Nothing and no one could withstand the force behind the roar. The 10 or so people in front of him went tumbling away.
One of those people was a cold-looking girl. She had jet black hair, white as snow skin, and a rather alluring body. But right now her expression was one of urgency. She raised her hands and a 3 meter wide hexagonal green shield appeared and tried to block the sound wave but she still had to move back tens of meters under its pressure.
"Please, we mean you no harm! You have to listen to me!" she yelled from behind the shield but the tattoed man's eyes were already bloodshot and he seemed to have lost all sense of rationality. He turned his head halfway and looked at the people behind him.
There were two other tattoed individuals in the group but they seemed to have incurred grave injuries already and were barely staying awake. Most of the others were either women and children or missing one or two limbs.
"Go! Tell the elders the invaders are getting reinforcements! We have to fight to our last breaths!"
He clutched his broken right arm while trying to stay standing but the light in his eyes was already showing signs of going out. His thoughts were in complete disarray with only one memory playing over and over again.
One of the two tattoed men came forward and pleaded,
"But master Kryz we can't do this alone, you have to com-"
"GO!" he shouted and another small sound wave pushed the injured man away.
Biting his lip, he reluctantly turned around and ran after the group, leaving his 'master' facing the so-called invaders alone.
Kryz saw their backs vanish from view and turned back around to face his enemies. All ten of them were already standing in front of him. Each of them had a different weapon in hand and even after taking his last attack head-on, they weren't injured in the least.
A deep, husky voice echoed in the jungle.
"I told you they won't listen…"
The girl's expression worsened as soon as she heard it. and she yelled back.
"You promised to give me a chance! I still have time left!"
"….fine. But this is the last one, no more!" the voice without an owner said and disappeared.
The girl looked back at the tattoed man and nodded. Her nine companions reluctantly put away their weapons and moved aside. She walked towards the man with open arms.
"Please listen to me, we mean you no harm. Those people that did that to you weren't with us…." she did her best to explain the situation but the tattoed man wasn't listening anymore.
But his thoughts were focused on one memory, the last good memory he had left. The last dinner he had with his family.
Until a few months ago he was just a normal farmer living a simple life. This planet was called 'Iuris' and was his home. He lived a quiet life there away from all the hustle-bustle and the fighting of the world.
When the sun came up he would start tending to the farms with his two sons and return when it would go down to a nice hot meal and a lovely wife and a daughter. Occasionally they would go out to the bigger villages and trade goods before returning back home.
But on one fateful day, the sun didn't come. It was the day their lives changed forever.
The sun had been hidden behind a flying contraption above the clouds. It was so high up that their simple minds couldn't even comprehend it. And soon after, people came down from the contraption on unknown beasts.
They asked for information about their world and took a few important people with them. The next day the sun rose as usual and everything seemed to have returned to normal, but that only lasted for a few weeks.
Soon after, hundreds of meteors fell from the sky and they brought three gigantic beasts with them. These beasts towered over most mountains and drank entire rivers dry, but that wasn't the worst of it.
On these beasts rode hundreds of invaders that called themselves cultivators. They fought amongst themselves every day, destroying entire towns and villages in the process. They fought with the native people and killed as they pleased. No one could stop them.
Kryz, like many others, journeyed to one of the bigger cities for protection with his but they would never make it there. Their caravan was attacked just a few kilometers away from the city and everyone was killed, everyone but him.
His wife didn't even have a full corpse left to bury. His precious daughter was crushed to death under a carriage and his sons were killed by one of the cultivators for crying too loudly over their deaths.
He could do nothing but watch as his entire family was murdered on a whim, like ants that had no meaning.
'These people, they didn't even bat an eye after killing so many, WHY WOULD I LISTEN TO YOUR KIND!?' he wanted to shout but it was too late. All he could do was grit his teeth and watch.
The numerous tattoos on his body lit up one after another. They came out of his skin and formed a single word in the air above him.
This was the power he and many others like him received on death's door.
"The Words of Power!"
He looked at the girl a few feet away from him and smirked.
"This is for my family…" he murmured before closing his eyes.
He clenched his empty fist and the word of power above broke into tiny shards and a black beast foot like that of a mammoth materialized in its place.
It was more than 40 meters in diameter, covering everyone including Kryz himself. Without giving any time for them to run away, it came crashing down.
The cultivator's complexions turned dark when they realized they couldn't move their bodies. The girl froze and hurriedly created a shield over them but it broke as soon as it appeared.
After trying a couple of other things without success, she let out a deep sigh and shook her head because she knew how it was going to end.
The air in front of her trembled and a small red spark ignited out of thin air. The spark quickly expanded into a crimson pillar of flame with a silhouette inside it. This silhouette raised its hand and murmured one word, "Immolate" and the beast's foot started burning from inside out, disappearing within seconds.
Kryz who had summoned it was laying lifelessly on the ground, the body already cold, summoning something like that as a mortal caused his blood essence to evaporate.. His vacant eyes were still open with a few tears falling onto the ground beneath.
