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Chapter 624: Facing the Unbeatable

Chapter 623: Vengeance Almost Forgotten

Chapter 622: Unexpected Blessings in the Heavenly Lakes

Chapter 621: Expected Reunions

Cliffhanger Poll

As previously mentioned, I will be taking a brief hiatus over the holidays, but I didn't want to leave you entirely without chapters. However, as I sat down to schedule chapters, I realize that we have the potential to leave readers on a big cliffhanger during the wait.

Rather than guess which people might prefer, I figured I'd just ask an...

Chapter 620: Late Across the Ocean

Even though Kai had pushed himself to cross the ocean in record time, he knew that Yangix had arrived first. It began when the invaders got a head start, while Kai fought the Abhorroid and did other preparations. Then, according to the last scouting reports from Krainuun, it seemed like the invaders could propel flying vessels to surprising spee...

Chapter 619: Invaders Advancing Everywhere

Flying high above the world had once been a pure pleasure for Inafay, but these days it all too often took her to grim locales. Her home - just "Deadwaste" to so many - was still in the grip of foreign invaders, and there was little she could do about it.

For now, she was tracking the group of invaders that had remained in the Elemental Na...

Chapter 618: Seeking the Foundations of Cloudspire

As she returned to the Brightwind Sect, Zae Zin Nim reflected on how much her life had changed. Once this had been a place of great terror and, after defeating her father, it had been a place where she vented her past emotions. But compared to the incursion and the invaders, the squabbling of cultivators seemed simply inconvenient... all she wan...

Chapter 617: Shifting Continental Strategies

(Just FYI, the plan is to maintain the current schedule for next week, then I'm taking a roughly one week break over Christmas and New Years.)

Just standing in the elite conference room could have felt tame after the battle against the Abhorroid, but Kai almost felt tenser here. The solution to a giant monster was obvious, if diffic...

Chapter 616: Against the Abhorroid

With an enemy this powerful, potentially the most powerful his spiritual sight could currently understand, Kai had no intention of ramping up slowly. By the time he flew anywhere near the Abhorroid, he had already fully transformed into his Savage Heart form.

As he approached, he wasn't sure if the monster was even aware of him: it had doz...

Chapter 615: Fracturing Strategy

(This chapter is posting late because I somehow just typed the wrong time when scheduling them. Weird mistake to make.)

Kai paced around the exterior of an abandoned elite base, his eyes constantly shifting toward the horizon. He accepted the logic that he couldn't run out and attack, not when it might ruin their strategy, but the m...

Chapter 614: Branching Paths Against Monstrosity

After venturing through Lostwreck, going back over the oceans was frustrating for Zae Zin Nim. She wasn't really losing time, since she could continue cultivating while they traveled, but the wait dug under her skin. There was so much she needed to do to uncover the deepest secrets of cultivation and yet she still needed to slowly move around th...

Chapter 613: Invading the Depths

For a while, Raghi had felt like he was doing important work, gathering valuable intelligence for the elites. Now, as they headed into the Frontier, he no longer had any idea what was going on.

Why was the Prince of Pebbles pushing the invaders into the wasteland? Surely no one could be short-sighted enough to promise them anything to get ...

Chapter 612: What Strength Means

Raghi grunted in pain, straining to keep his arm in place. His elbow was being ground into the stone below so hard that his bones ached, but he held out a little longer. Of course he had no chance: the invader slowly and surely pushed his arm back until Raghi let himself collapse.

"Hah!" The invader burst to his feet, raising his arms skyw...

Chapter 611: Fragments of Lostwreck

As she flew, on a mission to acquire great power and perhaps decide the fate of her world, Zae Zin Nim found herself thinking about her wife. It bothered her how much Omilaena was willing to risk, tempting fate with Insanities. She admitted that from a different angle it could be seen as ambition, as they would never grow unless they took signif...

Chapter 610: Lethal Traps

So far, Lostwreck had been less of a nightmare than a mausoleum, and Omilaena had to admit that she was a little disappointed.

Their initial explorations had been extremely hesitant, concerned that they might be completely outclassed by remnants of the Whispering Death. So far the dangers they had encountered, including monsters and unstab...

Chapter 609: Consuming the Blood Current

It wasn't often that Raghi could sneak anywhere, but somehow he was the one being sent into the Earth Union. Experimentation had shown that the invaders were suspicious of anyone with over 500 Power, fearing them to be elites. But if they looked at Raghi, they would assume he was just a thug with a level of strength that didn't threaten them, so...

Chapter 608: Facing Untold Threats

It was a golden dragon. Maybe not the same one that had scorned him, but exactly the same breed, with the golden plates and vast wings he remembered.

In his flight over the ocean, Kai had spotted the golden dragon on the horizon several times, but never gotten close enough to risk a sprint with Thunderbird's Wings. The beast seemed to sens...

Chapter 607: Paths Around Deadwaste

Juray was a veteran of two incursions now, but she had never seen anything like this. When the elites had asked her to come north, she had readily accepted, and what met her was an endless stream of bodies.

It began with casualties from the Elemental Nations, Waterborn who had been slaughtered by the new invaders. Their techniques tended t...

Chapter 606: A Plan of Insanities

The announcement wasn't news to the planners, but the rest of them winced as they understood. Omilaena nodded as if she wasn't surprised, Zae Zin Nim frowned, and Kai was just trying to figure out what this meant for him.

"Do they still have silver eyes?" he asked. "I mean, even temporarily?"

"No, there has been no sign of that trans...

Chapter 605: Strategy in the Wake of Defeat

At first, despite the obvious arguments against it, Kai wanted to go back. There was a part of him that was convinced that he could always save the day if he just pushed harder, that he could somehow return and rescue Sheiri.

The majority of him knew the truth.

After Kai and his wives had encountered the enemy, the Frontier elites h...

Chapter 604: A Costly Retreat

As soon as Gunjin told him about the mysterious invaders, Kai had intended to attack. After hearing about the disastrous first attempts, he managed to restrain himself - the elites said they likely would have performed worse without his training with them, but they were emphatic that these opponents were like nothing they'd faced before.

T...

Chapter 603: Beneath the Ground Floor

Going from ending the incursion to hearing about disasters in the north gave Zae Zin Nim a sense of surreal disorientation. In Krysal, everyone had been cheering and thanking her. When she followed the elites to the Elemental Nations, she was immediately surrounded by death and despair. Tales of strange barbarians with impossible power... how co...

Chapter 602: A Grim Conclusion

Even as her hands flew, doing what she could to save the lives of the elites in front of her, Omilaena felt certain that she was making a mistake.

Not that helping them was inherently wrong, because they needed her help. Fornil was pressed to his absolute limits with the severe injuries coming in, phased injuries that required extensive he...

Chapter 601: A Gray Trap Closes

(More new patrons than average, presumably coming from the audiobook. Welcome! Though if they are coming from the audiobook, they're probably reading through the past backlog, so I don't know when they'll see this.

Anyway, with that said, you have a tense week ahead of you. The rest of this book is mostly escalation.)

For no c...

Chapter 600: Not the End

Kai streaked across Krysal, eyes focused past the horizon on a destination he couldn't see. There were people slaughtering each other in Philaster and he didn't have any time to wait for elite teleporters, he needed to arrive now.

His rush was made a bit more awkward by the fact that he was carrying Nirka along with him. It wasn't exactly ...

Chapter 599: Healing After the Hordes

Technically there were still monsters roaming through Irun, but Omilaena could finally stop pretending to care about them. What was the point of going to so much effort strengthening soldiers if they couldn't take out some tedious monsters for her? The last time she'd needed to fight had been a big blob that resisted sword blows but not poison -...

Chapter 598: Through the Voidshell

As she flew south, Zae Zin Nim knew that others were concerned for their lives, but her primary fear was that she would be disappointed. Many people did not understand the huge gulf of power between the average level on Deadwaste and her current strength, so a monster that was a threat to them might be trivial to her. If it wasn't strong enough ...

Chapter 597: Heroic Rescues at Monskon City

When Ankrastor stumbled back through the gates of the city, covered in the blood of monsters, he had Goralians cheering for him on every side. It should have been the best day of his life, the culmination of everything he had been working for, yet all he could think was that it wasn't enough.

He'd gone out to do his part, taking on the hor...

Chapter 596: A Different Sort of Frontier City

As Kai transitioned to the second phase of the incursion, his personal risk decreased, but his tension increased. There were no more monsters as dangerous as the Deepclaw, so he wasn't challenged on a personal level. But he couldn't be everywhere at once, and Krysal falling apart tore at him.

He arrived at one of the evacuated eastern citi...