“Your Majesty,” Elaine Jie Long said, driving a red-armored rino. The sternness in her ice-blue eyes was the best proof of her seriousness.

Their army was still on the move, and from here he could see Vermia and the smoke rising intermittently from the city walls, as if to tell them some news. They would be there soon.

At first Yu Zao had no intention of coming here. He was planning to lead his army east and take Sagio, but he was forced to come to Vermia when Elaine Jie prophesied that his army would be defeated.

After all, Elaine Jie had never been wrong in any of her predictions and Yu Zao did not think she would be wrong in the future.

According to Elaine Jie's prophecy, the army commanded by Lien Yachi Long and Azil Zao Long would be destroyed by a dragon, and only another dragon could stand against it.

So he gathered his army and marched after the army he had sent to Vermia without even informing his own generals Azil Zao and Lien Yachi. The reason he didn't inform them was that he didn't want them to take the enemy lightly, relying on the army behind them, but to fight as seriously as they could.

“I'm listening,” Yu Zao said.

He, Elaine Jie and Fâlyn were advancing on the rinos. They were at the front of the army because Yu Zao thought a king should go first.

“They are coming for us.” Elaine Jie's words were simple and explained the situation. “They are coming now.”

“We're going to them,” Fâlyn said. “They are the ones to worry about.”

Fâlyn’s rino wore a red armor like his hair. He had ice-blue eyes like Elaine Jie, but his short pointed ears told at first sight that he was not the human male people was thought to be.

“Underestimating your opponent is one of the things I hate the most.” Yu Zao looked at Fâlyn out of the corner of his eye.

He was not trying to be modest or sympathetic. He was aware of his power, Fâlyn's power, Elaine Jie's power, the power of his army and the power of the mage who accompanied them.

He knew that they were among the strongest in this country, but he did not want to make the mistake of underestimating them, no matter how great the difference in power between them and their opponents. After all, power was more than the sword.

“I apologize.” Fâlyn bowed his head in embarrassment. His cold blue eyes trembled as if wounded.

Fâlyn was half a head shorter and thinner than Yu Zao, but still much taller than average. He was the only one here who did not wear armor, instead he wore a long red one-piece dress that some people wore at festivals. The dress was tied at the waist with a blue cloth.

Yu Zao sighed, seeing that Fâlyn was offended. “I'm sorry, I didn't mean to say I hate it, we just shouldn't think like that.”

“I understand, Your Majesty.”

It was unclear whether the smile Fâlyn was putting on his face was real or if he was doing it to avoid upsetting Yu Zao. Nevertheless, he was smiling and Yu Zao stopped paying attention to him and looked at Elaine Jie.

She was also a tall woman. She was shorter than Fâlyn, but taller than most of the men.

“Can you see how many there are?” he asked.

“Leon, Maiden and Libra are there,” Elaine Jie said. “But their numbers are uncertain, they won't all attack at the same time. Some of them are waiting in the back.”

He understood what Elaine Jie had said. If the battle was to be fought in the north of the city, the soldiers from the south of the city would attack from behind when the enemy army crossed to the north, leaving them in a trap.

When this happened, they had left troops behind to break through the city soldiers. Elaine Jie might have thought that, even if she didn't say it.

“Spread the army, we will form a crescent.” He turned to his commanders advancing behind them. “Send three thousand cavalry immediately beyond the left flank. When the enemy comes with a new force to break through our troops coming out of the city, they will cut them off.”

Soon they could see the enemy army on the horizon. Although not on top of a hill, the city was high up, so if either side attacked, they would have to climb up. This gave the advantage of space to their opponents.

Yet half of his army of twenty thousand was cavalry. So attacking the enemy would not be that difficult.

“Fâ.”

As soon as the word came out of Yu Zao's mouth, Fâlyn turned into a flame, headed towards Yu Zao's left hand and entered his palm, taking the form of a long sword.

Fâlyn was Yu Zao's sword fairy.

He raised his sword, which had a red streak in the middle of the silver steel that glowed as if it were on fire. At the end of the crimson hilt was a blue jewel.

“ATTACK!” he shouted. His voice was loud enough to make the mountains tremble and it reassured his soldiers.

***

His cloak was torn, so he changed it and put on a red cloak. On this cloak was the figure of the Virgo Maiden. Although he thought the cloak with the dragon motif he used to wear was cooler, he couldn't deny that this one was nice too.

The silver armor and shield he wore was once again the Virgo Maiden. He couldn't lie, Yu had spared no expense on his equipment and had the armor he wore made by one of the best armor makers he could find in Virgo.

Armor covered the vital parts. The rest was covered with a red leather. The leather was of better quality than most nobles used for their clothes. He wasn't talking about durability, but the leather was breathable and kept Link from sweating to some extent.

His sword was a simple sword he had inherited from his father. On top of his rino was a spear, a spare sword and arrows.

When he saw the crescent-shaped enemy army, he lowered the visor of his helmet, drew the bow attached to his rino and raised it in the air.

“Form a crescent, don't let them surround you, ready for first shoot!”

He had assumed the role of leader of the vanguard with Yashin Huo, so he was at the front. His words, spoken aloud, were transmitted among the officers and reached the soldiers.

Link was leading the left wing, they had planned that the right wing would do the same and they did.

“I am going to kill my own lineage to make someone else king,” he thought. “The Longs are really right, I am an insult to the name.”

He took a regular arrow from the quiver attached to his rino, placed it in his bow and stretched it.

“Let go!” he shouted, and a thousand arrows flew towards the enemy.

“It's that simple!”

Unlike the novice army of the Virgo Cathedral, the army of the Libra Cathedral knew its business. It was still a practice shot, but their arrows had successfully hit the enemy.

The arrows struck some enemies directly, others struck their horses and rinos and knocking them down.

Excited, Link shouted louder. “REAL SHOT!”

He drew an arrow with a blue magic stone glowing on the tip. The feather behind these arrows was also blue. He stretched the arrow, took aim and shouted. “RELEASE!”

The blue-tipped and blue-feathered arrow flew, leaving a blue streak in the air, and Link's heartbeat quickened as it descended towards the enemy.

He wasn't a war enthusiast, but he couldn't help but be excited to use a weapon of such destructive power for the first time.

“Oh, fuck.”

Many of the arrows from the left flank's wings hit the enemy, creating explosions, but the arrows at front of Link exploded in the air as they met the flames.

Yes, the flames rising from the ground reached the arrows and caused them to explode in the air before they landed.

Their plan was to use their magic stone arrows in a single devastating attack, and it was only partially successful. This partial success was not enough, assuming that the soldiers were frightened by the sight of the flames.

“At least they are not recruits,” he thought.

***

Their shields protected them from the first attack, but when Elaine Jie sensed mana from the second wave of arrows, Yu Zao moved.

“Burn.”

“Yes, my king.”

Yu Zao swung it as Fâ's voice echoed in his mind. The sword sliced through the air. The flames rose towards the falling arrows and collided with them, creating an explosion above.

Yu Zao could normally only use earth magic, but when Fâlyn became a sword for him, he could also use fire magic with his help.

The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

It was actually Fâlyn who cast the spell, and he could cast spells independently of Yu Zao if he wanted to, but in this form Yu Zao could give his commands quickly, instantly turning his thoughts into reality.

“What about the wings?” Elaine Jie asked.

Elaine Jie lowered the visor of her blue helmet and looked to her left and right. Although Yu Zao had protected his position, arrows had struck the wings and caused explosions.

“We will keep moving forward.”

The only thing Yu Zao could do for the dead was to organize a funeral. Beyond that, especially on the battlefield, he could do nothing.

So he pointed his sword at the oncoming enemy troops and continued to drive his rino at full speed.

Before their armies clashed, spears of ice appeared in front of Yu Zao. It was Elaine Jie who created these spears using water magic. She threw the spears at the enemies in front of Yu Zao.

Some spears hit the armors and shattered, others penetrated it and killed the enemy.

The spears striking the rinos knocked them down along with their riders, and the enemy soldiers were crushed under the rinos driven by Yu Zao's soldiers.

As a result, Elaine Jie killed several dozen soldiers before the battle even started and Yu Zao faced his first opponent.

Above the steel protecting his opponent's chest was the figure of a Liba. It was a cavalryman of the Liba Cathedral. He shouted and thrust his spear forward to stab Yu Zao.

Yu Zao met the spear with his shield, guided the steel-tipped board into the air and, lying on top of the rino, thrust Fâ into the scaled steel. The magic sword easily penetrated the steel and took his opponent's life.

Elaine Jie kept killing the enemies around Yu Zao with her ice spears. Anyone who tried to attack them was turned into an ice statue before they could even get close.

“FÂ!”

Hearing Yu Zao's command, Fâ flashed, Yu Zao swung it, and the flames from the sword burned through the enemies.

Fâ's flames charred the enemies immediately in front of him and caused severe burns to those behind them. As the enemy soldiers screamed and fell from their rinos, Fâ decapitated a Libra cavalryman who had been burned.

“We're doing great again,” Fâ said. Yu Zao could hear his voice in his head. “What are the others doing?”

Yu Zao looked around as Fâ protected him with fire magic. In her ice-blue armor, Elaine Jie was killing her enemies with a ferocity that belied her grace.

The men on his right were moving towards the enemy with Elaine Jie's power, but Yu Zao looked to his left and saw that the enemy soldiers were more dominant. So he turned his rino to the left and moved to support his soldiers.

His rino bit the neck of another enemy cavalryman's rino. The cavalryman had not noticed them because they had rushed at him so suddenly. At first he was going to try to save his rino, but Yu Zao brought his sword down on him and he had to raise his shield.

Yu Zao's sword collided with the cavalryman's shield and Fâ's flames shot into the air. The cavalryman tried to thrust his spear into Yu Zao's chest, and Yu Zao countered with his own shield.

Yu Zao's rino dropped the rino whose neck he had bitten, and the rider on top of him fell to the ground. Yu Zao swung Fâ and cut the neck of the fallen rider.

On his rino, he continued to mow down the cavalry of the Libra Cathedral. None of them could stand against a warrior like Yu Zao.

Sensing a threat from behind him, he turned his rino, but Fâ had already set fire to the cavalryman who was about to attack Yu Zao. The rino and the cavalryman screamed and burned as they were consumed by the flames and began to advance towards their own ranks.

“FOR THE KING!”

A royal cavalryman who had fallen from his rino was running with his sword raised in the air. He brought his sword down on the neck of the horse an enemy was riding. He did not succeed in cutting the horse's neck all the way through, but he made the wound that would kill it. The horse and the rider fell to the ground.

Before the royal soldier who felled the horse could finish off his opponent, Yu Zao's rino lowered his head and tore the neck of the fallen horseman.

Yu Zao pulled the bridle of his rino towards him and guided the animal with his heel. He turned his face again to the south, to the area where the enemy was attacking.

“Your Majesty.”

When he heard Fâ's voice in his head, he lifted his head up and they were attacking with arrows again.

“They have no honor, they'll kill their own men!”

As Fâ spoke furiously inside Yu Zao's mind, Yu Zao swung at him. Fâ's flames rose towards the arrows. This time the arrows didn't explode, but Yu Zao didn't have the ability to destroy all the arrows.

Some of the arrows struck and killed the soldiers of the Cathedral of Libra, but most of them hit Yu Zao's soldiers. Even an arrow that had been dodged in the flames luckily struck Yu Zao's rino in the eye.

“How arrow can hit the eye with all that armor?!”

The rino fell and Yu Zao was trapped under it. Fortunately, it didn't take him long to throw off the rino and stand up before he was crushed by another rino.

The first thing he did when he stood up was to look at Elaine Jie. She was far away from him, but he could see the tall woman's ice-blue helmet and the glow of her magic in the distance.

“I feel strange,” he thought. “All this is familiar.”

“Your Majesty, this is no time to think!”

Yu Zao stomped his foot when he saw an enemy coming towards him on a horse. Layer after layer of earth rose up in front of the enemy's horse. The horse tumbled against Yu Zao's earthen ramp and the rider fell to the ground.

The rider stood up before Yu Zao could kill him. He had dropped his shield, but his sword was still in his hand. He raised his sword and brought it down towards Yu Zao. Yu Zao defended the move with the shield still attached to his arm and swung Fâ.

The rider took a step backwards and avoided Fâ. If he had taken another step he would have been hit by a rino, but he stopped at the last moment.

Yu Zao approached him and tried to stab Fâ. The rider met the attack with his own sword, but he was too weak compared to Yu Zao. This defensive move made him fall to the ground.

Yu Zao stabbed him in the chest before he had a chance to get up again and went in search of a new enemy to kill.

***

It was not going well for them, nor for the enemy. The war was going on equal terms. He had not encountered any magic users, except for the occasional flashes of red and blue in two distant areas.

The owner of the crimson glow should have been Yu Zao Long, the one who had blasted the arrows raining down from the air with his flames in the first place. Like all Longs, he knew that he has a sword fairy who could use fire magic.

“I must kill Yu Zao to end the war.”

There were hundreds of people he wanted to kill, but only killing Yu Zao would bring temporary peace. Maybe he wouldn't even do that, but still, when Yu Zao was so close to him, when he had the opportunity to kill him, there was no way he could ignore the opportunity and focus on something else.

He had no personal hatred for Yu Zao. He knew he was right in his own way, but the peace under his rule would not last, Link believed.

It was not possible to make peace with this blood.

“As much as I like Yu, he is not a good man. He won't do this out of noble ideals, but when Yu Zao falls, he knows what he has to do to keep the peace. So, right now, I'm ready to die if it is necessary.”

When the enemy soldiers failed to kill Link on his rino, they cut off the legs of the rino he was riding on and knocked him to the ground. Of course, this was not enough for them to kill him.

His shield was down, so he could only use the sword he held in both hands, but he was more used to fighting like this. He leapt into the air to avoid two enemies attacking him at the same time and kicked them both in the head, knocking them to the ground.

With the strength gained from the kicks, he jumped again and plunged his sword into the back of the neck of a royal cavalryman who was about to kill a Libra cavalryman.

He drew his sword and swung it at the threat he felt behind him. With this move he cut the neck of another person.

“Fuck you!”

“Son of a bitch!”

He did not know which swear word came from which soldier, but these insults were the only intelligible words he heard on the battlefield, apart from the cries of “For the King!” and “For Azer!”

When he saw the red glow, the flames, rise once more, he knew he was getting a little closer to Yu Zao, but just then he caught a glimpse of a spear he didn't understand where it had come from. Before it hit his chest, he grabbed it in his hand and spun around, stabbing the nearest enemy soldier.

“Ah!” He was shaken by the throbbing of his head.

His eyes glazed over for a moment, but trusting the mana in his body, he threw back his elbow and pushed the soldier who had struck him. He turned around to see a royal knight in plate armor holding a double-handed sword. If he hadn't been wearing a helmet, he would have been dead.

He raised his sword to stab him, but a rino suddenly passed between them and he could not dash forward. When the rino was out of the way, the knight brought his double-handed sword down on Link again.

Link raised his own sword up and stopped the knight's sword from landing on his head once more. He was about to thrust his opponent's sword into the air when he was grabbed by his cloak, pulled backwards and saw a dagger coming towards his eye.

He turned his head to the right so that the dagger hit the steel of the helmet and not his eye. In this way he managed to survive for a while longer.

The knight holding the two-handed sword raised his sword to bring it down on Link, but Link could not raise his sword because he was being held by his arms.

He saw the knight spread his legs, a dishonorable move, but he wasn't going to just die. The knight's shins were also covered in armor, but Link knew he could still hurt him with the mana he carried.

He put his strength into his right leg and lifted his foot between the knight's legs. He believed he could hurt him more than he normally would, thanks to his steel solleret.

Link was hurt when his foot hit the knight between the legs, but he managed to make the knight jerk in pain. With his arms grabbed, he jumped and slammed his foot into the knight's helmet. As the knight jerked and fell back, a Libra cavalryman thrust a spear through his armpit. As he fell to the ground, a horse trampled him.

Link jumped again, this time behind the soldier holding his arms. The surprised soldier's arms lost their strength and Link grabbed the arm of the soldier behind him, spun him around, broke his arm and hit him in the back with his shoulder, knocking him to the ground.

Dropping his sword while his arms were being held, he picked up the first weapon he saw on the ground, a spear. He ducked to avoid the sword of a cavalryman with a rino coming at him and drove the spear into the leg of his rino.

When the rino fell to the ground, its rider naturally fell too, and ironically, the rider's chest was crushed by the rino of another royal cavalryman. Then another cavalryman again crushed the rider on the ground, and then another cavalryman.

Crushed under the rinos and horses, the knight was dying, trying to get up, but he was likely to die there. Link wanted to go and finish him off, but there were always cavalrymen riding where he had fallen, so he was not going to risk it.

Instead, he turned in the direction he thought Yu Zao was. He grabbed the hand of the first enemy soldier who ran towards him because he didn't have a sword, twisted his wrist, took his sword from him and threw him to the ground.

He readied himself to finish off the enemy on the ground, but a cavalryman took his life with his sword as he tried to get up. Now that Link was free again, he could focus on his work.

He ran, cut down those in his path and jumped out of some of them. His only goal was to kill Yu Zao right now and end the war. So, even though the war was not going to end completely, he had to try. People like Yu, Cornelia, and Keichi might not know what the people were going through because they were upper class, but Link did.

To stop the bleeding, to heal the wounds, either Yu Zao had to die or Zodya had to die.

Under different circumstances, it is very likely that he would have joined the royal side after the death of the Pontifex. Even if he believed that peace could not come from the royal hand, he would have done so, believing that it would be better than a rotten religion.

But in the present scenario, he believed that he had found a much better way than Yu Zao and Zodyanism, and that this was the only way to bring peace and prosperity to the people.

No, he did not believe or think. He knew that this was so.

At last he ran and ran. His sword, his armor, the exposed parts of his face were smeared with blood and mud, but at last he reached the flames he sought.

A man much taller than Link stood before him. He had no helmet and his blood-soaked hair was blond to brown. His eyes were like rubies, burning. His face, covered in blood, was as white as most nobles' faces. His body was muscular.

On top of his black armor was the figure of a red dragon. This was the figure of the Ruby Dragon. The armor was decorated with rubies. It was not plate armor, but like Link's armor, it covered vital areas and gave him mobility.

“YU ZAO!” Link shouted.

Yu Zao looked at Link, who was shouting at him after slicing a cavalryman in half with his sword.

Link was going to finish the job as a true knight. In front of his helmetless opponent, he took off his helmet and threw it aside. His blond hair fell around his neck and his yellow eyes gazed at Yu Zao.

“Link Yachi Long,” he said, giving his name. “I have nothing personal against you, yet you will die here today.”

He knew he was pointing his sword at perhaps the most honorable of all the kings who had ever come to the Mora. Yet he was fighting against this righteous man for a righteous cause. For peace.

Yu Zao had a shield on his left arm. He knew he had to do the same when he saw an opponent of his own blood in front of him, and he knew he had to do the same when that opponent threw down his helmet to be on equal terms. He unstrapped the shield and it fell to the ground.

“Virgo Knight Link Yachi Long,” he introduced himself again. This time he also used the title he officially carried.

“King Yu Zao.”