Ryker tightened the straps of a gauntlet to his arm, feeling hints of annoyance that he pressed down.

The annoyance didn’t come from anything expected, he just didn’t like armor, it reminded him too much of those Mystery Master Alliance bastards. It was a funny thought considering it was what Patience wore the most often, but who ever said emotions were rational?

But he had to.

Since he was going to lead the Federation into battle, he couldn’t wear robes. He had to look like a warrior, and in this culture, being a warrior meant wearing armor.

Although he felt it was a bit too primitive and reductive a thought, his own opinion didn’t matter. When trying to stoke the emotions of the common man, you had to understand them.

Ryker had spent enough time studying the Federation to have a pulse on their culture, so he acted accordingly.

“You should let me help you,” Patience said to the side, chuckling when she saw Ryker’s pout. By this point, they had spent enough time together that she understood him better than most. She knew exactly why he was acting like this.

Ryker shook his head. “If I let you put it on the right way, I just might kill myself. I need them to be loose enough that when I “lose” them in battle, it’ll look natural.”

Patience laughed and settled for tying Ryker’s hair for him instead.

Ryker grinned, enjoying her scent. It was just unfortunate that she had already put her own armor on, so there were no dreamy sights of plump flesh to enjoy.

The two eventually stood.

Ryker had worn an armor of reflective crimson. Beneath its glowing eyes, his blue irises almost looked violet.

This armor was one that only Auberon had been able to wear before. It was easily over 500 pounds, and though this weight was nothing to most who had begun to cultivate, it was one thing to carry such a weight, and another matter entirely to battle with it.

Ryker had wanted to just melt it down and turn it into a new chain whip, but out of respect for Patience, he chose not to subject her family heirloom to such a thing.

The couple walked out of the door and to Patience’s surprise, Auberon stood there in silence.

The Crimson Supreme… or maybe the former Crimson Supreme at this point considering he was nothing more than a figurehead, looked just the same, just as dignified, just as emperor-like. But Ryker could see that the fierceness in his crimson gaze had dimmed considerably.

That was in one part due to the obvious soul injuries he had suffered, and another part due to the fact that Ryker had basically taken everything from him.

It was hard for a man to accept such a thing.

He wore simple robes that he had likely just slept in, but they were tidy and without the slightest wrinkle. Oddly enough, they were also an off-white color, a rare choice for Auberon to be sure.

Auberon met Ryker’s gaze, his hands clasped behind his back and his thoughts unreadable.

Ryker could imagine what he was thinking. To Auberon, he was a Valorian, and he had made his assumptions about what that might be. As for Ryker, he couldn’t be bothered to explain to the man what was happening.

“Just sit and watch, old man. I’m too lazy to be bothered with you,” Ryker patted him on the shoulder, took Patience’s hand and walked by.

Patience looked back toward her father, but in the end, she didn’t say anything and let Ryker take her away.

…

Soon, Ryker and Patience had found their way to the northern gates of the Federation. Riding on Phoenix’s back, the two of them truly looked lofty and majestic, the picture of confidence for the Federation as a whole.

The Federation army was split, forming their path forward. A sea of red, whether in armor, beast or flames took shape, rolling out in waves.

Banners hung high in the skies, golden lions embroidered onto a tapestry of red dancing in the wind.

When the couple made it to the front of the army, silence reigned.

Ryker stood there without a word, his back straight, breathing in the air.

The rumbling undertones of Phoenix’s breathing filled the skies. The big guy had grown larger, standing at over seven meters tall. It looked as though their long necks wanted to pierce the skies themselves.

Then, the drums began.

BOOM! BABOOM! BOOM! BABOOM!

Ryker smiled, sending a glance down toward a peeved Sofia.

“What are you pouting about?”

No one could see it, but Ryker’s facade of seriousness vanished as he grinned.

Sofia was among the vanguard. In these last several weeks, she had risen from the 4th Enlightenment Realm all the way up the 6th. She was already one of the strongest warriors of the Federation.

She was startled when Ryker’s voice suddenly drifted into her ears, and she jumped, scared. It almost felt like he had whispered right into her ear, because that was effectively what had just happened.

“How the hell did he do that?” Sofia mumbled.

Beneath the raucous drums, no one could hear her at all. But that was also precisely why Ryker decided to tease her right this moment.

“Don’t you know your husband can do all things?”

“Husband? Don’t flatter yourself,” Sofia hissed, entirely incapable of doing what Ryker was doing, and also worried that someone would overhear them.

Ryker blinked innocently. “Didn’t you call me husband last night?”

“That’s called roleplaying! Have you ever heard of it before? I thought you were experienced, but given your lack of skill, I should have known better.”

Sofia’s words belied the furious red on her face.

It had already been over a week since their first night together. She had said just tonight, but every subsequent day it was like Ryker had made it his mission to make her say at least one embarrassing thing a session. It was infuriating!

The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

“Sof?” Rosemary, who was standing by Sofia, looked at her expression a bit weirdly.

“Nothing!” Sofia said a bit too loudly. Luckily, a down beat covered for her.

At that moment, in the distance, an army began to approach…

If you could even call it that.

It was a gathering of a hundred total, all wreathed in shadows and wearing black armors.

Their momentum was mighty, or it should have been. Unfortunately for them, the people of the Federation didn’t sense it at all because unbeknownst to them, Phoenix blocked all of it, their heads arrogantly looking down on the world from above.

The sight of Phoenix, in fact, filled the eyes of the approaching Shadow Clan members with fear and horror. They had never seen such a beast in their lives, and they could feel their own shuddering in horror.

At the helm, an old man with a wispy white beard dancing from his chin sat on the back of a large, black shelled turtle. It moved forward slowly, and yet somehow crossed hundreds of meters at a time. Even with his aura restrained, there was no doubt that he was in the Ascension Realm and the Shadow Clan had likely sent him here to deal a quick death blow.

While they didn’t want to divert too many of their troops from their resistance against the Enlightened Empire to a small fry like the Crimson Federation, in this case they had no other choice.

Who would still fear them if they allowed one of their own to be slaughtered like Vie had without doing anything? It could be said that the Federation had forced their hand in this regard.

But at this moment, the old man who had come with intentions of ending this quickly couldn’t help but open his eyes, his expression serious.

When they had seen so many of the Federation gathered together like this, as though they were about to fight for their lives, the warrior of the Shadow Clan felt like laughing. The only reason they didn’t was because of their discipline.

Objectively, it was amusing. Gathering up an army of over 10 000 to face off against a troop of a hundred. What was that if not pathetic?

But those thoughts were all washed away when they entered a close enough range to sense Phoenix’s majesty.

It felt like the earth, a storm and the sun were bearing down on them all at once.

The troop came to a stop a hundred meters away as the old man opened his mouth to speak.

However, the moment he did so, Phoenix suddenly roared.

The earth shook and almost collapsed, the skies up above swirling with the majesty of a godly storm.

Earth Reborn. Inductive Touch. Tempest Lord.

These were the three Lineal Talents of Phoenix, and Tempest Lord was the last to be awakened.

After awakening to the existence of his own Divine Chain Spiritual Resonance, unsealing Phoenix’s talents had been a breeze. It took him months just to unshackle four for the each of them, but now they each had more than a dozen abilities each. In fact, some of them were too strong for them to use even after the improvement to the strength.

The temperature skyrocketed, the earth trembled and the skies rolled.

All at once, these Lineal Talents seemed to paint the image of a God amongst beasts, and half the beasts in the small troop collapsed to the ground in an instant, a 6th Enlightenment Realm Phoenix being far too much for them to handle.

The last echoes of Phoenix’s roar faded.

“I believe you’ve misunderstood something,” Ryker said with a smile. “I don’t need to hear your words to know what you meant to say. But all you need to know is that the reason I’ve gathered this army here today isn’t for the sake of dealing with you. Rather, this time next week will be the funeral date for your Clan head.”

The old man’s expression changed but Phoenix’s throat had already begun to light up with hues of molten magma.

BANG!

The ball of fire shot out like a canon, practically shattering the air around it as it carved a path toward the troop of a hundred.

The Molten Fireball left a deep trench in the ground without ever touching it. It was as though everything in its vicinity was torn asunder, whether that be the earth or the crackling air above. In that moment, all the moisture seemed to have been sucked dry.

The old man hurriedly commanded his beast, a smokescreen of Dark Type Spirit Energy forming in the air as he vanished behind it.

The Molten Fireball tore through it, however the old man was no longer there. Unfortunately, the others weren’t nearly so lucky.

A trench was blown through the troop of a hundred. Even those that were out of its way screamed out in horror as their armor melted into their skin.

And then it collided with the earth.

BOOM!

A pillar of fire shot into the air, a spiral of crimson being pulled high into the skies beneath the swirling clouds.

By the time it vanished, there was nothing left but piles of ash and a crater that spanned over fifty meters.

Phoenix took a step forward and Earth Spirit Energy rumbled, sealing the crater with new earth, and in an instant, it was as though the troop of warriors had never been there.

Ryker sent a glance into the distance. The old man had long since run away, but he made no attempts to stop him.

ROAR!

Phoenix took another step forward and began to lead a march.

“Today… we raze the Shadow Clan to the ground.”

…

Grimshell urged his turtle beast to move faster, cursing his own nine generations, not to mention his younger self, for choosing a damn turtle as his first beast.

It had seemed so perfect at the time. His name was Grimshell, and his first beast would be a Dark Type turtle, who could have imagined he would come to regret it so far into his old age, and even after he had found so much success with it?

Luckily, he had managed to compensate for the weakness in speed in exchange for movement type skills that relied on Dark Type Spirit Energy. But now he suddenly felt like it wasn’t enough.

He had to return, they had to return. If he tried to fight that monster alone, he would die.

100 9th Enlightenment Realm masters, all dead in a single strike.

The more he thought about it, the more fear he felt, and the more he urged his beast forward.

“Faster! Faster! Faster!”

…

Ryker’s lip curled as he watched the old man disappear into the distance. As fast as he could run, could he outrun Phoenix?

But Ryker let him go, for now.

There were two paths to take with this world. The first was to just ignore it and do as he pleased. He was now strong enough to take what he wanted and ignore everything else… somewhat.

The main issue he faced was a numbers disparity. He only had himself and Phoenix to rely upon. Although he could raise an army of people, it would take time, time he didn’t have.

Plus, for Patience’s sake, he couldn’t just go scorched earth and ignore everything. Once he left to return to his home, how would she survive if he left everything in a mess? And if he wanted to take her with him, would she be willing if he had left her home in shambles?

Then came the second option, and that was to both carve out a land and a legend, one that would give him enough leeway to come back before anything devastating could happen.

Ryker had decided that he would unearth everything he could from this land and then return home. He had to pass down the information he had to his Clan and have them start preparing, and he was also worried about exactly when the experiment would come to an end.

This world had more than a thousand years, but that might not be true for his world. Although he controlled the access point between these prison worlds and the outside world, if they came looking to collect earlier than he expected they would, what would he do?

In the end, he settled for this route.

He would crush the Shadow Clan and replace them, forming a new third pillar. After he weathered the storm that would cause, he would return.

But his success was dependent on how he conquered the land.

If the Federation suddenly went from a land the Shadow Clan felt was far beneath them, to a land that had conquered them, how could those people ever be satisfied? It was impossible.

In that case, he needed to strike a swift and decisive blow, one that left no quarter and one that shook the hearts of their people to the very core.

And if that was what he wanted, he couldn’t allow a war of attrition, nor could he actually let the warriors to his back fight. They were far too weak.

No. Grimshell would be the lightning rod.

BANG!

“Forward!”

Ryker’s roar shook the skies and the army began its march. He seemed to have forgotten everything about defense as he launched an all-out offensive.

Grimshell was widening the distance further and further, and by the time several minutes had passed, he had already vanished from even Ryker’s line of sight.

**

The Shadow Clan was one you would expect to be wreathed in shadows as their moniker applied, but while this was technically true, the reality was more surprising than many might assume.

The empire was indeed swallowed by shadows, but rather than this being because of objective darkness, it was instead because of an enormous tree with bark as dark as night that took up the core of its territory.

The Shadow Clan capital city basked beneath the shade of this tree, but otherwise, it was a land not too much different from the Federation’s own. If anything, it was livelier.

Dark Type Spirit Beasts were known as scourges in many lands, mostly because of their similar appearance to Corruption. But in practice, it was no different from any other Spirit Energy and was quite beautiful in its own right.

In a world like this one where history only went back 370 years and there wasn’t enough time for such a stigma to build up, the rise of a power like the Shadow Clan wasn’t too surprising, allowing the picture of a different reality to be born.

But it was precisely through this peaceful atmosphere that Grimshell charged. He tore a path and disrupted the ambience, fear pulling at his heart…

And that was because no matter how much distance he put between himself and Ryker, he could still feel that latter’s gaze on his very soul.