Emperor of Steel

“Die! Die, you bastard!”

At the words of Earner, the illusions which were chasing after Luke’s illusion rushed towards Luke.

Luke, who escaped from the illusion of Hiros with Blink, released divine power.

“Holy Nova!”

Luke, who recently awakened the divine power, could only use a few skills by using it.

However, such attempts would be considered to be great from the perspectives of the general priests, and the Holy Nova which he used just now was overflowing with power.

The skill was rather simple.

It was a skill that used Divine power and strengthened the Holy Light skill, which emitted the sacred light.

However, as divine power being used was considerably high, the power and effectiveness couldn’t be compared to Holy Light.

Wooong!

“Kuak!”

As if the sun appeared, the sky began to brighten the entire place in an instant.

The powerful light and the divine power melted the vision of everyone who was close to Luke.

Earner couldn’t even believe what was happening.

“Ho-how is this…?”

“Huh. the Divine power has the ability to purify evil and powers of darkness. Even if your skills are different, the roots are evil, so you will have to disappear.”

“How dare you! Are you insulting me and my ancestors?!”

Earner who heard Luke’s explanation yelled at him.

“This is the body of the ancestor! In other words, it represents the will of his! Whether it is the light, dark, clean, or filthy power, I am justice and I am in the right!”

‘Surely this one is crazy too.’

Apart from the fact that he was a madman, the skills performed by the angry Earner wasn’t so weird.

He took out the talismans from his sleeve and threw them, and each time a dragon appeared while spewing flames.

“Ugh! The dragon!”

“Ru-run away!”

The flame dragon didn’t just attack Luke, but also the men whom it saw, and it didn’t have the ability to distinguish between people.

Jo Won-rak, who helped So-hye to escape from the castle gate turned to see the flame dragon rushing towards them.

‘Are we going to die here…?’

Pop!

The flames of the dragon flew to the ground.

However, Jo Won-rak and So-hye weren’t hurt at all.

A steel giant suddenly appeared before them and blocked the flames which were spewed by the dragon.

The steel giant was Luke’s exclusive Gigant, Avenger.

The one which was destroyed in the fight against Arsene had been rebuilt again with great defense and strength.

Because of that, it managed to endure the fire.

Luke hurriedly summoned Avenger to save the two of them, and Earner who saw it seemed to feel unpleasant.

“Coward, trying to use other people to divert the fight.”

“What is so cowardly in a fight? War is to use whatever you can! Whether a human or a bait!”

Earner, who refuted Luke’s words of cowardly, didn’t care and continued to make the dragon burn everything.

Luke controlled the Avenger with Marionette’s magic and tried to get rid of the flame dragon.

However, when he realized that a single Avenger wouldn’t be enough, he pulled out the other Knight-class, Gaius, and the Warrior-class Stiletto’s, which had been stored in the subspace bracelet spares.

When the three Gigants with the use of Marionette magic moved to attack, the flames of the dragon turned to smoke and the dragon disappeared.

At Luke’s excellent maneuvering skills, Earner was shocked.

Apart from the fact that the dragon was very powerful yet on the verge of being destroyed, it was thanks to Luke’s control on the Gigant that seemed way beyond excellent.

‘It makes no sense! I heard that the Northern steel Gigants were needed to be manipulated by a person inside them, then how is this?’

Had Earner studied it more in-depth, he would know that the Gigant was a prototype of the Golem, the rock golem which was manipulated by the Devil King, Saymon with his Marionette magic.

However, Earner knew very little about the magic engineering in the northern continent.

Following the illusions, even the flame dragons, which could face thousands of soldiers, were being neutralized in Luke’s hands.

It compelled Earner to use the last resort.

‘I need to change the flow before he gets rid of the flame dragon.’

Earner, who bit his lip, pulled out a black bamboo flute from his sleeve and began to blow in it.

Peeeing!

The sad, gloomy music from it resounded everywhere.

The soldiers who were around lost consciousness and began to fall where they were standing.

“Cover your ears, fast! Don’t listen to it!”

Princess So-hye blocked Jo Won-rak’s ears and ordered everyone around her.

She didn’t just warn Luke, but also to the other soldiers.

‘An attack using sound waves?’

Luke had heard that there was a ‘Sound attack’ in the Southern Continent which used sound to attack the opponents.

So Luke wondered if the flute which Earner was using was one sort of the Sound Attack.

However, along with the illusions, the dragons, and the 3 layered defense shields which were major skills of the Apostasy, the Sound attack wasn’t a mostly used attack.

It was an evil tool that would forcibly separate the listener’s soul from the body and gather the ghosts around him.

Thousands of ghosts of those who died in the battle in Yu-dong began to float around.

Listening to the tunes which contained the magic spells to summon the ghosts, he could transform them into evil spirits which could be compared to the demons of the Devildom.

‘Tch, this can’t separate Luke’s soul. Humans with strong spirits or strong energy have resistance to this…’

He was thinking of giving rise to thousands of evil spirits.

When attacked by the evil spirits, no matter how strong the man would be, he would take in considerable damage.

Thinking so, Earner took a moment and continued to play the melody.

The moment when he was playing, suddenly, something came up.

“Kuak! Th-this is…!”

“Well, the poison from the Devildom.”

Poison Smog, the demon’s ability which was taken away from the intermediate demon, Naga.

When Luke wasn’t able to get close to Earner because of a sound attack, he secretly released the mist around Earner.

The moment he inhaled it, the poison would soon seep into the body and started to melt down the organs.

“Kuakkk!”

Earner, whose face began to turn black, coughed up blood.

He tried to stop the spread of poison, but none of his skills had any effect on it.

The poison from the Devildom was unknown and weird.

“Kuak! Coward… descendant of warriors…!”

“Huh, it was you who said that war means to use everything possible? I am just doing what you said.”

“Uh, ughhh!”

Earner felt a huge pain surge through his entire body, and there was no way he couldn’t admit defeat in that situation.

However, that didn’t mean that he would let himself get caught over there.

So, he decided to run.

Once he ran away, he would think of a way to neutralize the demon poison.

‘This! I will pay him back for the shame given today!’

Earner, who grunted to himself, secretly used a technique that would teleport him.

He would be able to travel 100 km at once with that skill.

Flash!

However, even though the skill unfolded with sparks around his body, his body didn’t disappear.

Thinking that something went wrong, he tried it one more time, only to see the same result.

“Kukuku! Thinking of running away? I can’t let you do that!”

Said Luke with a smirk.

As soon as he flew in towards the castle, he was secretly unfolding magic barriers that would prevent Earner from running away.

Luke raised his hand towards Earner who was flustered.

“Now, let’s slowly make you a prisoner. Holy Bind!”

The moment Luke snapped his finger, rings of divine power formed, trapping the body of Earner.

If he got caught, he would die vomiting blood and suffer in the enemy’s hands.

It seemed better to just die right away.

Earner’s eyes changed from anger to madness, and began to memorize the hidden spell, which was his last resort.

‘Om… mani Jubaya Sarodaya…’

It was a self-destructive spell.

As soon as he was memorizing the spell, his body began to swell up like a red balloon.

“Kuak. I might have lost in the battle, but I’ll never get caught by you!”

Earner laughed like a mad person and memorized the last part of the spell, and the moment it was done, his body exploded.

Baaaannnnnnggggggg-!

As if a few wagons of mana bomb exploded, enormous heat and flames spewed everywhere out of control.

“Th-this can’t be! Aegis!”

Luke never expected that the sneak, cunning man like Earner would ever take up the extreme option of self-destruction.

He kept on unfolding dozens of layers of defensive magic around the body of Earner which had just exploded.

It wasn’t much difficult for him to avoid it.

However, if he didn’t hold the explosion, half the castle would be blasted and its rocks would fall all around.

Dozens of layers of mana of defensive magic made of the 9th magic circle surrounded the flames which were about to spread in all the directions.

Crack! Crack!

Earner’s last resort was astonishing.

Dozens of layers of Aegis defensive shields created by Luke were continuously breaking.

However, Earner’s self-destruction flames didn’t go past the Aegis shields and slowly subsided.

“Phew, that was almost dangerous.”

Luke, wiped the sweat off his forehead with the back of his hand and looked at the place where Earner was supposed to be.

The ground was hollow and there was no trace of him.

‘Tch, I was thinking about finding out the Apostasy skills from him…’

It was unfortunate, but there was nothing Luke could do.

Shaking his head, Luke went to help the Yemaek army which was around him.