Chapter 375: A month passed and the War Begins

Chapter 375: Chapter 375: A month passed and the War Begins

Chapter 375: A month passed and the War Begins

An entire month passed in the blink of an eye.

Within the hidden valley, the sounds of training never ceased from dawn until dusk.

And the results were beyond anything Fridleif could have ever imagined.

On the training grounds, a burly warrior roared as he drove his fist forward. The perfected Mountain Shattering Fist erupted with three times its former might, instantly reducing a boulder to powder.

A hundred paces away, a young swordsman moved like flowing water. His blade traced an elegant arc, and the wooden practice post in front of him was severed into three clean pieces before it even toppled.

Under Rhain’s ruthless guidance, the foundations of every Crystalveil warrior were torn down and rebuilt from the ground up.

Warriors who had been stuck at bottlenecks for years shattered them one after another.

Early-stage Core Formation veterans broke through to the middle stage.

Spirit Manifestation elites stepped into the Core Formation Realm.

Even the ordinary fighters found their strength multiplied two to three times over.

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Three days later

BOOM... BOOM... BOOM...

The heavy sound rolled through the canyons like the heartbeat of a waking giant.

On the walls of the valley entrance, the scout on watch paled and frantically blew his horn.

"They’re here! The Bone Skull army! Thousands of them!"

From the gorge beyond the narrow entrance, a savage tide of warriors flooded into view. Row upon row of hulking, hide-clad brutes stretched across the canyon as far as the eye could see, their bone totems held high, their faces smeared with ferocious expressions.

The entire might of the Bone Skull Tribe had come.

At the very front of the army stood Skarn.

The eight-foot-tall giant rested his massive axe over his shoulder, the newly formed Domain Master aura rolling off his frame in waves.

His yellow eyes gleamed with cruel anticipation as he stared down the narrow canyon path leading into the valley.

"FRIDLEIF!" Skarn’s booming voice tore through the gorge. "Your month is up! Come out and kneel, or I will march in and bathe this valley with your blood!"

Inside the valley, the Crystalveil Tribe did not cower.

BANG!

The central gates were thrown open.

Marching out in disciplined, thunderous formations were the Crystalveil warriors — and they looked nothing like the defenders Skarn expected.

Their auras were dense and sharp. Their eyes held no fear, only cold battle intent forged through a month of hellish training.

At their head walked Fridleif, his aura blazing like a bonfire.

Behind him stood Rhain, his hands clasped casually behind his back, alongside Lyra, whose crimson eyes swept over the Bone Skull horde with open disdain.

Skarn’s yellow eyes narrowed as the two forces faced each other across the gorge.

"So, you have chosen to die standing," Skarn sneered, stepping forward. His Domain Master pressure crashed down like a collapsing mountain. "I will give you one final chance, Fridleif. Unconditional surrender. Hand over the valley, its resources, and the outsiders. Kneel, and I will let your bloodline survive as slaves."

Fridleif’s response was immediate.

"You bark like a mad dog, Skarn," Fridleif roared, his voice carrying across the entire battlefield. "The Crystalveil Tribe gave you its answer a month ago. We would rather die standing than live kneeling. This valley is ours. Our benefactors are under our protection. If you want them..."

He drew his heavy saber, and a hundred warriors roared behind him.

"...then come and take them!"

Skarn’s expression twisted with fury.

"FINE! SLAUGHTER THEM ALL!"

"CHARGE!"

Thousands of Bone Skull warriors surged forward like a savage tidal wave, flooding into the narrow canyon with blood-curdling war cries. The ground trembled under their charge.

"Hold the line!" Fridleif bellowed. "FOR THE CRYSTALVEIL TRIBE!"

"FOR THE CRYSTALVEIL TRIBE!" hundreds of voices roared back.

The first wave of Bone Skull warriors charged straight into the gorge — and straight into Karsten’s web of death.

"NOW!" Karsten roared from his perch above the canyon wall, slashing down with his arm.

SNAP! SNAP! SNAP!

Concealed tripwires triggered in sequence.

Massive boulders, suspended for a month above the narrow path, came crashing down.

The front ranks of the charge didn’t even have time to scream before they were crushed into paste beneath tons of falling rock.

"AAARRGGHH!"

"AMBUSH! THERE’S AN—"

SCHLICK! SCHLICK! SCHLICK!

From both canyon walls, sharpened wooden spikes smeared with Devil-Root sap shot out of concealed holes, impaling the warriors who dodged the boulders.

Within seconds, their legs went numb. Within a minute, they collapsed, paralyzed and helpless, only to be finished off by Crystalveil archers raining arrows from above.

"HAHAHAHA!" Karsten laughed maniacally, hurling a jar of toxic grease onto the panicking enemy ranks below. "Welcome to your graveyard, you filthy dogs! Did you really think we’d roll out a red carpet?!"

The mercenaries worked alongside the tribal scouts with practiced efficiency, triggering trap after trap.

The narrow gorge that was supposed to be the Bone Skulls’ highway into the valley became a channel of slaughter.

For every three steps the enemy advanced, they paid for it in blood.

But the Bone Skull Tribe was too numerous.

Thousands pressed forward relentlessly, and no amount of traps could hold back a tide forever.

"Front line, engage!" Fridleif commanded.

The Crystalveil shield wall locked together at the gorge’s inner exit, and the true clash began.

And that was when the Bone Skull warriors discovered something horrifying.

The Crystalveil fighters were... different.

A Bone Skull brute swung his bone club down at a young Crystalveil warrior with full force — a blow that should have shattered the boy’s shield and his skull along with it.

The boy easily sidestepped with precision, drove his elbow into the brute’s exposed ribs with perfectly channeled force, and finished with a palm strike that sent the man flying backward into his own comrades.

Another warrior faced two attackers at once.

Instead of panicking, his footwork flowed like water, and two strikes — one to a throat, one to a knee — dropped both enemies before they could coordinate.

"What... what is this?!" a Bone Skull squad leader shrieked, watching his men get dismantled by opponents they had always considered weaker. "These Crystalveil dogs fight like demons!"

Every movement the Crystalveil warriors made had been ruthlessly optimized.

No wasted motion. No brute swinging. Every strike landed with three times the power at half the effort.

The once-"superior" Bone Skull fighters found themselves overwhelmed and outclassed in pure martial skill.

On the eastern flank, the slaughter was even more elegant.

A wave broke through the chokepoint and spread into the open ground — straight into Lyra’s waiting blades.

"Now!" Lyra commanded coldly.

The dozen swordsmen she had personally trained moved as a single entity.

Their blades wove together in synchronized arcs, each warrior covering the other’s flanks. A Bone Skull war-band of twenty charged them head-on.

Swoosh! Swoosh! Swoosh!

In seconds, it was over. Twenty corpses lay at their feet, and Lyra’s formation hadn’t lost a single man.

"Is this all the mighty Bone Skull Tribe has to offer?" Lyra laughed haughtily, flicking blood from her rapier. "An old woman swings a cane faster than you pigs swing those clubs!"

The Crystalveil war cry thundered across the battlefield, and the genuine fear began to creep into the eyes of the Bone Skull army.

Within minutes, the savage tidal wave had crashed against the valley entrance — and broken.

"USELESS!"

An earth-shaking roar exploded across the battlefield.

It was Skarn.

The massive brute shot forward like a cannonball, his Domain Master aura blazing.

Warriors from both sides were hurled aside by the sheer pressure of his passage.

BANG! BANG! BANG!

His massive axe swung in casual, sweeping arcs — and every arc sent a dozen Crystalveil warriors flying like broken ragdolls, their bones shattering on impact.

"GAAAH!"

"HE’S A MONSTER!"

In mere seconds, Skarn carved a bloody path straight toward the center of the battlefield.

Spears shattered against his skin. Swords bent against his muscles. The perfected martial arts that had turned the tide of battle meant nothing when the disparity in realm came crashing down.

"HAHAHA! THIS IS WHAT A DOMAIN MASTER IS!" Skarn roared in ecstatic fury. "YOU DOGS HAVE LEARNED SOME NEW TRICKS, BUT TRICKS ARE NOTHING BEFORE THE ABSOLUTE POWER! DIE!"

The Crystalveil warriors did not retreat, their eyes burning with defiance.

"SKARN!"

A thunderous roar shook the battlefield.

Fridleif shot forward like a cannonball, his massive frame crossing the distance in an instant.

His heavy war saber came crashing down with every ounce of his power.

CLANG—!!!

Their weapons collided. The shockwave flattened the dirt in a hundred-foot radius.

Skarn blocked the strike one-handed, a savage grin splitting his face.

"Fridleif! Finally crawled out of your dog hole?"

His axe came swinging down in a devastating overhead smash.

Fridleif raised his saber to block.

CRACK!

The saber shattered.

Fridleif was blasted backward, his feet carving two long trenches into the earth before he crashed heavily into a stone outcrop.

Skarn slowly walked toward the crater, dragging his axe behind him, laughing.

"Peak Core Formation... what a joke. This is the power of a Domain Master, Fridleif. You were never anything but a slightly bigger insect."

The Crystalveil warriors’ morale crumbled.

Their Chieftain was down. The enemy’s god of war still stood untouched.

Skarn raised his axe high over the crater, ready to deliver the final blow and end this war in one strike.

"Any last words, Chieft—"

Crack.

A sound came from within the dust cloud.

Skarn paused.

Crack. Crack. CRACK.

The shattered stones around the crater began to tremble.

WHOOSH—!!!

A pressure — dense, profound, and utterly overwhelming — erupted from the crater like a volcano waking from a thousand-year slumber.

Skarn’s triumphant grin froze on his face.

His axe, held high for the killing blow, began to tremble uncontrollably.

"No... that’s... that’s impossible..."

Fridleif rose slowly from the crater, looking at Skarn’s stunned face with a mocking gaze.

"Skarn," Fridleif said loudly, wiping the blood from his lips, "you weren’t the only one who broke through this month."

Skarn’s triumphant grin evaporated. His pupils shrank to pinpoints as he stared at his rival.

"Y-You... you also reached the Domain Master Realm? How?!"

Fridleif’s battle aura, which had always burned at the peak of Core Formation, had transformed.

True Domain Master Realm!