Chapter 1033: You’re confident
The ground groaned, then split with a deafening crack as a colossal, Accursed Monolith tore its way out of the earth. It immediately began to pulse, a dark beacon drawing in all the necrotic energy and raw despair from the blood-soaked battlefield.
ROAR!
From the churned soil at its base, a Dread Revenant clawed its way free. Clad in shattered armor from a forgotten age, its aura was ancient and suffocating. It took one look at the battlefield, its hollow eye sockets locking onto the Gnasher Race arch lord still carving through the allied fodder.
"An arch lord!" a Gnasher Race guardian cried out in shock. The creature Arthas had summoned was an arch lord itself.
The Dread Revenant bellowed and launched itself forward like a cannonball, closing the distance to engage the enemy in a savage, close-quarters brawl.
Behind the lines, seeing his summon successfully engage its target, Arthas turned his attention back to the two enemies still caught in his ethereal Wraithgrasp.
Eight arch lords total. More than I bargained for.
Five minutes earlier. Death Spiral Zone, the heart of the Gnasher Race Nest.
Not long after Matriarch Jynara had dispatched her guardians, the monolithic statue behind her finally stirred.
"More invaders?" a voice rumbled from the stone, thick with the dust of millennia, as if waking from a dream that had lasted eons.
"Ancestor, the invaders’ elites are powerful," Matriarch Jynara reported, her head bowed. "They have an undead tower, and its contents remain shielded from our scrying."
In her eyes, the only piece of intel truly worthy of the Ancestor’s attention was that tower. As the war raged, the Gnasher Race’s only real hesitation stemmed from that single, ominous structure looming behind the undead armies. It was the sole reason Jynara herself had not yet joined the battle.
But now, with the Ancestor’s will descending, she finally had the confidence to step out of the Nest and crush her enemies.
"Go," the statue commanded. "Slaughter every last intruder on our territory. Let their bodies pile high as a warning to any who would dare covet this land."
As the last word fell, the statue cracked open, stone flaking away as the being within came fully alive. It shot upward, bursting through the roof of the Nest and appearing in the sky high above the battlefield.
Its arrival was timed perfectly to the moment Arthas had snared two enemy guardians in his Wraithgrasp, preparing to execute them.
"Invaders die here," the Ancestor declared, its gaze fixed on Arthas’s lich avatar. It gestured, its finger tracing a sigil in the void.
A monstrous, Gnasher-like maw of pure energy materialized above the lich, preparing to bite down and annihilate it.
"Hmph. About damn time you showed your face."
From within the lich’s form, the Phantom of the Bone Sovereign erupted—a spectral projection of Arthas’s true power—and shattered the maw with a single, contemptuous punch.
The Ancestor wasted no words. Its attack thwarted, it simply strode through the air toward Arthas.
Arthas met the charge without a hint of fear, his own power flaring. Shedding his lich form, his true avatar met the Ancestor head-on.
BOOM!
High in the sky, the two demigod phantoms collided. Warring realities ground against one another, their fundamental rules clashing, repelling, and dissolving into chaos until the very fabric of the sky began to boil. The sight was apocalyptic.
Down below, the now-unoccupied lich avatar grew colder, its empty sockets glowing as it summoned two more skeletal arms. But at that exact moment, the two ensnared guardians, seemingly acting on a new command, began to glow with sacrificial energy.
The ambient elements went into a frenzy, space itself warping as miniature cores of raw fire began to coalesce.
VREEEEN!
One guardian’s ultimate skill activated first—Final Reckoning: Voidlock. The lich was instantly imprisoned, banished to a pocket dimension of absolute nothingness. An instant later, the second guardian’s ability triggered—Final Reckoning: Pyreburst. An incandescent, soul-searing firestorm erupted, incinerating the Voidlock and everything within it from existence.
And just like that, the last of the immediate arch lord threats on the field was gone.
Matriarch Jynara’s figure finally descended, appearing serenely above the battlefield. With a flicker of teleportation, she was behind the Dread Revenant, a single punch reducing the ancient creature to a cloud of dust and bone fragments.
But it wasn’t over. The Revenant began to reform at the base of the Accursed Monolith.
Jynara’s brow furrowed in annoyance. She teleported again, shattering it with another blow. Realizing the source of its immortality, she teleported a final time, appearing before the Accursed Monolith itself. She drove her fist into the black stone, and it exploded into a million pieces.
This time, the Dread Revenant stayed dead.
A cold smirk touched Jynara’s lips. Now, she was the single most powerful being on the field. Her gaze shifted, locking onto the distant undead tower. It was time to tear down the fortress that had brought this war to her people.
"Victory belongs to the Gnasher Race!" she declared to the heavens, striding through the air. In her wake, the swarming small scorpions and skeletal soldiers on the ground below disintegrated into dust, unable to withstand her sheer presence.
Awwrooo... awwrooo...
Crap, crap, crap, what do I do? What do I DO?! Thinking isn’t my strong suit!
Watching the enemy arch lord advance, Dirtclaw, posted as guard before the Sand Scorpion Nest, felt his mind go completely blank. He had only just hit Legendary level; the thought of fighting an arch lord was something out of a nightmare.
This is it. I’m all in.
AWOOOOOO!
Primal instinct took over. Despite his bloodline’s evolution into the formidable Hell-Drake Hound, in this moment of pure terror, all Dirtclaw could do was let out a desperate, gnollish howl. It was a sound of pure, unadulterated panic.
THUMP.
Just then, a deep, resonant impact echoed from deep within the earth.
The ground bucked and shuddered, a tremor so violent it even drew Matriarch Jynara’s attention. As she looked down, the battlefield split open. A bottomless fissure tore through the land, stretching from the epicenter to the horizon.
An overwhelming aura of dread erupted from the chasm.
In the next instant, a phantom scythe materialized in front of Jynara, swinging in a lethal arc. She teleported reflexively, the blade cleaving through the space where she’d been a nanosecond before.
It was obvious who had caused the tremor. Bursting from the newly formed canyon, freed from the sacrificial prison, was Orion, the Deathly Soul-Reaper.
"Don’t be so sure victory belongs to you," Orion said, his presence slightly diminished. He had been forced to use a brute-force method to break the guardians’ trap. He knew that if he was out of the fight for too long, Arthas would be overwhelmed, and both the undead tower and the Sand Scorpion Nest would fall.
Unfortunately, he was still a step too late.
He could no longer sense Arthas’s lich avatar. Its presence had been completely erased.
Orion’s heart sank. He glanced up at the highest point in the sky, where two mighty, incandescent powers were still locked in a world-breaking struggle.
"I knew the Tomb of the Crushing Earth wouldn’t hold you," Matriarch Jynara said, eyeing him with an unnerving calm. "But I didn’t expect you back so soon." As an arch lord at her peak, she had no fear of the Deathly Soul-Reaper. She already had a plan to deal with him.
"A broodmother," Orion noted, pulling his gaze from the heavens to lock onto Jynara. Her eyes were sharp, calculating. He could practically taste the killing intent rolling off her. "You’re confident."