Combat Slave Harem-Chapter 58: Soul King’s Might

The battlefield was a chaotic symphony of iron and agony. The air above the southern gate had grown thick with a greasy, black smoke that smelled of charred meat and ozone.

While the city’s elite soul evolvers fought in desperate clusters, trying to match the sheer physical brutality of the orcs with their flickering mana, Egon moved through the slaughter with a terrifying, rhythmic calm.

​

He stayed close to Vienna. She was pale, her breath coming in short, sharp gasps as she clutched the focus crystal he had given her. This was no longer a business meeting or a tea party in a manicured garden. This was the raw, unadulterated reality of the world Egon now inhabited.

​"Vienna, move your feet. Do not plant them like a tree," Egon advised, his voice slicing through the roar of a nearby explosion. "If you stay still, you are a target. If you move, you are a predator."

​"I... I’m trying," Vienna gasped, her breath hitching as she gestured toward a charging orc.

​A thick, thorny vine erupted from the mud, impaling the creature through its chest, but the effort left her drained. Her mana pool fluctuated wildly, her knees buckling under the weight of her own new power.

​"Concentrate, Vienna," Egon said, stepping into her space. He didn’t reach out to catch her; instead, he placed a firm hand on the small of her back. His cold, steadying energy flowed into her, acting as a stabilizer for her frantic spirit.

"Do not fight the forest. Be the forest. Feel the roots beneath the cobblestones. They are hungry. Feed them."

​He guided her arm, pointing it toward a second wave of attackers.

​"Now," he whispered.

​Vienna took a deep breath, her emerald eyes flashing with a sudden, sharp clarity. She stopped fighting the fear and let the mana flow. A dozen spears of hardened wood shot out of the earth, weaving together into a lethal barricade that shredded the incoming orcs. She looked at her hands, a flicker of fierce pride blooming in her chest.

​"I did it," she whispered.

​"Keep doing it," Egon replied, his eyes scanning the horizon.

​Around them, a strange phenomenon began to occur. While the rest of the soul evolvers were being pressed back by the sheer weight of the horde, a circular zone of absolute stillness formed around Egon and Vienna. It was as if an invisible, repelling force had been carved into the very air. Orcs would charge toward them, their axes raised and their mouths foaming with bloodlust, only to skitter to a halt ten feet away. They would snarl, their red eyes darting around in confusion, but they refused to step closer, their primal instincts screaming that to cross that line was to invite a fate worse than death.

​Further down the line, however, the pressure was shifting. Noella had been separated from the main group. She was a blur of black silk and steel, her Shadow Sword reaping a heavy toll, but she had been baited too deep into the ruins of a collapsed guard tower.

​A trio of Ogre-Mages, towering giants with blue-tinted skin and eyes glowing with chaotic energy, had surrounded her. They pounded the ground with their staves, creating gravity wells that pinned her down while a swarm of nearly a hundred orc berserkers closed in for the kill.

​"Noella!" Vienna screamed, seeing her sister-wife stumble as a gravity spell buckled her knees.

​Noella snarled, her blade flashing as she severed the arm of the nearest orc, but she was panting. Her shadows were thinning under the constant magical bombardment. She looked up, seeing the wall of muscle and rusted iron closing in from all sides.

​Egon saw it too. His expression didn’t change, but the temperature around him plummeted.

​"Wait here," Egon told Vienna. "Do not leave the circle."

​He didn’t run. He took a single step forward, and the invisible barrier that had been protecting them expanded like a shockwave. He focused his mind, reaching out with the icy, spectral fingers of his Death King power. In his vision, the battlefield transformed into a map of flickering lights—the souls of the living. The orcs around Noella were bright, aggressive sparks of jagged red.

​He didn’t need to swing a sword. He didn’t need to chant a spell. He simply clenched his fist and thought one word.

​Extinguish.

​The effect was instantaneous and horrifying.

​The hundred orcs surrounding Noella didn’t scream. They didn’t fall back. They simply stopped. As if a cosmic puppeteer had cut every string at the exact same microsecond, a hundred bodies went limp. Their eyes rolled back, their hearts ceased to beat, and their souls were yanked violently from their chests, flying toward Egon in a swarm of gray, screaming mist.

​THUD.

​A hundred corpses hit the mud in perfect unison. A silence so heavy it felt physical fell over the southern gate.

​Noella, suddenly free of the pressure, stood in the center of a literal carpet of the dead. She looked around, her chest heaving, her Shadow Sword dripping with blood. She looked back at Egon, who stood fifty yards away, his hand still raised, his eyes glowing with an unholy, obsidian light.

​Even she, who knew his secrets, felt a shiver of pure dread climb up her spine.

​The soldiers on the walls, the mages in the backline, and even the General himself stood frozen. Kaelen’s jaw dropped so low it looked unhinged. His eyeballs were nearly popping out of his sockets as he stared at the mountain of dead orcs. There were no wounds. No fire. No ice. They had simply ceased to be.

​"What... what did he do?" a young mage stammered, his staff falling from his nerveless fingers. "That’s not magic. That’s... that’s a massacre."

​General Varos gripped the stone railing of the battlement, his knuckles turning white. He had seen 4th Order heroes perform feats of great destruction, but this was different. This wasn’t destruction. This was erasure.

​Egon ignored the stares. He felt the hundred soul fragments rushing into his core, being refined by the Eternal Void into raw, potent energy. He looked at the three Ogre-Mages, who were now trembling, their staves clattering to the ground as they realized their spells were useless against a man who could command the transition between life and death.

​"Noella," Egon called out, his voice echoing with a spectral reverb. "Finish them."

​Noella didn’t need to be told twice. She blurred across the gap, her Shadow Sword singing as it claimed the heads of the paralyzed ogres.

​Egon walked back to Vienna, who was looking at him with a mixture of awe and a tiny, flickering spark of fear. He saw it and immediately softened his aura, the darkness receding back into his skin.

​"You okay?" he asked, his voice returning to the calm, human tone she knew.

​Vienna swallowed hard, looking at the field of silent corpses. "I... I think I understand why the book needed a Hero, Egon. Because if you were the only one with power... the world would be a very quiet place."

​Egon smiled, though it didn’t reach his eyes. "The world is going to get a lot noisier before I’m through with it, Vienna."

​He looked up at the sky. Hilga’s light was still burning, but a new shadow was forming within the rifts. Something was coming that a mere hundred souls wouldn’t satisfy.

​"Stay close," he said, pulling both wives toward him as the ground began to shake with a rhythmic, subterranean thud. "The real show is about to start."

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