CHAPTER 24
WARRIORS OF THE DAWN
The scene shifted.
Shortly after, an explosion erupted across the battlefield—
BOOM
"Warriors, fall back!"
"Bring in the reinforcements!"
"The Bal Thrag-gians... we need the Bal Thrag-gian Executioners now!"
"It's no use, Commander! Nothing we throw at them seems to work!"
"Don't you dare stop firing!"
"The heavens bestowed upon you the Arts that no mortal should wield… and this is how poorly you display humanity's strength? Pathetic…"
"Nobody is permitted to die unless I give the order. Release every ounce of strength left within you for the glory of our beloved empire… and for humanity's continued existence!"
"Raise your voices to the heavens! Though the enemy is outnumbered, it changes nothing about what they truly are…"
"Humanity's greatest threat."
"We contend not with mortals of flesh and blood… but with gods who walk amongst men."
"This is a war of attrition!"
"Protect the empire with your lives!"
"Barriers! We need barriers now!"
"How is the situation looking?"
"Dire, Commander… We've lost countless allied forces already. I'm afraid the allied nations refuse to spare any more manpower."
"At this rate, Commander… if we don't do something soon… the empire may fall."
"Tell me something I don't already know,"
The commander replied, visibly vexed.
"So they refuse to spare more manpower, hm? Fools…"
"Do they not realize that if this empire falls, every other empire will follow?"
"The Bal Thrag-gian Empire believes itself impregnable. They have no idea what we face every single day. We've lost good men to this war…"
"Men we should never have lost… if only they had lent us their Executioners sooner to turn the tide of battle. But they'd rather keep them hidden behind their precious walls."
"Do they truly believe they can escape this war?"
"Commander!"
A soldier cried out between heavy breaths.
"The Bal Thrag-gians… the Bal Thrag-gian Executioners… they're finally here!"
The commander's eyes widened slightly.
"Tell the men to fall back immediately."
"Create as many layers of barriers as humanly possible and reinforce them with the Arts."
"Everyone, fall back!"
"Fall back!"
"Make way for the Bal Thrag-gian Executioners!"
"Prepare the barriers! We are about to witness the might of the Empire of Bal Thrag-gar!"
"The barriers have been set!"
"Have the aerial assault squads retreat as well!"
"So… those two are Bal Thrag-gar's secret weapons?"
"What a monstrous presence…"
"It feels like the entire battlefield is being crushed beneath some invisible force the moment they arrived…" a soldier muttered, sweating profusely.
"Are they even human?"
The remaining warriors on the battlefield quickly made way for the two Executioners sent by the Empire of Bal Thrag-gar, creating a path that led directly toward the enemy of humanity standing at the opposing end of the battlefield.
Silence fell.
A dead, suffocating silence.
Every warrior stood on edge, their eyes locked onto the two most powerful individuals humanity had produced during that era.
The two Executioners walked forward calmly before finally stopping.
A hundred meters behind them stood the remnants of the allied armies.
At the forefront were specialists highly versed in the Arts. Like every warrior participating in the war, each possessed an Art unique not only to themselves, but also to the nation or race they originated from.
Humanity's united forces consisted of countless empires, kingdoms, clans, and races gathered under one cause.
The specialists stationed at the forefront belonged to the Empire of Hantrepedes.
The empire currently under siege; the very one requesting military assistance from Bal Thrag-gar, was known as the Empire of Hantrepedes. One born within its lands was called a Hantrepedean.
The Art practiced by the Hantrepedeans was a defensive Art that allowed its users to manipulate existing matter and shape it into colossal walls, barricades, and shields capable of protecting entire civilizations.
Its defensive capabilities were nearly limitless.
In theory, a skilled Hantrepedean could erect walls vast enough to stretch across an entire nation.
The Art itself was named after the empire, and only those born of Hantrepedean blood and ancestry could wield it.
However, at the time of the war, the Art of Hantrepedes was still in its infancy. Many advanced combat applications and techniques had yet to be discovered or developed.
The Hantrepedean specialists tasked with erecting the barriers quickly moved into formation.
There were roughly a hundred of them, arranged into rows of twenty.
Behind them stood what remained of the allied armies.
And beyond the armies, stretching far into the distance, were the colossal walls protecting the Empire of Hantrepedes and the countless lives sheltered within it.
To protect the empire from what was about to unfold between the Executioners of Bal Thrag-gar and the Six… the specialists deployed their Art.
The Art of Hantrepedes.
The ground trembled violently.
Massive walls of earth erupted upward from the battlefield with terrifying force. Each barrier was nearly six meters thick, rising close to a mile into the heavens.
Every row of twenty Hantrepedean specialists erected a colossal wall whose length stretched beyond what the eye could perceive.
Through the collective use of their Arts, the specialists created five enormous defensive barriers, each towering nearly a mile high.
Together, the walls formed a colossal shield that completely separated the Empire of Hantrepedes from the battle about to take place.
Rumors regarding the Executioners' strength had spread far and wide across the world.
But only a select few truly understood how terrifying they really were.
The Executioners were the finest military assets of the Bal Thrag-gian Empire.
The Hantrepedean commander understood this better than anyone. That was why he immediately ordered multiple defensive layers the moment he learned of their arrival.
To outsiders, deploying a hundred specialists merely to erect five colossal barriers may have seemed excessive.
But to the commander…
It was merely a precaution to ensure the empire would still remain standing once the battle was over.
The barriers were set.
Five colossal walls stood between the battlefield and the Empire of Hantrepedes.
On one side stood the allied armies, the Hantrepedean specialists, and the empire they swore to protect.
On the other side…
Only the two Executioners of Bal Thrag-gar remained, standing before the beings history would later remember as—
The Gods of Calamity.
The standoff did not last long.
The moment the barriers were raised and reinforced, the two Executioners immediately initiated a Release.
There was no hesitation.
No exchange of words.
No warning.
Hand signs were formed with terrifying precision.
Before the Six could even force a proper confrontation, the Executioners had already moved.
Their orders were simple:
Total obliteration of the Six on sight.
To Bal Thrag-gar, an enemy of humanity was an enemy of the empire itself.
Lupus found himself witnessing the confrontation firsthand, as though trapped within a memory replaying itself before his eyes.
He watched the two Executioners charge toward the Six.
His eyes could barely register their movements.
They moved beyond human comprehension.
Before Lupus could fully process what was happening...
A spark appeared.
Then came a blinding flash of light.
The instant he saw it, realization struck him.
The Executioners had never come for a battle.
They came for annihilation.
Not just the destruction of the Six… but the complete eradication of the battlefield itself.
At that moment, Lupus finally understood why the five colossal barriers had been erected in the first place.
The barriers were never meant to protect the Executioners.
They were meant to protect everyone else from them.
The goal was simple:
Ensure that absolutely nothing remained of the Six.
Even if it meant erasing the entire battlefield in the process.
Even if it endangered the allied armies.
Even if it meant placing the Empire of Hantrepedes itself in harm's way.
As long as the threat was destroyed before it could ever reach Bal Thrag-gar… no sacrifice was considered too great.
The Hantrepedean commander understood exactly what kind of people the Bal Thrag-gians were.
That was why he wasted no time deploying specialists to erect multiple defensive barriers and reinforce them with the Arts over and over again.
He had anticipated this outcome from the very beginning.
The commander may have requested military aid from the Empire of Bal Thrag-gar—
—but he was no fool.
He knew precisely the kind of monsters he had invited onto his battlefield.
Then it happened.
From the spark and blinding light came a deafening sound so catastrophic that the resulting shockwave alone instantly collapsed the first colossal wall of earth.
The reinforced barrier shattered apart violently.
And with it...
...the twenty Hantrepedean specialists maintaining the wall were killed instantly.
Only four colossal walls remained.
Each barrier was reinforced continuously with the Arts and maintained by twenty Hantrepedean specialists.
But after witnessing the first supposedly impregnable wall collapse from nothing more than the shockwave of the Executioners' Release, the remaining specialists immediately poured every ounce of stamina they had left into sustaining the other four barriers.
The commander's face was filled with both shock and fear.
He stood frozen as he watched the pride of the Hantrepedean Empire;
The Art of Hantrepedes itself;
crumble before his eyes.
The defensive Art was renowned for creating walls and barriers considered nearly indestructible once properly reinforced.
And yet…
one shockwave had reduced the first barrier to dust.
The rumors were true.
Beyond any shadow of doubt.
The commander had believed he understood the extent of the Executioners' power.
But what he witnessed far exceeded even his worst expectations.
Moments after the blinding flash and devastating shockwave, the battlefield erupted into chaos.
Massive debris, dust, sand, shattered rocks, and fragments of earth were violently blasted outward in every direction.
The aftermath alone left the first colossal wall completely ruined.
Then suddenly...
everything changed.
The debris that had been scattered across the battlefield was violently dragged back toward the center.
Toward the exact location where the Executioners stood.
The force pulling everything inward was so overwhelming that soldiers across the battlefield had to brace themselves to avoid being dragged toward the frontline.
Fortunately, the four remaining barriers still stood strong, continuously reinforced by the surviving Hantrepedean specialists.
Even then, everyone could still feel the pull.
Even the civilians living behind the massive walls of Hantrepedes; hundreds of meters away from the battlefield, felt its terrifying force.
Then came the next phase.
And what followed could only be described as...
...the birth of a sun.
At least, that was how Lupus perceived it.
He had never witnessed anything remotely close to such power.
And it all happened so fast.
Within moments, the temperature rose to absurd levels never before recorded… nor experienced by mankind.
Then it appeared.
A massive flaming sphere rapidly formed at the center of the battlefield, expanding outward at a terrifying rate like a newborn star erupting into existence.
What Lupus witnessed with his own eyes...
in all its terrifying glory...
...was the Art of the Bal Thrag-gian Empire in its Full Release.