Chapter 1268: Aqua Iron City
Chapter 1268: Aqua Iron City
"The Bodam Kingdom’s army is stronger than expected," one man said, his voice firm but edged with strain. "If we hold back now, we’ll be crushed. We must commit everything."
"I agree," another replied immediately. "Their assaults are relentless. They don’t retreat and they don’t hesitate. If they break through our lines..."
He paused, his expression darkening.
"We won’t recover."
A third leaned forward, his brows tightly drawn.
"Their high-level experts are the real problem. We’ve already injured more than once. And yet..." His jaw tightened. "They come back."
A murmur spread across the room.
Unease and disbelief slowly spread.
"...Regeneration?" someone muttered.
"No." Another voice cut in, low and grim. "Their regeneration is strange. It carry more power."
Silence fell for a brief moment before a single phrase surfaced.
"The Secrets of Immortality..."
The words lingered in the air like a curse.
There were rumors that the Bodam Kingdom discovered it before.
"But where is Freida?!" one of them snapped, his voice suddenly sharp with anger. "A war of this scale is unfolding, and she’s nowhere to be found?!"
No one answered immediately.
Instead, they hesitated. A thought crept in.
"...What if..."
The voice was quiet and careful but it was enough.
The room fell into complete silence.
Eyes met and expressions stiffened.
In that heavy, suffocating stillness, they all arrived at the same conclusion.
"Do you think... Freida is dead?"
They exchanged glances, disbelief etched across their faces. The very thought felt absurd. They knew better than anyone how monstrously powerful Freida was. None of them could stand against her in a one-on-one battle.
"No... it’s more likely she’s severely injured and forced into recovery," one of them said, his voice low but steady. "We’ve seen it before, the high-level experts of the Bodam Kingdom possess terrifying regenerative abilities. If that’s the case, then Kras’ah might be no different."
"...That’s possible."
Before the thought could settle, the chamber doors burst open with a sharp, echoing crash. Every head in the room snapped toward the entrance, irritation flashing across their faces.
This was the Supreme Council barging in unannounced was a grave offense.
But the man who entered paid no heed to their anger. His face was pale, his breath unsteady.
"E-Elder Councils... something’s happened on the battlefield," he stammered. "The right flank has been completely destroyed. Our supply line from Cold Water City... it’s been cut off."
"WHAT?!"
A violent surge of energy erupted as every member of the Supreme Council shot to their feet, their auras shaking the entire chamber.
Losing the supply line from Cold Water City was nothing short of catastrophic.
That city was the heart of their nation’s pill production, the source of nearly every medicinal pill circulating within their territory. Without it, their army would be crippled, forced into a desperate battle of attrition with dwindling resources.
...
Aqua Iron City, the ironclad bastion at the edge of the Tarrant Nation.
A city forged for war.
Its colossal structures loomed beneath the dark waters like the bones of some ancient leviathan, unyielding and eternal. This was where the nation’s strongest gathered, an oceanic fortress packed with elite warriors, each one a living weapon sworn to halt the advance of the Bodam Kingdom.
Here, retreat did not exist.
Here... the war devoured everything.
RUMBLE!!
The sea convulsed.
Pressure rippled through the depths like a shockwave, sending violent currents tearing through the battlefield. The water itself seemed to groan under the strain, churning with the aftermath of clashing powers beyond mortal limits.
And in the heart of the city, she hovered.
A woman suspended in the crushing depths as if the ocean itself dared not press against her. Her skin glowed with a deep, abyssal blue. Gills along her neck flared rhythmically, drawing in the water as though it were air. Silver-white hair drifted wildly around her, shimmering like fractured light in the dark sea.
Two pairs of arms hung at her sides, relaxed yet heavy with a quiet, terrifying promise. Around her, the raging currents slowed, bent and submitted. Her gaze cut through the battlefield, cold, vast, and merciless.
Explosions of power, dying soldiers, collapsing formations... none of it escaped her notice.
She was not merely watching the war.
She was measuring it.
Weighing lives. Calculating outcomes.
She was the City Lord of Aqua Iron City, the Commander-in-Chief of the Tarrant Nation’s forces.
The absolute authority on this battlefield, one whose will overruled all but the Supreme Council.
Her name echoed like a silent decree through the depths, Wavey Lensar.
The entire battlefield quaked without pause.
The ocean churned in violent spasms, pressure crashing in relentless waves as power after power erupted across the depths.
Yet amid that chaos, Wavey remained still.
"Seventh Shackle Realm experts have entered the fray..." she murmured, her voice calm, almost detached. "Even those initial fifth-stage monsters are revealing themselves..."
Her gaze lifted slightly, as if piercing beyond the battlefield.
"...This war is about to spiral beyond my control." A faint pause. "The Bodam Kingdom... is no longer testing us. They’ve committed."
Far below, a monstrous shape tore through the battlefield.
A colossal whale, its body a deep, abyssal blue streaked with jagged white lines, surged forward like a living catastrophe. Spanning over a hundred meters, its sheer mass displaced the ocean itself, crushing everything in its path.
Formations shattered and ground collapsed.
Soldiers didn’t even have time to scream.
They were simply erased, bodies pulverized into red mist and drifting fragments of flesh as the beast rammed through them without slowing.
BOOM!!
Two streaks of light flashed across the depths, colliding head-on with the monstrous whale. The impact sent a violent shockwave ripping outward, tearing through currents and scattering debris like dust.
Two figures emerged, blazing with power. Their auras surged wildly, unmistakable.
Seventh Shackle Realm.
They moved like phantoms, vanishing and reappearing in rapid succession, striking in perfect coordination. One drew the whale’s attention while the other carved into its flank, their attacks precise, relentless.
Even so, the creature did not fall.
It roared and the ocean answered.
Elsewhere across the battlefield, devastation unfolded on an even greater scale.
Multiple Seventh Shackle Realm experts clashed without restraint, their powers colliding in catastrophic bursts.
Shockwaves tore through the seabed, ripping apart everything in their reach. Entire stretches of terrain, dozens of kilometers wide, were reduced to ruin, the once-stable ocean floor now a fractured wasteland of debris and chaos.
Currents twisted violently.
The sea itself seemed to fracture under the strain.
And through it all, Wavey Lensar watched.
Every movement, every death, and every surge of power.
Nothing escaped her gaze.
Suddenly, she turned her head as she sensed something.
The next moment, an enormous explosion erupted to the east of Aqua Iron City.
BOOM!!
Wavey’s expression darkened. Immense mana surged out of her body. The oppressive force radiating from her made the nearby experts feel as if a mountain was pressing down on their heads.
Her figure turned into a stream of light, heading toward the direction of the explosion.
Swoosh!!
Her speed was extremely fast, yet she didn’t create a single ripple in the water. She arrived above the location in just a matter of seconds.
Just outside the city, bodies were floating, and blood was slowly dyeing the water.
"How dare you?!!"
Upon seeing the fallen soldiers of the nation, Wavey grew furious. Her energy turned wild, shaking the space and sweeping across the entire area.
She turned her eyes, her gaze piercing through the sand and debris floating in the area, looking straight at several dozen silhouettes in the distance.
She could see that the entire path toward Cold Water City was gone. The experts guarding it had died, and the supplies were gone.
Even though she was angry, Wavey didn’t rashly launch an attack. She observed and analyzed the situation.
"Are they people of the kingdom?" Wavey muttered with a deep frown.
She wondered how these people managed to slip past their surveillance.
Don’t tell me... There’s a traitor.
A similar thing had happened to the Rulman Household. She remembered that the Supreme Council had been furious when the kingdom’s monsters managed to enter the nation. No one would fail to recognize the infamous Kras’ah, an advanced fifth-stage monster and yet he had slipped inside without anyone knowing.
While she was analyzing the situation, an old man stepped forward from the opposing group.
"I’m Franklin, a messenger of the great Realm Lord," the old man introduced himself, making it clear that he was not part of the kingdom attacking the nation. "We’ve come here to take over this land. The Lord said we should spare those who surrender, so I’ll give you a chance to surrender."
"Impudent!!" Wavey sneered upon hearing the old man’s words, yet she was curious about the Realm Lord he mentioned, so she refrained from acting.
"Where did you come from?" she asked.
Seeing their appearances, she knew that this group of people weren’t natives of the ocean.
"I already said that I’m giving you a chance to surrender, not that I’m going to answer your question. You’ll know everything if you surrender," Franklin replied.