Chapter 8: The Power Beyond All Limits

I felt a trace of pity for the soldiers stationed within the fortress as I looked down at them from above.

They had endured far more than ordinary soldiers should ever have been expected to endure. The battle had dragged on for so long that the distinction between exhaustion and despair had almost disappeared from their faces. Their armor, once maintained with the kind of care that soldiers usually gave to the equipment upon which their lives depended, had become little more than battered metal covered in dust, dried blood, and pieces of whatever had been unfortunate enough to die too close to them. Some were still standing only because their weapons had become makeshift supports, their trembling hands wrapped tightly around sword hilts and spear shafts simply to prevent their exhausted bodies from collapsing. Others had already fallen to their knees, their shoulders rising and falling heavily as they struggled to draw enough air into their lungs.

Yet, despite all of that, none of them had truly surrendered.

That was perhaps the most admirable thing about them.

They were terrified. Their bodies had reached their limits, their minds were beginning to break beneath the continuous pressure of the battlefield, and many of them had probably already accepted that they might not survive the next few minutes. Still, whenever another roar echoed from the battlefield, they forced themselves to raise their heads. Whenever another monster emerged from the enormous horde surrounding the fortress, they tightened their grip on their weapons. They were exhausted, frightened, and painfully aware of how hopeless the situation had become, but somewhere beneath all of that was a stubborn refusal to simply lie down and wait for death.

Their eyes remained fixed upon the battlefield.

They were waiting for something.

A miracle, perhaps.

Well...

Maybe they had already received one.

I suppose I should ask Liz to prepare a proper reward for these children once everything was over. They had done surprisingly well, considering the circumstances. I would never say it aloud, of course, but there was something respectable about people who continued fighting even when their bodies were practically begging them to stop.

Of course, there was another reason I had decided to make an appearance.

Someone had to clean up this mess.

I moved forward through the sky, deliberately making each step audible despite the complete absence of anything beneath my feet.

It was unnecessary, naturally. I could have descended without making a sound, appeared directly before the fortress, or simply teleported onto the battlefield.

But appearances mattered.

There were moments when a certain degree of dignity was expected from a ruler. I had always believed that a proper entrance was essential to maintaining one's image. After all, if one possessed enough power to descend from the heavens, simply appearing out of nowhere seemed like a terrible waste of potential.

So I walked.

Step after step, I crossed the sky, the sound of my footsteps rolling across the battlefield.

The soldiers noticed almost immediately.

Some raised their heads. Others stared upward, their exhausted minds struggling to reconcile what they were seeing with what they believed to be possible.

I allowed myself a faint smile.

Yes.

Much better.

Now that the entrance had been properly established, I could turn my attention to the real problem.

The monsters.

From above, I could finally appreciate the full extent of the army surrounding the fortress. It stretched across the battlefield like a living ocean, an endless tide of twisted flesh and unnatural forms. There was nothing beautiful about it, though. Even the most repulsive creatures of the natural world would have seemed harmless by comparison.

Some possessed hunched backs covered in leathery skin. Others moved on elongated limbs that bent at angles no normal skeleton should have permitted. Jagged claws scraped against the ground as they advanced, while pale skin stretched tightly over protruding bones, revealing the grotesque structures beneath.

Some crawled on all fours like enormous insects. Others staggered forward on distorted legs, dragging malformed bodies behind them.

Crimson and yellow eyes glimmered throughout the horde. Countless mouths gaped open, revealing rows of irregular teeth seemingly designed for the sole purpose of tearing flesh apart.

There were simply too many of them.

Looking at the horde, I couldn't help wondering what had possessed them to come here in the first place.

Why invade my home?

It was rather like falling asleep for a few hours and waking up to discover that an entire colony of insects had somehow multiplied inside your house. You could spend the entire afternoon cleaning, only to find another dozen crawling across the floor the moment you turned around.

Annoying.

Disgusting.

And, more importantly, entirely unnecessary.

I had no particular desire to spend my time dealing with creatures that had decided to turn my territory into their personal feeding ground.

My gaze swept across the horde once more.

They advanced with remarkable confidence for creatures that had no idea what awaited them.

Perhaps that was fortunate.

After all, ignorance made death much easier.

I slowly raised my hand.

There was no elaborate gesture, no complicated incantation, and no need to summon some enormous magical formation into the sky.

I simply lifted my arm and allowed my will to spread outward.

Magic was not always about chants and spells. Sometimes, true power required neither.

My consciousness extended beyond my body, touching the world around me. I felt the earth beneath the fortress, the air sweeping across the battlefield, the countless particles of dust suspended in the atmosphere, and the immense layers of stone buried deep beneath the surface.

The world was there.

Waiting.

And when my will touched it, it answered.

The entire army froze.

The change was so abrupt that it almost seemed as though time itself had stopped. Creatures that had been charging toward the fortress a moment earlier became motionless, their bodies caught in the middle of their movements. Claws remained suspended above the ground. Open mouths froze halfway through their roars.

Then, one by one, countless eyes turned toward me.

Silence descended upon the battlefield.

It was curious.

These creatures were hardly intelligent enough to understand what I was doing. Most probably lacked even the capacity to comprehend the concept of overwhelming power.

But there were instincts older than intelligence, deeper than reason, that even creatures such as these could not escape.

The instinct to survive.

Every living thing possessed it.

Even monsters.

And now, that instinct was screaming.

Something was wrong.

Something had appeared before them that did not belong within the boundaries of anything they understood.

Their bodies recognized it before their minds could.

They were looking at death.

Not the possibility of death. Not an enemy that might kill them.

Death itself.

I looked down at the motionless horde and smiled faintly.

"Watch closely, my children."

My voice swept across the battlefield, reaching every corner of the fortress.

"Let this be a lesson in what it means to stand beneath my protection."

I had no idea whether the soldiers would understand the sentiment, but that hardly mattered.

What mattered was what happened next.

I moved my hand.

The world obeyed.

A low rumble rolled beneath the fortress.

At first, it was little more than a faint vibration. Several soldiers glanced around, uncertain whether they had imagined it. Then the ground shook again, hard enough to send loose stones bouncing across the battlements.

A crack appeared in the earth.

Then another.

The fractures spread across the battlefield, branching like veins beneath the skin of some enormous creature. The ground groaned, and beneath that sound came something deeper still—the rumbling protest of an entire landscape being forced to yield.

I raised my hand a little higher.

The earth tore itself apart.

Stone shattered. Layers of soil ripped free from their foundations and rose into the air. Enormous slabs of rock broke apart and joined the growing mass, while trees were wrenched from the ground, their exposed roots disappearing beneath cascading waves of dirt and stone.

The battlefield itself seemed to peel away from the continent, layer after layer drawn upward by an invisible force.

I watched the mass gathering before me.

It reminded me of wet sand being pushed aside by a child's hand.

Only this was not sand.

It was the earth.

Hundreds of meters of soil, stone, and rock gathered into a colossal wave that stretched across the battlefield, growing larger with every passing moment.

A great spell.

Tsunami.

The name might have been a little dramatic, but I had always believed that powerful techniques deserved appropriate names.

Besides, I liked it.

The enormous wall of earth continued to rise.

Below, the soldiers could only stare.

Some instinctively stepped backward. Others dropped their weapons without even realizing they had done so.

Perhaps they were too frightened to react. Perhaps their minds had simply run out of ways to comprehend what they were witnessing.

After all, fear required some understanding of the danger.

And how could anyone be expected to understand something like this?

They weren't watching a powerful spell take shape.

They were watching the land itself obey.

The great mass of earth finally reached its highest point.

For a brief moment, everything hung in silence.

Then I moved my hand forward.

The earth followed.

Tsunami crashed across the battlefield.

The first impact swallowed the monster army's front lines. Thousands of creatures vanished beneath the immense wall of earth before they could even react. Their roars disappeared beneath the thunder of colliding stone, the grinding of shattered rock, and the deafening rumble of the landscape being torn apart.

The wave continued.

It did not slow.

The first ranks disappeared beneath it, followed by the second, then the third. Tons of soil and stone swept across the battlefield, burying everything in their path.

There was no desperate struggle. No desperate counterattack. No final exchange of blows.

The monsters simply could not resist.

Their claws were useless against the earth. Their bodies could not withstand its weight. Whatever abilities they possessed meant nothing against a force of such magnitude.

The creatures that had seemed so terrifying only moments earlier disappeared beneath the advancing avalanche, reduced to insignificant fragments beneath an ocean of soil and rock.

The ground shook violently.

A shockwave swept across the region, striking the fortress hard enough to make its walls tremble. Dust poured from the battlements, and several soldiers stumbled as they struggled to keep their balance.

Then the dust rose.

Brown and gray swallowed the horizon, blotting out the sunlight until the entire battlefield disappeared behind an enormous cloud.

For a moment, it seemed as though night had fallen in the middle of the day.

The soldiers could see nothing.

Not the monsters.

Not the battlefield.

Not even the full extent of the destruction.

All they could do was stand there and listen to the earth.

Then, slowly, the noise began to fade.

The trembling subsided.

The dust settled.

And the world emerged from the haze.

There was no army anymore.

Only land.

A massive scar stretched across the continent, spanning several kilometers in width and extending for dozens of kilometers into the distance. The battlefield that had existed only moments earlier had been erased so thoroughly that it was difficult to imagine thousands upon thousands of monsters had ever occupied it.

A single movement of my hand had reshaped the earth.

The creatures were gone.

All of them.

No survivors emerged from the rubble. No monster crawled out from beneath the soil. No final roar broke the silence.

Everything had simply...

Ended.

I lowered my hand.

The wind returned, carrying the last traces of dust away from the battlefield.

The world was clean again.

I studied the enormous scar I had left behind and nodded in satisfaction.

That should do.

Behind me, however, the fortress had fallen into a silence that was almost unnatural.

"My God..."

"Is that... a human?"

Ethan and the officers fell backward onto the ground, staring blankly at the devastation before them. Their minds simply refused to process what they had witnessed.

One of the officers opened his mouth as though he intended to say something, but no sound emerged. He closed it again, swallowed, and looked toward another officer as if hoping that someone else could explain what they had just seen.
. Another simply stared into the distance.

For several seconds, nobody seemed capable of speaking.

Only Alexander remained standing.

His body was perfectly still, but his expression had frozen in pure shock. Even he, who had witnessed countless battles and encountered powerful beings before, could not immediately comprehend what had happened.

But there was something different in his eyes now.

It wasn't merely respect, nor was it fear.

It was the dawning realization that the scale upon which he had measured power his entire life had been fundamentally wrong.

He had thought he understood what it meant to be strong.

Now he understood that there were beings for whom the concept of strength itself needed to be redefined.

A person could spend an entire lifetime becoming stronger, mastering increasingly powerful techniques, defeating increasingly dangerous enemies, and eventually reaching what they believed was the highest point possible.

And then, one day, they could meet someone who treated everything they had spent their life pursuing as casually as moving a hand.

That realization could be terrifying.

For Ethan, however, the shock eventually gave way to something much simpler.

He laughed

It was a quiet laugh, tinged with helplessness—the kind of laughter that escaped a person when they finally reached the point where there was nothing left for them to do.

He looked once more at the devastated battlefield.

The scale of the destruction was so enormous that it could only be described as a catastrophe.

If someone had told him yesterday that a single person could reshape the earth with such ease, he probably would have laughed at them.

But now?

There was no need to believe anyone.

As Ethan continued to contemplate this reality, another thought gradually surfaced in his mind.

As long as that transcendent being was alive, perhaps there was really nothing to fear.

Wars, political conflicts, border disputes, monsters, disasters...

None of these things were truly terrifying except because humans were forced to face them with limited power.

The people of the continent could fight among themselves for decades, clans could rise and fall, armies could clash along the borders, and powerful monsters could emerge from places no ordinary soldier would dare approach.

But none of that mattered to a humble man like him.

Ethan slowly sighed, and the more he thought about it, the more reasonable the idea seemed. Perhaps he had been worrying about matters far beyond his station, and perhaps there was no reason for him to spend his time thinking about the fate of the continent or the possibility of some distant catastrophe.

Those were matters that concerned beings far more important than him.

However, his stomach—which seemed completely indifferent to the destruction of an area spanning several kilometers—chose that very moment to remind him of something far more pressing.

Dinner.

Ethan rubbed his stomach and looked toward the fortress.

"Ah... I'd like to have some warm soup for dinner tonight."

The officers around him stared at him, and for several seconds, none of them seemed to know how they were supposed to respond. Silence remained over them as they struggled to comprehend how this man could so effortlessly go from witnessing power capable of reshaping the earth to thinking about his dinner. Ethan, however, saw nothing strange about it and simply shrugged, as though the matter wasn't worth giving much thought.

After all, what else could he do? The battle was over, the monsters had been eliminated, and the fortress had survived. More importantly, that terrifying entity responsible for everything was still alive, and he showed no apparent interest in destroying the world.

For Ethan, that was enough.

The end of the world could wait. For now, he had to think about his soup.

Perhaps that was the strangest consequence of all.

And so, in the end, the man named Ethan discovered a new talent.

He had become a connoisseur.

Judging by the seriousness with which he was now considering what kind of soup he wanted for dinner, it seemed that he intended to take his newfound expertise very seriously.