novelraw Chapter 473: The Strongest Genius in History
Chapter 473: The Strongest Genius in History
“Molten Mountain, Rock Hammer.”
Jie Ming’s voice transmitted through soul connection into the consciousness of the two black giant leaders, each over two hundred meters tall.
“Lead your people and act according to the situation.” Jie Ming’s instruction was concise and clear. “I won’t have time to micromanage from here on. Judge the battlefield yourselves and coordinate with the other cannon fodder legions.”
“We obey the will of the Father God.” Two deep, heavy voices—like rocks grinding together—responded simultaneously in Jie Ming’s mind.
The two leaders turned and began issuing silent mental commands to their kin.
The million black giants shifted formation with mechanical precision: melee types gripped condensed obsidian great-axes and tower shields to form the front line; mid-range units opened the vertical slits in their chests, internal energy beginning to condense into highly compressed breath attacks; the rear priests raised their staves and chanted collectively, constructing army-wide support barriers—strength enhancement, speed buffs, damage sharing, elemental resistance…
Such a disciplined, shockingly high-tier cannon fodder legion drew astonished glances from many surrounding wizards.
As Jie Ming hurried back inside the fortress, Viola was already waiting at the passage entrance.
“Impressive, Junior Brother.” She looked him up and down, admiration in her eyes completely unconcealed. “This scale and average strength outclasses the cannon fodder legions of many sixth-ring wizards. Looks like you’ve put serious work into your bio-modification techniques.”
Jie Ming smiled but didn’t respond. Viola didn’t mind. She grabbed his wrist and pulled him through the bustling corridor to an observation window on an upper level of the fortress.
A crowd of wizards had already gathered here. Everyone held their breath, staring intently outside.
Beyond the window stretched an endless sea of cannon fodder legions that nearly covered the entire sky and ground.
And high above those cannon fodder legions, dozens of figures hovered in the upper atmosphere.
They were all the high-ring wizards belonging to Fortress No. 7’s war group.
At the forefront stood Clark and Dionysius.
Behind them: four seventh-ring wizards and twenty-seven sixth-ring wizards.
Thirty-three high-ring combat powers in total.
At this moment, every one of them had lifted their heads, gazing toward the distant horizon.
There, flashes of energy explosions were now clearly visible, rapidly closing in.
That was their own vanguard legions, retreating while engaging the enemy according to plan.
At the same time, an overwhelmingly suffocating pressure rolled in from the edge of the horizon like a tidal wave.
The main forces of the Chaos Secret Cult and Tower of Annihilation had arrived.
The enemy vanguard had already clashed with the vanguard legions. The energy ripples from their ferocious spell exchanges caused the shield over Fortress No. 7 to ripple faintly even from over a hundred kilometers away.
Yet none of the thirty-three high-ring wizards hovering in the air showed the slightest fear.
Dionysius even laughed.
He reached out and clapped Clark on the shoulder.
“Come on, Junior Brother.” The old wizard’s voice brimmed with anticipation. “Let those guys on the other side get a good look at…”
“…the bearing of the strongest genius in Noren workshops history.”
Clark was silent for two seconds.
Then he let out a soft sigh.
“You really know how to give me trouble.”
He raised his right hand. His index finger moved swiftly through the empty air in front of him, as though calculating something.
Faint silver trails lingered in the air, forming a continuously refreshing set of numbers.
“Right now, in total combat power: we’re short 137 seventh-ring wizards and more than 2,000 sixth-ring wizards compared to them, correct?”
“And don’t forget the cannon fodder units they lead,” Dionysius added with a smile.
Clark nodded.
He withdrew his hand and pinched the bridge of his nose.
The gesture looked ordinary—even a bit like the weary relaxation after long hours of work. His tone remained quite relaxed.
“Fine then.”
Clark lowered his hand and opened his eyes.
“I’ll cover the difference.”
The moment the words fell—
Jie Ming suddenly felt a tightness in his chest.
Then…
The sky went dark.
No.
Jie Ming reacted instantly.
It wasn’t that the sky had darkened.
The light was being devoured.
Centered on Clark, in a radius of dozens of kilometers, all light—whether the plane’s own dim ambient glow, the radiance from the fortress rune shields below, or the flickering energy flows on the cannon fodder legions—collapsed toward a single point.
That point was Clark’s raised right hand.
Palm upward, fingers slightly spread.
As though holding an invisible black hole.
Immediately after, shadows poured out from that “black hole.”
At first only a thread—like ink dripping into clear water.
Then a second thread, a third… the thousandth, the ten-thousandth.
Finally, it became a pitch-black waterfall that blotted out the sky.
The shadow waterfall “exploded” at roughly three hundred meters above the ground, like an inverted black ocean pouring down.
Then that ocean began to differentiate, condense, and take form.
One portion transformed into black warriors over ten meters tall, clad in thick, ferocious black bone armor, wielding door-sized tower shields and long-hafted battle-axes.
They were the most numerous, spreading like a black tide and occupying the lower airspace.
Every one of them emanated energy fluctuations firmly locked at peak sixth-ring.
Jie Ming’s mental power quickly scanned and calculated: roughly eighty million.
Another portion became slender assassins that seemed to melt into shadow.
They had no fixed form, their bodies constantly shifting between liquid and mist. Instead of physical weapons, they held fragments embodying rules such as “lethality,” “fracture,” and “decay.”
They silently slipped into spatial folds and vanished.
Each carried peak sixth-ring fluctuations, with a small portion even touching the seventh-ring threshold.
Numbers exceeded twenty million.
Finally, the most refined portion of the black liquid coalesced into dragon-like but far more slender and elegant shadow creatures.
Their wingspans exceeded fifty meters. Instead of scales, their bodies were covered in flowing dark-rune patterns.
They had no eyes—only a gaping maw filled with sharp teeth on their heads, and at the center of their foreheads, a constantly rotating vortex-shaped crystal.
These shadow dragons were even more exaggerated in strength—all at early seventh-ring collectively, numbering close to one million.
And above these three forms of shadow legions…
Higher in the sky.
More than ten thousand strands of black light burst out from the shadow ocean, transforming into even vaster, deeper shadows that slowly unfurled.
They had no concrete form—more like conceptual entities directly condensed from the laws of “darkness,” “devouring,” and “void.”
Each was the size of a small mountain. The energy fluctuations they emitted caused the surrounding space to wrinkle and collapse.
Eighth-ring.
Fully ten thousand eighth-ring shadow lords.
The entire area around Fortress No. 7 fell into dead silence.
Only the distant explosions from the vanguard legions clashing with the enemy still reminded everyone that time continued to flow.
At the observation window, Jie Ming’s mouth hung open. His mind briefly ceased to function.
He instinctively began calculating:
Eighth-ring units: ten thousand.
Seventh-ring units: one million two hundred thousand.
Peak sixth-ring units… one hundred million.
And this was merely the “cannon fodder legion” released by his mentor—alone—in ten seconds.
Jie Ming’s gaze slowly shifted to the figure still hovering beneath the center of the shadow legion, clad in black robes, expression as indifferent as ever.
Mentor Clark.
The strongest genius in Noren workshops history.
“This…”
Jie Ming heard his own voice, dry and rasping like sandpaper on stone.
“…is Mentor’s true strength?”