191: Great Guardian Sealing Technique

In the northern continent of Mana Star, on a plain three hundred kilometers from the magic capital Stedwick, the sky appeared leaden gray—a color formed by the mixture of residual elemental turbulence and smoke from countless magical bombardments.

The earth was trembling, as if a group of subterranean behemoths were awakening.

"Hold steady! Spear array! Do not retreat!"

"Damn it! Those iron lumps are charging!"

On the Salvation Army's defensive line, a Commander of a Thousand roared in despair. In his field of vision, a legion composed of iron and rock was advancing with heavy steps, ignoring the sky-filling rain of arrows and stones, crushing forward like a moving city wall.

That was the pride of Stedwick—the Magic Colossus Legion.

These alchemical golems were generally between five to seven meters tall, their bodies cast from obsidian reinforced by alchemy or enchanted essence steel, with surfaces covered in defensive runes glowing with arcane brilliance. Their internal core was a high-concentration mana crystal, driving these massive bodies to erupt with monstrous strength sufficient to destroy city gates.

Boom! Boom! Boom!

Hundreds of golems charged simultaneously, the earth wailing beneath their feet. Although the Salvation Army had undergone modern adaptation by Gareth and possessed strict discipline and standardized equipment, flesh and blood still appeared fragile in the face of such an absolute gap in quality.

An obsidian golem swung a massive flail, easily sweeping away a group of spearmen; immediately after, the runes on its chest lit up, and a thick torrent of fire erupted, turning the archer positions behind into a sea of flames.

Behind the golem legion, Stedwick's Battle Mage Regiment was stirring. Dressed in uniform purple robes, their staves waved in unison as if conducting a symphony of death.

Blizzards, chain lightning, acid rain... various area-of-effect lethal spells poured onto the heads of the Salvation Army as if they cost nothing.

"Is this the foundation of Stedwick?"

From the command heights in the rear, Gareth lowered the monocular in his hand, his expression beneath the helmet as dark as water.

Although he was invincible on the southern continent, his army of peasants and slaves still seemed somewhat inadequate when facing a magical holy land like Stedwick that had accumulated power for thousands of years.

"Your Majesty, the left flank is about to collapse! The Third Legion's casualties exceed 15%!" a messenger reported, running over covered in blood.

"Have them withdraw and send the reserves to hold the line," Gareth ordered calmly. "Tell the frontline commanders not to go head-to-head with the golems. Use trenches and traps to delay them. Our purpose is not to have a decisive battle here."

He turned back to the temporary camp and looked at the sand table inside the tent.

Although Stedwick's magic legion was incredibly powerful, they were not without weaknesses.

Their greatest weakness was that they were not fighting alone, yet they might as well have been.

To suppress Gareth, the "tyrant trying to destroy the world," the Stedwick Mage Council had united the armies of seven surrounding kingdoms to form a seemingly powerful "Justice Allied Army."

But the interior of this allied army was simply a mess.

"The army of the Rocasia Kingdom wants to preserve its strength and is deliberately lagging behind. The northern Highland Barbarians and the southern city-state coalition had a fight in camp yesterday over the distribution of spoils. And those arrogant mage lords..." Gareth sneered, drawing a circle on the sand table representing the allied army's position. "They look down on these mortal allies entirely, even forcibly requisitioning allied supplies to charge their golems."

"This is our opportunity."

Over the past month, Gareth had fully utilized the military command arts he learned from the Wanderer's database.

He did not choose to clash head-on with the allied army. His army, composed of the lower classes, possessed extremely strong organizational power under a modern military system; they could achieve greater mobility than horses using their own legs on complex terrain, and with Klaus Difan's aerial reconnaissance, they could perform large-scale flanking maneuvers across the broad front.

He used the terrain to segment the allied army's formation, concentrating superior forces to create local outnumbering situations. Today he would devour a vanguard regiment of one kingdom, and tomorrow he would cut the supply line of another city-state.

He was like a patient wolf, tearing at this bloated behemoth bite by bite, causing the allied army to become weak, irritable, and suspicious of one another through constant blood loss.

And today, the moment of the decisive battle had finally arrived.

"Is there news from Shadow?" Gareth asked the attendant beside him.

"Replying to Your Majesty, the 'Stinger' has been deeply embedded," the attendant handed over a secret report. "According to your plan, that rumor has already spread among the allied high command."

Gareth took the secret report, and a look of joy finally appeared on his face.

He had sent a large number of spies to infiltrate the allied army and spread a rumor sufficient to make this loose alliance collapse instantly:

[The mages of Stedwick do not intend to win through conventional warfare. They are preparing a forbidden curse called the 'Sacrificial Array,' and the sacrifices for this curse are the hundreds of thousands of soldiers of the seven-kingdom alliance. The mages intend to sacrifice their allies at the moment of the decisive battle to summon an otherworldly demon god to wipe out the Salvation Army in one fell swoop.]

This rumor sounded absurd, but combined with the mages' usual arrogance of treating mortals like grass and the fact that the mage regiment had indeed recently set up some incomprehensible strange arrays around the battlefield (which were actually just charging arrays), those kings and generals who already harbored their own schemes believed it.

"Very good."

Gareth drew the Dawnbreaker from his back; the blade hummed, and the high-frequency vibrating particle stream made the surrounding air scorching hot.

"Order the entire army! Abandon defense! Full-scale counterattack!"

"Target—the Stedwick Magic Legion!"

...On the battlefield, the situation changed abruptly.

The Salvation Army, which had been struggling to hold on, suddenly erupted with astonishing combat power.

As the charge bugle sounded, tens of thousands of suicide squad members wearing light armor and carrying special armor-piercing spikes and home-made bombs developed by Gareth leapt from the phalanxes, charging frantically toward the tall golems.

"Seeking death!"

The commander of the Magic Legion, a red-robed elderly man, looked contemptuously at the charging ants. "Order the allied cavalry regiments on the left and right flanks to flank them and crush these insects!"

However, a shocking scene occurred.

The heavy cavalry legions of the two kingdoms responsible for covering the mage regiment's flanks not only did not charge after receiving the order, but instead turned their horses in unison.

"Retreat! Entire army, retreat!"

"The mages are going to sacrifice us! Run!"

Someone shouted, and the allied army, whose morale was already unstable, instantly fell into a panicked rout.

Those kings and generals, to save their lives, actually abandoned the Magic Legion fighting on the front line and led their troops like a tide toward the rear.

"These... these treacherous pigs!" The red-robed mage's beard shook with rage. "How dare they?!"

This was the moment Gareth had been waiting for.

Although the Magic Legion was powerful, its mobility was extremely poor. Once they lost their flank protection, they were just a group of sitting ducks. Gareth's army couldn't handle the golems, but Gareth could.

"Klaus Difan! Get to work!"

Gareth roared toward the sky.

"Roar!!!"

The clouds burst apart as a massive Red Dragon dove down with an aura of destruction.

Klaus Difan had followed Gareth in battles across the north and south over the years; although it still had that character of bullying the weak and fearing the strong, it was an absolute expert at crushing inferior opponents.

Facing those clunky alchemical golems, this Red Dragon displayed top-tier aerial suppression.

It circled above the golems, taking advantage of its flight.

Whoosh—

A thick, conical dragon breath spewed out, instantly covering several essence steel golems.

Although the high-temperature dragon breath couldn't melt the golems instantly, it was enough to cause their core mana conduction circuits to overheat and short-circuit. Several golems emitted black smoke, their movements becoming sluggish and stuttering, until they finally collapsed on the spot like scrap metal.

"Damn lizard! Shoot it down!"

The mage regiment hurriedly turned their firepower, shooting countless fireballs and lightning bolts into the sky.

But Klaus Difan was no longer the clumsy dragon of the past that only knew how to take hits; it skillfully performed a barrel roll, using the golems' massive bodies as cover to dodge most of the attacks.

And at the moment the mages' attention was drawn by the giant dragon, the real killing move arrived.

A silver lightning bolt tore through the battlefield.

That was Gareth.

He activated the jet thrusters on his battle armor, flying low to the ground at a speed so fast it left only an afterimage on the retina.

He avoided the front of the golems, thrusting like a sharp knife straight into the mage regiment's position.

"Stop him! Quick, stop him!"

Several guardian-type golems tried to block him, but the Dawnbreaker in Gareth's hand at this moment displayed the terrifying power belonging to interstellar technology.

The high-frequency vibrating particle blade sliced through the golems' enchanted armor as if cutting through a block of tofu.

Sizzle—

Without any hindrance, a six-meter-tall rock golem was cleanly severed at the knees by Gareth and came crashing down.

Gareth's momentum didn't slow down; his body spun, and the sword light flashed like a wheel.

Wherever he passed, whether it was rock, steel, or magic shields, everything was split in two.

Just like that, he forced a blood-soaked path through the steel jungle, charging in front of those fragile mages.

"No... don't..."

The red-robed mage fearfully raised his staff to cast an instant shield, but under the gaze of Gareth's cold eyes, his movements appeared so slow.

"Times have changed, mage."

Gareth said coldly, his greatsword sweeping horizontally.

That magic shield, claimed to be able to withstand a battering ram, shattered like a soap bubble before the particle blade.

The red-robed mage's head flew up, the expression on his face frozen in that moment of terror.

With the commander's death and the collapse of the flanks, Stedwick's pride, the Magic Legion, finally crumbled.

The golems, having lost the mages' control, turned into clumsy iron lumps and were dismantled one by one by the swarming Salvation Army soldiers using home-made explosives and armor-piercing hammers.

The remaining mages tried to flee, but under the hunt of the Red Dragon and the encirclement of the ground troops, most became prisoners or corpses, except for a few high-level mages who possessed teleportation scrolls.

As the sun set, the Ash Plain was stained an even deeper dark red by blood.

Gareth stood on a massive golem wreck and sheathed the Dawnbreaker back into the scabbard on his back.

He looked at the white city looming on the horizon—Stedwick.

"Rest for one night," Gareth ordered, his voice carrying deep exhaustion but even more of the determination of someone about to reach the end.

"Tomorrow morning, we will be at the city gates."

...The next morning.

When the Salvation Army's cloud-like formation appeared beneath the walls of Stedwick, this magic capital that had stood for thousands of years felt fear for the first time.

The sky-piercing mage towers were still white, and the defensive arrays engraved on the walls still flickered with light, but the atmosphere inside the city was oppressive to the extreme.

News of the allied army's defeat had returned, and the nightmare of the Magic Legion's total annihilation made all the mages look as if they had lost their parents.

But what surprised Gareth was that Stedwick did not close its gates to defend to the death as he had expected, nor did they send envoys to sue for peace.

The entire city was shrouded in an eerie silence.

And in the very center of the city, atop the highest "Tower of Truth," a massive crystal ball was emitting an unsettling white light.

This light grew brighter and brighter, becoming so piercing that it even eclipsed the brilliance of the sun.

A magical fluctuation so massive it caused heart palpitations was gathering beneath the city; even Gareth, far outside the city, could clearly feel the elemental restlessness in the air.

"What are they doing?" Klaus Difan landed beside Gareth, pawing the ground uneasily. "This magic... the smell is wrong. It doesn't seem like an attack spell, but more like they are... sealing something?"

Gareth's brow furrowed as he turned on his tactical visor, attempting to analyze the nature of that energy.

"Energy index skyrocketing... space curvature undergoing abnormal distortion..."

This was the prompt from the simple analysis module Ilya had installed on the helmet.

"Not good!"

Alarm bells rang in Gareth's heart.

Although he didn't know exactly what the other party was doing, an energy reaction of this level was definitely not a good thing.

"Entire army, retreat! Withdraw ten kilometers!"

He loudly issued the order while jumping onto the dragon's back.

"Klaus Difan, let's go take a look!"

However, at the very moment they took to the air.

Inside Stedwick, the seven speakers of the Mage Council were sitting around the top floor of the Tower of Truth.

There was no fear of impending doom on their faces, only a kind of mad resolution.

"That rebel possesses weapons we cannot understand, and conventional means can no longer stop him," the speaker said in a raspy voice. "To protect the sparks of magic, to keep the holy land from being defiled..."

"Activate the Great Guardian Sealing Technique!"

As the seven people simultaneously crushed the magic crystals in their hands.

Boom!!!

A white beam of light over ten kilometers in diameter erupted from the center of Stedwick, piercing straight into the clouds.

This light beam did not spread outward; instead, like an inverted bowl, it slowly descended from the sky, completely enveloping the entire city of Stedwick.

That was no ordinary magic shield.

That was a high-level forbidden spell involving space-time—the Great Guardian Sealing Technique.

Legend has it that this was a spell invented in ancient times to preserve the seeds of civilization during world-ending disasters.

It forcibly stripped the space where the city was located from the Primary Material Plane, sealing it within a static time-space bubble.

Within this seal, time would stop flowing; one second outside might be infinite stillness inside, or one second inside might be equivalent to countless years outside.

It was an absolute cage and an absolute fortress.

No physical attack could break this space-time barrier unless the casters actively released it or until the mana was exhausted (which could take thousands of years).

Gareth flew in mid-air on the Red Dragon, watching helplessly as that grand city gradually became blurred and illusory in the white light, finally vanishing into the air like a mirage.

Only a giant crater remained where Stedwick had been, its bottom consisting of lifeless rock.

The entire city, along with the hundreds of thousands of mages and civilians inside, simply "evaporated" into thin air.

"They... exiled themselves?"

Klaus Difan was dumbstruck.

Gareth looked at the crater, speechless for a long time.

This bastion of the old era's highest wisdom chose to reject his "salvation" in the most resolute way.

They would rather imprison themselves in eternal stillness than face this rapidly changing new world.

"Is this your answer?"

Gareth sighed and sheathed his greatsword.

"Since you have chosen to escape, then let me face the coming storm."