Surviving the Magic Academy With Just Intelligence Stats-Chapter 74: Golden-Eyed Tyrant [PART 2]

Even the soldiers engaged in battle below momentarily paused, their weapons suspended mid-swing as they gazed upward at the breathtaking spectacle unfolding in the sky. General Autumn stood encircled by thousands of identical Friedrichs, each one bearing the same golden-eyed stare, the same imperious posture, creating a panorama both magnificent and terrifying.

Autumn’s eyes darted frantically from one Friedrich to another, struggling to discern which, if any, was the genuine article. After several moments of assessment, his expression hardened with resolve. "They’re just clones," he muttered, reaching a decision. With a bellowing war cry, he charged blindly toward the nearest cluster of Friedrichs.

The moment he committed to his attack, he felt devastating blows rain upon his back. Spinning to confront his attackers, he immediately received strikes from another direction. Within seconds, he found himself at the center of a brutal onslaught, surrounded by Friedrichs who appeared and disappeared too quickly to track, each landing punishing blows before retreating into the temporal chaos.

The sound of mocking laughter echoed around him as the clones taunted his futile efforts to counter. Rage built within Autumn’s chest, threatening to overwhelm his battle-honed instincts. But the veteran general refused to succumb to emotion. Drawing a deep, steadying breath, he forced himself to analyze the situation dispassionately.

"They’re trying to provoke me," he realized. "But the damage is minimal – irritating at best." As a tank-type, his defensive capabilities were unparalleled. These attacks, while numerous, weren’t penetrating his natural defenses enough to pose a serious threat.

A calculated smirk formed on his battered face. "Let them waste their mana," he thought, deliberately relaxing his stance and allowing the blows to land. "Friedrich isn’t foolish enough to think these clones can finish me. He’ll eventually attack personally – I just need to wait."

Autumn adopted a defensive posture, conserving his strength while the temporal duplicates continued their assault. "In a battle of attrition, the tank always wins," he reminded himself, finding cold comfort in battlefield fundamentals. The clones could spend mana indefinitely, but even the mighty Friedrich Rothschild had limits.

Seconds stretched into what felt like minutes as Autumn maintained his stance, beginning to wonder if his strategy had been miscalculated. Was it possible Friedrich truly believed these attacks would be sufficient? Did he possess some unknown trump card?

Just as doubt began to creep into his mind, Autumn felt it – a blow to his groin several magnitudes stronger than the previous attacks. The pain was nearly unbearable, causing his vision to momentarily blur, but beneath the agony, triumph blazed. This was no clone – this was the real Friedrich, finally revealing himself.

With lightning reflexes honed through centuries of combat, Autumn’s hand shot out, seizing the wrist connected to the offending fist. His grip tightened like an iron vise, allowing no possibility of escape. With a violent flex of his entire body, he scattered the surrounding clones, sending them flying several meters outward.

A wicked smile spread across his face as he stared into the eyes of his captured opponent. "I finally caught you!" he crowed victoriously.

The trapped Friedrich looked at him with apparent nervousness. "H-how did you know?" he stammered.

Autumn’s laughter boomed across the battlefield. "Hahaha! Of course I knew – the original hurts more than the clones," he declared, swelling with pride at his own cleverness.

Friedrich’s face fell in apparent defeat, his free hand rising to his forehead in a gesture of dismay, further feeding Autumn’s growing ego. "Didn’t think I was this smart, huh?" the general gloated, savoring his moment of triumph.

But the victory was short-lived. His expression froze as the captured Friedrich lifted his foot and delivered another devastating kick directly to his groin. The pain was so intense that Autumn felt death itself might be preferable to this agony.

Through his haze of suffering, he heard Friedrich’s calm voice: "Of course being hit in the groin hurts more."

Before Autumn could process this statement, the Friedrich he’d been so certain was real exploded into golden light, transforming into yet another temporal clock that quickly dissolved into particles of light. The revelation hit harder than any physical blow – he’d been deceived again.

The real Friedrich watched from multiple perspectives at once, his time-split consciousness analyzing Autumn’s every move. The empire general had fallen for the oldest trick in combat – mistaking pain for authenticity.

…

General Autumn hovered in midair, one hand clutching his groin as waves of excruciating pain radiated through his entire body. The agony was almost unbearable, but far more acute was the humiliation burning through his veins. His pride, cultivated over centuries of conquest, lay shattered around him like the golden particles of Friedrich’s disappearing clones.

The revelation struck him with devastating clarity – from the very beginning, apart from that initial blow, Friedrich had merely been toying with him. The Golden-Eyed Tyrant wasn’t engaged in serious combat at all. What high-level combatant would target an opponent’s groin in a battle between transcendent beings? It was the clearest statement of contempt possible.1

Looking down, he could see even his own remaining soldiers laughing at the spectacle he had become. The mighty General Autumn, one of the Empire’s four legendary generals, reduced to a laughingstock before both armies. Friedrich hadn’t just attacked his body – he’d systematically dismantled his reputation.

Something primal snapped within Autumn’s psyche. His face contorted in rage as he threw his head back and bellowed, "FRIEDRICH!!!" The name erupted from his throat with such force that the battlefield below trembled, soldiers staggering as the sound waves rippled outward. Dust rose from the earth, and birds fled from distant trees.

"I wanted to slap you a few times," he snarled, his voice dropping to a dangerous growl, "But it seems that I have to kill you now." The words were mere formality – he had intended Friedrich’s death from the outset, but now it had become deeply personal. This was no longer about conquest – it was about vengeance, about restoring his shattered honor.

A crimson aura began to surround Autumn’s form, crackling with electricity-like discharges every few seconds. His oversized, bulging muscles – the hallmark of his tank-type fighting style – began to shift and realign. His body underwent a startling transformation, his bulky frame becoming leaner, more refined, optimized for speed and precision rather than absorption and endurance.

The watching soldiers below fell silent as they witnessed the legendary general’s transformation. Only the most seasoned veterans had ever seen this form – Autumn’s true combat state, reserved for opponents worthy of his full power.

With movement so swift it defied perception, Autumn tore through the surrounding Friedrichs. Hundreds of temporal clones exploded into golden particles as he carved through their ranks, each dissipating with a flash of light. His hands moved with surgical precision, crushing the neck of one clone after another.

"Show yourself, you coward!" he roared, continuing his rampage through the sea of duplicates. Each clone he destroyed only seemed to multiply his rage, for none proved to be the real Friedrich.

This chapt𝙚r is updated by freeωebnovēl.c૦m.

Below, the battlefield had become eerily still. Both sides had ceased fighting, transfixed by the spectacle above. The empire soldiers who remained unfrozen by Friedrich’s time magic watched their general’s transformation with a mixture of awe and dread. They had never seen Autumn pushed this far, driven to such extremes.

The kingdom soldiers, for their part, exchanged worried glances. They had witnessed Friedrich’s power countless times, but even they had never seen him employ such elaborate tactical deception. Something had changed in their commander – Victoria’s departure had transformed his usual calculated precision into something more creative and cruel.

As Autumn continued his destructive path through the clones, the second-in-command who had brought Friedrich the initial report watched with growing concern. This was escalating beyond a border skirmish – this was becoming the kind of confrontation that reshaped maps and rewrote histories.

Friedrich, for his part, observed from multiple temporal vantage points simultaneously, his consciousness split across different versions of himself. He hadn’t intended to take things this far, but Autumn’s taunts about Victoria had awakened something within him – a darkness he’d kept carefully controlled until now. "Maybe I should stretch a bit…"

A/N - F => E => D => C => B => A => S(Special Rank 1) => SS(Special Rank 2) => SSS(Special Rank 3) => Transcendent

A/N - lets use this for now