CLEAVER OF SIN Chapter 618: Such Power

"Don’t be so guarded, why would I attack you here? Just to show off my power?" Malrik questioned with a rhetorical edge, shaking his head while letting out a sigh. He possessed zero motive to strike at Asher, who couldn’t withstand even a casual strike from him, regardless of Asher unleashing his full defensive might without reservation.

"Then how will you show me?" Asher inquired, puzzled, as he cocked his head a bit to one side while hovering motionless in the sky.

"Simple, I will show you a battlefield of mine," Malrik answered, a subtle but assured smile playing on his lips.

At those words, Asher’s eyes sparked with sharp curiosity. His stare returned to the wreckage stretching out below. In his clash with Debro, their strikes had obliterated roughly seventy to eighty kilometers, and when they unleashed their Sword Techniques, the destruction ballooned past a hundred kilometers with horrifying simplicity.

Armed with these estimates, Asher couldn’t resist pondering the true scale of ruin two Crownstar Life Rankers could unleash in an all-out brawl without limits. Eagerness blazed in his eyes, excitement surging inside him, and he swiftly fixed his gaze back on Malrik. No words were necessary; that one vivid look conveyed everything perfectly to Malrik.

Sharing that wordless accord, Malrik rested his hand on Asher’s shoulder anew, enveloping him in thick crimson-orange Solar Energy, and in a mere blink, they disappeared as if they’d never been there. The instant after, they materialized in midair once more, and Asher sensed that odd, elusive feeling again from when Malrik had first shifted or teleported him—he remained unsure which it truly was.

As soon as he steadied himself aloft, Malrik withdrew his crimson-orange Solar Energy promptly. Right then, Asher registered it: scorching heat, stifling, choking, and crushingly vast. His lungs clenched fiercely, as if inhaling here defied some unbreakable Law; his skin flushed scarlet and started searing steadily but relentlessly, wounds sprouting over his body that Virelass mended in a flash.

Asher hastily wrapped himself in Star Energy as a counter, yet it offered no protection whatsoever—the ambient force ignored it entirely, acting as if it were nonexistent.

Malrik showed no reaction at all, merely observing his young brother with a serene, perceptive smile, as if he’d foreseen this exact result all along.

Virelass kept mending him nonstop, but the faster she repaired, the quicker new wounds emerged in a relentless loop. After bearing it briefly, Asher ordered Virelass to cease, since they lacked endless blood for such pointless cycling. He even halted his breathing altogether, for each inhale tormented his lungs and organs severely.

He hadn’t descended to the battlefield proper, yet its mere aura tormented him fiercely. Still hovering thousands of feet overhead, distant from the chaos below, his skin kept smoldering.

Finally, Asher’s violet eyes dropped to survey the battlefield beneath. The second they locked on it, it was like staring straight into the Sun; his eyes heated agonizingly, stinging fiercely as tears poured down without control, his sclera shifting to a stark, eerie crimson from the searing torment.

Asher’s pulse quickened wildly as he kept peering down, surrounded by devastation beyond destruction’s own grasp. It defied comprehension; he faintly sensed a desert had once sprawled here, but now an endless glassy plain, forged by inconceivable heat, sprawled across hundreds or thousands of kilometers.

Moments later, blood seeped from his purple eyes, as if the world itself rejected him as too frail to witness the divine scars etched into existence by gods’ fury. Witnessing Asher’s eyes weeping blood, Malrik intervened at last, laying a hand on his shoulder to instantly cure all wounds, then shrouding him again in crimson-orange Solar Energy to shield from the battlefield’s brutal aftereffects.

Asher exhaled deeply in relief, then descended smoothly and steadily. Breathing came easy now, and upon his feet meeting the glassy surface, the intense heat hit him—the air itself blazed fiercely. From high above, he’d already bled and struggled to breathe, but here on the battlefield, it felt infinitely more savage.

Asher knew for sure that absent Malrik’s crimson-orange Solar Energy barrier, death would have claimed him long before reaching this spot. Wild thoughts raced through his mind at the realization, and with Malrik’s ongoing support, they shifted to another remote battlefield section, now a charred, boundless sinkhole vanishing into the horizon.

No explanation required; Asher grasped an ocean had once filled this void, erased utterly as if it never was. Elsewhere, a whole forest expanse had vanished from Crymora’s face. Asher quit estimating ranges; all devastation spanned thousands of kilometers with ease.

’Such power,’ Asher mused inwardly, struggling to accept humans wielding such apocalyptic might. Even gods in his past life’s films as Ethan couldn’t match this utter annihilation.

’How many Crownstar Life Rankers roam Crymora?’ Asher pondered again. With each capable of this effortless apocalypse, the world should have perished already.

Moreover, how could one planet hold so many titans? Earth would shatter under their power alone.

His thoughts wandered to Cindralis, also a Crownstar Life Ranker, prompting another soft sigh. ’In novels, Academy Principals are never feeble,’ he realized.

’That’s why Father, Big Brother, and Cindralis chose compensation over battle,’ he reflected, ’one clash could obliterate the entire Separate Dimension.’

Asher sighed yet again; this godlike prowess loomed impossibly remote from his grasp.

’I wonder who Big Brother battled here,’ he contemplated, noting not just Malrik’s lingering energy but his foe’s matching scars of cataclysmic ruin across the field.