Leon's eyes coldly scanned the chaotic battlefield, tracking the three Lords standing atop the ridge. Claymond, in particular, was stiffly adjusting his glasses, every muscle in his body tense as he anticipated the tyrant's next move.
Stepping fully away from the heavy wooden threshold, Leon moved forward with measured, terrifying steps. All around him, the battlefield raged in a deafening storm of steel and war cries. High-tier Vanguard troops—Lizardmen, Jhuul beast-folk, massive Hobgoblins, swift Rabbitmen, and hollow Living Armors—clashed violently against the allied reinforcement army, turning the clearing into a meat grinder.
"Leon..." Claymond called out, his voice sharp but tightly controlled. "Finally out of your hole, yeah?"
"Figured I would check the weather up here," Leon said, a mockingly pleasant smirk playing on his lips.
"Well, as you can see, it's quite the bloodbath," Varen interjected, dropping his lazy demeanor as he kept his grip tight on his weapon.
Leon continued to step closer, entirely unbothered. He walked alone, yet his presence was heavy enough to flatten the grass beneath his boots. Immediately, Fallon and Renn moved into formation, their bodies positioning defensively to cover Claymond, Lyra, and Varen.
Down in the clearing, the brutal duel between Garth and Jeeves was still fiercely raging. Jeeves was desperately trying to disengage, his long rabbit ears pinned back in sheer fury. "Get off me, you green bastard!" Jeeves hissed, his polite butler persona completely warped by rage.
Garth answered with a booming laugh.
"No!"
Another swing came immediately after.
Jeeves twisted away just before the blade buried itself into the ground where he'd been standing.
"Thats why I hate you orks!" Jeeved shouted, "Always going on about battle spirit and such, just give up! And die!"
Garth let out a bloody laugh, tightening his grip on his axe as his mane shook. "Well, you will also know that us orks don't back down! You stop wasting your time over there, Leon, and come over here!" He violently swung his blade toward Jeeves. "I'm just getting started!"
Up on the ridge, Lyra narrowed her calculating eyes at the lone commander. "Why come out now, Leon? Afraid that you'll lose? Surrender now, and we won't kill you—at least, not right away."
Leon merely smirked, a subtle, patronizing tilt of his head.
Swish! Swish! Swish!
Without warning, three agile Vanguard Lizardmen vaulted from the shadows directly behind Leon, weapons drawn as they rocketed toward the allied Lords.
They didn't even make it halfway. Fallon, the eye-patched maid, stepped forward with terrifying force, slamming her massive tower shield against the earth. The concussive shockwave and the weight of her shield cleanly crushed two of the leaping Lizardmen into the dirt. Simultaneously, Renn lifted his violin bow, unleashing a volley of glowing song arrows that cleanly impaled the remaining attacker through the chest before the creature could even scream.
"We aren't that easy of a prey," Varen stated, stumbling past the dissolving bodies carefully. "Try something better."
Leon just sighed, stopping a few paces away from their defensive line. He slowly opened his arms wide, his aura flaring outward like a dark, suffocating tide as he delivered his speech. "You truly think your petty numbers matter? I will build my empire upon your very corpses. You all will die in these ancient ruins, unknown, forgotten, with no one left to remember your names."
"Don't flatter yourself, you fool," Lyra snapped back, her black horns gleaming as her mana began to swirl dangerously.
Leon chuckled, a dark, hollow sound. "You think your backgrounds will protect you? I know exactly who you are. You are all children of prestigious families, hiding out here in the fringes of the world and playing house.
His gaze shifted toward Claymond.
"...Though you."
He tilted his head slightly.
"I'm afraid you still remain something of a mystery."
Claymond merely shrugged
"But it doesn't matter, you will all die the same."
You will deeply regret the very reason you ever decided to settle where I shall start my conquest of this world."
Claymond stared through the rising dust, his sharp mind picking apart the tyrant's words. He noticed a micro-expression, a subtle tension in Leon's stance.
"Then... what brings you here?" Claymond asked suddenly, his voice piercing through the ambient noise of war. "What about you, Leon? You are obviously in an immense position of power, and we can all see you are not afraid to use it. So... what scares you? What is your reason for hiding in these exact same ruins?"
Leon froze. A sudden, genuine shock flickered across his face, his jaw tightening as the question hit a nerve he hadn't prepared for. For a long, heavy moment, he couldn't answer.
Then, he slowly chuckled, a low, menacing sound that vibrated through the earth.
"Ohh, you shouldn't not have asked thay."
Miles away, the courtyard of Kairo's territory was a desperate, high-stakes vortex of violence.
The curved sickle carved cleanly through the skeleton's left arm at the elbow.
The severed limb spun through the air before crashing onto the fractured stone.
Theo's heart nearly stopped.
"Onyx!"
The black skeleton staggered, violet lance scraping against the ground as he struggled to regain his balance. Cracks spread across his bones where the impact had landed, yet he refused to collapse.
Kairo felt his stomach twist.
(No...)
His carefully constructed plans crumbled before his eyes.
(Damn it!) Kairo thought, panic violently slamming into his chest. His strategy, his calculations—everything was violently fracturing. (Onyx is our strongest vanguard force! For him to be heavily injured like this, from a single, casual attack...) A suffocating dread settled into his core as his crimson eyes widened. (This battle... we have no chance of winning it.)
But kairo knew, this was no time to doughty, he shouted "Onyx, get up!"
Despite the missing limb, Onyx didn't stop. Driven by the dark, wordless command pulsing from Kairo's rage, the black skeleton dropped to his knees but immediately thrust his violet lance upward in a savage, desperate upward slash. Quipster merely laughed, twisting his torso at a sickening, fluid angle to dodge the tip by a mere inch.
"My, my..."
Quipster laughed as though he were watching a stage performance.
"Still dancing after losing an arm?"
Onyx didn't let up. He went entirely feral, unleashing every single high-tier skill in his arsenal. Shadow Bind! Dense, shadowy tendrils erupted from the dirt, wrapping frantically around Quipster's ankles to restrict his movements. Simultaneously, Onyx activated Black Armament, conjuring a dozen lethal daggers formed from pure, condensed shadow energy and hurling them in a rapid-fire volley toward the jester's chest.
Using Shadow Step, Onyx sank into the shadows, reappearing instantly behind Quipster's flank to drive a one-handed thrust toward his blind spot. Theo surged into the opening alongside him, his blade of light humming fiercely as he executed a series of relentless, high-speed slashes to create a perfect pincer movement.
Yet, nothing worked. Quipster was simply too fast, too monstrously strong.
The jester danced through the shadow tendrils, breaking them with raw physical strength. He parried the shadow daggers with casual, musical flicks of his twin sickles, laughing as the steel sparked violently. When Theo thrust his light blade forward, Quipster swiveled on his heel, catching the holy knight's blade with the flat of his sickle and delivering a brutal, snapping kick right into Theo's chest.
Theo was hurled backward across the courtyard, slamming heavily into the shattered stone wall. He slumped against the rock, coughing violently as his blade of light flickered.
Quipster sauntered back over to the kneeling, one-armed skeleton, his asymmetrical sleeves dripping with fresh crimson. He tilted his porcelain mask, the black painted smile looking incredibly sinister under the dim sunlight.
"You know, just cutting off your hand won't be enough to satisfy me," Quipster murmured pleasantly, raising his heavy sickle high above his head. He looked down at Onyx's skull. "Looks like I will get a brand new skull for my collection today. And lucky me! It's a rare color!"
The jester brought his blade down with terrifying, crushing force, aiming straight to shatter Onyx's boney neck and end him permanently.
But right before the sickle could connect, a voice echoed. It didn't come from a throat—it was a sound cracked, fragmented, and entirely ancient, vibrating directly through the air like a blue haze enveloping Onyx's very center.
"L...looks...like...the...sword.....won't....be...enough..."
An absolute, violent explosion of black aura detonated from Onyx's skeletal frame. The sheer, suffocating pressure of the dark energy slammed into Quipster, violently throwing the unhinged jester backward across the dirt.
Quipster skidded on his feet, his laughter cutting off as he stared in genuine shock.
In the center of the fresh crater, Onyx's broken body slowly lifted off the ground, completely defying gravity. He began floating above the earth, suspended by a dense, swirling cloud of malevolent black energy. The temporary blue tint in his face instantly vanished, and his hollow eye sockets flared to life, glowing with a brilliant, absolute, and dominant purple light.
Then the skeleton pointed towards the jester with its skeletal fingers, as though signaling, the end of this life.
To be continued.....