Chapter 581: A Scorching Judgment ( 581 )

Javier walked calmly into the open field beyond the fortress gate. The wind was crisp, carrying the faint scent of soot from the recent battle.

“Lord Javier!!” a dwarven commander called up from the wall.

Javier didn’t turn. His tone was steady and unwavering.

“You all stay inside. It’s dangerous.”

“But—”

“This is my order.” His voice was calm, final. “Stay inside. Relax. And watch.”

“…Yes, Lord Javier.”

He took a few more steps, then stopped. This was far enough.

With a smooth motion, he reached into his magic storage. A faint hum filled the air as a sleek, rune-inscribed device emerged—a compact disc-like object glowing softly with intricate patterns.

“Sky Eye. Deploy,”

He knelt slightly, pressing his palm to the device and channeling his mana into it. The runes brightened, rotating in harmony with his mana signature. A brief whirr sounded as four small fins extended, and a mana propulsion system ignited.

The drone shot upwards with a blue-white trail of mana, piercing through the clouds within moments and vanishing from ordinary sight.

Javier stood still, pulling out his mana glass.

Connection established.

Immediately, his vision shifted—overlaid with a high-resolution aerial view of the battlefield. The Sky Eye relayed a 360-degree feed, marked with colored dots and mana signatures. The feed moved in real time as it detected movement.

On the horizon, he saw them—a massive wave of enemy troops moving steadily forward. Over 100,000 halflings in wide formation, spread across multiple battalions.

His expression remained unreadable.

So they’ve started their advance…

He adjusted the lens, zooming in slowly. Behind the troop lines, more siege equipment, war beasts, moved in coordinated deployment.

He exhaled quietly.

From his magic storage, he retrieved a sleek, tall device mounted on a triangular frame: the mana missile launcher.

Its core thrummed with latent power, encased in layered mithril and etched with precise runes. The control panel—a floating crystal array—flickered into life at his touch.

He loaded a mana missile—a slender, spear-shaped device with a pulsating mana core at its center. He pressed his hand to the rune lock, syncing the missile with his unique mana signature.

The missile hissed as it locked into place.

Above, Sky Eye adjusted its targeting and fed coordinate data into the floating array—forming a ghostly blue map with blinking red symbols pinpointing enemy concentrations.

Javier pressed the rune labeled “Barrage Point Alpha.”

“Mana missile… primed,” he muttered.

He stepped back.

“Fire.”

The air shimmered and distorted.

The missile launched with a deafening roar, spiraling into the sky and leaving a trail of radiant mana fire. The shockwave flattened the grass around him, making his cloak whip violently in the gust.

It disappeared into the clouds—then, moments later…

A titanic explosion.

A pillar of blazing light erupted in the distance. The land trembled faintly from the impact. Javier’s Sky Eye displayed the aftermath—one-third of the enemy formation obliterated in a single blast. Dust and fire billowed outward, sowing chaos in the ranks.

Javier silently adjusted his mana glass.

He exhaled slowly, crouching beside the mana missile launcher. With deliberate care, he opened a side panel—three thin, glowing crystal rods retracted and hovered in place, releasing the lock mechanism.

From his magic storage, Javier reached in with precision, gently pulling out another mana missile.

This one was identical in shape to the first—a sleek, elongated projectile roughly the length of his torso. Its surface gleamed with polished mithril alloy, engraved with delicate glowing runes. At its core, a transparent mana chamber beat slowly—like a living heart—illuminated with dense, pulsing hues of azure and violet.

He cradled the missile delicately, as if it were fragile glass.

With practiced ease, he rotated it once in his grip, inspecting the rune stabilizers near the tail fins, checking for any disruptions in mana flow.

Once satisfied, Javier aligned the missile above the launcher’s rail.

The platform lit up softly, guiding him with gentle pulses of light. He let the missile hover just above the rail, and with a satisfying click, it snapped into place.

A faint tremor ran through the launcher’s frame. The runes along the rail began syncing with the missile, mana flowing from the core into the launcher in a closed circuit.

“Target calibration,” Javier mumbled, his mana glass beginning to display more detailed data from the Sky Eye above.

Three potential strike zones flashed in sequence on his lens.

He raised his hand toward the floating control panel beside the launcher. “Manual override. Target Point Beta.”

The map shifted, locking onto a wide formation of halfling siege units—their march toward the second dwarven stronghold clearly marked.

Javier narrowed his eyes.

“This is the difference…” he whispered. “Between old-world brutality… and modern warfare.”

His finger touched the central rune.

“Except this time… it’s not gunpowder or steel.”

A low hum filled the air.

“It’s mana… and me.”

He stepped back slowly. The mana in the air crackled and sparked as the launcher ignited. A glowing circle formed beneath the platform, amplifying the launch force.

Javier lifted his hand.

“Launch.”

The second missile screamed upward, leaving a spiral of glowing mana flame in its wake. The ground rumbled beneath his feet; waves rippled outward through the grass as the missile soared into the sky.

High above, the missile arced beautifully through the clouds—cutting through blue and white with terrifying grace.

And then—

The explosion.

A colossal, devastating blast.

Like a second sun blooming on the horizon.

The sky briefly turned white as shockwaves rippled across the battlefield, shaking even the stone walls of the fortress. Dust and smoke billowed upward, as if the earth itself had been struck by divine hammer.

Javier stood unmoved. He watched in silence—calm, calculating, relentless.

The explosion echoed across the battlefield, a deafening roar that could be heard from miles away.

A blinding flash burst into the sky, lighting up the horizon like a second sun.

The shockwave rippled outward with immense force, distorting the air and making the ground tremble beneath the dwarves’ feet on the stronghold wall.

The dwarves atop the wall stared in awe and dread as the massive blast unfolded before their eyes—dust and smoke billowing upward in a relentless, towering column of fire and chaos.

The shockwave reached them moments later, a guttural rumble that shook their bones and caused the stones beneath their feet to vibrate.

Some grabbed the battlements for balance, others simply watched in stunned silence, realizing the true power of Javier’s attack.

In that instant, they knew—they were witnessing something extraordinary, something terrifying.

( End Of Chapter )

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