Lancelot scoffed at General Titus.
The sound was sharp, dismissive the scoff of a warrior who had seen his enemy's best and found it wanting. His dragons were rising. His lake was churning. His world was intact.
Titus did not respond with words.
He responded with rods.
They rained down with full might and force not randomly, but with purpose. The first targets were the dragons. Rods of every size descended upon them: some as small as one inch, thin as needles; others two inches, thick as daggers; still others a metre long, longer, even longer. They fell like black rain, like judgment.
The first dragon was the victim.
Two rods one a metre long, the other five meters came crashing down on it. The first stabbed into its eye, piercing through the orb, through the socket, through the skull. An explosion of blood erupted from the wound, dark and thick, spraying across the blood lake.
Then the second rod went straight for the head.
SHLIK!
It pierced through scales, through bone, through brain. The dragon's body convulsed, its jaws snapping uselessly, its claws scrabbling at the air.
Titus's voice was calm.
"Expand. Now."
The rod grew.
It expanded inside the dragon's head pushing, stretching, destroying. The creature's skull cracked along its seams. Its eyes bulged. Its entire body exploded not in fire, not in magma, but in flesh and bone and blood.
The remaining dragons were targeted next.
Rods of different sizes pierced them from all around their bodies through their wings, their scales, their hearts. The rods went deep, destroying skin, entering flesh, breaking through everything that held the creatures together.
One by one, the dragons fell.
Their bodies shattered. Their blood poured into the lake that had birthed them.
And then all of them were dead.
But that was not the end.
It was the beginning.
General Titus continued to pour out killing intent not in controlled bursts, but in a flood. His body strained under the pressure, his muscles trembling, his veins bulging against his skin. From his killing intent, he summoned more rods.
Massive rods.
They rained over every single corner of the illusionary world over the lake, over the shore, over the sky itself. The rods hit the blood lake with full force, evaporating it on contact. Steam rose in great clouds, thick and choking, as the crimson liquid boiled away.
The lake drained.
The ground beneath was exposed cracked, dry, ancient. But the rods did not stop. They continued to fall, pounding the earth with relentless fury, destroying everything from the largest boulder to the smallest atom.
Lancelot watched, his eyes wide.
His illusionary world his creation, his domain was slowly collapsing. The rods continued to rain down, their power unending, their destruction absolute.
Above them, Darlington watched in awe.
"This..." His voice was barely a whisper. "This is such a destructive display of power."
He leaned forward, his eyes fixed on the collapsing illusion.
"If he had this power separate from the illusionary world if he could use it in reality then he would be a really big problem."
He shook his head slowly.
"So this is the power of killing intent." His voice was tinged with something like reverence. "This is truly bizarre. Honestly, I thought I had seen the limit to how killing intent could be used."
His eyes found Titus the general who was pouring out his very soul to destroy a world that existed only in the mind.
"General Titus." Darlington's voice hardened. "Now I know why he was sent. This man is truly a monster of conquest."
He paused.
"He must die. But not only that we must use him as a stand. For any future we will build."
The illusionary world crumbled.
It was held together by a single thread Lancelot's will, his malice, his desire to keep it intact. But the rods had been too much. Too many. Too powerful.
The thread snapped.
The world fell apart not gradually, but all at once. The blood lake vanished. The dragons vanished. The sky, the shore, the everything gone. Lancelot found himself back on the real battlefield, Arondlight still in his hand, his chest heaving.
General Titus fell to his knees.
For the first time in this war this entire war that had begun hours ago, that had claimed so many lives, that had pushed everyone to their limits the general was weakened.
Not in his body. His body was still whole, still healed, still capable.
But in his mind.
He had used an abnormal, insane amount of killing intent. More than he had ever used. More than he had known he could use. The mental energy he had dispensed was colossal and now, he was paying the price.
His head hung. His breath came in ragged gasps. His vision swam.
He was vulnerable.
Darlington's voice cracked through the mental link.
"Now!" He was shouting, desperate, triumphant. "He has a weakness not in his body, but in the amount of mental energy he has dispensed!"
His eyes blazed.
"Right now we can kill him!"
General Titus knelt on the sand, his head bowed, his body still.
And two attacks came for him.
Sir Galahad's long-range attack but different this time. He was not simply cutting through the air. He was using his ability Cut to its fullest extent. He created a connection between the space where Titus knelt and his own position, a bridge of nothing that spanned the distance between them.
He stepped through.
And delivered a direct attack.
SHIIIIING!
The Sword of David cut through Titus's side not a glancing blow, not a shallow wound, but a devastating strike. The right side of the general's body opened, his ribs exposed, his lungs hanging out of his chest like wet, red flags.
Blood poured from the wound.
Titus stayed silent.
The pain was great unbearable for any normal man. But he did not scream. Did not cry out. Did not move. He simply knelt there, his body ruined, his breath shallow, his eyes fixed on the sand before him.
Sir Galahad stood over him.
His sword was raised. His stance was ready. His eyes were cold.
He was about to land a finishing blow.
Unknowingly to him unseen by everyone except one General Titus smiled.
It was small. Subtle. A twitch of the lips that could have been mistaken for pain.
But Sir Percival saw it.
His eyes those bleeding, strained eyes that had been pushed beyond their limits caught the micro-expression. His mind sharpened by centuries of battle, by the cost of his technique interpreted it.
Something's wrong.
He sprinted.
His body launched across the sand, faster than he had ever moved, faster than he should have been able to move. His spear was extended. His eyes were fixed.
He saw Titus's palm open, facing upward, waiting.
From the centre of the palm, a black rod rose.
It emerged from his flesh like a splinter, like a weapon small at first, then growing. It was made of the same material as the rods in the illusionary world, the same killing intent made manifest. But this was not an illusion.
This was real.
Above them, Darlington's eyes went wide.
His mouth opened. His breath caught. His mind that brilliant, calculating engine ground to a halt.
What
The rod fired.
Not at Galahad not yet. It simply rose, extending from Titus's palm like a black flower blooming, its tip aimed at the sky.
Lancelot's voice came, raw with disbelief.
"Impossible." He stared at the rod at the real rod, the physical rod, the impossible thing that should not exist outside the illusionary world. "It can't be."
His grip tightened on Arondlight.
"That ability..."
The rod grew longer. Thicker. Deadlier.
"...it's actually real."
General Titus knelt, broken and bleeding.
And from his palm, a black rod rose real, physical, terrible.
The game had changed.
Again.