Wizard: Starting from the Skill Tree-Chapter 500: Reinforcements Arrive

Tom desperately swung his sword to fend off a slash from the swift blade insect, the tremendous force numbing his arm, almost causing him to lose grip of the Broken Sword.

He stood in front of his parents, but more ant-like insects from the Insect Race surrounded them from the side.

"Tom... my child..." His mother’s voice was full of despair.

Old Bill looked at his son’s trembling yet still upright back, then at his lifelong companion, his old wife, and a resolute look flashed in his murky eyes.

He suddenly shoved Tom forcefully toward the exit, meanwhile using his body and outstretched arms like a protective hen guarding her chicks, blocking his wife from the insects.

"Run! Tom! Run fast! Don’t look back!" Old Bill roared with all his life’s strength.

"Father!" Tom stumbled from the push and turned back just in time to see the swift blade insect’s Bone Blade, like a venomous snake, easily piercing through Old Bill’s frail chest, blood gushing forth instantly.

"No—!" Tom’s eyes nearly burst with rage.

Almost simultaneously, several insects knocked down his mother, their sharp pincers mercilessly tearing away... The heart-wrenching scream abruptly stopped.

His parents’ figures were immediately submerged by the dark purple insect swarm, with only the splattered blood and the faint sound of bone cracking proving their final existence.

At that moment, Tom’s heart felt like it was gripped and crushed by a cold hand.

Boundless pain and anger almost devoured him; he wanted to charge back, even if it meant dying together.

But Old Bill’s last shouted command to run was like a brand in his mind; he looked at the spot where his parents disappeared, his teeth almost breaking, blood seeping from the corner of his mouth.

He abruptly turned away, never looking back, using all his strength to rush toward the weed-filled exit like an injured beast.

He smashed through the decayed wooden gate, rolled into the cold, foul-smelling drainage channel, crawling forward relentlessly.

Behind him, the eerie screeching and gnawing sounds of the Insect Race pursued like maggots clinging to bones.

Not knowing how long he crawled, until a sliver of light appeared before him did he finally emerge from the other side of the exit, landing heavily on the land outside the castle covered in sticky fungal blankets and traces of insect activity.

He collapsed in the mud, panting heavily, the stabbing pain in his chest and the sorrow in his heart nearly suffocating him.

He turned back to look, Stone Shield Castle was thoroughly shrouded in dark purple, fiery light illuminating that land of death.

No tears, only a void of dead silence and deep-seated coldness in his bones.

He had lost his parents, lost his home, lost everything.

The force driving him to crawl out was no longer hope, but an ingrained hatred and a thread of tenacious Life Force born from the instinct to survive.

...

Tom did not know how long he stumbled and ran, nor where he was.

The wounds on his body had split open again from the intense running, blood soaking through his tattered leather armor.

Hunger, thirst, blood loss, and the piercing sorrow gnawed at his will like countless ants.

The scene before him started to blur, with only his own heavy breathing and frantically pounding heartbeat echoing in his ears.

He ultimately exhausted, collapsing onto a ravaged forest clearing covered with a thin fungal carpet.

The earthy stench and the lingering sour rot of insects filled his nostrils, but he didn’t even have the strength to roll over.

He lay staring at the gray sky, the tragic sight of his parents, the flames of Stone Shield Castle, the faces of his dying companions, all flickered repeatedly in his mind like a revolving lantern.

"Is this the end..." A thought surfaced in his mind, tinged with a sense of liberating fatigue.

He slowly closed his eyes, ready to embrace death or become fodder for those monsters.

At that moment—

A powerful gust suddenly descended from above, dispersing the nauseating odors around him and stirring the sweat-soaked hair on Tom’s forehead.

Then, a loud and majestic eagle’s cry pierced through the sky, shaking his eardrums to a buzz.

Tom struggled, almost instinctively, to open his eyes.

The next moment, his pupils contracted, nearly forgetting to breathe.

A colossal, extraordinarily majestic creature was folding its wings, slowly descending onto a nearby clearing.

Its streamlined body was covered with feathers glistening with metallic sheen, sharp eagle eyes like amber, emanating the dignity of a sky sovereign.

Its mere presence exuded a natural pressure that made Tom’s heart jitter.

And what shocked him even more was the figure standing on the giant eagle’s back. 𝘧𝑟𝑒𝑒𝘸𝘦𝘣𝑛𝑜𝘷𝑒𝓁.𝘤𝘰𝓂

A young man wearing a dark, uniquely styled robe.

His posture was upright, his features calm, his hair slightly stirring in the airflow.

He stood there as if integrating with the giant eagle beneath his feet and the space surrounding him, radiating an unfathomable, ocean-deep aura.

Sunlight seemed to especially favor him, outlining a blurred halo around his presence.

Just as Tom was overwhelmed by this scene, another change occurred.

It seemed that the Storm Dragon Eagle’s arrival and Duke’s unabashedly powerful life aura attracted the nearby roaming insects.

Dozens of swift blade insects and acid-spitting bugs shrieked as they charged out from the forest shadows, as if discovering more valuable prey, and furiously dashed forward.

Tom’s heart leapt to his throat; he wanted to shout a warning but couldn’t utter a sound.

However, Duke, standing on the dragon eagle’s back, didn’t even furrow his brow.

He didn’t even look at the swarming insects, merely casually raising his right hand, gently clenching toward the direction of their charge.

Around Duke and the dragon eagle, countless yellow sands seemed to emerge from thin air, converging like golden streams.

The sands roared and rolled, under Duke’s mental command, transforming into dozens of agile and lethal sand pythons, recoiling with speed far surpassing the insects.

The fierce swift blade insects were ensnared by the sand pythons, their hard shells groaning under the endless sand’s frantic rotation and pressure, tightening, deforming, and with a crunch, gruesomely crushed, their shell fragments and green mucus splattering from the snakes’ crevices.

While the acid from the acid-spitting insects splashed against the thick sand walls, failing even to erode through the topmost sandy layer before being utterly submerged by subsequent sand waves.

The sand pythons swept through, these bloated insects too were caught in the sandstorm, ground into pulp.

The entire process, quiet, efficient, even possessing a certain cruel beauty.

In just two or three breaths, those dozens of insect armies capable of massacring a squad of elite soldiers were, with a casual strike from Duke, reduced to a mess of fragmented shells and sand, and couldn’t be discerned in their original form.

The Storm Dragon Eagle didn’t even intervene, lightly flicking its wings to scatter the pervasive stench.