Hiro Matsumoto Guardian Daimyo of the Three-Fold Alliance

His charge had finally succumbed to her exhaustion, and with her, the enchantment bolstering the Bastion rank had flickered out. Hiro had been planning his next move for hours and instantly took her unconscious body and slung it back behind the wall with all his strength. He wanted her well clear of any enemy combatants while he was gone. She filled too important a role in the Faction at present to let anything happen to her.

He watched as she crashed into a few tents before rolling to a stop over two hundred paces away. He was no longer surprised at what he was capable of with his newly bolstered Strength and with her Constitution such an impact would be negligible…

Once he was sure of her safety, he turned to the flagging front line. Behind them, the thinning second and third ranks barely held on in their support role as waves of enemies continued to crash against their formation. Linus had sent out the reserves as soon as the enemy's attack had shifted in nature, but now with no replenishment available and the healing gone, the First Rank would break soon. Thousands of the enemies sprinted up the mountain of their own dead, like a morbid siege ramp, attempting to bury the soldiers in bodies. The Consumers among the rolling charge focused on landing as many strikes as possible in the chaos before being rebuffed. The only goal was the slaughter, and all thought of strategy had faded from their collective attack.

Iron thigh muscles flexed as he took this all in and crouched down, gathering the new strength in his body and focusing it into his legs.

On the outside, he still looked the same except for his eyes, which now gleamed a crystalline green. But internally, his stats were completely transformed, and while he no longer could gain levels from combat, he had grown much more accustomed to this form over the multi-day battle they had fought defending the wall. He had not tired, and no wound he took remained for long. His greatest limitation now was that he could only be in one place at a time, and the defensive nature of this conflict did not play to the strengths of his build. So he had hung back, keeping their main magical support in the fight for as long as possible.

But that had just changed.

A booming clap sounded as he exploded from his crouch, launching into the air under the power of his explosion of applied Strength. The path of his jump took him high above the center of the enemy formation and for the first time in days, he allowed himself a grim smile. Sword in hand, he reached back extending its midnight blade fully behind him, perfectly timing the motion to coincide with the top of his flying arc.

“Waxing Shadow” he whispered, unnoticed by the masses of creatures below. His blade’s weight suddenly multiplied, layering on metaphysical significance that began to pull him to the ground along with gravity.

He held the blade back as he began to fall like a meteor, its weight continuing to increase. This Ability was an aspect of the special nature of his Legendary blade and was scaled to match its wielder’s Strength. A stat that had recently doubled for Hiro upon his resurrection as a Guardian.

His fall picked up speed and he brought the blade around, straining against its reality-warping significance. It ripped through the fabric of space as Hiro swept it forward, aided by the full momentum of an object crashing down from the heavens. As he completed his swing, the energy that had been building was expelled forward ahead of his fall at an angle designed to hit a large portion of the Horde before the wall. Much of his kinetic energy was canceled out by the unleashing of the Ability and he felt all of his built-up momentum transfer seamlessly into the attack's release.

A cataclysmic roar sounded in the air around him just before the Ability crashed into the enemy below. The first rank of enemies to be hit by the expanding arc were obliterated by the most concentrated epicenter weaponized darkness.

Hiro landed with a crouch in the recently cleared area surrounded by enemies. Ahead of him, his Ability continued to expand, mowing through enemies at an incredible rate, clearing fifty, then a hundred, then two hundred of the strigoi from the rear of their chaotic formation. By the end of its expenditure, some of the Consumers were able to block the Arc of dark energy, breaking bones and weapons, but by that time, Hiro had created an immense gap in the roiling mass of creatures. The collective weight of the Horde's attention turned as one toward the newly created gap in its midst, howling in frenzied challenge at their new attacker.

Scanning his surroundings calmly, Hiro took in a deep breath, held it, and then expelled. The Land was now attuned to him in a way he could not express to the others. It was a part of him, and here, defending it against invaders, he felt at peace. He was completely one with himself and as easily as putting on an old pair of boots, he entered Battle Trance. His son may have evolved this technique into something new… but he had learned it at Hiro’s feet.

As enemies charged in from all sides, Hiro shouted back in defiance activating Waning Light and Cascading Strike. An umbral darkness exploded out from him, eagerly drinking in the charging enemies as they flooded the gap his first attack had created.

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Breath steady, Hiro began to move through his sword forms. Cascading Strike caused every consecutive strike in a battle to increase strength by 1%. The second passive Ability of his weapon activated along with this, increasing the weight of the blade by 1% every consecutive strike. Both of these effects worked in tandem to create a vastly overpowered damage output for very little Mana expenditure, and Hiro simply focused on adjusting his steps and posture with every swing to accommodate the change in the weapon. The motions were so familiar, and the effects of his Abilities so well practiced, that Hiro’s meditative state only deepened as the world around him became a chaotic storm of blood, fangs, and claws.

Not a step was wasted, not a swing misplaced as he leaned into the darkness of his environment like an old friend. The Land beneath him augmented the combination of Abilities like never before, giving him an even greater understanding of his surroundings.

He danced between the enemy’s frenzied forms, whirling around and through tightly packed bodies, desperate to vent their long-suppressed fury on an enemy. The carnage grew so thick that blood began to mist the air, and offal sprayed out in concentric circles from each of Hiro’s strikes, showering the blinded combatants. Then his trance was almost broken in shock as the strigoi nearest to his sword strikes lost any semblance of control in the presence of so much blood and rent flesh.

Enveloped in complete darkness, they seemed to give up altogether on telling friend from foe, and an orgy of slaughter began to grow from the epicenter of Hiro’s Domain. He stilled and crouched down, attempting to center himself again, an island of calm in a sea of madness. He had hoped to buy the wall sometime… But as the screams of combat grew from the midst of his Domain, more and more enemies charged in from all directions collapsing the press against the wall, and drawing in its weight to the center of the new killing field like a black hole.

Just as he was about to enter back into the fray, a deep reverberation echoed through the Land. His head whipped up, peering unimpeded through the Umbral Domain toward the mountain. Something had just happened to the Sovereign Crystal. A rippling tide of energy was washing over the Alliance’s land, touching every member and imparting some of its bounty as it expanded inextricably over the entirety of the Faction’s holdings.

Hiro stood smiling as the wave of azure light was accompanied by a new verdant counterpart. He could feel it restoring and empowering as it washed over those on the wall. That was not all, the energy not only touched those defending its domain but also spent a small portion of its wrath upon each enemy combatant. Laying them low with some sort of Debuff he did not understand, they were not killed... No, instead it cleansed them of the darkness using the monsters as hosts and rendered the bodies comatose from the sudden loss of animating energy.

As the wave washed over him and moved to the boundaries of their allotted portion of the Land, he felt it grow outward, pushing the boundaries of what had once been theirs, expanding and transforming their Faction’s influence, and along with it, his strength…

Canceling his Umbral domain to reveal a shocking field of eviscerated bodies, Hiro called to the wall in a booming voice.

“Attack Now Defenders of the Alliance! Your enemy has been delivered to you, now reap them for the experience they offer!” His voice echoed supernaturally past the wall, deep into the forests and valleys, spurring every newly empowered member of the Three-Fold Alliance to charge forward and finish the work that the Faction’s transformation had begun.

…

Deep below the mountain, at the epicenter of a network of tunnels that had only just begun to hear the ringing of mining picks once again, something stirred. The energy of the Faction’s transformation had reached deep below the bedrock of the Holy Temple touching an ancient magic of binding and sleep. The contact stirred the enchantment, and a series of if/then logic statements began to unravel, as the spell unwound itself around its target, beginning a process of reanimation. The supernatural slumber that had held it for Epochs began to fade…

…

Wesley level 59 Black Market Trafficker

Wesley couldn’t help but sneer at the posturing fool next to him reporting on what had happened on their assignment. He had set everything up perfectly, and this fool had to go and ruin it by bringing in some unknown variables at the last minute.

“-Because of the ineptitude of this slimy human, the trap was sprung too early, allowing many of my brethren time to respond. That, along with the presence of this unknown warrior caused much of the infiltration to die in its infancy. We had still gained dozens of new agents at every level of the Order, but it was not nearly what we had planned.” The dark-haired Knight finished smoothly, bowing as he shifted the blame for the failure on Wesley.

Wesley could not allow those to be the last words of the report… So with scorn dripping from every word, he rebuffed the accusation, “And who pray tell gave entry to this warrior in the middle of our operation? Perhaps you are not as loyal as-”

“Silence.” A hissing cacophony of voices from one of the thrones. Wesley’s flinched as if struck. There were six gigantic thrones arrayed before them, each holding a figure of unbelievable power cloaked in darkness. Wesley’s eyes darted across the line of thrones as he knelt immediately, trying to parse out which figure the voice had come from.

The command hung over the gargantuan chamber like a leaden weight. The Hall of Fallen Princes had not been occupied in millennia and even Wesley knew that the thrones were no longer being held exclusively by classic figures of demonic strength. Power had shifted in the Pits… just as it was shifting everywhere. Times were changing, and a new empire was rising, one that would drown the current system of hierarchies in its own arrogance and give rise to a new Empire.

“Tell me of this Warrior and the power he wielded to expunge our influence.”