Kairo and Leonhart stood entirely frozen, staring down at Gideon's lifeless, still-warm body. Their chests heaved as they violently fought back the tears threatening to blur their combat vision. Discipline was the only thing keeping their hands from shaking.
Kairo, his voice projecting straight into Leonhart's mind through a heavy, telepathic frequency, forced a cold, dead register. "Yeah... our strongest ally has been killed. But we still have one thing left. We can still completely defeat you."
But Leonhart couldn't maintain the strategic stoicism. The raw weight of grief and unadulterated fury completely shattered his emotional parameters. He knew the macro-plan required absolute discipline, but looking at his brother-in-arms lying dead in the dirt, he threw his head back and let out a savage, agonizing scream of pure rage, mourning the heavy loss of the vanguard's general.
Kairo's hands began to shake violently. The battlefield, the smoke, the smell of burning stone—everything suddenly distorted like a shattered mirror.
"Wait... what? What is happening...?" Kairo muttered, his vision warping.
He looked up, and the sky was no longer there. In its place stood a terrifying, monstrous entity towering over them. The creature was sickeningly creepy, possessing a hyper-extended, impossibly tall, and gaunt, razor-thin physique. It didn't have a normal face—its visage was violently split completely in half, exposing a pale, hollow interior.
Kairo whipped his head around, looking at Leonhart. Leonhart's golden eyes were wide with a rare, suffocating panic as he gripped his sword. "Where the hell are we...?" Leonhart whispered.
They weren't in the capital square anymore. Trees—ancient, knotted, and bleeding black sap—stretched into a dark canopy above them.
Beside them, King Lysander had completely stopped fighting. The invincible, majestic monarch was shaking violently, his knees buckling as he stared at the pale, faceless monstrosity. The unholy pride of the Land of Lust completely evaporated, replaced by a whimpering, primal dread.
"No way... I am screwed," the King whispered, his voice cracking as he backed away. "How... how did I end up in the Forbidden Forest...?"
The perspective violently shifts back to the capital gates, where the thousand rebel soldiers stood in absolute, paralyzed confusion. The reality-warping spatial shift had separated the leaders, leaving the army stranded.
Suddenly, the heavy thrum of marching boots shook the earth. From the outer rim of the city, the primary royal army—one hundred thousand loyalist soldiers—flooded into the plaza, led by one of the regime's remaining high-tier generals.
The loyalist general skidded his horse to a halt, staring at the empty, blood-soaked ground where the battle had just taken place. He spotted Gideon's bloodied armor lying near the rubble. "How did General Gideon die?!" the general demanded, his voice booming over the ranks.
A rebel soldier stepped forward, his knuckles white on his spear. He rapidly explained the entire sequence—the betrayal, the King sacrificing the Queen, and the horrific execution of their leader. "And now," the rebel soldier snarled, "we are rebelling against the crown."
The loyalist general stared at him, then let out a low, dark chuckle. "No way... so you vermin actually think you're going to rebel against the state? Huh?"
"Yeah," the rebel soldier spat, his voice trembling with years of buried rage. "Because I am completely tired of that monster killing innocent soldiers for his own amusement!"
The loyalist general threw his head back, unleashing a maniacal, arrogant laugh that echoed off the burning walls. "Do you honestly think a measly thousand of you can beat me and an army of a hundred thousand?!"
"They won't," a gruff, gravelly voice echoed from the dirt. "But I can."
The entire plaza fell into a dead, horrified silence. The loyalist soldiers gasped, their horses rearing back in panic.
Slowly, agonizingly, General Gideon stood up.
His chest armor was completely caved in, a gaping, hollow void sitting where his heart should have been. Yet, he stood straight. He wiped a thick torrent of dark crimson from his chin and spat it onto the cobblestones. "Yeah... I am standing at death's door. But I sure as hell don't want to die a normal, quiet death. This... this is my last dance."
[FLASHBACK SEQUENCE]
The micro-second King Lysander had ripped Gideon's heart from his chest, Kairo's tactical genius had already rewritten the terms of mortality. The concentrated emerald mana crystals Kairo had forced into Gideon's pathways acted as a localized life-support engine.
Oxygenation Loop: The raw mana directly bound to the cellular structures, artificially converting deoxygenated blood back into hyper-oxygenated blood without needing a pulmonary circuit.
Adrenaline Overdrive: The mana systematically forced Gideon's adrenal glands to completely rupture their limits, pushing his nervous system into a state where his muscles operated at 100% maximum structural capacity, bypassing the body's natural safety limiters.
The Mud Core: Down in the dirt, Kairo's precise mud magic had instantly encased Gideon's severed heart, keeping it intact and forcing it to pulse with a weak, artificial rhythm via mana threads. It was incredibly faint, but it kept the brain stem alive.
[PRESENT TIME]
Gideon looked down at his hollow chest, then raised his eyes to face the 100,000 enemy troops. The sheer volume of Kairo's mana crystals was the only thing keeping his cellular structure from turning into ash.
He drew his silver broadsword, his chest expanding as he unleashed a feral, deafening bark that shook the very foundations of the city.
"MY SOLDIERS!" Gideon roared, his voice carrying the weight of a dying god. "I will be dead in no time! But remember this—if you die right now, this systemic cycle of corruption ends with us! Before you draw your last breath, make absolutely sure to kill these evil tyrants who murder innocent children for their own entertainment! My soldiers, ATTACK! Redeem yourselves for the sin of staying silent for so long! ATTACK!!!"
A deafening, unified scream tore from the throats of the thousand rebel soldiers. They violently slammed their spurs into their horses, launching a reckless, localized cavalry charge straight into the sea of iron.
The loyalist army, driven by their general's commands, surged forward to meet them, and the final, catastrophic clash of a hundred thousand blades erupted under the burning sun.
The thousand rebel soldiers didn't care about the catastrophic disparity in numbers anymore. They were utterly sick of the endless political rot, the unholy depravity, and the cruel whims of the royal court. They knew with absolute certainty that even if they surrendered now, they would be labeled as unloyal dogs and executed in the most humiliating ways possible. Instead of dying a coward's death as branded betrayers, they chosen to die on their feet as men who flatly refused corruption.
"KILL THE EVIL!" they roared, throwing their horses into a full-speed gallop.
Yet, to their absolute shock, General Gideon didn't charge alongside them immediately. He stood entirely still in the center of the opening clash, his eyes locked onto the sky.
Beneath his caved-in chest armor, Kairo's emerald mana crystals were working overtime. The hyper-oxygenated loop violently surged through his system, weaving across the torn, mutilated meat of his heart. With an agonizing squelch, the muscle fibers successfully fused back together, forced into a crude, functioning shape by the sheer intensity of the spell.
Gideon lowered his gaze, his eyes narrowing as he locked onto the loyalist general leading the opposing charge. That general had always deeply envied Gideon—especially after Gideon married one of the oldest, most respected daughters of the kingdom. The loyalist general had never managed to best Gideon in a single tournament or campaign. Now, with a massive army behind him, the man openly hoped this would be the day he finally executed his rival.
The loyalist general was internally stunned by the suicidal bravery of Gideon's men, but he saw this chaos as his perfect path to vengeance. "ATTACK THESE FELLOW BETRAYERS OF THE LAND! COME ON, LETS DO THIS!" he roared.
As the two armies collided in a sickening crunch of steel and horseflesh, the loyalist general violently activated Assassin's Step.
He instantly vanished from his saddle, dissolving into the chaotic friction of the battle arena. The regular soldiers couldn't track his coordinates or know where he would appear next. But the general wasn't interested in killing low-ranking rebels. He moved like a shadow straight toward Gideon, who was still seemingly distracted, staring blankly upward.
The loyalist general materialized directly in Gideon's blind spot, a mad, triumphant grin twisting his face. He drew his master-work broadsword and brought it down with his full, unmitigated might.
"I WON!" the general screamed.
SHRED.
The blade tore violently through flesh and bone, a heavy spray of crimson painting the dirt. But as the loyalist general's vision cleared, his grin instantly froze. He hadn't slashed Gideon's head off at all.
Standing before him, his throat completely cleaved open, was his own loyal companion—his strongest elite lieutenant.
The general staggered back in absolute horror, his mind struggling to process the visual metrics. "Wait a second... in the blink of an eye, he was right behind me... How did I just kill my own ally?!"
"You're too slow," Gideon's gravelly voice growled from behind him.
Before the general could even pivot, Gideon's mana-reinforced fist swung around like a battering ram, striking the general squarely across the jaw.
CRACK.
The sheer, brutal kinetic force instantly twisted the general's head at an unnatural, fatal ninety-degree angle, snapping his cervical spine instantly.
Gideon didn't even watch the body hit the floor. He shook the blood off his knuckles and muttered, "Sorry. Don't have the time to break the rest of your bones."
With a deafening roar, Gideon lunged directly into the densest sector of the front field. Within seconds, the sea of iron closed around him—he was completely, utterly alone, surrounded by thousands of enemy troops in every single direction. Left, right, front, back—the loyalist spears and swords rained down upon him in a desperate, frantic swarm.
But to the enemies' absolute terror, Gideon stood his ground at the epicenter. Pushing his reflexes to the absolute peak of human capacity, he centered his stance, fluidly dodging the majority of the supersonic thrusts. Some blades managed to slip through his guard, slicing deep gashes across his shoulders, torso, and legs.
Yet, the pure, unadulterated rush of adrenaline and testosterone generated by Kairo's overdriven mana crystals completely blocked out the concept of pain. Gideon went into a state of total, primal rage. He fought like a feral beast, his silver sword shearing through armor, shields, and flesh with single, heavy swings.
He went completely all out. The sheer, terrifying violence of his assault shattered the morale of the surrounding loyalist ranks. The closest soldiers threw down their weapons, their faces pale with sheer horror as they turned and ran away from him. They realized in that singular, bloody moment that their vast numbers meant absolutely nothing in front of a literal dead man walking.
Seeing the feared, broken faces of the royal vanguard, Gideon's rebel army let out a triumphant cheer. They knew the battle was already theirs.
"FOR THE INNOCENT! NO SURRENDER!"
The rebel cavalry rode their horses with terrifying, relentless speed, slamming into the fractured loyalist ranks with total force and unbridled rage. As they swung their weapons, every single bad deed the regime had inflicted upon the land flashed through their minds. They remembered the stolen lands, the businesses brutally stripped away from honest families, the old men and women tortured in the public squares, and the innocent children sacrificed to feed the unholy desires of the King's court.
Fueled by the righteous memory of those atrocities, the rebel army became an unstoppable, vengeful tide, mercilessly crushing the evil army of the King beneath the hooves of their mounts.