FLASH!

Commander Gonan’s lightning-fast arrow strike caught Widi completely off guard. It was an unseen, sound-shattering vector that pierced straight through her heavy chest armor. In a split second, the pulsating dark heart driving her dark core was destroyed.

Widi’s monstrous frame went limpid instantly as her internal dark magic collapsed. Deprived of its living pump, her physical vessel lost all stability, crashing heavily onto the earth with a thunderous impact that shook the surrounding basin.

BOOM!

Commander Gonan slumped forward, completely depleted of internal parameters. He had poured every drop of his remaining aura into that singular execution strike. Fortunately, the risky gamble orchestrated by Elder Silvi had succeeded, ensuring his sacrifice was not in vain. Gonan felt his body trembling with acute exhaustion; he had pushed his core past its limits to eliminate the dark warlord.

Seeing Commander Gonan on the verge of collapsing, Elder Silvi moved swiftly to his side. Though her own parameters were heavily drained, she tapped into her remaining spiritual circles to channel a stabilizing stream of natural mana into his vessel. Manifesting a gentle light construct around Gonan, she initiated a rapid recovery field over his internal pathways.

Gonan immediately seated himself cross-legged, closing his eyes to harmonize his core. Across the wider field, the war was rapidly approaching its boiling point. Casualties were mounting heavily on both sides, yet the chaotic struggle for Prisma’s gates raged on with unyielding fericity.

In a different sector of the field, Commander Dasatama was heavily surrounded by a dark legion while simultaneously holding off Warlord Hexos. Hexos commanded immense physical parameters, wielding a massive, double-headed executioner's axe capable of pulverizing solid steel upon impact. Dasatama was forced to continuously dodge Hexos’s heavy execution arcs while parrying relentless flanking maneuvers from swarming dark cultists.

The dark army was giving Dasatama special tactical attention. As the supreme leader of the continental martial alliance, he served as the central pillar of the orthodox sects. The dark high command recognized that executing Dasatama would strike a fatal blow to the alliance's morale, fracturing their unified front and throwing the defenders into hopeless panic.

Consequently, a massive wave of dark operatives converged on his coordinates, designating Dasatama as target number one.

Yet Dasatama was celebrated across the five continents as the God of War—a title earned through surviving countless bloody campaigns. He was a living legend whose martial exploits commanded absolute awe and respect from grandmasters across the globe.

Under his leadership, the martial alliance had forged an unyielding front, standing resolute against any dark threat seeking to plunge the world into chaos. Though a few self-interested sect leaders harbored petty grievances over his strict regulation of regional resources, the overwhelming majority revered Dasatama for his unwavering fairness and absolute justice.

It was under Dasatama’s direct command that the shadow network of dark infiltrators—the Mondu—had been systematically dragged into the light. These covert operatives, planted by Lord Demon Shura to sow division among orthodox grandmasters, had been exposed and purged across multiple continents.

Because of this, the dark army targeted him with absolute malice. Dozens of high-ranking dark cultists unsealed their ultimate Demon Transformations, their physical vessels mutating into terrifying, bone-armored dreadnoughts. Swarming him from every cardinal direction, they unleashed a continuous barrage of dark magic, determined to deny the God of War even a second to formulate a counter-offensive.

Unfortunately for them, they severely underestimated the man they sought to kill.

Dasatama remained the God of War. Channeling a vast wave of natural mana into his broadsword, he executed a single, sweeping 360-degree arc. The high-density kinetic shockwave bisected five demonized dreadnoughts mid-air, incinerating their physical frames on impact.

The surrounding dark operatives recoiled from the devastating strike, but fresh waves immediately surged forward to fill the gap. They probed his perimeter relentlessly, searching for a single opening in his form. Dasatama countered with fierce, calculated precision, maintaining absolute focus. He knew his mandate: hold the line, survive the onslaught, and buy time until the primary reinforcement columns from the remaining continents arrived.

Hundreds of demonized dark cultists pressed the attack while Hexos circled like a patient predator, waiting for the precise moment to deliver a surprise, lethal blow. Hexos intentionally used his subordinates as cannon fodder, using their bodies to force Dasatama to reveal a fatal blind spot.

Dasatama’s broadsword blazed with celestial aura, parrying every incoming blade with thunderous shockwaves. Ignoring the crushing exhaustion creeping into his muscles, he maintained continuous natural mana absorption to sustain his physical stamina.

Facing the absolute focus of the dark host, Dasatama held zero concern for his own survival. He was fully prepared to sacrifice his life on this field if necessary—so long as the five continents were saved from Lord Demon Shura’s tyranny. He would fight to his final breath to ensure justice prevailed and the world remained free.

Sweeping his broadsword in wide, defensive arcs, Dasatama maintained his stance. He needed to preserve his strength to confront the Demon Lord directly. He could not afford to fall before reaching Shura. Though the dark operatives felt endless, Dasatama understood their fundamental flaw: they could be permanently neutralized only by destroying their neural core in the head or their cardiac core in the chest.

This critical intelligence had been provided by the Sky Squad, earning Dasatama’s deepest respect. Though active for less than a year, these resilient young grandmasters had systematically crippled the dark army's operations, reducing Shura's overall combat capacity by over thirty percent.

Ever since the Sky Squad had been tasked with exposing the Mondu network and neutralizing high-tier dark threats, they had proven their absolute worth. Dasatama held complete faith that the future of the martial world would be safely entrusted to their hands.

He felt an overwhelming pride in the young generation. With a confident smirk, Dasatama channeled that pride into absolute martial focus, systematically striking down every dark cultist that stepped within his reach.

Yet, despite his sweeping strikes, Dasatama had not yet unsealed his absolute peak parameters. He recognized that he was currently fighting standard and elite infantry; the true supreme threats had yet to take the field. He needed to preserve his internal reserves for the final clash.

His thunder-elemental sword aura applied a localized movement-impairment domain over his immediate perimeter, a high-tier technique refined through decades of combat. Surrounded by transformed demonized dreadnoughts, Dasatama executed a rotational kinetic sweep, hurling dozens of attackers backward before blurring forward to crush their neural cores one by one.

Without targeting their heads, their Black Blood cellular regeneration would restore their wounds instantly, making them nearly impossible to put down.

Yet the dark host was relentless. As soon as one wave fell, a fresh, fully charged detachment swarmed his position, locking their sights entirely on him. Dasatama deployed a dense mana barrier to absorb the incoming bombardment. Even for the God of War, physical fatigue was beginning to set in after hours of continuous, high-intensity defense.

Fighting an army that held zero regard for their own lives was an exhausting ordeal. The dark cultists fought like mindless thralls, driven solely by the directive to crush their target regardless of casualties. They were true monsters.

Observing from the edge of the clash, Warlord Hexos sensed that Dasatama’s output was finally beginning to dip. Hexos refused to rush in prematurely; he willingly sacrificed hundreds of dark operatives as bait, caring nothing for their lives.

To Hexos, trading a thousand dark cultists for the death of the God of War was a masterstroke. Eliminating the leader of the martial alliance would shatter the defenders' resolve, allowing Lord Demon Shura’s legion to sweep over the five continents effortlessly.

It was an exquisite tactical trade.

Dasatama continued to parry strikes coming from the front, rear, flanks, above, and below. He was completely suffocated by overwhelming numbers, while nearby orthodox cultivators were too heavily engaged in their own life-and-death skirmishes to reinforce him.

Holding out indefinitely under these conditions was mathematically impossible. The dark operatives, if not struck in their cores, simply regenerated and rejoined the assault. Though Dasatama had slain thousands of dark cultists, the horde appeared bottomless.

Suddenly, a heavy dark magic strike breached his rear defense. As Dasatama turned to crush the attackers, another detachment lunged from his left flank. He deployed a localized barrier to absorb the blow, but a third group thrust their broadswords toward his exposed right side. Dasatama was forced to draw his blade back in a awkward parry.

His defensive rhythm fractured. With his blade pinned on the right, several demonized dreadnoughts lunged at his open center from multiple angles simultaneously.

Dasatama opened his internal pathways, drawing a massive influx of natural mana to encase his vessel in a dense defensive shield. He needed only to absorb this joint impact, reset his posture, and prepare a counter-cleave. The surrounding dark cultists slammed their weapons into his barrier, their high-density dark magic grinding against his glowing shield like iron battering rams.

Trapped under the crushing weight of hundreds of dark operatives, Dasatama felt his barrier begin to fracture.

Noticing Dasatama pinned beneath his subordinates, Warlord Hexos seized the opening. Unsealing his dark core, Hexos leaped high into the air, his double-headed executioner's axe blazing with volatile, midnight-black inferno flames.

"Clear out! He is mine!" Hexos bellowed, descending from the clouds like a falling meteor.

His massive axe roared with dark flames, closing to within meters of Dasatama's head to execute a decimation strike!

WOOOOOSH!