The Battle of Buenos Aires

A hundred towering wooden colossi approached the southern settlements. They seemed slow, but each of their steps covered dozens of meters.

Most of them stood around twenty meters tall, but the largest among them nearly reached a hundred meters in height.

That one was the most worrisome, each step it took sent tremors through the ground like a small earthquake, shaking the earth beneath their feet.

Yet, what surprised Klaus even more was the strange phenomenon that followed their path. Wherever they went… life bloomed. Verdant grass, wildflowers, and young trees erupted in their wake, as if nature itself welcomed their presence.

Klaus blinked, his thoughts drifting, inevitably... toward greed.

If I capture these weird-ass goliaths… the income from the southern settlements would skyrocket. I'd be filthy rich...

Smiling faintly, he summoned Leviathan in a burst of white sparks. The delicate sword gleamed under the sunlight, radiating a pale, gentle light as Klaus vanished.

He reappeared above the trees and aimed Leviathan at the towering wooden goliaths. The sword began to pulse and vibrate, as if it could no longer contain the sheer, overwhelming power locked within its glass-like structure. And then, like divine judgment, a pillar of flames descended from the heavens, reminiscent of the Sun God's wrath.

The goliaths looked up, their wooden faces calm and indifferent.

In the next instant, the flames crashed down upon them.

Boom!

A terrifying explosion bloomed as Leviathan roared from heaven to earth. It was a beautiful, harrowing, and terrifying sight, to witness how easily everything could be reduced to ruin with a single swing of a sword.

Yet, the Goliaths didn't fall.

Despite the scale of destruction, the quality of the flames was lacking. The flames Klaus summoned were of the same Ascended rank as himself, which meant they couldn't inflict significant damage on Transcendent-ranked creatures. That's why the more powerful among them had survived with ease.

As for the Awakened and weaker Ascended ones, they were reduced to ashes. Still, around forty of them remained which were Gaia's most powerful creations.

Worse yet, Leviathan had run out of soul fire.

Klaus frowned, tilting his head slightly as he hovered in the air. If he was being honest with himself, these things would never be able to defeat him. He could fight on both land and in the skies. They, on the other hand, were rooted to the earth.

"W-what!?"

Klaus twisted his body mid-air on reflex, narrowly avoiding a giant wooden spear by an inch. The air exploded around him from the force of the throw, slamming against his body like a hammer. But he ignored it, eyes locked on the Goliaths below, his expression frozen in disbelief.

Though scorched and battered, the towering wooden beings remained as eerily indifferent as ever. Now, however, they were pulling massive wooden spears from the earth, shaped by roots and bark. Others rooted themselves deeper into the ground as thick, durable vines erupted from the soil, writhing toward the sky like living chains.

Klaus forced out a grin… then cursed under his breath as a vine lashed toward him. He dodged again, narrowly avoiding entanglement.

More and more spears were being launched at him, turning the sky into a deadly forest of flying wood. It was becoming a problem. He was burning through essence too fast. Teleporting, generating repulsive force fields, trying to stay one step ahead. At this rate, it was only a matter of time before he slipped.

And since the wooden Goliaths' strength was so immense, Klaus had to raise his essence output and shift his focus entirely to defense.

He vanished, reappearing atop a flying spear, sprinting along its surface like a shadow in motion. Another spear came hurtling toward him, colliding with the one he stood on and shattering it into splinters the size of houses. At the last second, Klaus turned intangible, phasing through the debris before reappearing mid-air, still charging forward.

The vines came next, lashing out at him with savage unpredictability. Unlike the spears, they moved erratically, coiling like serpents with minds of their own.

He gritted his teeth as one of them struck him. The repulsive forcefield around him flared, pushing the vine back just in time but its raw strength was greater than he'd anticipated. Cracks danced across his barrier.

With no other choice, Klaus surged more essence into the forcefield, the dark purple glow intensifying until it was visible even to mortal eyes. The strain was immense.

And then in a blink, he vanished.

He couldn't withstand much more.

Clenching his fists, he let Devourer shift, transforming from a delicate white sword into an amalgamation of pure darkness. The weapon twisted into a sinister, blood-drenched spear that gleamed with malice as Klaus raised it, activating all of its deadly enchantments:

Enchantment: Impaler – A spear that strikes with death.

Enchantment: Soul Piercer – A spear that pierces the soul itself.

Enchantment: Striker of Heavens – A spear that splits the skies.

Without a moment of hesitation, he infused it with the [Death] enhancement through the power of the [Conqueror], coating its wicked edge in a deathly will.

Satan trembled in his hand as he tightened his grip then hurled it with all the force of an Ascended Devil.

Boom!

The spear shattered the sound barrier, sending out devastating shockwaves. It tore through the air like divine wrath, piercing straight through the core of the first Goliath and it didn't stop.

The spear continued its path of destruction, impaling another towering behemoth behind the first. Two giants collapsed, leaving behind a trail of ruin.

Klaus stared at his mangled, ruined arm with a bitter grimace. His flesh was shredded, bones shattered beyond recognition.

Half of my core's essence…

Fuck.

He cursed under his breath and activated Faceless, channeling it to regenerate his arm. The muscles twitched grotesquely as new tissue wove itself together, knitting the bones back into place.

Meanwhile, the Goliaths didn't let up. They lumbered after him, relentless and silent, as he darted through the chaos, narrowly dodging attacks. Vines erupted from the earth like whips, pulling entire chunks of land high into the sky and hurling them down with terrifying force.

The battlefield had turned into a surreal nightmare. Craters forming, cliffs collapsing, terrain reshaping itself with every monstrous step. The ground shook beneath their feets, while the sky screamed with sonic booms from their strikes.

Yet even amid the chaos, Klaus found himself… fascinated.

A geomorphological shift, right before his eyes. Entire landscapes were being twisted and warped. It was the kind of spectacle scholars dreamed of witnessing.

If only he wasn't being hunted by pissed-off trees.

"What has my life become?"

He let out a short laugh and continued forward, sprinting toward his destination with blood still wet on his fingertips.

Klaus had already run the numbers long before stepping onto the battlefield. He wasn't like Nephis, Sunny, or Mordret. Among those who wielded Divine Aspects, his strength didn't lie solely in monstrous mastery or refined skills. It was his intelligence that set him apart.

They were like a brute monkeys.

Frankly, Klaus found them laughable. Idiots who thought themselves clever. There was no strategy behind their battles, no layered preparation. Only instinct dressed up as intuition. Rage mistaken for resolve. Victory confused with competence.

It was insulting.

His pride refused to place such mongrels beside him as equals. Because they weren't.

Sure, Sunny was his friend. Nephis was his sister. And Mordret... an old friend, once even like a brother. But so what?

Ariel had been right. No one wants to see the truth. Not when it stares back at them like a mirror. Because the truth is the most hideous thing in the world.

He shook his head to clear his thoughts. Sliding down the broken debris, he landed near the shore with a soft thud. Slowly, he turned and looked back.

Then his eyes began to glow with deep, dark amethyst light and his perception of time changed.

He stared at the ravaged land for a long moment… and then he grinned.

"Don't blame me, okay? You guys really pissed me off. So I kinda snapped, heh."

A deranged smile twisted across his face, the scar on his cheek stretching unnaturally as a rasping laugh escaped his throat. Then, without hesitation, he slammed his fist into the earth.

Cracks ripped through the atmosphere like spiderwebs of lightning. The ground beneath him groaned and then roared.

Cataclysmic shockwaves erupted outward, splitting the landscape open in violent tremors.

He had already done his research. This region rested atop multiple fault lines that remained dormant, but waiting. And by using Poseidon, Klaus knew exactly where to strike to awaken them.

Klaus cast a glance west, then east. Anna and Mark had done their part, herding the remaining wooden goliaths exactly where he needed them.

One, two, three, four... one hundred and twenty-four.

A dark smile curled across his face just as the earth began to tremble. At first, it was a subtle vibration, barely noticeable. But then, it grew violent and devastating.

The ground buckled and screamed beneath his feet. The very air ruptured, creating deafening sonic booms and thunderous airquakes. The shockwaves tore through the atmosphere like blades, a sound so overwhelming it could kill anything dormant or unprepared.

Without hesitation, Klaus vanished, tearing a hole through space using the last remnants of his essence.

He reappeared dozens of kilometers away, slamming into the ground like a ragdoll. He gasped for air, his breaths ragged and shallow. Blood streamed from his ears and eyes, his face pale, his cores completely drained. Not a drop of essence remained.

A moment later, Anna crashed down nearby with the terrible force. Her boots hit the ground hard, cracking the earth beneath her. Her massive mace rested on her shoulder, thick with steaming green ichor which obviously was blood goliath. His pretty, petite bodyguard definitely ripped some of them with her bare hands... Bloody barbarian.

Without a word, she strode over, knelt, and gripped Klaus by the arm.

"that was cool, boss!" she said cheerfully and hoisting him up with surprising ease.

He couldn't respond, not even a groan. His body was limp, consciousness slipping, as Anna carried him away through a battlefield that still trembled with aftershocks and falling giants.

Behind them, the land gave way.

With a deafening groan, the earth convulse. Collapsing inward as violent tremors tore through the terrain. Entire landmasses buckled and surged, rising and falling like a chain of toppling dominoes. Towering goliaths, once indomitable, were crushed beneath the overwhelming fury of nature itself.

And then, silence broke with a monstrous roar.

A colossal tsunami surged from the ocean's depths, a wall of water dozens of meters high, slamming into the shattered coast. It devoured everything. Lands, trees, corpses, ruins, all swallowed in a single, merciless wave.

The foliaths returned to the very nature they once served.

The Battle of Buenos Aires was over.

The capital which was already a ghost of its former self since the Dark Ages, had now been erased entirely, vanishing beneath the sea.

Winner: Chaos Ascendancy.