His eyes zeroed in on One. The Drakkhan was fighting the defending Elite Squad’s Captain, as expected. Instead of going there to help him, however, Liam turned away.

‘This is an opportunity.’

He wasn’t sure how powerful he was right now, but he was decidedly incomparable to before. The enemies were unaware of this fact. He could exploit this gap in their knowledge, attacking the forcefield for as long as possible before reinforcements came his way.

‘Since it’s been six months, more troops from the Kingdom of Luweth might have arrived.’

There could be more Elite-level enemies than he thought. He should move carefully but quickly. The more damage he did in as little of a time frame as possible, the better.

‘Let’s begin.’

Liam felt the Aura within him flow. All of its attributes were drastically stronger, but he circulated it slowly. Once he felt like he had reached the same level of power as before his training, he started running to Cinzolia Fortress. The sand gave way to his feet, pushing him forward in the direction of his objective. Soon, he got close enough to be noticed. Five soldiers turned to him, firing Aura waves in his direction as soon as he got within five kilometers of the forcefield. In the midst of the hundreds of millions of attacks going on at the same time, both above and next to Liam, this was virtually unnoticeable. This was what Liam was counting on.

‘Focus.’

His Aura sped up. Like a raging river, it flowed within his Pathways with unprecedented force. It got faster and faster until the cycles reached blinding speeds. Liam flexed his legs as he crouched, feeling the might of his new body. His muscles bulged, their defined appearance not hiding the power they possessed in the least.

BANG

Liam shot forward like a bullet, immediately breaking the sound barrier. In moments, he accelerated to Mach 12. Four kilometers were crossed in a second, making the soldiers’ attacks miss.

‘Singularity.’

He controlled his strongest Active Skill, making only about 20% of his Aura be consumed, while the weight of his existence descended in full. His existence was compressed into a single infinitesimal dot. Instead of white, the dot was now black with golden strands; it floated in spacetime for an instant before accelerating, leaving a golden streak in its wake. It hit the forcefield silently and softly, as if it were merely caressing it.

Pressure could be calculated by the amount of force over a certain surface area. In terms of force, all of Liam’s attributes had increased since the last time he used Singularity, but most importantly, the weight of his existence had surged massively. Withstanding contact with the incomprehensible entities, while seemingly simple, could be considered his greatest achievement, incomparable to killing a Titan or a soldier from the Kingdom of Luweth. As such, Liam knew this would be his strongest Singularity so far based on that alone. In terms of surface area, the more proficient Liam grew with his Skill, the smaller the dot became. It meant that the pressure applied was much higher than only the amount of force Liam used.

The result was obvious.

CRACK

The cracking sound resounded on the battlefield, making every single combatant freeze in place at the same time. For the first time, the battlefield entered a lull. All soldiers turned in Liam’s direction. Their eyes reflected a small crack on the forcefield that protected Cinzolia. It could not be considered large or wide, being only thirty centimeters tall and ten centimeters wide. The forcefield grew brighter, and the crack started to close. The shield crawled over itself to repair the hole. The soldiers only moved again when it was already halfway done.

“CHARGE!”

One’s voice pierced the skies. As if they had practiced it beforehand, the hundreds of millions of Drakkhan soldiers started to converge in Liam’s direction, while starting to bombard the forcefield with Skills in order to keep the defenders busy. At the same time, the Kingdom of Luweth’s soldiers dashed at Liam by the tens of thousands, using their fastest movement Skills.

Liam jumped backwards, evading most of the blows, but there were simply too many attacks. As such, he did the only thing he could. He faced them head-on.

‘Riptide.’

Using the defensive Skill taught to him by Eynart, he used the blows’ own strength against them, deflecting a good portion of them. As for the rest….

‘Event Horizon.’

Everything within a radius of 500 meters was devoured by the black tide. It stretched over the forcefield, digging into the small gap Liam had created and crawling over Cinzolia’s walls. It was then that Liam noticed a difference.

‘What is this?’

Before, Event Horizon was a simple Aura domain. His Aura stretched over a certain distance, grinding everything within it to nothingness. This time, however, it was completely chaotic. The Aura’s outline was completely still but inside the Skill’s range, it writhed and moved in random directions multiple times every second. The Aura pushed and then pulled, forcing something upwards only to force it to go to the right an instant later. The direction of his Aura’s force changed so many times that it threw all the enemies inside its range completely off-balance. They had to concentrate fully to remain standing and not be dragged away. It was the moment when Event Horizon became more than a defensive Skill, turning into something that could actively support Liam for the entirety of its duration.

Liam decided to try to move while Event Horizon was still active. He had only managed to do so a few times, and it had made the Skill grow unstable, but he felt like it had changed more than it seemed. The moment his feet touched the ground, he dashed back at his top speed. As he expected, the Skill shook but did not shatter immediately as it would have in earlier days. Taking advantage of this, Liam kept it up for as long as possible. The vast majority of the enemy moves simply missed him, due to his relatively small size and the actions of the Drakkhan army, but a few tens still got through. He weaved between them, blocking and parrying the ones he could not dodge, eventually escaping the waves of enemies almost unscathed.

Liam glanced at the forcefield, using his Aura Sight to see past the enemies in front of it. The crack had already completely repaired itself, cutting through his Event Horizon after much effort.

‘Won’t be that easy, huh.’

The next second, Danger Sense flared up.

‘Waterstep.’

He disappeared from his position, appearing over ten kilometers away, but the attack still reached him all the same. Gritting his teeth, Liam pierced at the figure attacking him.

BANG

Spear and greatsword clashed, upturning the earth around the two of them for kilometers on end. The attacker was a humanoid in green armor that looked similar to the one worn by the Drakkhan Elite Squads. Liam immediately realized that it was a Captain.

The greatsword pressed down on his spear, making it quickly be pushed towards Liam’s body. It was a testament to the gap that still existed between him and the Captains of the Elite Squads. Swinging his spear to the side, Liam’s right foot dug into the armored figure’s torso, pushing them back almost a hundred meters. The next instant, the Captain appeared right next to Liam, slashing horizontally with his sword. The youth ducked and rotated in place, avoiding the blow and attacking at the same time.

‘Crescent Moon Wave.’

From the spear’s blade, a large, black, crescent-moon-shaped blade of Aura shot out, almost two kilometers in length and over two hundred meters in height. It completely enveloped the armored figure, making them burst forth with their own Aura, splitting the Wave in half. Nevertheless, the slash that cut the Wave apart left a small gap in their defense. It would take a tenth of a second longer for the Captain to return to a neutral position. That was enough.

‘Drought.’

The golden beam surrounded by a dark outline shot towards the Captain’s chest. Faster than even Liam’s movement speed, it crossed the small gap between them in a flash.

BOOM

The Captain was hit head-on. Flying backwards, the warrior sunk their feet into the sand, creating large gashes that extended for almost a kilometer. Then, the Captain immediately stabilized themselves and lowered their center of gravity, getting ready to attack once more. Liam braced himself while inwardly feeling amazed at the enemy’s durability. Even though they had taken a clean hit from a Drought at point-blank range, they seemed to be virtually uninjured. Was the gap between him and the Captains really that large? Under his helmet, Liam’s eyes narrowed. He didn’t believe it. He could now clearly feel how much his strength had increased. He refused to accept that he was still far away from One’s level of power. It was then that the Captain abruptly fell to one knee, trying to stand up only to stumble again. Liam’s eyes widened at this opportunity.

As Liam circulated his Aura as fast as he could, the sky was dyed orange. A titanic wave of Aura washed over him, converging to the figure of the kneeling enemy. In mere instants, the enemy Captain slapped forward, forcefully pushing them backwards due to the counterforce, and used a movement Skill, retreating in the direction of the forcefield. However, when they were almost inside, the owner of the orange Aura arrived, turning his hilt into a scythe and slashing at the enemy.

CLANG

Liam used his Aura to shield his eyes from the upturned ground, swinging his arm and splitting the wave of dust and sand that came his way. His gaze zeroed in on the two fighters in front of the green barrier. With their back against the ground, the enemy Captain had their greatsword raised in front of them and their two hands on the blade, pushing against the scythe’s shaft and keeping its blade’s tip from piercing into their chest. After a second of pushing, One raised his scythe and struck down once more. Not missing this gap, the enemy immediately kicked One’s torso, pushing both of them away from each other. Naturally, One’s range was much higher than the distance now created between them, but the enemy never needed to get far away in the first place.

One’s scythe hit the ground, making it veritably explode. The sand around him was raised to the skies, hiding his figure and shrouding the surrounding kilometers. The next instant, the dust cloud was split apart.

BOOM

The forcefield shook. Behind it, the figure of the enemy Captain clutching their chest could be seen. They had succeeded in retreating into the forcefield, but seemingly not without a price, Liam noticed. One had slashed once more to the side, splitting the dust cloud and hitting the forcefield as soon as the enemy’s presence was detected from inside the barrier.

Powerful attacks came from different directions. The enemy Elite Squad surrounded their Captain, striking at One. Liam’s Elite Squad responded virtually at the same time, their attacks meeting on the way and detonating, pushing all the surrounding warriors away and causing hundreds of casualties. The next moment, the ordinary Drakkhan troops surrounded them while the enemy Elite Squad retreated further inside the forcefield, giving Liam’s squad some breathing room. Almost immediately, One grabbed Liam’s shoulder and forcefully turned Liam towards him. The youth could feel the lizardman’s burning gaze even through the helmet.

“How?”

One’s voice was incredulous. Liam pretended to be confused.

“I don’t understand what you mean.”

The Drakkhan tightened his grip on Liam’s shoulder.

“It’s only been six months, during which you didn’t fight or obtain any XP at all. You did not receive the buff to Skill Proficiency that occurs during life-and-death battles, nor did you obtain access to further levels of the Library. How did you grow so much more powerful?”

In his mind, Liam cursed his own actions. Caught by surprise, he had fought the enemy Captain seriously, matching their strength at least momentarily. He hadn’t had the time to adjust his power to seem weaker than he actually was. The result was this. The gazes of his teammates dug into his back, both Elite Squad members and common soldiers.