A Man Like None Other (Jared Chance) novel Chapter 5712

Elder Bonewick's eyelids twitched so violently they seemed ready to tear loose. His skeletal fingers clenched the Bone Sceptre until the knuckles blanched.

Inside, his heart hammered against his chest. The Soul Devourer's confident assurances still rang in his ears.

Yet here loomed a Draconian army bristling with war lust. And above it hovered Jared, his aura as bottomless as the sea, not a hint of injury marring him. The sight slapped Elder Bonewick across the face—and smashed the fate of the Skyfiend Sect along with it.

"Panic will get us nowhere!" Elder Bonewick forced down his terror—and the urge to curse whoever had lied to him—then bellowed, his voice bolstered by Netherlord force so it boomed across the mountains.

"They are nothing but an overgrown clutch of serpents led by a reckless youth. With our Ten-Thousand-Soul Grand Array, even a sovereign would break his teeth against our walls. Form up the array—prepare to meet the enemy!"

Before his last word finished echoing, Jared moved. He ignored the barrier that shimmered around the headquarters, ignored Elder Bonewick's shrill command. Instead, his measuring gaze drifted over the sect's twisted architecture, as if searching for something.

"Who commands the Skyfiend Sect? Kneel and accept your death." Jared's voice was not loud, yet it pierced every layer of spellwork and space, sliding into the ear of every disciple poised for battle. Each word carried a frost-edged weight. "And you, Soul Devourer, skulking in the dark—come out. Sending ants to die while you cower like a turtle in its shell—is that how you do things?"

Contempt curled through every syllable he uttered.

It had been a long time since Jared felt this good. He used to be the one being hunted down.

He'd get beaten to the brink of death until someone took pity on him and hauled him from the brink.

Today, he needed no savior. Behind him marched a Draconian army unbeaten across level nine.

Be it the Skyfiend Sect or the Soul Devourer, in Jared's eyes, they were trash.

Coall roared, a mountain-shaking dragon cry bursting from his chest. The sound struck the Wailing Soul Barrier, making the ghost-lit membrane quiver like water beneath a hailstorm.

He hunched his bulk—an obsidian mountain brought to snarling life—while bolts of black light sparked across scale and sinew. Hundreds of streams of dragon's power converged on him, tightening around his frame like armor forged of pure ruin.

Then, he lunged, arrow and avalanche in one. Carrying the weight of a falling primeval peak, he hurled himself at the thickest wall of that gray-black dome.

"Ten-Thousand-Soul Guard, Spirit-Devouring Rebound!" Elder Bonewick's voice cracked with panic as he lashed the sceptre forward, forcing every thread of the grand array into one desperate knot.

Behind him, a dozen Heavenly Immortal elders thrust their palms out in unison, pumping their force into the array. The rushing power funneled through the Bone Sceptre, swarming toward the impact site in a last-second bulwark.