The roar of Dante shook the canyon.
The shadow dragon burst upward, wings stretching nearly fifty feet wide. His roar echoed off the stone walls of Crescent Moon Canyon, the sound multiplying until the entire battlefield trembled.
The ground itself seemed to vibrate.
And then the trap was sprung.
From the canyon rim, arrows began to fall.
Not random.
Precise.
Calculated.
Llandra moved like a phantom across the cliffs above.
Her Legendary skill still cloaked her true body in invisibility while two perfect clones mirrored her movements from opposite ends of the ridge.
Three archers.
One mind.
Four arrows released from each simultaneously.
Twelve arrows at a time.
Over.
And over.
And over again.
To Jax, watching from below, it reminded him of machine-gun fire.
Soldiers collapsed in rows.
Those not struck directly found themselves pinned beneath collapsing rock as explosions detonated along the canyon walls.
Boulders the size of wagons broke loose and crashed into the marching columns.
The army fractured.
Ten thousand troops suddenly became dozens of smaller, chaotic clusters.
Exactly as planned.
The General stared upward in disbelief.
This wasn't supposed to happen.
The canyon had been scouted.
The town had supposedly evacuated.
Their informants had been certain.
Yet now—
His archers were dead.
His formation shattered.
The canyon itself had turned into a weapon.
And they hadn't even reached the city.
Llandra continued her assault.
Her skill had a time limit.
Every second mattered.
Four arrows.
Release.
Four more.
Release.
Her arrows screamed through the air, piercing shields that should have been impenetrable.
Magic barriers cracked.
Armor split.
Men fell.
Her clones mirrored the rhythm perfectly, multiplying the devastation.
Below, soldiers scrambled for cover that did not exist.
Then Dante attacked.
The dragon swept low behind the Imperial army.
Hellfire poured from his jaws in a wide arc of molten destruction.
Entire ranks disappeared in burning light.
Men screamed.
Armor melted.
The backline collapsed in chaos.
And suddenly the army realized the trap.
They could not retreat.
The canyon behind them burned.
The only direction left—
Was forward.
Straight into the shadow army waiting ahead.
The General still had numbers.
But numbers meant little when formations broke.
The Slave Guild had promised a frightened town.
Instead they had walked into a prepared battlefield.
The creatures rising before them were unlike anything his troops had fought.
Shadow beasts.
S-rank.
A-rank.
B-rank.
Their forms shifting like living nightmares.
The dust rose quickly.
Debris from the avalanche filled the canyon air.
Visibility vanished.
But the screams continued.
The shadows advanced.
Loki led the charge.
The Frost Giant towered above the battlefield, his massive club crashing downward with thunderous force.
Each strike froze its victims solid before shattering them across the stone.
Gryph dove through the crowd, wings slicing air as talons ripped through armored soldiers.
Fang followed close behind, tearing enemies from formation and dragging them into the swarm.
Shadow beasts flooded the battlefield.
Relentless.
Fearless.
Unstoppable.
The canyon restricted the Imperial army to narrow formations.
Only twenty soldiers could stand across the passage at once.
Their massive numbers became a liability.
Wave after wave crashed into the advancing shadows—and collapsed.
For a moment the General thought he saw something moving through the dust.
A blur.
A shadow.
When the dust cleared from his eyes—
He saw him.
The man.
Jax had landed directly in the middle of the battalion.
Two pistols flashed in his hands.
Gunfire erupted.
He moved like a dancer.
Spinning.
Sliding.
Shooting.
Soldiers dropped around him faster than the General could track.
Then the man jumped.
No.
Not jumped.
He stepped onto the air itself.
Windwalk.
He soared above the battlefield before descending into another cluster of troops.
The pistols roared again.
Bodies fell.
The General watched in stunned disbelief.
This single man was dismantling entire companies.
Jax used the wind currents like stepping stones.
Leaping.
Flipping.
Dropping into enemy formations like lightning.
His Requiem guns thundered again and again.
Each landing erased another pocket of Imperial soldiers.
Mages.
Archers.
Long-range support.
Jax hunted them first.
And it was working.
Above, Llandra continued firing.
Below, Dante incinerated the rear ranks.
More than a thousand soldiers burned where they stood.
Another thousand staggered wounded, scrambling for cover from the dragon's fire.
The front lines collapsed under the shadow beasts.
The Imperial army was now trapped between three nightmares:
Fire from behind.
Shadows ahead.
Death from above.
And somewhere in the middle—
That man.
The General's confidence faltered.
Minutes ago they had held the advantage.
Ten thousand soldiers.
One emissary.
The Slave Guild had assured him resistance would crumble.
Yet here he stood watching an army break.
Then he saw the man again.
Jax launched himself upward once more, landing gracefully along a stone outcrop halfway up the canyon wall.
His black trench coat snapped in the wind.
The pistols disappeared into their holsters.
And the man reached behind his back.
The weapon he drew was absurd.
A massive double-bladed sword.
Larger than the man himself.
Yet he wielded it effortlessly.
He spun it once.
Twice.
Then drove one blade into the rock beside him.
The man stood there calmly.
Surveying the battlefield.
Like a king inspecting his domain.
The General stared.
And then—
The man's eyes found him.
Recognition.
A slow smirk spread across his face.
He lifted the weapon from the stone and pointed it directly at the General.
Despite the chaos of the battlefield—
The General heard his voice clearly.
As if the man stood inches away.
"I'm coming to collect the bill."