Chương 84: The Strike of Someone Who Never Wanted to Be a Hero

The Dark Colossus's chest swelled into a massive, spiked black sphere, more than a hundred meters across. The blizzard around it was swallowed whole by the annihilating heat in an instant. The air let out a piercing shriek as the reactor's black mana compressed down into a single point, glowing a furious red; the Dark Colossus's Combat Power reading still held at 1. 2 BILLION, seconds from an explosion that would erase the entire valley within a twenty-mile radius.

Astra stepped forward, raising the Sun-Slaying Dragon Sword to her chest. Her holy mana erupted at full output, wrapping her in platinum light and driving her Combat Power reading toward eighteen billion as she prepared to charge straight into the heart of the blast and cut the energy mass apart. GRAB! A small hand shot out from behind her, seizing the collar of her leather armor and yanking her backward. Lucian pulled her back behind the boulder, his voice sharp.

"Stand down! You slice that thing and it blows, and four and a half million gold worth of military supply contracts turn to ash!" Astra blinked, her glowing sword tip frozen mid-air.

"But it's about to explode..."

"It's not exploding," Lucian said, reaching into his coat pocket and pulling out a small, rusted three-inch iron nail — one he'd picked up off a broken wagon wheel earlier. He stepped out from behind the safe boulder at an unhurried pace, standing alone in the middle of the searing black heat wave. Ting! A Unified System v2. 0 notification appeared before him. [SKILLS: 'READ THE FINE PRINT' + 'LANGUAGE BREAKER'] Analyzing self-destruct compression structure: closed-loop matrix based on Ancient Demonic command code.

Structural flaw found: pressure release valve at the reactor's base, offset by 0. 003 millimeters! Intervention command: 'Nul-Khar'ash' (Cut circulation loop). At their core, the Demon race's pre-war biological war machines always ran on the same logical loop: compress energy to its absolute limit, then trigger a mana-particle disintegration. A colossal destructive process — locked behind one fragile, mechanical pressure release valve at the reactor's base. Layered Focus: Locking target coordinates.

Spell Control: 95, 200, 000, 000—targeting precision engaged. This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings. Lucian pinched the rusted iron nail between his thumb and index finger. With ninety-five billion points of Spell Control guiding his mana at a microscopic level, Lucian wrapped the nail in a spin reaching millions of rotations per second, compressing its aerodynamic force into a point thinner than a needle's tip.

From the tunnel entrance behind them, thousands of 4th Legion soldiers turned to look back. They saw a small figure in an ash-grey cloak standing alone in front of the hundred-meter, blazing orb of annihilation, coat snapping in the heat wave. The boy slowly raised his right hand, aiming the nail's tip at the colossal monster. CLICK! Lucian flicked his finger. The iron nail tore through space with no explosion, no blinding flash.

It passed straight through the Colossus's ten-meter-thick chitin armor as easily as a needle through paper, burying itself precisely in the mana pressure valve at the base of the beast's reactor-heart. Lucian's lips moved, forming one syllable of Ancient Demonic.

"Nul-Khar'ash!" HSSSSSSS... A strange sound rang out across the snowy valley. The swelling orb of destructive energy suddenly stalled. All that black mana pressure, punctured through a single vent hole, began hissing out into the air in a thin stream of black smoke, rising straight up into the clouds like a deflating balloon. The Colossus's hundred-meter body convulsed violently, its muscle mass collapsing like an emptied animal hide.

Every ounce of life-sustaining energy drained out of it, its six blood-red eyes going dark, and it collapsed onto the white snow with a heavy BOOM, lying motionless as a pile of limp flesh. The entire area around Broken Wind Ravine fell into absolute silence. Snow began drifting lightly across the granite once more. Lucian brushed off his hands against his coat and turned to look at Astra, still standing dumbfounded behind the boulder.

"Get the supply squad to bring the carts over here to butcher this thing. Its armor plating has excellent magic resistance — strip it clean and House Wright's foundries at Floor 1 of the World Tower will pay at least two hundred thousand gold for it." Astra blinked twice and nodded quickly.

"Yes, Lucian!" Clink. From the ruptured chest cavity of the monster, a small shield-shaped piece of dark bronze fell out onto the snow. Lucian crouched down and picked it up. Engraved into the black bronze was an emblem — a black flame encircling a three-eyed skull — the personal crest of the Fourth Legion once serving under his mother Valeria, ten thousand years ago. Lucian narrowed his eyes at the crest, then calmly tucked the piece of metal into his coat pocket.

"So this was just some old weapon of my mom's subordinates gone astray..." RUMBLE! RUMBLE! A thunderous roar of footsteps suddenly burst out from the mouth of the artificial tunnel. The hundred thousand soldiers of the 4th Frontline Legion, General Morid and his staff officers leading the way, looked at the corpse of the 1. 2-billion-Combat-Power monster lying dead in the snow, then at the ten-year-old boy in the ash-grey cloak standing with his hands in his pockets in front of it.

Morid dropped to both knees on the freezing snow, tearing off his iron helmet and tossing it aside. A hundred thousand soldiers in blood-stained black cloaks fell to the ground all at once, raising their steel spears high, shouting in unison, shaking the entire snow-covered mountain range.

"LONG LIVE THE NAMELESS KNIGHT!"

"LONG LIVE THE ROYAL SAVIOR!" The roar of their voices tore through the fog over the western border, carrying the legend of the small figure in the ash-grey cloak straight into the eternal chronicles of the entire continent.