With a mind as sharp and cold as a freshly honed blade, Hegemon completely abandoned his past erratic approaches. This time, he focused entirely on precision and calculated actions. He spent the entire morning compiling every fragmented detail, memory, and piece of empirical evidence he had gathered from his previous lives into a coherent investigation log.
Instead of demanding an immediate, blind evacuation from the stubborn village chief, Hegemon targeted a specific local patrol captain—a pragmatic man whose daughter was among the children targeted by the brainwashing frequency. Dressed in his immaculate Noble house butler attire to command respect, Hegemon presented Lily's technical mana readings alongside precise coordinates of the cult's scout scouts.
"If you move your men here, at exactly midday, you will find a hidden Western Cult transmission array hidden under the roots of the weeping willow," Hegemon explained calmly, his voice carrying an undeniable weight of certainty. "Capture that scout alive, and you will prevent the conceptual trigger for tonight."
The captain, driven by a sudden protective instinct, took a squad and did exactly as instructed. They caught the cultist red-handed. This single event triggered a massive -Domino Effect. The capture of the scout forced the village chief to panic and immediately order a defensive lockdown, while an emergency distress flare was shot straight into the sky, alerting nearby royal garrisons.
The rapid shift in the timeline, caused by the localized domino effect, brought a massive anomaly that Hegemon had never encountered before: the early arrival of a Royal Knight detachment led by a fearsome warrior.
Her name was "Xuka Astri", the Fifth High Knight of the Western Kingdom.
In the military hierarchy of this realm, Knights were strictly divided into distinct tiers:
-Low-Class Knights:The frontline foot soldiers and basic guards.
-Mid-Class Knights: Squad leaders and seasoned combatants.
-High-Class Knights:Elite commanders who directly led the Mid and Low-class ranks. Only ten held this title in the entire kingdom.
-Holy Knights:A separate, supreme division acting under direct royal decrees, operating beyond standard military chains.
As the Fifth High Knight, Xuka Astri was a master of "Wind Magic". She arrived on a gale-force wind, her silver armor gleaming as her short, sharp hair whipped in the breeze.
With the village now fully alert and fortified hours ahead of schedule, Hegemon and Lily utilized the extra time to smoothly evacuate all the children out of the central warehouse and onto armored transport carriages bound for the outer walls of the Capital.
Just as the final carriage was preparing to leave, the earth tore open. The cult leader, realizing his grand plan was collapsing prematurely due to the domino effect, erupted from the shadows in a desperate, mad frenzy. He ignored the guards and lunged directly at Hegemon, a jagged obsidian sacrificial blade aimed straight for the butler's eyes.
The blade was mere inches from Hegemon's face. He braced for the impact, prepared to endure the agony of another death.
"CLANG!"
A fierce, localized hurricane deflected the strike. Xuka Astri intercepted the attack seamlessly, her heavy broadsword blocking the obsidian blade with absolute ease.
"Targeting civilians in my jurisdiction? Pathetic," Xuka said, her voice dripping with icy disdain.
Before the cult leader could even pull his weapon back, Xuka rotated her body with fluid martial precision, utilizing the vacuum of her wind magic to accelerate. She delivered a devastating, rock-shattering elbow strike straight into the cult leader's jaw.
"CRACK!"
The sheer force of the blunt impact knocked the high-ranking cultist completely unconscious, sending his body crashing helplessly into the dirt. He was neutralized in a single, fluid motion.
With the threat subdued and the high knight effortlessly routing the remaining cultists, Hegemon didn't waste a single second to celebrate. He leaped onto the driver's seat of the evacuation carriage alongside Lily, snapping the reins. The horses roared to life, and the carriage sped away toward the safety of the Western Kingdom, leaving the burning nightmare behind them at last.