A Man Like None Other (Jared Chance) novel Chapter 6526

Standing atop his war chariot, Starwick looked down over the Shrouded Wood.

His gaze pierced layer after layer of mist until it found the towering mountain gate buried deep in the forest.

Three huge characters were carved across it: Beastmoor Ridge. Each stroke was roughly 3 yards tall, the chiseled lines sharp enough to look like blade cuts.

He let out a cold snort, lifted his golden spear, and leveled the tip at the gate.

"The Veilbreaker Pearl."

A cultivator in golden armor stepped forward behind him and presented a pearl the size of a fist with both hands.

It was milky white from end to end, its surface packed with dense breach-sigils that gave off a soft glow.

It was an ancient celestial relic, forged specifically to break through mist, illusion arrays, and other wards that disrupted spirit sense.

Starwick tossed the Veilbreaker Pearl into the air and snapped his spear. A blast of holy light slammed into it.

The Veilbreaker Pearl erupted with towering radiance at once, blazing like a newborn sun and turning the sky for dozens of miles around bright as day.

Where that light reached, the mist melted like snow thrown into fire, collapsing, retreating, and vanishing into nothing.

In barely ten breaths, the fog around the outer edges of the Shrouded Wood had been forced back hundreds of yards.

The forest's true face lay exposed—ancient trees rising into the sky, vines choking every path, jagged boulders everywhere, and ravines so deep the eye couldn't find the bottom.

"Attack!" Starwick's voice cracked across the plain like muffled thunder.

Three thousand adepts of Pole Star Hall roared as one.

Golden holy light merged into a surging torrent and smashed toward the Shrouded Wood.

Their formation was wedge-shaped, with several hundred heavily armored cultivators at the front carrying massive shields etched with warding sigils, a moving golden wall.

Behind them came the central host, ranks of spear-bearers standing dense as a forest, saintlight flames dancing along every tip.

The two flanks were made up of lightly armored sword cultivators, fast on their feet and quick to adapt.

The wedge drove forward with crushing force.

Trees snapped apart in its path, and the ground split open under the pressure.

Glacier and Clarendon each brought up their own forces, advancing slowly along Pole Star Hall's left and right wings.

They weren't moving fast, and their formations were loose. They had clearly left themselves room to pull back at any moment.

Starwick glanced back once, and something dark flashed through his eyes.

Those two old foxes really weren't about to spend themselves unless they had to.

He said nothing.

He only tightened his grip on the spear.

Once he crushed Beastmoor Ridge and got his hands on that relic, his cultivation would surge.

After that, dealing with those two old bastards would be easy.

The first wave of Pole Star Hall cultivators to charge into the Shrouded Wood learned very quickly what Beastmoor Ridge was capable of.

The Veilbreaker Pearl had forced the mist back several hundred yards, but deeper inside the forest, the beast-race fog Morgana had laid down was still thick enough to choke the world.

It wasn't ordinary fog.

It was miasma condensed from demonic energy, capable of corroding spirit sense and disrupting the flow of spiritual power.

The moment Pole Star Hall's vanguard shield formation stepped into its range, their spirit sense wavered. The world in front of them began to warp and twist—trees seemed to move, the ground seemed to roll over on itself.

Years of training kept them from panicking, but the speed of their advance dropped at once.

And then the first attack hit.

Dozens of poisoned bolts shot out from the depths of the deep forest.

Their shafts were dark green, and their heads had been smeared with Beastmoor Ridge's signature flesh-rotting toxin.

The bolts hammered into the heavy shields with dull, brutal thuds, and the poison immediately ate smoking pits into the shield faces.

One bolt slipped through a gap between shields and punched into a cultivator's throat.

He went down screaming, and within a few breaths his body rotted into a pool of blood.

The second wave hit almost on top of the first.

This time, it wasn't bolts. It was demon beasts.

Dozens of shadewolves burst from the darkest corners of the deep forest, lean and swift as ghosts.

They moved so fast they barely looked real—just streaks of afterimage flashing through the mist.

They went straight for the weakest points in the formation.

One of them clamped its jaws around a cultivator's leg and dragged him screaming into the heart of the deep forest.

His scream echoed through the mist.

Then it cut off.

Several ironwing hawks dove from the canopy overhead.

With hooked talons, they ripped one cultivator's helmet and skull open in a single pass.

Their bodies were burned into charcoal by holy radiance.

Dozens of stone fiend apes were pierced through at the same time by dozens of golden spears.

Their huge bodies crashed to the ground and threw ash into the air.

The ironwing hawks' corpses hung from charred branches.

Their wings had been burned away by holy radiance, leaving behind nothing but blackened skeletons.

After paying a terrible price, the garrison defending the first ward-layer began an orderly retreat, exactly as Jared had arranged.

Using the deep forest for cover, they pulled back through tunnels dug in advance.

Before they left, they triggered the spirit-burst charges buried throughout the woods.

The charges exploded in the heart of the deep forest and blasted dozens of pursuing vanguard cultivators from Pole Star Hall off their feet.

The garrison at the second ward-layer was already in position, waiting.

The second demon-beast packs sent out by Morgana leaped down from the cliff walls and slammed into Pole Star Hall's flanks.

More than a hundred frostscale pythons burst up from underground.

Their bodies, thick as barrels, swept sideways and snatched up dozens of cultivators, crushing them into mangled meat.

Dozens of thunder hawks plunged from the clouds.

Lightning crackled over their beaks, and every strike blasted a charred hole straight through a body.

The venom-spider swarm spun webs all through the deep forest, a deadly net that dragged Pole Star Hall's advance down once again.

Pole Star Hall's casualties kept climbing.

By the time the third ward-layer was broken, more than 300 cultivators had already died, and over 200 more had been wounded to varying degrees.

But Starwick still didn't react.

There wasn't the slightest ripple on his face. If anything, he looked annoyed by the delay.

He drove the Veilbreaker Pearl again and shattered the core formation-node of the Second Depth.

The spiritual backlash killed dozens of Beastfolk warriors guarding the Second Depth on the spot.

Their bodies were caught in spatial tearing and ground into pieces. Not even a whole bone remained.

"Anyone who stands in my way dies."

Venerable Starwick's voice rolled through the deep forest, cold and utterly without feeling.