The wind howled and the earth groaned as Keilan clashed with Samon—The bulwark. There was a reason he was called 'The Bulwark'. Samon had once defended against an invading force of over one hundred thousand strong while battling two spirit lords. Aside from the emperor, he was considered the second strongest in the empire, even surpassing the emperor's knife. Shocking.
Their battle tore up the already damaged plains and turned giant rocks on a five-mile radius into dust as they flitted from one position to another. While battling the spirit lord, Keilan had to defend against the sun fleet—the emperor's personal fleet. Most of the fleets in the empire were either made up of soldiers from the different noble houses or were recruited from the commoners. Except from the sun fleet. A specialized fleet raised for the sole purpose of being able to withstand and deliver hits towards spirit lords. However, the amount of hits they could take was not much, as any battered ship was meant to have already escaped before being completely brought down. Leaving new ships to take up their position. They were like bees unthreatening alone, but their threat levels began scaling higher when their numbers increased. Same with the battle squads on the ships. Alone they posed no threat towards him, but when their powers were continuously delivered together, it put too much weight on him that eventually would later drown him. That's why he paid close attention to them as he battled Samon.
The ships in the sun fleet were built differently from the others. Instead of the barge-like shape the normal ships had, these were built narrow, for increased speed. Their hulls were so sturdy that they could withstand few direct hits from spirit lords. Their power batteries were also directly recharged by the most powerful of the empire's lords, even the emperor himself. That was why he'd left them with a problem of their own to deal with.
Larger tornadoes wove through their ranks, continuously tearing into hulls as the ships tried evasive actions. While scything wind flew from his winds to continuously hammer them. Still, they managed to continually annoy him.
He battled Samon, long-spear against bastard sword. He used strong gusts of wind to redirect and hamper his enemy's movements. But he took back in return. Samon's hits landed like the weight of three mountains since he was mainly a gravity Cultivator. Everything felt so crushing and stifling as Samon increased the gravity on his position, weighing him down and sometimes delivering hits that smashed Keilan into the earth. The land was already pockmarked with multiple large craters from his repeated crashing. The good news was that he didn't have to bother with the outer dome anymore, as their fight had already smashed it into glittering tiny shards, same with most of the weapons, judging by the drastically reduced attack.
While slowly drawing the air out of Samon's lungs and hardening the wind around him, Keilan sent wind blades towards the attacking ships, using his tornadoes to smash into them repeatedly. Some ships were already making their way back to base, unable to continue without the risk of being utterly destroyed. While some were already on the ground, in pieces. Body parts littered the ground as Keilan's scything tornadoes and wind blades did short work on the ships, but there were still more, always more.
The wind was drawn as Samon dropped a golden ball in between them, the bronze orb imploding and sucking in the air. Keilan felt a dragging force, mildly, but still enough to disorient him, which opened him up to a smashing attack from Samon's huge tower shield that had the unfortunate—or maybe fortunate, depending on who's opinion—that blasted him through a ship, leaving the ship in tiny pieces as it crashed to the ground.
Samon came after him, the wind exploding from his passage as he crashed into Keilan. The man weighed like a mountain. Keilan twisted, trying to shake him off before he crashed into a small hill in the distance. The ships kept chase, raining pinpoint attacks on Keilan.
This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.
He straightened his body horizontally, surprising Samon who was suddenly bewildered as to why Keilan stopped struggling. His surprise lasted until he slammed into a wind wall placed a few centimetres from Keilan's body. The man was forcefully yanked from Keilan, leaving him to re-orient his fall. He came to a full stop in the air, the kinetic energy blasting the top of the hill behind him.
Samon was already back on his trail though, so when Keilan turned to face him, he found the man a short distance from him, blade poised to deliver a chopping cut. Spreading wide his wings and thinning the air resistance around him, he blasted upwards, evading Samon and then began heading towards the approaching fleet.
Having expected him to keep fighting Samon, they weren't ready for his sole attention. He tore into their ranks, jumping from one ship's deck to another and anywhere he landed, death reigned. With his spear and hundreds of tiny wind blades, he dove into multiple groups, laying waste to them and tearing apart the ships at the same time. He'd already finished with the second ship when Samon arrived, the man was furious as he'd expected Keilan to play fair, who in their right mind would ever do that?
"You snake," the man said, fuming in anger. His face was red and Keilan could sense how ragged his breath was. Good, it meant his work was still on.
He smiled. "You're the one who brought them to be slaughtered, and now I'm being criticised for taking advantage," he said, tsking. "That's bad of you."
Samon was about to reply when something happened. Far to the west, an aura bloomed. Its power greater than anything in the continent and even beyond. Keilan could almost see the world slowly turning grey.
Samon eyes widened, fear sinking into him. "My emperor," he breathed, as space began destabilising around him.
Keilan sensed the teleport. He knew he couldn't stop it as he was now, he was already greatly weakened. So he summoned his astral image. "Tsk, tsk, where do you think you're going?" He said as his astral image appeared. The mere power radiating out of it slicing into pieces any ships that were within a few metres from him. With his will, he pressed down on the space around them for miles, locking it down. He wasn't as good at it as a space cultivator, and his will wasn't strong enough to indefinitely hold back Samon, but it'd have to buy him enough time to enact his plan.
Samon looked back towards him, fury radiating from him. "You will regret that," he said with finality.
Keilan nodded. "Maybe—Maybe not," he said, and then triggered his advancement, raising his power by leaps and bounds.
It was well known that the simplest way to advance was to fight, as you consume a third of the potential every being had to fuel your advancements. The more monsters you killed, the more potential you consumed to fuel your growth—The benefits being the expansion of your energy well, giving you more powers at your disposal. At the lower tiers, that was easy enough to accomplish as you could fasten your growth by killing droves of beasts. But that got significantly harder in the higher realms. Most high-level beasts had used up almost all their potential, leaving you with little to consume as their growth would have ended in that tier. The beasts with the most potential to consume were those of sentience, and Keilan had just participated in the killing of multiple sentient dragons. But that wasn't enough to fuel his advancement.
What only people in the higher realm knew was that there was another way to advance—the different flavours of Cosmos suffusing the air.
Getting to spirit lord boosted your senses so well you could sense the different flavours of Cosmos when you concentrated on it. That was what Keilan did.
He focused his mind, since he was floating in the air, that made it easier. He located the flow of wind energy flowing through the world and suffusing it. Normally he'd not have been able to do this due to the strain it would have put on his soul but he'd recently taken something into his soul. He didn't understand what it did but he could feel it in his soul, his potential had grown in orders of magnitude. locating the energy river flowing through the world, he began to consume, energy raged through his soul as his advancement started. Samon must've felt what he was doing because he immediately attacked. Summoning his own astral image, a giant bronze figure with dull glowing golden eyes appeared behind the man, their combined energy and proximity to each other pushed back the wind and thin cracks began spreading through the air as space began destabilizing.
His advancement quickly reaching a climax, his powers rose to new heights as Keilan renewed his clash with the bulwark, their collision tearing through the gathered fleet, leaving none able to even scream as they were crushed and torn to pieces.