Alex's thoughts froze, the suspicious paranoid monster on his shoulder whispering into his ears also stopped cold.

"They're your brothers right?" The woman cautiously asked. Her form trembled slightly as they kept their swords levelled at her.

Taking a moment to compose himself, Alex lowered his sword and breathed a heavy sigh. His clones followed and stayed silent.

"Yes they are my brothers. But I would like to keep that to myself." Alex warned.

"I don't know why you would hide that." Julliet mumbled. "And don't dare point your swords at me ever again or I will sick my grandma on you."

Alex laughed and shook his head. His ears perked up though as he heard fluttering in the air. With a jump, he grabbed onto a branch and catapulted himself to the top of the tree.

Moments later, he was staring slack-jawed as the Glen Crows nest was emptied and its former inhabitants, a hundred or more crows and its king, were heading towards his very location.

"Shit!" Alex gritted his teeth and jumped down from the tree, carefully. He was sure he would need his legs.

The clones were already on high alert, with their swords up high. They surrounded the girl in an arc aimed towards where the crows were coming from.

"Dammit. The crows are coming, girl let's run." Apex grabbed Julliet's hand. "My brothers will hold them off until we are far enough away."

"That doesn't make any sense!" Julliet screamed, her face in a panic. "The fucking birds have never done that before. They are too dumb to retaliate."

"It appears they got wiser." Alex chuckled darkly as he dragged the stupefied girl in his sprint. "No talking, better save your breath."

Alex quickly left his clones to their death. He didn't hold much hope in them winning, considering the king would be present and boosting his flock.

It was truly a misfortune though, he would lose all those swords, clothes and masks. On the bright side, at least he will be getting tons of skill levels.

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Alex wanted to take the road back to the village, but a tug from Julliet quickly dissuaded him from the fact. Her eyes held a worry in them, and he knew that if those crows became against humans, it would be a slaughter with the help of the king.

Earlshire would become just another ruin among the many that dotted the landscape.

They had long escaped the sounds of wings and were now heading downstream from a river. Sometimes Alex's eyes would wander into the sky and he would see several crows circling from where they were.

It was as if they were searching for them. Scouting, hunting.

Prime was casting its shadow on to the landscape, blasting it with its harsh light. The duo, who have been running for too long, collapsed into a small chamber made from the roots of an old tree.

With his still functioning arms, Alex shared a waterskin with Juliet. Her stamina was impressive, and for most of the journey she kept up with him. Her stamina only faltered at the end of it, and he was close to doing the same.

The melody of nature took over as they rested and restored their breaths. Alex, with an almost instinctual twist of his metaphorical limb, checked if he could summon anymore clones.

To his dismay, he could. He could summon four to be exact. His expression crunched up for all the lost equipment.

"I am sorry for your brothers. I hope they got out safe." Julliet piped up, her hands gripping his arms. Alex shied away from the foreign touch.

"....they are not really my brothers." Alex blurted out, the emotion in the eyes of Julliet being too much.

"Who are they then?" She asked curiously.

Alex stayed silent. Julliet retracted her hand, and he almost missed her touch. Fuck, he wasn't that lonely as to desire the touch of another that much.

"We should go back." Julliet said and crawled outside of the root chamber. "Mercy knows how much danger my family is in."

"You want to warn them?" She nodded. "You know the way back?"

"Yes, the river we've been following, it's source is near to our village." She said and Alex crawled outside.

They walked back, no energy in their limbs for more sprinting.

–

The clone stumbled back, his whole body adorning little holes. Yet he couldn't feel the pain from the sheer exhaustion weighing his mind down.

It was the cost of [Last Hurraw]. He and his brothers in everything had used it in their last moment. It helped immensely, doubling their kill count.

Even if they felled twenty birds each, it wasn't enough. The tornado of crows was too much, and it was impossible to evade all of their hits.

He bled from a hundred wounds, against a tree with the blood of those ducking birds. His eyes found those of the King Glen Crows, its gaze sharp and intelligent.

His luck was truly good.

The giant avian cawed to the sky and the clone followed the direction it had cawed at. A dot in the sky, just an ant compared to Mercy's body, was moving. It blinked red, and the clone finally understood.

It wasn't that his luck was good, the whole world's luck was good.

In his last moments, he had a realisation. With how slow Skorn's Dungeon Shard was moving across the sky, it meant that it was very very far away.

If it was that far away and still visible from this distance, it meant it was very very big.

He released a blood-filled chuckle, because he had understood why the Empire was gearing up so hard.

It wasn't for a petty war, but for a world ending apocalypse.

The clone's eyes dimmed and he exploded into smoke. Four swords and half of the Glen Crow Nest's population were littered on the ground.

The King, unruffled by the scene, bowed to its god and its gift. It cawed and flew with remnants of its clan, to search for prey that weren't just smoke.