"Shit!"
"What the fuck?"
"This is crazy!"
People cursed and screamed at the absurdity of the scene, while suppressing their mounting fear. This was the first time they saw the attack of a true Grand Rank 2 Lord with one hand in Half-Rank 3 King! If Early Rank 3 Kings, such as those involved in the extermination of the Featherwind Sect, could wipe out city-sized regions, then this display of force was nothing too impressive. In fact, the truly impressive act had yet to come! Crus furrowed her brows and concentrated once more on her doppelganger. When the doppelganger collided with the bottom-layer barrier, it promptly burst into two, smaller-sized birds! Retaining the same edge, they pierced like an arrow through two other warships. Half the Martial Energy, half as deadly, it could not bisect these ships this time and many survived the attack. Still, no one could defend against Crus's pinnacle art!
As the two cranes soared into the sky, the two ships began sinking with a gaping hole in the middle of their decks. Water ravenously poured into the opening, signalling the ships' demise. Since they were at sea, this became their greatest weakness! Crus did not have to directly obliterate the fleet, only sink the ships! Once that happened, it was only a matter of time before everyone drowned. That was right! It was less of two against twenty thousand soldiers, but more of two against a few hundred ships! And these ships were constructed from simple wood without special magical arrays or reinforcement techniques. For humanity, it might have been an impossible task, but in front of Ludin and Crus, it was laughably trivial. They were formerly Grand Rank 2 Lords for good reason!
"Attention! All ships, enter formation three! All hands, concentrate your attacks on those two birds! Destroy them before they can recover their strength! Arcanists, deploy defensive barriers! Ten Dawns, focus on destroying this barrier!" Admiral Aura ordered calmly. This time, she was assisted by an Arcanist, who helped transmit her voice to everyone.
One had to admire her commanding presence and calm demeanor. Thanks to her quick instructions, the fleet regained their footing and coordinated their assault! Archer squadrons let loose volley after volley, after which Arcanists used their wind-type spells to 'capture' the arrows. With a few clever circular revolutions to increase momentum, the Arcanists directed hundreds to thousands of projectiles toward the birds! The other Arcanists were not lax either, as the offensive division conjured a flurry of destructive spells! The four elemental magics: fire, wind, earth, and water, made their appearance, as well as rarer types. The soldiers raised their shields, while the defensive Arcanists raised their barriers. During naval combat, the Arcanists quickly revealed their worth. They were the main combatants on this battlefield! The sky was decorated in a majestic display of colors and strength!
"Good! If you couldn't fight back, then I wouldn't be able to sleep at night!" Crus laughed. "But the show is just beginning!"
Ludin nodded and initiated the next stage of his Seven Encloses Heaven barrier! His Magic Circles transformed into an entirely different configuration before shooting out seven beams which connected to the seven talismans. His aura then instantly soared and the energy inside his Core plummeted. In response though, the barrier began rapidly shrinking! The problem with his large barrier was the tremendous area it spanned. The sparse Magic Energy meant that the barrier was incredibly weak. A sufficiently powerful attack from the inside, such as a ship ramming into it, might be enough to blast it open. Even with Ludin's Bloodline Ability and pseudo-Grand Rank 2 Lord status, it was beyond his ability to maintain. That was firmly in the realm of a Rank 3 King's ability! But… if he could lower the area it covered, then he could redirect that surplus into strengthening the barrier. Hence, the longer this battle went on, the harder it would be to break free!
And that was not everything either. After sinking three ships, the two doppelgangers split again to become four! They wove through the skies and elegantly dodged the incoming attacks. With a fell swoop, the four coordinated their attacks toward the fleet again! Crus was about to smile when her expression froze. A streak of white light tore across the battlefield and narrowly missed one of her doppelgangers! Similarly, a blazing fireball attacked another doppelganger and detonated a little too far away. Neither were successful, but they were the closest to actually damaging the birds! Crus traced them to the Alzar flagship. There, Elizabeth was holding her glowing winged bow, which radiated an otherworldly strength. Dual Core Rending Technique! Freon was right beside her, holding his wand, with a dense Magic Aura. Thousand Core Resonance!
"This…" Admiral Aura was stunned and the same went for everyone else.
"This is… a tempering technique and a Bloodline Ability," Crus said with narrowed eyes. "How unexpected. I didn't think that we would see something like that from humanity."
"They're both around Grand Rank 1, close to touching Half-Rank 2," Ludin commented. "I can tell their powers are incomplete, yet they already possess enough power to transcend ranks. If they were in our sect, then they could become inner disciples."
"That's assuming they could break through to become Rank 2 Lords," Crus shook her head. "The step from Rank 1 and Rank 2 Lord is massive. There's no guarantee that they'll make that first step."
"That's true. Either way, it is rare to see a Rank Transcendent."
A Rank Transcendent was someone who could 'jump' ranks to fight a higher rank. In this case, both Elizabeth and Freon could be called Rank Transcendent Lords since they displayed strength equivalent to Rank 2 Lords! Of course, this was the weakest form of a Rank Transcendent. The difference between Rank 1 and Rank 2 Lord was large, but not chasmic. Given a powerful or unique ability, coupled with the right circumstances, then one could defeat a Rank 2 Lord and call themselves a Rank Transcendent Lord. In this regard, it was not particularly outstanding, nor did it invoke any fear or caution from Ludin and Crus. They had seen their own fair share of Rank Transcendent Lords and there were dozens of such individuals before their sect collapsed.
However, a Rank Transcendent King was an entirely different beast altogether. There were only a few hundred of them in the entire world. For example, Scholarly Lotus King, Veridian Song King, or even Crushing Apex King. Using their Rank 2 power, they could contest or kill a Rank 3 King! One had to know that the gap between Ranks at that level was hundreds of times greater than before. Bridging that gap meant a monstrous amount of skill, talent, potential, and power! They were practically guaranteed to make that final step to become a genuine Rank 3 King! That was why they were rightfully called monsters, highly feared across the world.
Above that was a Rank Transcendent Emperor. Due to the unbelievable enormity in difference between Rank 3 King and Rank 4 Emperor, it was virtually impossible to achieve! It was hundreds of thousands of times more difficult than a Rank Transcendent King. After all, an Emperor was a one-man army! Who could prevail against that? But… in the vast, vast history of the world, there were bound to be supreme prodigies, blessed with every gift imaginable, who could shatter those beliefs and do the unthinkable! They could kill an Emperor! For example, Thunder Swallowing Heaven Emperor, Celestial Nine Ring Emperor, or Drifting Snow Serenity Emperor! 'Monsters' was inadequate to describe them. Even Rank 4 elite civilizations avoided angering them. They were walking legends!
What about Rank Transcendent Gods then? Well, to put it simply… If becoming a Rank Transcendent Emperor was a one-in-a-million opportunity, then becoming a Rank Transcendent God was completely impossible! Not abysmally low odds or anything like that, but it was fundamentally impossible. A God was an invincible, unkillable, unstoppable, and immortal existence thanks to the powers they wielded. They could control the most basic building blocks of the world and reconstruct them to whatever they desired. Any 'laws' could be freely bent and abused! A Rank 4 Emperor was a civilization-destroying monster, but a Rank 5 God was a world-ending calamity! Whether it be a million Emperors or the entire world, a God could defeat them all! Therefore, a Rank Transcendent God was a legendary existence above legends… a fairy tale.