Chapter 316: Deforestation (1/2)

Zac knew time was running out as he rushed toward the sea of puppets. They had no idea what the enormous array in the sky would do, but he couldn’t imagine it being anything good. Since Salvation said it was time to join the unity it might mean that both he and Ogras would be turned into puppets the moment the fractals finished charging up.

He also knew that [Chop] wouldn’t cut it, even with its recent upgrade. There was a limit to how many puppets he could destroy per swing, and the number was too low to rip apart the endless army in front of him. It was like the mission he received to kill enough zombies in ten minutes. This time he needed to kill to maintain a killing speed that was at least ten times higher.

The function of the special blade from [Chop] was still unclear as it still hovered around him. However, Zac noted that it had barely cost any Cosmic Energy to maintain since he formed it, meaning it might be possible to keep a permanent edge on hand. He needed to explore ways to manipulate it though, as traveling with a five-meter cutter swirling around him would be pretty inconvenient.

He instead put his hopes on his newly acquired skill, [Deforestation]. He received no explanation of how the skill worked when he got it, and there were rather only a few names that entered his mind. But its description indicated it was used as an army killing attack.

So it was with fervent hope he started to flood the fractal on his bicep with Cosmic Energy as he ran toward the puppets. The fractal immediately activated and he finally received a burst of insight, making him understand how to properly utilize the skill. And it was just in time with him arriving in front of the Silver Guards.

“Axe of Felling,” Zac muttered as his arm started to perform a wide horizontal swing.

It felt as though he was pushing through a viscous liquid, but to Zac’s massive pool of Strength it was only a minor inconvenience, some additional strain on his body. The energies in the surroundings started to churn while a large chunk of Zac’s own Cosmic Energy also was dragged out of his body to feed the attack.

[Verun’s Bite] only cleaved air as Zac finished his motion, but the swing was only there to summon the real strike. The true effect of [Deforestation] materialized the moment Zac finished his strike, and it moved to repeat Zac’s own swing.

It was a forester’s hatchet, almost a bit reminiscent of his first weapon, his trusty hatchet that had unfortunately turned to scrap in his battle with Vul. The summoned weapon had a somewhat small head for its very long wooden handle, and if it wasn’t for two details one could have thought it was a normal hatchet from Earth.

The first oddity was its size. The hatchet was well over ten meters long, with its head being larger than Zac himself. The second clue to its origin were the fractals that adorned it. There were two lines of inscriptions, one running along the back of the long handle, and the other along its edge.

The fractals along the chestnut-colored handle emitted a sense of imperviousness and fortitude, making it seem the axe would be able to handle any amount of strain without snapping. The ones on the edge gave off a completely different feeling, and it was one that Zac was familiar with. It was sharpness, the ability to cut through anything.

The fractals' functions might be the standard set that a multiverse hatchet would contain, but they were extremely different from the fractals on a weapon that one might pick up in the System’s general stores. They contained a boundless intricacy in their simplicity, and it was clear they contained truths that were well beyond Zac’s current understanding of the Dao.

Zac tried to imbue the enormous axe with his Dao of Sharpness, but his mental energy was actually rebuffed when he tried to infuse it. Zac knew he might be imagining things, but he almost felt as though the huge axe disdained his Seed of Sharpness, not wanting to be sullied by such a lowly insight into the Dao.

Zac quickly tried a few other Daos, but the result was the same. The axe finished its trajectory without getting imbued at all, and it was an exact copy of Zac’s own swing. The attack was simple and unadorned, but the effect was anything but. Zac first thought the attack was a dud, but soon one puppet after another started to fall apart, bisected in the middle by a clean cut.

First it was one, then two, then hundreds of puppets that fell into pieces before turning into vapor. The silver rivers weren’t faring any better as they shattered one after another as well from the forester’s axe. The attack kept moving outward and the battlefield was soon obscured in a dense silver mist from the thousands of puppets that were destroyed in an instant.

Zac estimated that over twenty thousand puppets had been destroyed by that one massive swing, but he knew that the effect of [Deforestation] wasn’t over. It was not a single-use skill, but rather a skill that ramped up, as long as his body could take it.

Zac hurried forward through the shrouded battlefield so that he could unleash the follow-up swing as close as possible to the remaining puppets. He shot a glance at Ogras while he rushed forward to see that the demon had unleashed his largest sea of shadows yet.

A large sector of the battlefield was shrouded in utter darkness, and puppets were swallowed and destroyed by the dozens every second. Ogras himself was floating above the shrouded field like a God of darkness, shooting concentrated shadows to destroy any silver rivers that tried to flee his sphere of influence.

It was starting to become clear that Salvation possessed some rationality at least, and it looked like he was trying to stall out the battle. His puppets had actually been trapped within the barrier as well, but there was still a lot of room for them to move about.

The mad prophet wasn’t trying to gather his forces to charge at the two, but he rather seemed content to sacrifice parts of his army while the runes in the sky kept gathering energy. Zac couldn’t be sure, but from the power they were starting to emit he feared that they had even less time than they had hoped.

Zac reached the edge of where the attack of [Axe of Felling] reached, and he once again charged up the fractal representing [Deforestation].

“Infernal Axe,” Zac growled, and suddenly it felt as though he was carrying a mountain on his shoulders when he tried to repeat the swing.

His whole body strained to the max as he desperately pushed his Axe forward, and once again an enormous axe materialized in front of him when he completed the swing. This time it was even more massive, with an edge at least twice the size of the [Axe of Felling].

The axe also looked completely different. The last one was a simple axe apart from the line of fractals, whereas this one was clearly meant for war. The head was larger with a long curved edge looking like molten stone, and it emitted an aura of fiery annihilation. Its handle seemed to be created from a burnt-out trunk of some unknown tree, and scorch marks formed dozens of fractals in a seemingly random pattern along the handle.