Chapter 136: The Alliance
Kaito stood at the rear of the million-strong undead legion, the Soul Fire in his sockets burning with a cold, steady intensity. He watched the thousand points of light—the doomed Templars—charge toward his lines.
They looked like moths throwing themselves into a global wildfire.
Kaito didn't even issue a command. The frontline undead spontaneously raised their weapons, a mechanical wall of bone and steel waiting to swallow the light.
Just then—
The earth began to shudder.
RUMBLE.
RUMBLE.
The sound didn't come from the undead. It came from behind Hupert, from beyond the distant hills. The Pope whipped his head around.
On the western horizon, a silver torrent appeared.
It was the main body of the Theocracy's Expeditionary Force. Two hundred thousand soldiers, facing the rising sun, thundered down the slopes. Their armor caught the morning light, merging into a flowing, liquid ocean of silver. Banners were a forest that blotted out the sky.
The beating of drums, the shriek of horns, and the collective roar of a quarter-million men merged into a sonic wave that made the very atmosphere vibrate.
"FOR THE SPIRITS!"
Cardinal Hal heard the thunder from behind. He looked back, seeing the silver sea, and his entire frame began to tremble with religious ecstasy.
"The reinforcements... they've arrived!"
He hoisted his scepter, his voice cracking with emotion. "CHARGE!"
The morale of the thousand Templars ignited instantly. They were no longer a suicide squad. They were the tip of a spear. The vanguard of a two-hundred-thousand-strong host.
The silver flood quickly overtook the thousand points of light, enveloping them and merging into a singular, unstoppable blade of steel that plunged deep into the undead phalanx.
Blood and shattered bone exploded upon impact. Human soldiers used broadswords to cleave skeletal skulls, only to have their chests shredded by the claws of a Ghoul a heartbeat later. Templar hammers pulverized rows of the dead, only to be buried beneath a mountain of black bone spears.
The meat-grinder of war had officially begun to turn. Every second, hundreds of lives were snuffed out.
Kaito watched the carnage, his Soul Fire showing zero ripple of emotion. Two hundred thousand? Still too few. He only needed to stand there; soon enough, those two hundred thousand humans would simply become his newest recruits.
However...
The tides of causality shifted once more.
On the far right flank of the battlefield—the very edge of the undead line—a earth-shaking boom erupted.
THUD! THUD! THUD!
The sound was rhythmic and heavy, as if a mountain-sized battering ram were striking the planet itself. A wall of massive steel tower-shields smashed through the undead flank with the force of a tectonic shift.
Tens of thousands of skeletons and ghouls were launched into the air by the impact, then trampled into the dirt beneath the weight of the advance. Behind the shield-wall stood countless stout, barrel-chested figures. They were bare-chested, their corded muscles engraved with ancient, glowing runes.
They swung heavy waraxes and iron hammers. Every arc of their blades reaped a harvest of necrotic mist and bone.
"WRAAAAAUGH!"
King Barock cleaved a Vampire clean in half with a single swing, blood spraying across his face. He didn't even pause to wipe it, turning his gaze toward the distant Pope and letting out a booming laugh.
"Hupert! A brave Dwarf never sits idle while there's glory to be forged!"
Hupert stared at the blood-drenched Dwarf King. Watching the Dwarven Legion methodically butcher the undead lines, a flicker of shock crossed the Pope's weary face. Barock? How did he get here so fast?
Before he could process the arrival, the rear of the battlefield flared with new light.
Countless golden points of light leaped over the heads of the Dwarven ranks. Those silhouettes were weightless, moving with a predatory, ethereal grace as they landed in the midst of the undead legion. They wore magnificent golden plate and wielded slender, wickedly sharp longswords.
Their movements weren't combat; they were a dance. Every spin, every thrust, was a masterpiece of lethal elegance. In the time it took to blink, dozens of undead had fallen to their blades.
Behind them, even more Elves drew their longbows. Arrows infused with the Mana of the Forest formed a canopy of emerald rain, precisely sniping the high-tier officers within the undead ranks.
Queen Elina stood at the absolute rear of the Elven lines. She didn't look at the carnage; she stared directly at Hupert in the distance, her lips curling into a smirk.
"Oi! Kid! A noble Elf would never deign to hide behind a human's back!"
Hupert withdrew his gaze from Elina, his eyes scanning the widening chaos. Dwarves... Elves... they're all here. But why?
Just then, a roar—wilder and more primal than anything heard before—erupted from the absolute rear of the undead army.
"WAAAGH!!!"
A green wave surged over the opposite horizon. They lacked the refined armor of the Empire or the enchanted steel of the Elves. They had only massive, bulging muscles and eyes burning with bloodlust. Like a pack of starving wolves, the Orcs slammed into the back of the undead host.
Warchief Grom literally kicked a Skeleton Knight off its horse, sending the creature and mount flying. His gargantuan axe carved a path through the sea of bone, creating a tide of calcium and necrotic Od. He hoisted his axe toward the bruised sky, howling:
"ORCS FEAR NO WAR!"
Humans. Dwarves. Elves. Orcs.
The four most powerful ground-dwelling races of the continent had converged. From four different directions, they acted as gargantuan pincers, clamping down on the black ocean of death.
And then, from the clouds—
A series of high-pitched, predatory shrieks cut through the din. Everyone looked up. A shadow blotted out the sun.
Griffins. Tens of thousands of them.
Astride each beast sat a knight clad in silver-white plate armor. At the head of the aerial legion, mounted upon a golden griffin of monstrous proportions, sat a young girl. She wore the radiant royal plate of her house, her golden hair whipping in the gale.
Queen Alice drew the Sword of Kings. She offered no grand speech, no passionate plea. She simply leveled the tip of her blade at the heart of the undead army below.
"CHARGE!"
The Royal Knights behind her drew their steel in a single, metallic choir. Their voices shook the firmament:
"WHERE THE SOVEREIGN POINTS, OUR SOULS FOLLOW!"
The Griffin Legion became a rain of silver lightning, diving toward the earth.
Kaito remained stationary, his Soul Fire pulsing with a quiet, observant rhythm. He watched the enemies swarming from every point of the compass. He watched the griffins falling from the sky.
He made no move to defend himself, knowing that in the end, numbers were just statistics to a King of the Dead.
But the Seven Generals behind him were not so patient. The Soul Fire in their sockets began to vibrate with an intense, oscillating frequency.
FURY.
Absolute, unadulterated fury.
These insects. These suicidal, blind insects.
They dared to unite. They dared to challenge the majesty of their Master.
The Generals took a single step forward in unison, the atmospheric pressure they projected turning the air around them into a physical weight. Kaito felt their intent and didn't stop them, merely watching with a clinical curiosity.
On the other side:
Barock, Elina, and Grom stepped from their respective ranks.
Altlais dropped silently from the sky behind Alice, landing on the grass.
Hupert rose into the air above the Theocracy's lines, wreathed in light.
Five Tier 6 Powerhouses.
Their gazes crossed the chaotic battlefield, locking onto the Seven Generals in a silent, high-altitude standoff. The entire field of war froze for a fleeting second under the weight of those twelve clashing auras.
The next heartbeat—
Barock hoisted his axe.
Grom unleashed a war cry.
Elina drew her bow to the ear.
Altlais bared his Holy Sword.
Hupert raised his scepter.
Across from them, the Seven Generals lunged.
The Total War for the fate of the continent had begun.
☆☆☆
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