CLEAVER OF SIN Chapter 638: Buzzing

Malrik's form plummeted sharply as he hurtled toward the Royal Palace, utterly disregarding the Imperial Knight Commander and Vice Commander; those two were never his aim, his only target being the Emperor who had dared to try dominating his younger brother.

The Commander and Vice Commander sprang into pursuit the moment they spotted Malrik's movement, yet he had already bridged the gap in under a second. Malrik's blue eyes shimmered with frigid chill as his stare fixed on the Palace; he sensed a massive dome enveloping the whole structure, a shield guarding it from harm, yet it posed no obstacle to him at all.

With zero pause, he unleashed his Katana, Solaris, in a mighty swing brimming with power, Solar Energy wrapping his blade in scorching light, and with an explosive clash, katana struck shield. Malrik sensed his weapon bounce back with tremendous power, his Solar Energy fiercely repelled by the dome as it surged toward him with matching fury.

Malrik simply blinked out of existence from his position, smoothly evading the returning Solar Energy, which instead blasted ahead and smashed brutally into the approaching Commander and Vice Commander, halting their charge.

Malrik regarded the dome with serene detachment; though his single blow hadn't shattered it, he remained utterly unconcerned. If the Emperor's defensive barrier could be breached so effortlessly, the ruler would be little more than a pretender. Malrik was certain, beyond any question, that his prior failure to break it stemmed not from its overwhelming strength, but merely from insufficient force in his strike; nothing more.

Yet no matter... the barrier wasn't his foe.

Malrik prepared to teleport, aiming to skirt the hindrance completely, but space itself resisted his command. He raised an eyebrow faintly upon noticing the barrier's special trait or power that completely blocked teleportation and all spatial manipulations.

"MALRIK WARGRAVE, YOU SHALL PAY FOR YOUR SINS!!!" the Knight Commander bellowed in rage as he rocketed toward Malrik at breakneck speed, the Vice Commander trailing right behind without delay.

Malrik's gaze drifted slowly from the barrier ahead, his icy stare pinning the advancing veteran pair. "You know, I simply intended to ignore both of you, since neither were my target, but it seems that if I do not put you down, you will simply continue buzzing in my ear without end," he remarked in a dull, toneless voice, as if speaking to mere nobodies instead of formidable foes.

In the instant that followed, he blurred away in a golden-orange streak, materializing right in front of the Vice Commander. The warrior countered at once, thrusting his sabre ahead amid surging red lightning that amplified his velocity to extreme heights and infused his attack with horrifying destructive power.

Malrik's katana whipped out at dazzling velocity, enveloped in fiery Solar Energy, but right as their blades neared collision, his katana veered sharply in mid-swing, altering course and aim to slice toward the Vice Commander's chest.

And with catastrophic, obliterating might, Malrik's blade ripped into the Vice Commander's breastplate, Solar Energy burning fiercely into the armor as if determined to liquefy and obliterate it, while myriad katana scars erupted across the Vice Commander's frame.

With a colossal, ruinous collision, the Vice Commander's body was flung downward with irresistible momentum, his figure slamming savagely into the ground and carving a vast crater stretching fifty kilometers wide and plunging over a thousand meters deep, the terrain buckling under the strike's overwhelming force.

Yet despite the insane collision, the man avoided severe injury; he had enveloped his body in red lightning beforehand, greatly reducing most of the harm he might have endured.

Malrik's eyes flicked sharply sideways, where the Commander was already lunging, his enormous broadsword crashing down with power enough to cleave the heavens asunder, fierce blue flames engulfing the blade in annihilating energy.

Facing the oncoming assault, Malrik merely tilted aside as if the sky were firm earth underfoot, casually dodging and slipping past the blow with zero exertion. The Commander's broadsword released a searing arc of fiery energy that plummeted with colossal ruinous power, smashing fiercely against the barrier beneath and sending waves rippling over its face.

Malrik didn’t just dodge—he struck back fiercely. His leg whipped skyward at absurd, otherworldly speed, the air and winds howling savagely as his knee rocketed toward the Commander’s jaw with ruinous might. Yet the Commander responded with lightning-quick precision; his right hand let go of the broadsword’s hilt while his palm surged ahead, halting Malrik’s assault in its tracks, rings of compressed wind bursting explosively from the clash point.

Before the Commander could even register the events, Malrik flicked his hand nonchalantly, unleashing a surge of golden-orange erasing energy that roared forth with obliterating power, smashing straight into the Commander from zero distance. The Commander got blasted away instantly, totally unprepared, his form hurtling wildly through the sky as the explosion’s ferocious force propelled him out of control.

Yet before he could steady himself in midair, Malrik had already arrived. He materialized in a blink, foot hoisted high overhead, then hammered it down like a plummeting meteor, his heel diving toward the Commander’s chest with apocalyptic strength.

The strike hit with reality-cracking power; for a split second, the world appeared to halt, stuttering back into motion under the kick’s overwhelming force. The Commander plunged downward without resistance, balance and bodily control shattered, his back crashing brutally into the ground below, unleashing towering clouds of dust while sand, rocks, and boulders shot skyward from the tremendous collision.

The Vice Commander sprang into action anew, lightning raging fiercely around his arm, and from the heavens, clouds split apart as a massive red lightning bolt plunged ferociously onto Malrik’s spot. Malrik’s gaze whipped toward the descending strike, but he offered no defense; rather, his figure broke apart into myriad light particles like photons, vanishing completely from sight.

In the very next moment, he reconstituted flawlessly next to the Vice Commander, and upon rematerializing, he launched a cataclysmic punch infused with solar power, Solar Energy erupting like a furious, space-shattering supernova.

The Vice Commander’s form instantly turned to lightning streaks, dodging the blow by a hair as Malrik’s fist scorched through space’s essence itself. Even as the Vice Commander evaded, Malrik chased relentlessly, anticipating every move as if reading from a simple scroll.

The split second the Vice Commander reformed, Malrik was waiting there, identical stance, identical swing, identical destructive blow, and like a star’s implosion, his fist crashed into the Vice Commander’s breastplate with a deafening, skeleton-jarring thud.

Once more driven earthward, the Vice Commander nonetheless wrested back command of his body before impact, his boots pounding the dirt with a booming echo as he slid backward across the landscape until grinding to a hard halt.