Heir of Synthesis: The World Mage

The icy wind cutting through the gorge carried an unbearable smell of fresh blood.

At the bottom of the valley, a blood-covered army with just over a thousand survivors was fighting a hopeless battle. Around them, a horde of 600 merciless figures attacked from every direction, closing in like an iron jaw and crushing any attempt to escape.

Despite the survivors’ slight numerical advantage, the reality was brutal: this was a confrontation between 600 Mage Masters and an exhausted contingent of Mage Disciples.

This wasn’t a fight; it was practically an open-air execution.

The Mage Disciples slowly fell one by one, while the enemies smiled and laughed with sadistic delight, savoring every second.

The only reason those thousand young Mages were still standing was sheer madness born of desperation. Knowing death was inevitable, they attacked with suicidal ferocity, trying to trade their lives for injuries on their opponents.

Unwilling to risk their own hides in a victory that was already guaranteed, the Mage Masters pulled back slightly with every insane charge, leaving just enough space to slowly wear them down.

Thus, the bloody mass of survivors slowly dragged itself north...

However, it was painfully obvious that none of them would reach their destination alive. The distance to Yin Lake was still enormous.

At the forefront of the resistance, Sallya, Daraen, and Inigo fought at the absolute limit of their strength, commanding the formation with eyes red from exhaustion and fury.

At the beginning of their journey, when they united the three largest factions of young Mages from the 11th Branch, they had nearly five thousand combatants. That army represented everything their leaders had managed to gather during months in that world. And now... seeing nearly a fifth of their remaining companions being torn apart was shredding their souls.

The only and final hope they clung to was that girl from the 1st Branch, who had managed to break through the encirclement and rush toward the lake.

"Still not tired of this pathetic fight, you worms? Today, every last one of you will become fertilizer for this valley!" mocked one of the Mage Masters at the front, delivering a heavy blow.

Despite their overwhelming advantage, the invaders didn’t dare become completely careless. Sallya, Daraen, and Inigo were legitimate Super Geniuses.

If they were given even a single opening, they could drag a few Mage Masters into the grave with them. So the enemy’s tactic was simple and safe: kill them slowly and securely.

"Hmph! So what if we die here?! Priam will definitely wipe the floor with your faces! The moment he finds out what you did, your deaths will be a thousand times more painful and grotesque than ours!" Daraen roared, clenching his teeth so hard that blood trickled between his lips.

His attacks had become completely self-destructive. He ignored enemy blades tearing into his flesh just to drive his own blade into his opponents’ chests, completely consumed by pure battle madness.

On the other side, the Mage Masters laughed at that vain hope.

"Priam? Idiot! That bastard will be sent straight into the reincarnation cycle right after you! In fact, every worm from your 11th Branch will be following you straight to hell!" another enemy mocked, joining forces with his companions to unleash a combined attack.

*CRASH!*

The devastating combination struck Inigo’s sword head-on.

The blade shattered into dozens of metallic pieces. He was brutally thrown backward, rolling across the freezing ground as a thick stream of blood spilled from his mouth.

"Haha! Your time’s up, trash!" shouted the Mage Master, realizing that Inigo’s aura had dropped drastically. His Ether reserves had reached absolute zero; he had no way to defend himself anymore.

Three Mage Masters raised their gleaming blades with sadistic delight, descending upon Inigo’s weakened body to butcher him.

*BUZZ!*

Suddenly, the three executioners’ eyes widened. A colossal seismic tremor shook the earth beneath their feet.

The ground exploded, and from the depths of the valley, hundreds of massive black wooden stakes violently erupted, instantly intertwining to form a monumental shield around Inigo and the survivors.

"Fuck this!"

They roared and attacked.

*BOOOM!*

The Mage Masters’ attacks slammed into the structure. But, to the attackers’ utter shock, their high-level weapons merely chipped its surface, completely unable to pierce that natural barrier.

They were Fighter Mages focused on raw offensive power... how could something as simple as wood withstand the full strength of three of them?!

The wooden barrier sank back into the earth with a thunderous crash, revealing two imposing figures at the center of the battlefield.

A man and a woman.

"P-Priam!"

When they stared into those two pairs of eyes filled with a killing intent that seemed to freeze the very air, the Mage Masters turned deathly pale. Their voices stammered in pure terror.

Priam and Dandara had finally arrived.

At that moment, the two seemed almost like a single entity. Their auras radiated a pressure that was both unique and similar, as if Yin and Yang were connected in perfect harmony.

Upon seeing those figures, Sallya, Daraen, Inigo, and the surviving soldiers let out choked sighs of relief. The tension finally broke, and hundreds collapsed onto the ground, utterly exhausted.

"RUN!"

No one knew who shouted first, but more than a hundred Mage Masters from the enemy army instantly turned around in absolute panic, trying to flee for their lives. They felt a visceral, primal danger screaming inside their souls.

"Wood That Seals the Heavens!"

Dandara slammed her palm hard against the ground. In response, thousands of gigantic black wooden stakes erupted from the earth throughout the valley, intertwining in the air and forming a colossal, impregnable prison that sealed every exit.

Everything happened incredibly fast, as if Dandara had been born knowing how to use the energy of nature at the highest level.

Mirra, who had been watching everything, widened her eyes in disbelief.

Was this really Dandara?

Priam let out a brutal roar of fury and charged toward the largest concentration of enemies. His fist, clad in absolute power, tore through the void as it collided directly with the first group.

The panicked Mage Masters had reached the edges of the wooden cage and were desperately trying to smash through the stakes when Priam’s fist appeared like the force of a meteor.

The terrifying power emanating from the blow made everyone’s souls tremble in fear; in sheer desperation, three of them raised their reinforced weapons to try to stop the attack.

*BANG!*

The fist wrapped in pure energy tore through all three blades as if they were rotten twigs. The Mages felt as though an entire mountain had collapsed onto their chests—their bones shattered instantly, and their bodies exploded into a bloody mist.

Before Priam could even throw his next punch, a blade of wind tore through the air with a deafening whistle, shooting across the battlefield like a devastating missile.

Priam stopped for a second, sensing a truly absurd fluctuation of power.

He turned his head just in time to see a dagger wrapped in the wind element, along with a strange purple aura, fly toward a dense group of Mage Masters.

Just a few millimeters away from the first target, the blade pulsed with an even deeper, more sinister shade of purple.

*BOOOM!*

A wave of wind and corrosive Miasma erupted in every direction, triggering a catastrophic explosion.

Piercing screams of pain and agony echoed endlessly throughout the wooden structure.

"Die!"

Dandara’s voice resounded like a frigid verdict, and a dark-purple aura burst from every pore of her body.

She waved her bare hands, firing concentrated orbs of Miasma like magical missiles.

Her entire body pulsed with that sinister, hypnotic energy. Her eyes changed to an intense crimson red. Her half-beast figure rose like some sinister, malignant entity.

*BOOOM! BOOOM!! BOOOM!!!*

Blood sprayed with every Miasma explosion. The Mage Masters watched in horror, realizing that no defensive power could withstand the overwhelming rot of that Miasma.

"You bitch!" A Mage Master, realizing that the prison was impregnable, roared in desperation and charged toward Dandara with a spear in hand.

Dandara merely snorted in deep contempt and spun around. In the blink of an eye, two daggers appeared in her hands.

Priam, who had started to move forward to help her, stopped halfway when he noticed the look in her eyes.

*WOOOOSH!*

With a roar of power, a storm of concentrated Miasma burst from Dandara’s body in an omnidirectional expansion. Her eyes glowed with a sinister yet seductive crimson red in the middle of that ominous mist.

The toxic fog expanded ten meters in a fraction of a second, completely swallowing the spearman.

"NOOO!"

The man’s agonized scream was cut short. No one could see or sense anything inside, but there was no doubt Dandara had sliced the trapped figure apart before he could even blink.

The next second, as if time were running backward, the Miasma cloud that had spread out was violently sucked back and reabsorbed into Dandara’s body, leaving the air perfectly clean.

Dandara turned her head toward Priam in the distance, the corners of her lips curling into a playful, slightly manic smile.

Priam gave a short snort and nodded.

’Miasma? Is this the power of a Goddess?’

Focusing on the present, he turned his attention back to the rest of the battlefield. Moving like a deadly shadow, he mercilessly attacked the others who were desperately trying to break through the black wooden walls and escape.

None of them possessed the strength to rival Dandara or Priam. They were nothing but cattle in a slaughterhouse, helplessly watching their lives being harvested one by one.

"I beg you! Please, spare our lives!"

"We never touched any of your friends! We only came because the crowd was coming!"

The moment the words left their mouths, their chests exploded beneath the duo’s merciless blows. At that moment, neither Priam nor Dandara gave the slightest value to the cowards’ pleas and lamentations.

Blood flooded the valley floor. The enemies ran around in panic, but their screams of terror were drowned out by the continuous explosions.

When they slaughtered the weak, those men had never shown even a trace of compassion. Only when they became the victims themselves did they understand the terrifying weight of death.

*BOOM!*

After the final Miasma detonation, absolute silence once again dominated the blood-soaked valley.

Behind the wooden barrier, Sallya, Daraen, Inigo, and the surviving soldiers stared at the scene, completely frozen.

They already knew Priam was an unreachable monster in combat... but seeing that black wooden cage transformed into a true hell on earth by Dandara had left them all in visceral shock.

Besides raising an impregnable defense, the half-beast woman beside Priam possessed a slaughtering power just as shocking and overwhelming as his own.

How was that possible?

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