Lord Vorian of House Iron-Heart struggled to move.
Vorian coughed out a thick stream of blood. It stained his heavy fur mantle and pooled on the gray ash.
The battle around them had completely stopped.
The surviving knights of the Iron-Heart vanguard thousands of men who had just watched their lord's elite command squad get pulverized in two seconds, dropped their weapons.
They stared in absolute terror at the Warlord in dark armor and the Dragoons behind him. They did not attempt to rescue Vorian.
They were paralyzed by the crushing, invisible weight of Lucifer's aura.
The Carnage Core on Lucifer's hip pulsed with a blinding, violent crimson light. The artifact sensed the dense, high-level life force of a Level 40 Noble.
Vorian looked up. His face was pale, streaked with dirt and blood. The cruel, arrogant sneer was completely gone, replaced by raw, unadulterated fear.
"Y-You cannot do this," Vorian gasped. His chest heaved painfully against his dented breastplate. "I am a Lord of the Realm. A High General. The King... the King will have your head. The other Houses will unite against you."
"The King gave me absolute authority over this expedition," Lucifer stated coldly. "You fired military-grade evocation magic into my rear guard. You attempted to assassinate the Supreme Commander during a combat operation. That is high treason."
"I... I was aiming for the undead!" Vorian lied desperately. He clawed at the dirt with his heavy, mailed gauntlets, trying to drag himself backward away from the Warlord.
"The fog... it was thick. A miscalculation by my mages. A tragic error in ranging."
"It was a trap," Lucifer corrected him softly. "And you sprang it perfectly. You just forgot to account for the fact that I am not a standard general."
Lucifer raised his left hand.
He did not draw a physical blade. He channeled pure Void Arcanist magic into his palm. The air distorted violently, bending light and sound.
A blade of pure, concentrated black nothingness materialized in his grasp.
[Skill Active: Void Blade (Tier 2)]
[Effect: Creates a melee weapon composed of dark matter. Bypasses all physical armor. Inflicts absolute severing.]
Vorian stared at the black blade. He realized negotiations were over. He realized Lucifer did not care about politics, ransom, or the King's law. Lucifer only cared about absolute dominance.
"Wait!" Vorian screamed, his voice breaking. He raised both hands, trying to shield his face. "Mercy! I yield! I yield to Obsidian!"
"I don't take prisoners," Lucifer said.
He activated the Zephyr's Grace Emblem for a fraction of a second.
Lucifer vanished from the edge of the crater.
He materialized instantly on top of the dead destrier, standing directly over Vorian's chest.
Before Vorian could even process the movement, Lucifer swung the Void Blade.
The black blade passed through Vorian's heavy, enchanted iron gorget and thick neck muscles as if they did not exist. There was no resistance. No sound of cutting metal or bone.
Lord Vorian's head was cleanly detached from his shoulders.
It rolled off his chest, bouncing heavily down the side of the dead warhorse.
[Target Eliminated: Lord Vorian of Iron-Heart (Level 40)]
The moment the noble died, a massive surge of high-density life force erupted from his body.
The Carnage Core on Lucifer's hip reacted instantly. A tendril of bright red energy shot out of the black glass artifact, wrapping around the invisible surge of noble blood and violently ripping it into the core.
The cursed artifact shrieked. It was a high, metallic sound that echoed across the silent ridge.
Lucifer gritted his teeth as the feedback from the artifact washed over his Warlord core. The red light intensified, turning from a deep crimson to a blinding, pure ruby hue.
The black glass shell of the core cracked slightly, unable to contain the massive influx of raw, high-level death energy.
A barrage of blue system interfaces exploded across Lucifer's vision.
[System: Carnage Core Overcharged!]
[Source: High-Tier Noble Bloodline Absorbed.]
[Artifact Evolution Initiated...]
[Carnage Core Upgraded: Tier 7 -> Tier 8 (Sentient Artifact Class)]
[New Passive Effect Unlocked: The Reaper's Domain]
[Effect: The Warlord's Aura is permanently fused with the Carnage Core's bloodlust. Enemies below Level 50 within a 100-meter radius suffer extreme psychological terror. Weak-willed targets will instantly faint or suffer cardiac arrest.]
[System: Title Acquired.]
[Title: The Living Reaper]
Lucifer closed his fist. The Void Blade dissolved back into thin air.
He stood on top of the dead warhorse. He looked down at the headless body of Lord Vorian, then slowly turned his gaze toward the surviving Iron-Heart knights surrounding the crater.
Lucifer did not speak. He let the new passive effect of his Warlord aura, The Reaper's Domain, bleed out over the ridge.
It hit the Iron-Heart ranks like a physical shockwave of pure, unadulterated fear.
The knights were Level 30 veterans. They had fought bandits, monsters, and minor undead swarms. But they had never faced a Level 50 Void Arcanist holding a Tier 8 sentient cursed artifact.
The physical pressure of Lucifer's aura was terrifying enough. But the psychological terror of The Reaper's Domain was absolute. It injected the raw, primal fear of death directly into their minds.
The front line of Iron-Heart knights immediately collapsed. Dozens of heavily armored men dropped to their knees, clutching their helmets and screaming in mindless panic.
Several simply fainted, their eyes rolling back in their heads as their nervous systems shut down from the sheer, overwhelming terror radiating from the Warlord.
The remaining thousands did not try to avenge their lord. They did not try to fight. They threw their heavy iron shields and halberds onto the rocky ground and fell to their faces, groveling in the gray ash.
"Mercy!" a captain wept, his face pressed into the dirt. "We yield! We serve the Commander! We serve Obsidian!"
Lucifer looked at the broken legion. He had just decapitated one of the most powerful noble houses in the kingdom and absorbed their entire military force without losing a single man.
He tapped his comms rune, connecting to Elara back at the main column.
"Vorian is dead," Lucifer announced calmly. "The Iron-Heart vanguard has surrendered. Send the Rose Company scouts up to the ridge to strip their officers of their command sigils. They fight for us now."
"Understood, Lucifer," Elara's voice replied. She did not sound surprised. "What is your status? The main undead swarm broke against the rest of Dragoons, but the necrotic fog is thickening. The Lich Lords are reacting to our presence."
"I am returning to the center," Lucifer said.
He stepped off the dead warhorse. He walked past the groveling Iron-Heart knights without giving them a second glance. The Aether-Steel Dragoons hovering at the edge of the crater parted, allowing him to pass.
Lucifer summoned his Nightmare Steed. The beast materialized from dark mist, snorting aggressively. He swung into the saddle.
"Dragoons. Fall back to the main column," Lucifer ordered.
Lucifer rode back into the thick fog of the valley.
The battlefield was a mess of shattered bone and scorched earth. The Dragoons had completely annihilated the initial charge of the Undead Knights.
Piles of ash and rusted armor littered the cracked dirt road. The ten thousand Awakened mercenaries were cheering, realizing they had survived the ambush without a single casualty, thanks to the Arch-Seraphs' Aegis of the Dawn.
Lucifer rode back to the front of the column.
Elara was waiting for him. Her silver spear was drawn. She looked at Lucifer, noting the blinding red pulse of the Carnage Core and the new, terrifying weight of his aura.
Even as a Fallen Valkyrie, she felt the edge of The Reaper's Domain pushing against her divine light.
Lyra, the Dawn Saintess, sat on her white mare behind Elara. She looked pale. She had felt the massive spike in death energy when Vorian died.
"You executed a Royal General," Lyra whispered. She stared at the Warlord. "The political fallout in the capital will be catastrophic."
"There will be no political fallout," Lucifer corrected her. He pulled his Nightmare Steed to a halt. "Lord Vorian died heroically defending the eastern flank from an overwhelming undead ambush.
The surviving Iron-Heart knights will swear to that version of events, or I will execute them for treason. The King will receive his body and a commendation."
Lyra closed her eyes. She was slowly realizing that Lucifer was not just fighting a war against the undead. He was fighting a war against the entire structure of the human kingdoms, and he was winning flawlessly.
Before Lyra could respond, a massive, unnatural screech tore through the thick fog.
It was not the sound of a spell or an undead horse. It was a deep, guttural roar that physically shook the earth beneath their feet.
The sound carried a wave of concentrated necrotic magic so dense it caused the floating torches carried by the mercenaries to instantly snuff out.
The cheers of the Awakened fighters died immediately.
"That is not a knight," Elara said. She leveled her spear toward the deepest part of the Scourgelands. Her golden eyes narrowed. "The death energy is massive. It feels like a Zone Boss."
Lucifer looked into the dense, purple mist.
"It is Vorthos," Lucifer stated calmly. He rested his hand on his longsword. "The Lich Lord of this zone. And he is sending his pet to greet us."
The fog parted violently.
A massive, skeletal wing, spanning over a hundred feet, tore through the mist. The creature let out another deafening roar.
It was a Bone Dragon.
The Grand Army had survived the ambush, but the true battle for the Scourgelands was just beginning. Lucifer tightened his grip on the reins of his Nightmare Steed.
The Reaper was ready for the Leviathan.