Legend of the Lightning Strike
141. The Arrival of the God of War
Here is the English translation for Chapter 141, formatted with clean grammar, polished prose, and an engaging narrative style tailored for Western fantasy readers, maintaining proper character consistency (including Barsha as a female squad leader):
141. The Arrival of the God of War
"Die, every last one of you!" Samoa's three top lieutenants pressed their attack in synchronized, lightning-fast formation. Alternating their strikes, they relentlessly pressed the six Sky Squad members. All three of Samoa's trusted lieutenants wielded longswords, their helmets styled to match their titles: Gold, Silver, and Bronze.
They executed continuous, fluid combinations that whipped up a tempest around them. Gale-force winds heavy with volatile dark magic howled through the clearing, leaving no room to breathe.
Barsha deployed the advanced techniques she had mastered. Tapping into her extreme mobility, she blurred forward at a speed that even Samoa's elite lieutenants failed to perceive. In a fraction of a second, Barsha materialized directly before Samoa himself.
Samoa flinched in surprise as Barsha appeared in his line of sight. He had not anticipated a young cultivator possessing the speed of a pinnacle-tier assassin. In fact, his three trusted lieutenants hadn't even noticed her departure from the main clash.
"State your name, lovely lady! I shall thoroughly break your vessel and harvest every drop of your energy. Speak, so you won't regret dying by my hands!" Samoa sneered, resting the flat of his massive greatsword against his shoulder.
"Engrave it deep into your memory: I am Barsha, granddaughter of Saint Ganada—and I have come to exact vengeance upon you all!" Barsha unsheathed her twin daggers, flipping her grip to hold the blades reversed. Her core aura surged as she prepared to strike.
"An exquisite prize!" Samoa laughed wickedly. "Twenty years ago, we Five Gates were driven back by those Three Saints. Today, I shall take immense satisfaction in tearing the granddaughter of one of those old fools to shreds!"
A violent burst of dark magic erupted from Samoa as he lunged at Barsha. Barsha immediately executed the highest-tier techniques she had gleaned from the ancestral scroll provided by Warrior Jiro—techniques she instinctively felt were part of her grandfather Ganada's true legacy.
Samoa's brutal, dark-infused slashes obliterated everything in their path. The destructive shockwaves forced even his own dark operatives to leap back from the canopy. Yet despite a single wide arc felling hundreds of ancient trees, none of his strikes touched Barsha.
Barsha's command of Ghost Speed had reached its ultimate peak. Her current velocity rivaled—or perhaps even equaled—that of her grandfather Ganada in his prime. Such terrifying speed allowed her to evade Samoa's massive greatsword with effortless grace.
Samoa gasped as Barsha slipped right past his guard, closing the distance at high velocity.
CLANG! CLANG! CLANG!
Barsha's daggers blurred into thousands of precision strikes that rained down upon Samoa's frame. Samoa raised his greatsword, desperately attempting to parry the onslaught while deploying a dark barrier. Dark, corrupted blood splattered across the soil as Barsha's lightning-fast daggers gouged deep lacerations all over his body, her movements almost impossible for the naked eye to track.
Elsewhere in the clearing, Gold, Silver, and Bronze were locked in a fierce engagement against the six Sky Squad members: Lao, Nanji, Yara, Samuel, Rosa, and Binto. Initially, Samoa's elite lieutenants had looked down on the young vanguard, believing they could slaughter them in minutes.
That arrogance quickly crumbled. Despite executing repeated combination attacks, the young operatives evaded every strike with practiced ease. Worse still for the lieutenants, one of the operatives was an elemental support specialist who manipulated hovering energy discs, using them to disrupt their offensive formations.
Losing his patience, Gold activated his full Demon Transformation, eager to end the duel immediately. Silver and Bronze followed suit, all three mutating into demonic forms. Signaling the surrounding dark horde, they ordered a simultaneous strike to overwhelm the six Sky Squad members through sheer numbers.
The six operatives immediately dropped into a tight, rotating defensive circle as hundreds of dark operatives converged upon them, sealing off all avenues of escape from above, below, and the sides.
The three mutated lieutenants led the assault at the forefront, flanked by dark operatives swarming like angry hornets. The six Sky Squad members readied their armaments, bracing for impact.
"Attack!" Gold bellowed as he surged forward, Silver and Bronze trailing close behind. Lao stepped up to intercept all three, manifesting a network of glowing energy discs. Threads of lightning chained the discs together, forming an impenetrable barrier that absorbed the heavy impact of the lieutenants' dark blades.
Vaulting into the air, Lao executed an acrobatic mid-air twist to evade Gold's downward slash, driving his boot down onto Silver's incoming blade. As kinetic shockwaves rippled outward, Bronze lunged from below with a sweeping strike. Lao's energy discs snapped into place, parrying Bronze's dark steel. Spotting a momentary lapse in Lao's mid-air stance, all three lieutenants unleashed a synchronized thrust, their blades dripping with volatile dark magic.
As the three dark blades converged upon him, Lao recalled his hovering discs in a split second. The defensive discs slammed into Gold, Silver, and Bronze from above, raining down like a localized meteor shower.
BLAAAAAAM!
The three lieutenants were forced to arrest their advance, paralyzed as high-voltage energy surged through their mutated vessels. Lao hovered above them, extending both palms downward to press his discs deeper into their guards.
"HAAAAA!" Lao roared, continuously drawing in environmental mana to sustain his relentless bombardment, locking the three lieutenants in a high-density energy trap.
Simultaneously, the remaining five Sky Squad members held off the swarming dark horde, repelling incoming attackers one by one. By drawing upon atmospheric mana, they multiplied their energy output to match the frantic pace of the mutated dark cultists.
Meanwhile, Barsha's duel with Samoa reached a fever pitch. Her twin daggers unleashed continuous arcs of light energy, driving Samoa back. Yet the Gatekeeper was far from finished. Detonating his dark core, Samoa released an immense shockwave of dark magic.
The kinetic pressure blasted Barsha backward. Samoa was drawing upon both his Demon Transformation and the harvested life force taken from slaughtered martial artists. His parameters multiplied exponentially, the resulting explosive aura forcing Barsha to retreat.
Flipping mid-air, Barsha discharged a pulse of internal aura to stabilize her momentum and land safely. She began regulating her core to restore her stamina; thanks to her hellish conditioning and the Heart Dragon's celestial essence, her energy absorption rate was astonishingly fast.
The two combatants clashed once more. The violent collision of light and dark aura generated continuous shockwaves that leveled the surrounding terrain.
On the other side of the battlefield, Lao felt his disc trap fracture. Pushing their mutated forms to their absolute limits, Samoa's three lieutenants broke free, fully giving in to demonic frenzy. Their dark aura erupted in a violent surge as they transformed into towering, scale-covered abominations.
An explosive wave of dark magic slammed into Lao, hurling him backward through the air. Pushing out an aura pulse to steady his footing, Lao dropped into a guard. Nearby, the rest of the Sky Squad continued repelling waves of dark operatives, though the endless numbers were slowly forcing them onto the back foot.
Just as the Sky Squad members were being pressed on all sides—with Barsha dodging Samoa's relentless counters, Lao straining to parry the wild, unhinged strikes of the three fully mutated lieutenants, and the others fending off the endless dark horde—a sudden shift rattled the heavens.
A warrior wrapped in crackling celestial lightning descended from the clouds above. He plummeted like a falling star, the air tearing apart in his wake. As he swung his sword downward, a catastrophic wave of aura slammed into the earth, sending a seismic tremor through the soil and vaporizing dozens of dark operatives in an instant.
BOOOOOOM!
Plumes of smoke billowed across the clearing, leaving everyone in the vicinity stunned. The newly arrived warrior commanded an unfathomable depth of power. His broadsword remained embedded in the earth, having gouged massive fissures into the ground and created a long, smoking crater.
The middle-aged warrior straightened his posture and raised his steel. As the dust settled, his face became clear. It was the God of War, Dasatama, who had entered the battlefield directly after shattering the forest's isolation array!
A short time earlier, at the perimeter of the Tulisma Forest...
"Brother! They've erected a massive array. This is clearly a trap designed to seal in the defense forces and the martial alliance," Warrior Jiro noted, touching the barrier surface. The array was exceptionally formidable—a high-tier defensive barrier operating at the absolute ceiling of array magic.
"Do you remember our combined breaching technique?" Dasatama asked, dismounting from his steed. Assembled behind him was a select strike force from central command—a small contingent, but comprised entirely of high-tier martial masters.
"Are you certain you wish to deploy it now, Brother?" Jiro asked.
"Do it!" Dasatama replied with a confident smile.
Without another word, Warrior Jiro took several steps back and dropped into a firm stance.
Standing side-by-side, the two legendary brothers readied a technique they had forged in their youth—an ancient, ground-shattering martial technique inspired by Saint Thunder Striker and Saint Ganada. It combined raw kinetic impact against the earth with a high-speed, high-yield piercing assault.
"Are you ready, Jiro?"
"Ready, Brother!" Jiro confirmed.
"Everyone! Focus your aura into a single strike!" Dasatama ordered, turning to the twenty-five elite martial artists behind him. "The moment Jiro and I strike, combine your energy blasts with ours to shatter the array's framework!"
"Understood, Commander!"
Dasatama and Jiro gathered dense aura into their right fists. Environmental mana rushed toward them, condensing into a swirling vortex around their hands. Gale-force winds whipped around their fists as their internal energy reached a critical threshold. Then...
BLAAAAAM!
Leaping forward, both brothers slammed their fists into the soil simultaneously. A seismic shockwave rippled through the ground, surging toward the barrier at terrifying speed. The combined kinetic force struck the wall of the isolation array.
CRACK! CRACK!
Spiderweb fractures spread across the barrier. Without missing a beat, Dasatama and Jiro drew upon fresh aura, surging forward like twin lightning bolts. They struck the fractured array at full velocity while the initial shockwave was still stressing the magical framework.
Behind them, the twenty-five elite masters unleashed their highest-yield energy blasts directly into the damaged point.
CRACK! CRACK! BLAAAAAAR!
The massive array shattered into glittering fragments, allowing Dasatama and Jiro to burst into the Tulisma Forest. With the barrier collapsed across the entire region, surviving martial artists who had been trapped inside rushed out, desperate to escape the dark army's slaughter.
Without losing a second, Dasatama surged forward into the woodland, intent on cutting down the dark army and aiding the trapped vanguards.