A vast battlefield somewhere.
Looking at the distant enemy troops—who seemed to be in disarray as if someone had kicked them in the rear—wizards from the Wizard World were full of confusion.
Each one had question marks all over their faces.
Charles frowned slightly and asked uncertainly, "Is this some kind of bait tactic?"
His teammate—and girlfriend—
Formerly known as Saya, now Shaya—replied casually, "No idea. Maybe?"
Charles was a hardworking wizard, gifted with both talent and luck.
He had been a fully-fledged wizard for over four thousand years now.
Currently, he was a Fifth-Tier Wizard.
And he was in charge of commanding a mid- to low-intensity battlefield.
Under his command were over a hundred thousand official wizards, along with dominion over more than five billion enslaved magical beasts.
Shaya—once male, now female—had been one of the many individuals who either tragically suffered or ironically benefited during Orsaga's chaotic rampage.
She was now a Fourth-Tier Wizard.
These two were long-standing side characters, so a brief recap of their history seemed appropriate.
As they, along with many other wizards, looked toward the enemy positions erupting in chaos, they found themselves completely unable to understand what was going on.
The same phenomenon was occurring on battlefields elsewhere.
No one had a clue what had triggered the chaos.
Watching the enemy fall into disarray, most of the wizards didn't know whether to strike or hold back.
So instead, they simply began spectating—waiting to see how the situation developed.
---
Main Battlefield
High above, in a remote portion of the sky, within a hidden spatial dimension undetectable by ordinary means—
Delico Harlton was staring down at the chaos engulfing the Gaienser civilization with narrowed eyes.
He was just as confused as everyone else.
As a Ninth-Tier Wizard of the Wizard World—a Primordial Wizard—Delico had returned from a distant foreign realm more than four thousand years ago after receiving an emergency communication from the Wizard Council, summoned to act as a strategic anchor for the world war.
Since then, he had silently observed the ongoing war across countless battlefields for thousands of years.
He knew every critical location on the battlefield like the back of his hand.
Though he had the power to end the war with his own hands, he had held back, hoping to use this opportunity to temper the Wizard World's younger generation.
Aside from secretly rescuing a nearly dead Eighth-Tier Wizard, he hadn't made a single direct move.
Even when entire battlefields were wiped out, Delico remained utterly unfazed.
As one of the few surviving Ninth-Tier Wizards from the brutal wars of the ancient era, he deeply embraced the principle of survival of the fittest.
Except for rare cases like Seventh- or Eighth-Tier wizards, most low- and mid-tier wizards were, in his eyes, expendable. Replaceable resources.
Even if some of them had outstanding talent—it didn't matter.
The Wizard World, home to trillions, had no shortage of geniuses.
What it lacked were individuals who could truly transform that talent into power.
With a swipe of his right hand—
Countless battlefield feeds streamed through his mind, one after another.
Each one showed the same thing: the Gaienser forces falling into total chaos.
Delico's instincts told him something was wrong.
Frowning slightly, he reached down—and with a casual gesture, pulled the Gaienser commander from the battlefield into his hand.
Ignoring the man's struggling, Delico plunged his finger into the commander's brain.
Instantly, a flood of memories poured into his mind.
Bit by bit, the truth was revealed.
And with it, a flash of astonishment flickered through Delico's eyes.
"The Gaienser civilization's homeworld... was destroyed?"
"And it happened in just a few dozen minutes?"
Even he found that hard to believe.
Not even he, with all his strength, could have taken out Gaienser's homeworld that quickly.
Sure—if the Wizard World's remaining four Primordial Wizards acted together, it would've been possible.
But the other three? They were still out roaming across distant worlds.
One of them had even gone missing entirely. Aside from confirming he wasn't dead, no one knew his whereabouts or condition.
After a moment of thought—
Delico cast a long-distance divination spell to probe the state of the Gaienser world.
And soon—he discovered something shocking.
It wasn't that his spell had instantly reached the Gaienser world.
Rather, through the spell, he sensed something unexpected—
A terrifyingly powerful lifeform was flying straight toward the Wizard World at incredible speed—from the direction of Gaienser!
"??"
Only then did Delico realize: he had almost been ambushed in his own home.
A mix of shock and fury surged in his chest.
Without a second's hesitation, leveraging his connection with the Wizard World's Worldheart, Delico instantly teleported back.
Then, without delay, he activated the Wizard World's Final Defense.
The inhabitants of the Wizard World looked up to see the sky suddenly turn a dark green-black hue.
Strange runes and arcane markings began covering the entire sky.
As for the members of the Wizard Council, they were utterly dumbfounded by what was happening.
They recognized this mechanism instantly—
This was one of the Wizard World's ultimate trump cards.
Forged during the peak of their civilization, when the Wizard World stood as the strongest among tens of thousands of neighboring realms.
Back then, they basked in unmatched glory.
Just crafting this one artifact had cost so many resources that they had emptied out several dozen worlds.
Its designers and builders were over a dozen generations of Primordial Wizards.
Under normal circumstances, only the Chairman and Vice-Chairman of the Wizard Council could activate it.
Yet now—those two were standing right there with everyone else, equally confused.
Clearly, they hadn't activated it.
In the next instant—
Before anyone could even ask what was happening—
BOOM!
A deafening impact echoed through the entire Wizard World.
The green-black sky visibly caved inward, as if a massive object was slamming into it.
To many experienced wizards, that caved-in area—looked distinctly like a fist mark.
As though someone was standing outside the world, throwing heavy punches at it.
Though the deformation quickly recovered, many wizards couldn't help but gulp nervously.
Before they could even relax—
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
A rapid barrage of thunderous impacts followed.
The sky above was instantly covered in countless fist marks.
Even though most of the power was absorbed by the barrier, the residual force still shook the entire Wizard World to its core.
Unlike the Gaienser civilization, whose world structure resembled a cosmic star system filled with countless planets—
The Wizard World followed a flat-earth cosmology, with a vast, endless continent surrounded by oceans.
At first, it hadn't been that large.
But thanks to the efforts of ancient wizards, tens of thousands of planets had been dragged in from distant realms, disassembled, and fused into the Wizard World.
Thus, its scale grew to astronomical proportions.
Today, the Wizard World was essentially a solid stellar system—incredibly massive, densely structured, and rich in resources.
If compared side-by-side, the sun would be like a ping-pong ball on a soccer field next to it.
Trillions of humans, along with who-knows-how-many other creatures, lived on it without putting any pressure on its resources.
But now, with each new fist mark—
The colossal Wizard World began to shake violently!
Countless buildings and mountain ranges were flattened.
Billions of square kilometers of ocean churned like a disturbed bathtub. Waves thousands of meters high surged back and forth.
Occasionally, entire schools of fish were hurled into the sky.
Even the deep-sea monsters that preferred to lurk at the ocean floor were forced to the surface, shaken from their habitat by the sheer power of the tremors.
Amid this apocalyptic upheaval—
Panic and unease spread through every creature's heart.
'Is this... the end of the world?'
Countless beings—human or not—couldn't help but think the same thing, their hearts filled with dread.
_____
T/N:
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