restraints that had locked him down dissolved into nothingness, and an unholy reservoir of power flooded his pathways.

He turned his eyes back toward the individuals who had strained his patience.

‘I must exercise restraint. This state is temporary.’

A sharp migraine lanced through his mind, accompanied by a high-pitched ringing—the inevitable toll of forcing such an influx of power—but he was highly conditioned to such discomfort.

As the neurological feedback faded,

A sequence of navigation coordinates materialized within his consciousness, fragmented but decipherable.

‘My primary focus remains the target objective. It is the core requirement for fulfilling the pact.’

The specific element required to realize his ambitions within this world.

And the precise key his hidden partner required to ascend back to the mortal realm.

Quelling his immediate impulse for bloody retribution, he began to tear at the fabric of space, carving out a transit corridor.

Zzzzt—!

Despite the frantic interference from Heinz’s causality manipulation and the desperate attempts of the rest of the group to disrupt the process, the dimensional tear steadily solidified.

The process demanded a higher expenditure of energy than expected, but the passage was secured.

“Hah, you truly are a tenacious lot. Regardless, I have far more critical objectives to secure. This brief diversion was… mildly amusing.”

“Halt! Do not think you can flee…!”

Ignoring the shouts, the Master let out a mocking sneer and took a decisive, sweeping stride forward,

Vanishing completely into the spatial fracture.

His precise trajectory:

The sacred capital, the absolute heart of the Ion Continent, where the Grand Temple stood erected.

—

While the auxiliary forces were still expending their energy to destabilize the residual magical signature of the Master’s spell,

The linked minds of the avatars were communicating at hyper-accelerated velocities, parsing data instantly.

Target coordinates identified… The southern gate coordinates of the Roselia Temple.

Calculated transit window… 2 minutes and 23 seconds remaining.

‘A fortunate twist that I enacted contingencies for this exact scenario.’

Heinrich, employing the absolute authority of the 「Monarch’s Authority」, transmitted the real-time telemetry directly to the Cardinal.

Consequentially,

The moment the Master stepped out at his destination, he was received by an immensely structured, devastating welcoming committee.

“Engage the sacred barrier!”

“In the holy name of our supreme Main God, execute judgment upon the heretic!”

Tens of thousands of elite holy crusaders, exceeding a thousand ordained priests, hundreds of frontline paladins, and dozens of high-ranking bishops…

…bellowed their prayers in perfect, resonant unison, their voices channeling immense divine authority while anchoring a colossal, glowing runic formation.

Fully prepared to bring down the ultimate enemy of the world.