XElenea
patreon
DN : [400] Slaughter
🕑 Added 2024-12-31 16:00:03 +0000 UTCBlood. Carnage. Corpses strewn across the land. Agonized screams of pain.
At this moment, Akame and Kurome finally grasped the full meaning of the “battlefield” that August had spoken of.
This wasn’t war. It was a massacre—an utterly one-sided slaughter.
Within the confines of the black energy field that enveloped the area, the allied soldiers had no choice but to fight back. There was no alternative.
But resistance was futile. The ice knights were simply too powerful.
Their numbers were overwhelming, and even if one was shattered, it would reform in mere moments. Meanwhile, a single strike from these knights was enough to leave even the strongest warriors dead or critically injured.
Esdeath’s initial attack had already shattered the coalition’s morale, dealing a blow from which they couldn’t recover.
In mere moments, 300,000 lives had been claimed by her hands.
And this was only the beginning.
The remaining million soldiers, though still numerous, were teetering on the edge of collapse. For them, continuing to fight was tantamount to suicide.
“Grand Hailstorm Barrage!”
Esdeath’s voice echoed across the battlefield as she unleashed her next attack.
The skies above the allied army darkened, the sunlight vanishing as though devoured by a malevolent force.
The soldiers below instinctively looked up—and what they saw rooted them in place, paralyzed by dread.
“What… what is that?”
“This can’t be something a human can do…”
“It’s over… we’re all going to die.”
“Why bother resisting? Let it all end…”
Some soldiers fell to their knees, surrendering to despair. Others broke into panicked sprints, tears and snot streaming down their faces as they fled aimlessly. A few, filled with grim determination, resolved to fight to the death.
Above them loomed a massive ice sphere, a superweapon of unimaginable size and lethality.
August watched from his vantage point, a smirk tugging at his lips as he absorbed the flood of negativity saturating the battlefield.
The scene before him reminded him of a distant memory—a moment when a god-like figure summoned a meteor to annihilate an army. But here, it wasn’t a meteor. It was an immense ice sphere, aimed directly at the coalition below.
Boom!
The ice sphere slammed into the ground with devastating force, crushing thousands of soldiers beneath it.
But the destruction didn’t end there. As the sphere shattered, massive shards of ice scattered in all directions, killing countless more. The impact also unleashed a violent shockwave, hurling soldiers through the air like leaves in a storm.
In a single strike, the allied forces lost tens of thousands more.
Those who survived were either maimed, unconscious, or left in a state of utter despair. Of the once-mighty army, fewer than 600,000 soldiers remained capable of movement.
For the survivors, this was not just a battlefield; it was hell incarnate.
The sheer despair blanketing the army only strengthened August further. The souls of the fallen and the despair of the living surged into him, elevating his power.
He ascended from an upper High Demon to a mid-stage Supreme Demon in an instant.
“War truly is the finest feast,” August mused, a satisfied grin spreading across his face.
In such a short time, he had advanced an entire tier of power. And with more than half the enemy forces still alive, he knew he could reach the pinnacle of Supreme Demon—or even step into the realm of Demon Kings.
Once he reclaimed the title of Demon King, August would become a walking cataclysm, a force of nature that left ruin in his wake.
“It's over… everything is over…”
The leader of the Revolutionary Army slumped to the ground, despair etched into every line of his face.
Years of planning, organizing, and sacrificing—destroyed in a single day. All his efforts had been rendered meaningless by the overwhelming power of Esdeath.
Esdeath herself stood atop the frozen battlefield, breathing heavily. The three successive ultimate techniques she had unleashed had drained her magic reserves significantly.
Even maintaining the army of ice knights consumed her power continuously.
By all accounts, Esdeath should have reached her limit.
Her magical reserves were nearly depleted, and even her relentless attacks seemed to have exacted a toll.
But Esdeath wasn’t one to stop when victory was in sight.
From her pocket, she retrieved two vials of shimmering liquid—large mana potions, a gift from August.
With a tilt of her head, she downed them both in one smooth motion.
Gulp.
The magic that had nearly run dry within her surged back to life, filling her with newfound strength.
“Let the final celebration begin… Absolute Frost Hell!”
A devastating surge of cold erupted from Esdeath, spreading outward in waves that froze everything in its path.
The battlefield, already blanketed in ice, now became an even harsher realm of death. Wherever the frost touched, jagged spikes of ice erupted from the ground like the fangs of a ravenous beast.
Shhk!
The ice spikes skewered countless soldiers, piercing through flesh and bone with merciless precision. The bitter cold fused their flesh to the spikes, and any attempt to free themselves would rip chunks of their bodies away.
Those already injured or unconscious weren’t spared either. They were encased in ice, transformed into frozen statues, their lives extinguished in the blink of an eye.
The battlefield became a gruesome harvest, with soldiers falling like wheat before the scythe. The sheer density and indiscriminate reach of the frost made escape impossible. To be caught in its grasp meant death—or worse, an agonizing struggle before succumbing.
From above, August observed the carnage with a mixture of awe and approval.
“An impressive feat,” he mused. “A perfect technique for wiping out armies.”
But Esdeath wasn’t done yet.
Within the frost-covered zone, her ice knights underwent a terrifying transformation. The frigid energy infused their forms, causing razor-sharp spikes to sprout from their armor, while their bodies grew by nearly a third in size.
The enhanced knights launched into a new round of slaughter, cutting through what little remained of the coalition forces.
The once-mighty allied army, which had boasted over a million soldiers, now had fewer than 20,000 survivors.
And even those were rapidly dwindling. Under the relentless assault of the empowered ice knights, their numbers dropped with horrifying speed.
From his vantage point aboard the Vimana, August took in the scene, his expression thoughtful.
“This is the sin of weakness,” he murmured to himself.
Though Esdeath’s base strength placed her at the level of an upper-tier demon, her current power was bolstered by several factors: her demonic transformation, the Queen’s Piece augmentation, and the sheer vulnerability of her enemies—ordinary soldiers unable to withstand her overwhelming might.
This perfect storm of circumstances had turned the battlefield into her personal stage, showcasing a massacre of unprecedented scale.
August considered the broader implications of the scene.
In a world like this, where the average combatant was so much weaker, Esdeath’s overwhelming power easily transcended the limits of the battlefield.
But in a stronger world—like the one from High School DxD—this spectacle would have been impossible.
Her signature technique, Mahapadma, the ability to freeze time and space itself, was devastating here. Yet in a more powerful realm, the costs of such a move would skyrocket exponentially, while its duration would be significantly reduced.
It wasn’t just a matter of Esdeath’s strength—it was the relative weakness of this world that allowed her to dominate so completely.
In a stronger world, the same power would falter.
Such was the nature of a universe’s inherent “resistance.”
