Placidium lay in the sacred heart of Ionia, the most sacred place on the continent where. Swain had led his legions to lay siege to this ancient city, bringing the iron boot of Noxian conquest to holy ground.
In response to the desperate call from the Navori Brotherhood, Ionia had united its scattered clans into a massive resistance army, launching a coordinated counterattack, determined to reclaim it.
At this critical moment, when victory seemed within Swain's grasp, his forces were suddenly redeployed by the paranoid Emperor Darkwill of Noxus, sent on a fool's errand to search the wilderness for mythical artifacts that could grant immortality to a dying tyrant.
With nearly his entire military strength stripped away, Swain found himself commanding little more than a skeleton garrison against Ionia's resistance.
Just as he was preparing a strategic retreat, temporarily ceding Placidium to avoid the resistance's momentum, he received orders from the military command.
Reinforcements had supposedly established an "inescapable trap" in the surrounding valleys, and he was commanded to lead his troops as bait to lure the resistance into the designated killing ground.
Swain obeyed the order, though his instincts screamed warnings. As he had suspected, it was indeed a trap, but one designed to eliminate him.
Within Noxus itself, powerful factions were maneuvering to see the empire's most competent general permanently removed from the board.
"Darkwill, the Black Rose, the decaying parasites who call themselves nobility, you're dragging Noxus toward inevitable ruin. The empire deserves leaders with vision!"
Swain clenched his fist and growled under his breath, watching his soldiers prepare their final defensive positions.
On the blood-soaked battlefield, Noxian soldiers, armed with advanced firearms, squeezed their triggers in controlled bursts.
In the middle of the gunfire, the operator of an gatling gun unleashed streams of standard ammunition interspersed with specialized incendiary shells specifically designed to counter supernatural abilities.
But this was merely a final, desperate stand against overwhelming odds. The Noxian forces were outnumbered; though their weapons were superior, their ammunition supplies were nearly exhausted after days of continuous fighting.
The Ionian resistance's apparent suppression was nothing more than a fa ade, they were conserving strength for the moment when they would surge forward like a breaking dam.
From his makeshift command center, Swain observed the situation: without meaningful reinforcements, the fate awaiting him and every Noxian soldier under his command was complete annihilation.
Even though he had anticipated this, prepared for it, and understood that such a sacrifice might prove necessary to catalyze the renewal Noxus desperately needed, his warrior's heart still burned with rage.
These soldiers were the disciplined elite of Noxus, the iron backbone supporting the vast empire, yet they were dying for nothing, sacrificed to satisfy the petty ambitions of a few.
"General! The front line's collapsing fast! Where the hell are those reinforcements command promised us?"
His adjutant stumbled into the command bunker, face blackened with gunpowder and streaked with unwashed blood from a dozen minor wounds.
"Reinforcements? There won't be any reinforcements coming. We've been abandoned. I'm sorry, because of my enemies, I've condemned all of you to die with me."
Swain shook his head, drew his sword, and though surrounded by death and consumed with fury, his face remained calm, without the slightest ripple.
He was, by nature, an exceptional military commander, unshaken by either triumph or catastrophe.
"Son of a bitch! Those bastards back in the capital, what've they got for brains, horse shit? Screw every last one of 'em!"
The adjutant spat a stream of profanity, abandoning all military respect for the chain of command, for Darkwill's regime, and for Noxus itself.
Though this unit wasn't comprised of Swain's personal bodyguards, they had marched beside him through countless brutal campaigns, witnessing his unmatched strategic brilliance and magnetic leadership. They had given him their complete loyalty.
Now, learning that even such a general, who had expanded the empire's borders through decisive victories and achieved legendary military success, was being betrayed by the useless parasites in high office, their rage burned hotter than forge fire.
Swain offered no response to the outburst. He stepped out of the command center, sword in his grip, and went directly to the front-line trenches. His mere presence among the defenders lifted morale; machine gunners steadied their aim and riflemen shot straighter.
But soon, their ammunition was completely spent, and machine guns and rifles alike fell silent.
"This is our moment, break through their lines and cut off their retreat! For Ionia, proud and eternal!"
A young girl's voice rang across the battlefield as she unleashed a storm of blades. The black-and-red armor and shields of the Noxian front-line soldiers might as well have been paper; they were pierced effortlessly.
Vanguard's Edge!
The defensive line was torn wide open. The girl dashed into the battlefield, blades orbiting around her like satellites.
Wherever her dance carried her, Noxian soldiers fell like grain before the harvester's scythe.
Following her charge, massive numbers of Ionian resistance fighters erupted from concealed trenches and forest positions, surging straight at the shattered Noxian defensive perimeter.
"So this is the legendary Blade Dancer, Irelia, that Cipher spoke of? The one blessed by Ionia's spirits, chosen as the leader of her homeland?"
"To stake the fate of an entire nation on the shoulders of a young girl... hah, utterly laughable. This backward land will eventually kneel before Noxus."
Swain gave a cold snort, then raised his longsword high above his head.
"All forces, advance! We carve ourselves a bloody path to freedom or we die like soldiers!"
At his command, he led the charge. Surrounded on all sides with no hope of reinforcements, the only slim chance for his soldiers to survive was breaking through enemy lines.
Such fearless leadership from their commanding officer ignited the spirits of every remaining Noxian. The soldiers discarded their spent firearms, seized shields and spears from fallen comrades, and followed their general.
But as the supreme commanding officer of Noxus' eastern campaign, Swain's distinctive armor and bearing made him stand out like a golden eagle among sparrows, and his high-profile assault immediately attracted Irelia's attention.
To the people of Ionia, Swain's name was spoken like a curse, despised across every village and sacred grove.
Countless Ionians who had lost their homes, families, and ancient ways of life fantasized about nothing more than tearing his flesh with their bare hands, drinking his blood, and hanging his skin from temple gates.
Although none of the orders for city massacres or village slaughters had originated from Swain himself, his strategy had emphasized appeasement, seeking to extract wealth through trade rather than warfare, it did nothing to prevent the Ionians from laying every atrocity at his feet. After all, he wore the title of supreme commander.
When blood enemies meet on the battlefield, old hatred blazes like wildfire. Irelia abandoned her slaughter of common soldiers and charged directly toward Swain.
Blessed by Ionian nature spirits and awakened to supernatural power, she could not be stopped by even Noxus' most elite veterans, especially now that their specialized ammunition capable of disrupting magic had been exhausted.
"Protect the General! Form defensive perimeter!"
Recognizing Irelia's shift, the adjutant gripped his blood-slicked spear and rallied the surviving guard unit to intercept her charge.
Within mere heartbeats, warm blood sprayed across Swain's face.
Against an awakened Irelia operating at the peak of her powers, no ordinary Noxian soldier possessed the capability to hold the line for more than seconds.
"Noxus will remember your sacrifice... and someone will pay the full price for this betrayal!"
Swain narrowed his eyes as Irelia approached. The blades orbiting around her form, guided by her will and spiritual connection, accelerated toward, seeking to pierce his heart as they had pierced countless others.
Bang! Bang! Bang!
Without hesitation, Swain drew the revolver Cipher had gifted him for self-defense, squeezing the trigger in rapid succession. The weapon was loaded with specially crafted armor-piercing rounds.
Faster than a sprinting warrior, the revolver's shots cracked through the air.
But skill could not overcome fate. Irelia herself had no time to react to the gunfire, but her blades did. They halted mid-flight, forming a barrier that deflected the bullets.
She blinked in surprise, then swiftly ducked low, slipping past the arm with which Swain held his gun.
The blue defensive field generated by Swain's Hextech armor seemed to offer no protection against her blades. The returning weapons severed his gun arm cleanly at the shoulder and shattered his left kneecap.
The severed limb tumbled through the air, only to be caught in Irelia's hand as she spun past him.
"How fascinating... even Hextech cannot withstand her blades. Is some greater spiritual force interfering?"
He collapsed into a pile of cooling corpses, his life essence pooling beneath him. No one noticed his fall, he seemed forgotten by the world itself, just another casualty in the meat grinder of war.
Even Irelia did not look back to confirm his death. Clutching his severed arm like a trophy, she simply continued her dance of destruction deeper into the battlefield, seeking more Noxian blood.
With their general fallen and apparently dead, Noxian morale completely collapsed, and the entire army suffered a crushing, defeat.
In this war, Swain, until this moment undefeated in every military campaign, tasted the bitter ash of failure for the first time. He also came face to face with his own mortality... and with the power of the demon.
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