However!
The expected scene of flesh and blood flying did not appear!
Marcus, who was hit, shattered like a broken gold sand bottle!
Under the huge impact, he exploded!
Not an explosion of flesh and blood!
Instead, he transformed into a storm of fine, shimmering gold sand particles, like countless tiny hairs, dancing in the sky!
Every grain of sand seemed like a minuscule Marcus!
They did not scatter and flee!
Instead, they condensed into an incredibly solid, gold sandstorm torrent, imbued with Marcus's desperate will!
Not only was he not defeated by the rock pillar, but he surged upstream, instantly entwining and penetrating the incredibly destructive rock pillar!
Crack! Crack! Crack!
The tough rock seemed to be rapidly losing some structural essence, groaning under the erosion, grinding, and decomposition of countless gold sand particles!
In just two or three breaths!
The rock impact pillar that Hotei had condensed, capable of instantly killing an ordinary Mage, began to rapidly turn to sand from within!
Disintegrating!
It turned into a pile of loose, fragmented sand, devoid of magical connection, on the ground!
Hotei's usually calm face showed a look of surprise for the first time!
His eyes, like eternal rock, also fluctuated violently for a moment!
After decomposing the rock pillar, the massive gold sandstorm torrent did not stop, but like a living gold dragon, it ferociously swept towards Hotei on the rock platform!
Within the sandstorm, it was as if countless Marcus were silently roaring!
"Ugh…" With sand in his mouth and nose, Hotei instantly felt suffocated!
Even more terrifying were those gold sand particles!
They tried to burrow into his body through every pore!
They even tried to erode and dismantle his protective Earth Magic!
"Trifling trick! Earth Barrier: Stone Guardian!" Hotei roared, and a massive surge of earthy yellow magic gushed forth!
A thick, ancient, monumental stone wall, like a gigantic mountain tablet, instantly rose from the ground, firmly protecting his front!
Boom!!!!
The gold sandstorm, like a surging gold tide, slammed fiercely against the Stone Guardian barrier!
The violent impact made the entire platform tremble!
Countless gold sand particles shattered, but the barrier was also struck with a huge dent and dense cracks!
Even more gold sand bypassed the barrier, like a gold whirlwind, continuously attacking Hotei's defenses from all directions!
These sand particles were no longer as loose as before; they seemed to have been imbued with life, constantly condensing into various sharp sand cones, heavy sand fists, and coiling sand whips, continuously bombarding the earthy yellow protective magic surrounding Hotei!
"Damn it… these things…" Hotei could clearly feel his protective magic rapidly depleting!
Those gold sand particles carried a strange erosive power and terrifying stickiness; they could even absorb leyline magic, accelerating his consumption!
This was no longer a simple sand magic attack!
Boom! Boom! Boom!
The gold sandstorm, into which Marcus had transformed, launched an unceasing, torrential assault!
Each impact shattered a portion of the rock platform beneath Hotei's feet!
The space he could evade in grew smaller and smaller!
"Arrogant!" Hotei's eyes completely darkened, feeling an unprecedented threat!
He suddenly clasped his hands together!
His entire body's magic erupted without reservation!
"Earth's Fury: Thousand Peaks Descent!"
Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom!
The ground shook madly!
The sky seemed to be obscured!
Small, incredibly condensed magical rock peaks, like dense cannonballs, tore through space and slammed fiercely into the omnipresent gold sandstorm!
This indiscriminate, covering attack was extremely terrifying!
Each falling peak was like a meteor impact! Shockwaves and rock fragments flew everywhere!
Large areas of gold sand were forcibly scattered!
Their attempts to condense in the air were interrupted!
"Ugh…" The rotation speed of the gold sandstorm clearly slowed down, scattering and re-aggregating, only to be broken apart again!
Maintaining this fully elementalized state was already extremely draining on magic, and enduring such a violent attack, the pressure Marcus endured was unimaginable!
Each forced re-aggregation was accompanied by intense mental pain!
Hotei locked onto the core of the storm!
"Your magic can't hold out much longer! What good is elementalization! Be utterly crushed!" He roared, controlling more, faster, and more condensed peaks to bear down!
Just as Hotei believed victory was assured, and was fully concentrating on condensing the next, stronger wave of peaks—
From the center of the gold sandstorm, which was constantly being scattered and re-aggregated, Marcus's clear soul roar, filled with resolute killing intent, suddenly erupted:
"Hotei!!! Accompany my sand particles to…"
"Sleep in the earth—"
"gold sand Ultimate Art!"
"Super: Billions of Wicked Souls Buried in gold sand!"
Ohm—!!!!
The entire battlefield, all the flying, scattered, embedded in rock, and even shattered gold sand particles by Hotei!
At the same moment, they erupted with a dazzling gold light that pierced the eardrums!
A terrifying, all-consuming will, as if from the depths of the soul, descended!
The next instant!
Centered on Hotei!
The ground within several hundred meters!
It was as if trillions of tons of explosives hidden underground were instantly detonated!
Rumble—!!!!!!!!
Not one explosion!
But the ultimate symphony of destruction, formed by the superposition of billions of explosions!
The earth was not torn apart! But completely overturned!
Endless gold sand!
Infinite gold sand particles!
Like a gold reverse waterfall!
And like gold magma erupting from the depths of the earth!
From every inch of land beneath Hotei's feet!
Every rock!
Even the huge platform he stood on itself!
Madly gushing and erupting upwards!
They were not just sand!
Every grain of gold sand carried Marcus's life-burning power, like billions of gold needles, with penetrating and tearing force!
They easily drilled through the earth's surface, ignored the barriers of soil, and shattered the structure of rocks!
The rock platform beneath Hotei's feet instantly became the most terrifying source of eruption!
Solid rock was as fragile as a biscuit in the face of these billions of simultaneous explosions from within!
Boom!!!
His proud Earth Barrier was torn to shreds like paper by the gold sandstorm coming from below and all directions!
The earth element he had invoked was completely disrupted!
He couldn't call upon it smoothly at all!
"No!!!!" Hotei let out an incredulous, horrified roar!
He could feel his footing instantly disappear!
As if he had fallen into a bottomless abyss of gold sand!
He didn't even have time to cast his strongest defense!
The all-engulfing gold sandstorm was already roaring and swirling, instantly swallowing him whole!
Not a single gap!
Sight, hearing, touch… everything was replaced by pure gold and the terrifying tearing sensation of being ground by sand!
Every grain of gold sand was alive!
All were penetrating his protective magic!
Drilling into his robes!
Cutting his skin!
Trying to burrow into his bones!
His internal organs!
"Ugh ah ah ah!!!!" Hotei's screams were drowned out by the roar of the sandstorm!
He was like falling into the legendary quicksand hell that devours gods!
All resistance was gradually eroded, worn away, and buried by this endless gold sand, imbued with a strong will to annihilate!
He could clearly feel his magic being drained at a visible rate!
His bones groaned, his internal organs felt like they were being crushed!
"Give… me… suppression…" He tried to unleash his last magic to condense a rock core to protect himself, but as soon as his intention formed, it was interrupted by the intense pain and magical disruption caused by countless burrowing sand particles!
Finally—
Like a colossal tsunami receding!
The world-sweeping gold sandstorm torrent suddenly collapsed inwards!
With the heavy sensation of finally burying everything, it pressed down fiercely on the swallowed figure in the center!
Like the final grasp of the desert's hand!
Rumble!!!!
A dull, extreme roar!
Centered at the base of the second giant leg, a massive, conical pit, dozens of meters in diameter and seemingly bottomless, had formed!
All the gold sand, along with a large amount of rock and soil at the bottom of the pit, was tightly, firmly compressed together!
Burying Hotei deep at the bottom of this heavy hell, a mixture of billions of sand particles and rocks!
At the edge of the deep pit, gold sand particles were still slowly flowing and rolling, as if murmuring a burial lament.
The original rock platform and surrounding terrain had been completely altered!
And in the center of the gold sand pit, symbolizing the burial, apart from the continuously collapsing sand and soil, there was no longer any sign of Hotei's activity.
Only an extremely faint magical aura, like a candle in the wind, emanated from the extreme depths of the thick gold sand and rock, as if sealed by eternal darkness and weight.
Thump!
At the edge of the deep pit, next to a cracked rock not far from the giant leg.
Space subtly warped, and countless gold sand particles, like tired birds returning to their nest, converged from the air and soil, rapidly condensing.
Marcus's body staggered into view.
He immediately fell to his knees, hands braced on the ground, breathing heavily, each breath like a broken bellows being pulled.
His face was ashen, devoid of any color.
His clothes were tattered, covered in bloodstains, bruises, and tears.
Especially at his left shoulder and calf, the wounds torn by the rock spear and stone claw were deep enough to expose bone; although elementalization partially avoided vital damage, the flesh wounds were still shocking, and blood mixed with sand stained the rock beneath him.
The cost of over-exerting himself to fully elementalize and detonate the gold sand Ultimate Art was extremely heavy!
His magic was almost completely depleted!
His mental energy was even more exhausted to the brink of collapse!
He couldn't even maintain a basic standing posture!
Sweat streamed down his forehead like a small creek, dripping onto the hot ground and instantly evaporating.
His vision also began to blur and double.
"Ha… ha… acting… acting tough… now… are you quiet…?" Marcus gasped, struggling to lift his head, looking towards the huge gold sand pit, his hoarse voice carrying an undisguised weakness, but his eyes burned with the flame of victory.
He won!
Under the terrifying pressure of a quasi-Ten Wizard Saints level, he was pushed to his limit, eventually breaking through in battle and completely mastering the ultimate form of gold sand Elementalization!
And on the eve of his magic running out, he gambled his life, using an Ultimate Art to narrowly defeat a powerful enemy!
Although the cost was being covered in wounds and utterly exhausted.
But the faint aura emanating from the deep pit, as if completely suppressed, declared the end of the battle.
Marcus grinned, wanting to laugh, but it pulled at his wounds, making him gasp in pain.
He painstakingly turned his head, looking at the Nirvana's second giant leg behind him, still standing majestically, with the magic crystal's light faintly swirling beneath its rock layers.
"It's… your turn… rotten stone leg…"
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