Chapter 234: The Howl

CRACK-BOOM!!!

The deafening explosion echoed through the battlefield as Raiden’s words hung in the air. The remaining Platinum-Tier beasts, pushed far beyond their natural limits by Darius forcing the bloodline crests to their absolute breaking point, let out a unified, maddened howl that actually tore the heavy clouds above them apart.

These were no longer just large animals; under the amplified power of the Stormwind crests, they were walking natural disasters. This was the true, terrifying reality of Platinum-Tier Terra Beasts, a level of power that could permanently alter the geography of the world just by throwing a tantrum.

An enormous Earth-type ape slammed its giant fists into the ground, and the entire terrain just completely shattered. A massive fissure over fifty metres wide ripped through the forest, swallowing giant ancient trees whole, while boulders the size of small mountains were telekinetically ripped from the earth and hurled into the sky.

Next to it, a wind-type mantis whipped up a hurricane so densely packed with cutting air that it sheared the top half of the forest clean off, turning the flying debris into a terrifying meat grinder. The sheer scale of destruction threatened to bury everyone alive under millions of tons of pressure and crushing rock.

Against this apocalyptic backdrop of floating boulders and a literal hurricane of blades, Woolie looked no bigger than a speck of dust. But the little sheep didn’t back down an inch.

Instead, the violet lightning wrapping around his body flared so brightly it painted the entire destroyed forest in an eerie, oppressive purple hue.

"Woolie Woo!!" Are you throwing rocks at this Emperor?! How insulting!!

With a heavy stomp of his tiny hoof, Woolie unleashed a brand new defensive move. Emperor’s Thunder Dome!!

A hemispherical barrier of pure, highly concentrated lightning expanded outward from his small body. When the mountain-sized boulders crashed into the dome, they were instantly vaporised into fine grey dust by the sheer heat and ridiculous voltage of his energy. The massive wind blades sparked and fizzled out against the barrier, completely unable to penetrate the absurd density of his aura.

Theodore shielded his eyes against the blinding flashes, his brain struggling to process the impossible math of the situation. A Gold-Tier beast was supposed to have a mere fraction of the aura capacity of a Platinum-Tier. The difference in their natural energy reserves was like comparing a small pond to a raging ocean.

Yet, Woolie wasn’t winning by having more energy; he was winning because his energy was fundamentally, terrifyingly superior.

The violet and crimson lightning wasn’t just elemental power; it was heavy, oppressive, and carried the ancient, overbearing weight of a mythical bloodline. While the Platinum beasts were throwing oceans of muddy water at him, Woolie was piercing right through it with a needle made of solid diamond.

Raiden watched the spectacular light show with a proud smirk on his face, completely unbothered by the landscape collapsing around them. He knew better than anyone the hellish training, the countless resources, and the absurd amount of pain that had gone into building the foundation of that small sheep.

His Woolie wasn’t the type that just intended to play defence forever. The Emperor was first and foremost an absolute unit that took every single attack head-on!!

Dropping the lightning dome, he launched himself into the air using Lightning Flash Step, leaving behind a trail of violet sonic booms that practically shattered the eardrums of the Battle Masters cowering below.

He appeared directly above the giant Earth-type ape in the blink of an eye. Before the massive beast could even register the sudden shift in air pressure, Woolie spun mid-air and delivered a devastating, lightning-coated axe kick right to the top of its thick skull.

BANG!!!

The impact was so severe that the giant ape was driven vertically down into the solid bedrock, creating a massive sinkhole that swallowed its body completely, leaving nothing behind but a cloud of dust and a groaning crater.

"Sha Sha!!" Neva cheered from the sidelines, waving her little light constructs around like glowing pompoms, completely ignoring the fact that a stray shockwave from the impact had just levelled the rocky hill right behind her.

Rose just flicked her tongue with a satisfied hiss, casually raising a thick blood wall to block flying rocks and debris from hitting Raiden, who was currently busy trying to wipe some dust off his shirt.

Seeing his supposedly invincible forces get completely dismantled by a Gold-Tier sheep who was literally using them as stepping stones, Darius completely lost whatever was left of his sanity.

His eyes became bloodshot, and he bit his own thumb, spitting a mouthful of blood directly onto the main control crest in his hand. The metallic badge let out a piercing, unnatural shriek that sounded like crying glass.

"WHAT ARE YOU GUYS DOING?!! THAT IS JUST A GOLD TIER SHEEP?!! FIGHT BACK AND WIN THIS DAMNIT!! I WON’T LET THIS END HERE!!!"

The final three Platinum beasts—a massive twin-tailed scorpion, a heavily armoured rhino-beetle, and a towering storm-eagle, they all began to bleed from their eyes and mouths.

Their bodies swelled grotesquely as they merged their remaining life force and elements into one final, desperate, suicidal attack. The earth, the wind, and a highly corrosive purple poison started flowing from their bodies and blended together in the sky, forming a massive, swirling sphere of annihilation that physically blotted out the sun.

The sheer gravitational pull of the combined attack began uprooting the remaining trees from the ground, sucking them into the vortex where they were instantly shredded into nothingness.

BOOM!!!

Just looking at the attack, more than half of the Battle Masters abandoned their posts and started running away as fast as possible.

Woolie looked up at the apocalyptic sphere of energy descending toward him with shining eyes, which was easily large enough to wipe the entire campsite and everyone standing in it off the map forever.

He didn’t try to dodge, and he certainly didn’t try to run away. Only the weak people ran away, and Emperor Woolie was anything but weak. Instead, the cheerful arrogance in his eyes was slowly replaced by a cold, domineering glare that looked suspiciously predatory, as if an ancient predator had just opened its eyes from a long slumber.

"Woolie..."

He planted his hooves firmly into the cracked earth, and the atmosphere around him suddenly grew impossibly heavy, suffocating the air out of the lungs of everyone watching.

The crimson fire and the violet lightning stopped swirling wildly around the battlefield and instead snapped directly onto his body, clinging to his wool like a skin-tight suit of electrical armour. The two highly opposing energies, rather than rejecting each other and exploding, merged perfectly in a terrifying display of pure destructive potential.

"Woolie Woo!!!" This Emperor said three minutes, and three minutes is exactly what it will be!!

"We are betting it all on you, Woolie!! I know you can do it!!! GO!!!" Raiden shouted loudly, causing the electric current surrounding him to grow even more intensely,

This was his ultimate, undisputed strongest attack.

Twin Thunder Annihilation!!!

"YOU LITTLE SHEEP WILL LOSE TO ME!!! FINISH THEM ALL!!" Darius’s hands clutched the badge in his hand tightly as blood started flowing down his lips, but he didn’t notice.

With a booming shockwave that temporarily deafened everyone in a five-mile radius, Woolie launched himself upward into the sky. He didn’t use a beam or a ranged projectile; he became the absolute weapon himself.

Covered entirely in a terrifying, highly condensed mixture of red and violet lightning, he performed a full-body wall tackle, rocketing straight toward the absolute centre of the descending sphere of destruction like a meteor flying in reverse.

BOOM!!!!

The moment Woolie collided with the massive elemental sphere, the entire world seemed to hold its breath. For a fraction of a second, the two monstrous forces pushed against each other in a deadly stalemate of blinding light and crushing pressure, tearing the spatial stability of the private realm to its absolute limits.

Then, the crimson and violet lightning simply tore right through the sphere like a heated bullet ripping through a rotten apple.

The massive combined attack destabilised instantly and exploded outward, raining harmlessly across the shielded boundaries of the private realm in a shower of broken elemental energy. But Woolie didn’t stop there. He carried that terrifying forward momentum straight through the explosion and slammed head-on into the three remaining Platinum-Tier beasts that were hovering helplessly in the air.

BOOOOOOM!!!

The impact sounded like a falling star striking the earth. The three massive Terra Beasts were thrown in entirely different directions, their thick natural armour completely shattered, their borrowed bloodline power instantly erased by the sheer voltage running through their veins. They crashed into the distant treeline and the rocky cliffs, landing as nothing more than twitching heaps of unconscious flesh, completely unable to move a single muscle.

Woolie landed softly on the ground a moment later, the red and violet lightning slowly fading back into his fluffy wool. He let out a small breath of white smoke from his nose and casually trotted back toward Raiden, looking like he had just finished a small workout rather than a deadly fight.

"No...this isn’t possible...no way..."

Darius collapsed to his knees with a dull thud, the master control crest in his hand completely shattering into useless grey dust that blew away in the wind. He stared at the ruined landscape, at the dozens of craters, and at his unconscious army, his mind completely unable to process the total, humiliating defeat he had just suffered at the hands of a single farm animal.

Aria, standing in the back with wide, disbelieving eyes, slowly raised her trembling wrist to look at her watch. She blinked, rubbed her eyes, and looked again just to be absolutely sure her eyes weren’t playing tricks on her in the chaos.

"Two minutes and fifty-two seconds," she whispered, her voice carrying clearly across the dead-silent, completely devastated battlefield.

"He did it...he ended the fight in...2 minutes and 52 seconds..."

Raiden stretched his arms lazily, walking over to the centre of the clearing and patting the little sheep’s head with a satisfied grin. "See? I told you guys not to worry. When Emperor Woolie makes a promise, he always keeps it. Right, Woolie??"

"AWOOO!!!"

CRACK-BANG!!!