Rise of the Peerless God of War

Chapter 17

The ancient battlefield was a minefield of magical death traps.

Every step they took deeper into the valley revealed new horrors left over from the great battle three hundred years ago. Runes carved into stones that exploded when touched. Spectral weapons that materialized from nowhere to attack anything that moved. Patches of ground where reality itself seemed unstable, warping and shifting like heat mirages.

This place is insane. How did anyone survive fighting here?

"Watch your step," Draven warned as they skirted around a crater where the air shimmered with dangerous energy. "Grandfather's stories mentioned magical traps that never deactivated."

Grandfather's stories. Right. Because I can't exactly say 'the memories of dead heroes are telling me this place is a deathtrap.'

Jin nearly stepped on a pressure plate hidden beneath fallen sakura petals. The moment his foot came down, the stone slab triggered with a sharp click.

Oh shit.

A volley of spectral arrows materialized from the air, their ghostly forms whistling as they shot toward Jin's chest. He threw himself sideways, his earth magic creating a hasty barrier that the arrows punched through like paper.

Spectral weapons. They're not entirely physical, so normal defenses don't work properly.

"Jin!" Lyra's wind magic deflected the remaining arrows, but more were already forming.

The trap's still active. It's going to keep firing until we get out of range.

"Move!" Draven shouted, pulling Jin away from the pressure plate. "Don't stop until we're clear!"

They ran through a gauntlet of spectral arrows, dodging and weaving as the ancient trap continued its deadly barrage. Only when they were fifty feet away did the arrows finally stop manifesting.

Fifty feet. The trap's range is exactly fifty feet.

Someone designed this with military precision. Someone who understood exactly how to kill people.

"That was too close," Jin gasped, checking his armor for arrow holes.

Too close. And that was just one trap.

How many more are there?

The answer came as they continued deeper into the valley. Dozens of them. Maybe hundreds. Three centuries of accumulated magical hazards, all still active, all still deadly.

The battlefield never ended. The war just went dormant.

A section of ground ahead of them suddenly erupted in flames that burned with colors that shouldn't exist. Purple fire that froze instead of burned. Green flames that seemed to devour light itself. Silver fire that made the air scream.

Celestial magic. Residue from the invaders' weapons.

Still active after all this time.

"Celestial fire," Draven said, drawing on Master Elena Brightwater's memories. "Don't let it touch you. It doesn't burn your body—it burns your soul."

Burns your soul. Because celestial beings exist partially outside normal reality.

Their weapons affect things that shouldn't be affected.

They gave the flames a wide berth, but even at a distance, Draven could feel the wrongness emanating from them. This wasn't magic that belonged in their world.

This is what we're up against. This is what War God Tianlong died fighting.

This is what's trying to come back.

Sera's shadow magic suddenly flared in warning. "Something's coming. Multiple contacts, moving fast."

Multiple contacts. The Shadow Moon Sect.

They've found us.

"Where?" Lyra asked, her wind magic stirring the air as she searched for threats.

Everywhere. They're surrounding us.

Using the magical chaos of the battlefield to mask their approach.

Smart. And deadly.

That's when the spectral weapons began manifesting on their own, without any pressure plates or triggers. Ghostly swords materialized in the air, their blades gleaming with malevolent light. Phantom spears thrust at them from impossible angles. Spectral arrows rained down like deadly snow.

The battlefield's magical residue is overloading. Too much power, too much chaos.

The ancient battle is starting to replay itself.

"The magic's destabilizing!" Draven shouted over the sound of clashing spectral weapons. "The battlefield's coming back to life!"

Coming back to life. Three hundred years of dormant magic suddenly active again.

All the death, all the violence, all the desperate fighting—it's all happening again.

And we're caught in the middle of it.

Jin's earth magic struggled to create barriers against weapons that existed only partially in the physical world. Lyra's wind couldn't deflect attacks that had no substance. Sera's shadows offered no protection against enemies made of light and memory.

We're fighting the echoes of a war we weren't part of.

Ghosts of a battle that ended before we were born.

But the ghosts don't care. They'll kill us just the same.

A spectral spear materialized inches from Draven's chest, its point aimed directly at his heart. He twisted aside, feeling the weapon's cold touch as it passed through the space where he'd been standing.

That would have killed me. These aren't illusions—they're real enough to hurt.

Real enough to kill.

Another explosion of celestial fire erupted nearby, its unnatural flames reaching for them with hungry tendrils. The heat was wrong, the light was wrong, everything about it violated the natural order.

This is what happens when you tear holes in reality. The damage never really heals.

It just waits for someone to make it worse.

"We need to get out of here!" Jin called out, his earth barriers cracking under the assault of spectral weapons.

Get out of here. Right. Except we're surrounded by magical hazards, pursued by the Shadow Moon Sect, and caught in the middle of a ghostly battle.

Where exactly are we supposed to go?

"The tomb!" Draven said, pointing toward the massive sakura tree at the valley's heart. "We need to reach Tianlong's tomb!"

The tomb where this all started. Where War God Tianlong made his sacrifice.

Where the answers are waiting.

If we can survive long enough to reach it.

They fought their way through the chaos, dodging spectral weapons and celestial fire while the ancient battlefield raged around them. Every step was a gamble, every breath a risk.

This is what war really looks like. Not the clean stories in books, but the messy, chaotic, deadly reality.

The kind of war where heroes die and the world keeps spinning anyway.

A massive spectral weapon—something that looked like a sword the size of a tree—materialized directly above them, its blade aimed to split them all in half.

Oh, come on. That's just unfair.

Jin threw every ounce of his earth magic into creating a barrier above their heads. The spectral sword struck with the force of a falling mountain, and Jin's barrier exploded into fragments.

The barrier held. Barely.

But Jin...

Jin collapsed to his knees, blood streaming from his nose. The effort of stopping a weapon that massive had pushed him beyond his limits.

He's hurt. Badly hurt.

And we're still surrounded by magical hazards.

And the Shadow Moon Sect is still hunting us.

And the spectral battle is still raging.

This is going very badly.

That's when they saw it—a shadow moving through the chaos with purpose and intelligence. Not a spectral weapon or a magical hazard, but something real and solid and hostile.

The Shadow Moon Sect. They're using the chaos to get close.

They're hunting us while we're distracted by the magical hazards.

They're going to attack when we're at our weakest.

"Contact!" Sera shouted, her shadow magic detecting the approaching threat. "Real enemies, not spectral!"

Real enemies. People we can actually fight back against.

People who will actually die when we hit them.

Finally, something straightforward.

But even as he thought it, Draven knew this was about to get much worse.

Because we're exhausted, Jin's injured, and we're still surrounded by magical death traps.

Because the Shadow Moon Sect has been tracking us, planning this, waiting for the perfect moment to strike.

Because they know exactly what they're doing and we're just trying to survive.

The chaos of the ancient battlefield suddenly seemed like the least of their problems.

Because human enemies are always more dangerous than magical ones.

Magical hazards don't think. They don't plan. They don't adapt.

But people do.

And the people hunting us are very good at what they do.

A figure in a dark robe emerged from the spectral chaos, moving with fluid grace through dangers that should have killed anyone normal.

Shadow Moon Sect. Professional killers trained to hunt people like us.

People who know about our power and want it for themselves.

People who serve masters from other dimensions.

The figure raised its hands, and darkness flowed from its fingers like liquid night.

Corrupted magic. Power that shouldn't exist in this world.

Power stolen from the spaces between dimensions.

Power that's about to be used to kill us.

The ancient battlefield had become a three-way war.

Spectral weapons. Magical hazards. And human enemies.

All trying to kill us at the same time.

This is definitely going to be interesting.

If we survive it.

The massive sakura tree at the valley's heart loomed ahead of them, its trunk wide enough to house War God Tianlong's tomb.

So close. We're so close to the answers.

To the power that could change everything.

To the legacy that could save the world.

If we can just survive the next few minutes.

A sound like breaking reality echoed across the battlefield as more celestial fire erupted around them.

The magical chaos is getting worse. The ancient battle is escalating.

The spectral weapons are becoming more real.

The dimensional barriers are weakening.

And somewhere in the chaos, something vast and terrible was beginning to stir.

Something that had been sleeping for three hundred years.

Something that was about to wake up.

The apex predator. The guardian of guardians.

The thing that War God Tianlong left to protect his tomb.

And it just noticed that we're here.

The ground beneath their feet began to tremble.

Oh, shit.

This is about to get much worse.