One moment Lennox stood there, still halfway caught between staring at his hands and trying to figure out if any of this had rules he could lean on, and the next something punched through his chest so fast his brain didn't get a warning.
It didn't feel like getting hit, it felt like something had already passed through him before the sensation showed up, like his body lagged behind the event itself; A burning weight filled his torso, then pressure, then everything at once as a massive blade tore straight through him and kept going.
SHUNK!
"AGH!"
The impact threw him off his feet, the force behind it carried him backward, body dragged along the length of the weapon as it pushed through trees that snapped apart on contact, bark exploding outward in chunks that scattered across the ground.
Stone exploded next, smaller rocks breaking under the path of the blade before a larger formation took the hit and split along a line that didn't look natural, fragments breaking away as Lennox's body slammed through them.
It didn't stop until the sword buried itself deep into a massive boulder, the sound of it hitting settled half a second after everything else.
Lennox's back hit the stone behind him, the blade pinning him in place, the pressure from it pressing into his spine while the front of it filled his chest entirely. His hands came up without direction, grabbing at the weapon, fingers slipping against the surface as blood coated everything he touched.
"Ghh—! Agh—!"
'No…No!'
His voice broke apart into something that didn't sound like words anymore, his throat shriveled as more blood pushed up, spilling from his mouth chaotically.
His vision didn't stay still either, the edges of his eyes flickering, not dark yet, but not stable either.
Lennox tried to breathe, but his chest didn't respond the way it should. Something blocked it, something inside wasn't where it needed to be anymore.
Each attempt pulled in less than he expected, air catching somewhere before it could fill him properly. His fingers pressed harder against the blade, like he could pull it out, like that would fix it, but his arms didn't carry the strength he thought they did.
And warm blood spread across his face, flowing out of his nose, his eyes, and his ears.
It ran down in waves, collecting along his jaw before dropping onto his shirt, darkening it further in patches.
His grip faltered for a second, then returned much weaker and less certain, like his hands weren't fully connected to the rest of him anymore.
His thoughts didn't line up.
Something about this wasn't supposed to happen.
This was supposed to be a dream, right?
He had been standing there and talking and being such a fanboy, thinking about stupid stuff. About NPCs, About—
Everything slipped.
Pain came in pieces. Devastating in one place, dull in another, pressure everywhere, like his body couldn't decide how to react so it did everything at once.
He tried to focus…on anything.
The blade.
The stone.
The sound of something cracking in the distance.
The way his fingers wouldn't hold steady.
None of that crap helped.
And back at the battlefield, heads turned at once to see who threw the blade.
Lancelot moved first, Bladegündr lifting as his eyes snapped toward the direction the attack came from, his stance changing immediately.
Sugred followed a second later, both axes rising as flames climbed higher along their edges.
Yubel already had an arrow drawn, the string pulled back as his gaze locked onto the hostile source.
Alpam's reaction came out loud.
"Shit!"
Aphrodite didn't move though, she stood where she had been, her expression still unchanged with that tranquil look, her attention forward like she had already seen this coming and didn't need to react the same way as the others.
The knights changed into formation without waiting for orders.
"An Ancestor!" one shouted, raising his shield as he repositioned.
"Get ready!!!"
"But not just any Ancestor…" another added, his voice carrying a different weight now, already detailing how this one stood out more than the other Ancestor fodder.
The figure stood across the broken field, and it was Commander Worstein.
He carried the same marks as the others, grey skin drawn across his frame, black veins threading through his face in lines beneath the surface, his eyes glowing white with no sign of anything human behind them. The halo above his head sat broken and formed a ring that didn't align, hovering there without any given motion.
But everything else about him stood apart.
His armor moved like shadow given form, dark plating layered across his body in segments that leaked red specks and embeds along their edges, small fragments floating off and vanishing before they could hit the ground. Red colored magic clung to him constantly, wrapping around him.
His hair was spiked and blonde and red, and had the bones of his old enemies tucked inside it.
And Four greatswords circled him magically, each one identical to the one lodged through Lennox's chest, burning red beneath coils of barbed wire that wrapped around the blades in spiraling loops, the metal digging into itself in ways that didn't look real at all.
They moved around him slowly while maintaining distance and never touching the ground.
"I missed…" Worstein said, his voice dragging through the air like something heavy. "…King Lancelot…!!!!!"
The intention settled immediately, that blade hadn't been meant for Lennox.
Lancelot stepped forward, Bladegündr lowering before rising again, his hand firm on it as his eyes locked onto Worstein.
"I have carried the burden of humanity across battlefields that should have ended me," he said, his voice steady, cutting through the tension without rising in volume. "I have watched kingdoms fall, allies fade, and still I remained to bear what others could not. It has never been without cost. But I will not allow what I have endured, what I have upheld, to crumble into nothing…."
The air around him grew more suffocating, war magic building, pressing against the space in a way that made the ground beneath his feet crack a little.
"…Commander Worstein." Lancelot finished.
Yubel exhaled slowly through his nose, the arrow in his bow steady as he spoke without taking his eyes off the target.
"Worstein huh? How convenient. He served under the Lord of Saints, King Xaxiel," he said, voice carrying that same edge, though quieter now. "Back when Kalhan was still under the rule of the Lord of Saints. Worstein was one of his highest commanders, led entire campaigns across the eastern regions and had a confirmed kill of 10,000. If he's here…"
He didn't finish it right away. "It means Xaxiel has already claimed this kingdom through Valkreig. And since His Majesty stands here instead of within the capital…They sent one of their best to remove him."
The truth of it didn't need more explanation, the Ancestors didn't move without reason. When the old kings returned, they sent their loyalists first, those who had served them in life, to hunt down whoever held the throne now.
Worstein was only one of those blades, a blade for "honor" more than a blade-for-hire.
Alpam stepped forward, her scepter lifting as green light gathered, her expression twisted in irritation more than anything else.
"We went through ALLLLL THAT TO BRING THAT SUMMON HERE, YA BASTARD!" she shouted, voice carrying across the field. "So fucking annoying!"
Yubel didn't look at her.
"Yelling at Ancestors doesn't accomplish anything," he said flatly. "I've told you that a hundred times! Dummy!"
"Oh, I know," Alpam shot back, already moving, "but it makes me feel better, so I'm gonna keep doing it!"
Aphrodite remained where she was for a second longer, then stepped forward, her expression still calm, her presence unchanged even as the battlefield prepared to erupt again.
Sugred said nothing but brood in his facial expression, his axes rising, flames intensifying as he closed the distance without waiting for further orders.
'No need to wait, we fight now!'
The knights followed with a battle cry, weapons raised, voices calling out formations, the line reforming as they advanced toward Worstein, knowing exactly what stood in front of them.
A damn threat.
Lancelot lifted Bladegündr fully now, magic gathered around him in waves, building in controlled layers that shot against the ground, sending cracks through the stone beneath his feet as the air around him bent under the weight of it.
The blade caught that energy, each of its three edges reflecting it differently, giving it a presence that felt larger than its size.
And Lancelot prepared to move, but a voice spoke, coming from somewhere that wasn't around him at all, but in his head. He knew that voice from anywhere, the voice had said:
"Save your summon!"
It settled directly into his mind, carrying something that refused to be ignored.
"Using any more of my Blessing after you spammed the shit out of Absolute Resonance will kill you."
The words didn't pause and the voice continued, "This is why you have summoned Lennox Hellslain. You are dying. And you knew the risks of Blessings. Yet, you allowed your own conviction to take hold and make you forget all about it."
Lancelot stopped, the energy around him faltered for a fraction of a second, the buildup halting as the reality of those words settled into place.
Worstein didn't advance like the others—
—FWOOSH!
He vanished between one step and the next, his presence skipping across the battlefield in intervals that left knights reacting a second too late every time.
"Where did he go?!"
"Form a circle—!"
One moment Worstein stood in front of a shield wall, the next he was already behind it, one of the circling blades dropping into his hand as he drove it through the back of a knight's armor, the metal splitting apart like it had been waiting to give way.
The body folded before the sound reached anyone else.
"There!"
Another soldier turned, raising his weapon halfway before a second blade tore across his side, the barbed wire along its length dragging through flesh and armor alike, ripping more than cutting.
Worstein then released the sword mid-motion, letting it continue forward on its own as it struck the next target, then he reappeared several paces away where another of his weapons hovered, catching it without looking.
Knights tried to close in, but couldn't hold him.
"Close him in so the Champion's can fucking kill him!"
Worstein moved through them with a speed that didn't match human timing, appearing at angles that made their formations collapse in on themselves.
A committed spear-thrust shot toward him, and Worstein slipped past it, his hand catching the shaft for a brief instant before twisting his body and driving a blade straight through the attacker's throat, the tip exiting cleanly as blood followed behind it in a thick stream that coated the steel.
Three more blades launched from around him, and they shot forward in straight lines, each one choosing a target. One pierced through a knight's chest and carried him off his feet before pinning him against a broken tree.
Another struck low, cutting through both legs of a soldier who hadn't even seen it coming.
The third slammed into a shield, splitting it apart before continuing into the man behind it.
Then those blades returned, every single one.
Worstein snarled, "Silly knights, do not protect such an imposter of a king! Kalhan belongs to King Xaxiel!"
The moment his blades completed their path, they tore free, dragging pieces of armor and flesh with them as they flew back to orbit around Worstein again, settling into that slow motion like nothing had interrupted it.
He caught two this time, his steps pressed into the ruined ground, then he dropped both blades into the earth with a hard slam which delivered a hard impact.
For a split instant, nothing happened. Then the ground responded.
THOOM!!!!
Massive versions of those same swords exploded up across the battlefield, not one or two, but dozens, each one forcing its way through soil and stone like bullets, shooting from the ground rapidly.
They shot up at blistering speed, tearing through anything above them, bodies lifted and torn apart before they could fall back down. The size of them dwarfed the originals, each blade wide enough to crush through armor entirely, their barbed lengths shredding anything they caught along the way, and so the field became a forest of rising steel.
The Champions were trying to reach Worstein, but it seemed like Worstein was avoiding them for now, wanting to clear the weaker and more annoying ones out first.
Alpam saw it first, the moment the blades began to rise beneath her, the symbols on her scepter reacted, pushing her body up on a platform of conjured energy, lifting her just above the erupting steel as one of the massive blades tore through where she had been standing seconds before.
"Seriously?! That's so annoying!" she scarfed, already redirecting her energy, sending shards of green crystals out to clear space around the surviving knights.
Sugred didn't bother with words at all, he just kept going, both axes igniting brighter as he read the ground itself, watching the subtle shifts before each eruption.
'There…'
His steps changed direction mid-stride, feet barely touching the surface before he launched himself again, dancing through the rising blades with his agile movement.
One large sword burst up directly in his path, and he twisted his body around it, using the flat of the blade as a brief surface to push off, sending himself into the air long enough to clear the next two that followed.
'This bastards running from us…?!'
Yubel moved differently, he never let himself stay in one place long enough for the ground to claim him. His position changed constantly, his footing light as he adjusted between shots, arrows that carried death already forming at the string before he fully settled.
When a blade shot up through the space beneath him, he used the motion itself, letting the upward movement carry him higher for an instant before stepping off it like a platform, landing several paces away with another arrow already drawn, and shooting an arrow trying to hit Worstein, and nicked him across the face.
'I missed!' Yubel thought. He was aiming for a one shot kill.
Aphrodite said to Yubel, "Do not worry about your shot, Yubel. We will win today."
Yubel looked at her, saying, "There you go with that cryptic sounding stuff."
Each step of Aphrodite placed with a calm that didn't match the destruction around her. When the blades surged from beneath her, something beneath her skin morphed, forming into a creature that pushed along her arm, its body expanding just enough to lift her clear of the strike before dissolving again into nothing, it was the lower body of a large Griffon. Another followed at her back, a pair of solid dove wings, rising like a shield that absorbed the edge of a blade before breaking apart into fragments that scattered across the ground.
She continued forward, untouched.
And across it all, Lancelot stood still.
The battlefield roared around him, voices shouting, the sound of bodies hitting the ground, but he didn't move with it. His hand remained on Bladegündr, the weight of it familiar and grounding to him while the voice in his head lingered.
"You couldn't wait…" he said under his breath, his voice carrying strain now, something stabbing into it that hadn't been there before. "…until after I reclaimed my own kingdom from Xaxiel's hands…? Asphodel…?!"
His grip got harder around his blade with a rising anger, "I have to be the one to do it. Let me last with this power just until I defeat that bastard of an Ancestor who stole my throne. I will let my champions fight for me until I get there. I will let my own kingdom be my last stand…not anytime before that!"
The response from Aspbodel in his head came without any sort of delay. "For a god to break the rules of his own Blessing for a mere mortal is taboo," Asphodel answered. "And your summon will die in thirty seconds if you do not act. You have said you carry the burden of humanity. You spent innocent lives to bring that boy here so he may take what you no longer can. You prayed your daughter would like him and actually marry him, and he will become the next king of Kalhan. You had it all worked out after you realized there is no coming back from breaking the rules of a Blessing."
Lancelot's jaw set and his eyes flicked just once toward the distance where Lennox's body remained pinned against the stone, and barely moving.
King Lancelot didn't move yet. Instead, his attention dropped to the blade he carried, the three-sided edge reflecting the fractured light of the battlefield, each surface catching something different.
His voice then lowered down just a smidge, "I tried to be a good king," he said. "And I tried to be a good father."
The memories came in spurts and pieces: His daughter when she was a kid, small and held close, her fingers holding his hand as if it anchored her and him to the world. The halls of his palace, quiet, too quiet, after the loss and death of his queen that had hollowed them out. The rule he set, no mourning, no grief spoken aloud, because if it remained unspoken, perhaps it would not consume everything.
"I kept her inside those walls," he continued, his voice lowering further. "Away from the world. Away from everything that could take her from me the way her mother was taken. I told myself it was protection. I told myself it was necessary."
His eyes closed for a little, "And she learned to hate me for it. I carried her pain alongside my own. I buried both under the same rule. No mourning and no weakness, a kingdom that would not bend to grief or surrendering. No surrendering to fear or any of our emotions, and definitely not the enemy.
His eyes opened again.
"And in doing so…I became what they needed. A king who would sacrifice anything, a man who would give half of humanity to save the rest."
"I did it for her," he said, quieter now. "For my daughter Ifrit's sake, and now..I do not know what I have become. I'm breaking my own rules, Is this me surrendering my own emotions? What kind of a leader am I? And you expect me to die like this?!"
Asphodel's voice returned unchanged.
"You speak about things being in vain, you're stalling on purpose. This would all have been for nothing. Your kingdom will fall and be claimed by Xaxiel and his forces of Ancestors, and your daughter will die. Save the boy. I have chosen him as your heir.
Lancelot's thoughts went back to his memories again: He saw himself younger, standing atop fields that stretched endlessly with fallen enemies, his crown raised, the weight of victory still fresh, the world looking at him as something unbreakable. He saw the queen beside him, her hand in his, her presence grounding him in a way nothing else had. He saw his daughter Ifrit as a child, smiling, untouched by everything that would come later.
The images broke, and the present returned and without another word, Lancelot moved.
Each step carried him across the battlefield with purpose, his path cutting straight through the destruction without hesitation, the rising blades, the fallen bodies, none of it slowing him.
Ahead, Lennox barely remained conscious.
His body hung against the blade, his hands still holding it weakly, fingers slipping more often than holding. His system window flickered violently in front of him.
[ERROR!]
[ERROR!]
[ERROR!]
His vision didn't hold steady anymore, everything came in pieces, cutting in and out, the battlefield, the sky, the stone behind him. His thoughts struggled to keep pace, but one thing forced its way through.
'This…this is real….!'
It stayed in his head, breaking apart as it formed.
'This is real…! This shit hurts…! I don't wanna die…!'
His breathing failed him again.
'I wanna wake up…! But this really isn't a dream…! What am I really doing here?!'
The realization settled whether he wanted it or not. This was real.
And Lancelot stepped in front of him, close enough now that Lennox could see him clearly, even through everything failing around him.
"I hope," Lancelot said, his voice steady once more, "that I live long enough to see this heir reclaim what has been taken from us."
Bladegündr lifted, and there was no hesitation, he allowed the blade to drive forward, and It pierced through Lennox's head cleanly, the impact sending a burst of energy through the surrounding space as magic ignited around them, the ground cracking further under the pressure, air whipping all over the place as power poured into the strike.