Chapter 164: A Will That Burns Hotter than Fire

Explosions rang out in the sky, crushing their newly lifted morale while simultaneously serving as a very much unneeded distraction. Alex craned his neck to look upwards as a large shadow momentarily blocked out the morning sun. Frowning, he watched as a tremendous, crystal-colored drake flew swiftly past the air directly above him before continuing onwards towards the southeast as though to pursue the three remaining fighter jets that the Royal Roses had sent to assist them in their time of need.

“Gods, what is that thing?” Lady Richel Theolina cried over the Comm.

Lady Theolina was the fifth-ranking member of the Lords of Justice and a woman Alex had only recently become better acquainted with. She was tall for a female, and she wore a full, heavy suit of metal armor and fought with a large claymore. At the moment, she was well ahead of Alex and closer towards the city where she was protecting a squad of level-1 infantry from a sadistic-looking, behemoth-sized officer of the Guild of Gentleman, who wielded a sledgehammer meant for two hands in just one while defending himself with a round shield in the opposite.

The man, who Alex believed was the 9th ranking member, Nedge Cullroth, had a massive beard, an even more massive belly, and looked like he lived in a cave. Presently, he was dripping with sweat from the blows he’d been trading with Lady Theolina. But now, both paused to stare upwards at the summoned, level-190 drake.

Warily, Alex observed as the dragon flew off into the distance as it chased after the retreating fighter jets. Unfortunately, the drake was faster than the aircraft, and Alex winced as it snatched one out of the air like a cat hunting a bird. Its jaws closing tight, the plane was crushed by its teeth. A piece of the right wing even dribbled out of the drake’s mouth like a crumb, and it fell several-hundred feet before crashing against the third-story window of an apartment building in the city, leaving a nasty crack in the glass. It then fell the rest of the way before landing on the roof of a parked DEHV, smashing in its hood.

“GRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!”

Clearly unwilling to let the other jets escape, the dragon proceeded onwards. Alex continued to watch it fly off until it ventured beyond 3rd Avenue. Silently, he said a prayer for his allies in the Royal Roses who would now have the misfortune of needing to deal with the beast. But that was something that, sadly, he could not help them with, so for the moment, he ripped all thoughts of it out of his head in order to better focus on what was actually relevant to those fighting with him up here in the northern highway right on the edge of the city.

“All brigades, continue to press the attack,” he ordered into the Comm. “The sky drake is not our priority.”

“But what if it comes back around?” asked one of the junior lords over the command line.

“We’ll worry about that if and when it happens. For now, we must break into the city!”

His blade gripped tightly in his right hand, and a pair of borrowed binoculars still in his left, Alex set out to resume what he’d been about to do only a moment prior. Once more raising them to his face, he observed the field of battle in order to assess the fighting and discover where he might be able to make the greatest impact. He did wonder, however, if perhaps it was still a bit too soon to tell. Though a lot of hectic things had happened in a very short period of time, it had actually only been around five minutes since Olivir had willfully sacrificed thousands of lives to give their forces a way of capturing the northern highway, and it had taken most of that time for his units to get into position.

They’re probably not even warmed up yet.

Due to mages and healers typically having a lower speed stat, the leveled squads hurrying towards the city had been required to collectively move slower than what their fastest members were capable of achieving all on their own. This, quite obviously, was done to prevent anyone from getting left behind or easily picked off. Therefore, it had taken longer than absolutely necessary for many of them to begin reaching their designated zones, which were uncomfortably far apart from one another, making it so that, once split up, supporting each other would be difficult.

I have to be very careful in where I choose to go, Alex thought.

The northern highway, constructed long before he was born, ended just before entering the city itself, where it split apart into several smaller but still significant roads, each heading to a different main street that ran from north to south, providing multiple points of entry into Shadowfall Coast and, by extension, to 1st Avenue. For this reason, it was only now that the leveled members of the Lords of Justice were first beginning to clash with the leveled members of the Guild of Gentlemen. Because of this, Alex knew it might take a little longer before he could get a read on how each side was doing. Still, he decided to look anyway, and he began by observing Lady Theolina.

If we succeed today, it might just end up being because of her, Alex thought, focusing the binoculars on where the metal-armor-wearing Lady of Justice was fighting her heart out all by herself in order to forge a path through 1st and Corner Street.

Although it was a target considered to be of lesser importance than some of the other main roads, it could serve as a very important backup to cut through to the city center if resistance proved too significant elsewhere. If nothing else, the Guild of Gentlemen must have also viewed it as valuable if they were willing to send their 9th ranking member along with about a hundred infantry to defend it. Thus, if the enemy feared it being taken, it was therefore worth the attempt to take. And Lady Theolina looked more than capable of accomplishing this goal.

“Stay behind me!” she commanded the level-one troops taking up positions of cover at her flank. Alex was able to overhear her, as he tuned to her channel on the Comm. There was something so very enchanting about the woman: about her courage. Though her stunning face was concealed behind her helm, Alex could still imagine her soft cheeks and her cherry locks of hair beneath the armor. “I’ll deal with this monster!”

“The Gods bless you, Lady Theolina!”

Of all the leveled guild members taking part in today’s battle, Lady Theolina was the one Alex had fast decided to bestow his highest level of trust. Although he didn’t know her very well, he had quickly found her to be intelligent, strong, capable, and incredibly noble and brave. She was also beautiful as well—and unmarried, to boot. She carried herself with dignity and decency, and it was for this reason that Alex felt disgusted that she was having to interact with such a repulsive creature like Nedge Cullroth, a filthy, grimy, and decidedly unworthy ogre of a man who was currently making loud, insufferable sounds of glee as he swung his sledgehammer around as though he were actually enjoying this—which he very well might have been.

“Come on, sweetheart!” he shouted out, his voice being unintentionally picked up on Lady Theolina’s Comm. “Come here. I just wanna play with you a bit. Mmm…I bet you’ve got nice tits under all that armor. Can I lick them? I wanna suck on each one, hahaha!”

“I’ll have your tongue for that, pig!”

To the extent that anyone could be compared to the horrifically vile—and thankfully deceased—Varsh Gellor of the Royal Roses, the Guild of Gentlemen’s closest match would be Nedge Cullroth, a boor of a man known more for his stench than for his views and beliefs. Sir Cullroth was a large, typically drunken slob who differed from the likes of Varsh only due to his penchant for reluctantly following the law. But Alex knew he would fit much better into a more anarchic region such as one of those in South Bastia, because there, the man would likely be able to relish in his true nature, which Alex suspected of being even worse than Varsh’s. There were credible sources that claimed Sir Cullroth liked to pay women to let him viciously beat them and scar them up. There were also reports that he regularly tortured animals for sport. Truly, a man like that had no place in this world.

He's in for such a rude awakening, Alex thought, concealing a grin. Lady Theolina will put him in his place.

It was rare for Alex to find himself so smitten with someone, especially a person he barely knew. He’d spoken to the woman all of three times since joining the Lords of Justice, and yet there was something about her that immediately attracted him. Perhaps it was the fact that she was an award-winning poet. Or maybe it was the fact she was one of the biggest donors in Dal'Zarrah when it came to funding science education for minors. Or…or maybe, well, it was just simply because of how incredibly beautiful Alex found her, inside and out. Honestly, it was probably a mix of all three. But no matter the reason, Alex was thoroughly offput by the thought of her having to be in the presence of this loathsome creature, who was so evidently beneath her.

She should not have to be anywhere near such a disgusting man.

Alex actually growled aloud as he watched the repugnant man quickly hold his shield using his chin so that he could then take his free hand, pull down his trousers, and expose his genitals, all while Lady Theolina continued to comport herself with dignity and honor as this savage subhuman began fondling himself—at least until she took a swing at him and he was forced to backpedal away and once again take up his shield. Alex completely despised the man. In this moment, he badly wanted to trade places with her.

But, at the very least, she wouldn’t have to linger around the atrocious man for very long. No, Alex knew her claymore would soon be permanently separating his pudgy, scarred-up, giddily laughing face from his shoulders. The two had only just begun to fight, and already, they were each attacking with what looked like full intensity, sparing little exertion as they traded blows.

Nodding to himself approvingly, Alex watched on as Lady Theolina, displaying her quick reflexes, bent backwards and evaded a horizontal swing from the massive sledgehammer. The weapon was so large that she even had to remain in that position while waiting for it to fully clear the air above her. Once it had, she straightened her back, bent her front leg, twisted her hips, and swung her own massive weapon with a great deal of force—and that was putting it mildly. The brave woman put so much power into the blow that the mere pivoting of her heels actually caused her feet to crack through several inches of the pavement beneath her while kicking up several rock-sized chunks of concrete.

Even still, Sir Cullroth, seemingly unworried, responded by barking out a laugh loud enough that Alex could hear it from all the way over here. Despite his size, he somehow managed to similarly duck, and then, predictably, he responded with another massive swing of his sledgehammer, which Lady Theolina…?

Huh?

…which Lady Theolina for some reason did not dodge and instead tried to parry despite the awkward position she was in. Unable to raise her weapon in time, the sledgehammer found its mark. The weapon struck her dead center on the right side of her face, and Alex saw what followed in great detail through the binoculars almost as though it’d occurred in slow motion. He also heard it, too. And it all happened so quickly. Without reason. Without explanation.

Everything just happened so fast.

It began with a sound. Two sounds, actually. Initially, there was a very quick thunk as the sledgehammer crashed into her metal helm. But following this was a strange sound. And what made it strange was how ordinary it came across—how mundane. It came from Lady Theolina herself. She had released a grunt, one that was deep yet not entirely troubling. It was a sound that contained a far greater note of surprise than pain. It was also incredibly brief.

“Ugh!” she vocalized.

And then Alex was confused. He did not understand what he was seeing. He did not understand why her helmet flew off her face at the speed of a bullet, and why the very shape of her head seemed to change. Her head…the shape of it…it changed. The shape of her head had changed. It changed completely, having become caved in on the side as though someone had created a depression in it. Her entire right cheek had been relocated to the center of her skull.

At the same time, her right eye popped free from its socket and dangled from a thin piece of flesh outside of her face. Dozens of cracked teeth flew out of her mouth. Her tongue began to dangle lifelessly out of her lips as the changing shape of her head no longer provided a means with which to keep it inside. And then she fell and hit the ground hard while her body began to violently twitch and convulse as a white foam began oozing out of her jaw, which had been forcefully opened wide and could not be shut. For around five seconds, she flapped around on the ground, shaking even harder and spewing even more white foam. Then, finally, she stilled.

What…? I don’t…this isn’t…but how?

Then it hit Alex: the shock of it. The sheer unfairness of it. She was dead, and her killer was now stomping on her deceased skull while laughing maniacally. “Look what I did to your whore!” he shouted at the terrified level-one troops, every single one of whom were almost certain to be slaughtered by his sledgehammer. “Uh oh! I think she stopped breathing. Hahahaha! I’m gonna do the same to all of you.” He pointed his sledgehammer at them. “Then I’m going to find your friends and family, and I’ll—”

His foot, which had been repeatedly stomping down on Lady Theolina’s lifeless skull, at last managed to flatten her head into the pavement such that it crushed the Comm in her ear, cutting off his voice. And just like that, Alex became so filled with rage and disbelief he began to tremble.

“That animal,” he whispered, causing the confused young man whose binoculars he’d borrowed to glance uneasily at him. Clearly, he did not see what had just happened—nor did he yet know. “That…that animal!”

Alex had to fight every instinct within him: every urge that demanded him to head straight for 1st and Corner Street and to avenge her personally. But if he did so, it would expose him as a hypocrite, for he had spent so much of his life advocating for the greater good over personal interests. Yet, by far, this was among the most difficult impulses he’d ever had to battle.

Focus, he told—no, demanded of himself. 1st and Corner Street is not a core objective. Calm down! Think clearly!

Alex suffered. Truly, he suffered with the pain and sense of wrongness that burst within him and caused a knot to tighten in his stomach. It had all happened so fast. All the woman had needed to do was duck. Why did she think she could parry in time? What had been going through her mind? Why did she risk it? Was she angry because of his taunting? Was she thinking clearly? How could something like this happen to someone like her?

Not now! he warned himself. You need to stop!

Forcing himself to once more raise the binoculars to his eyes, he decided to rip his mind away from the tragedy and instead observe the more significant and important fights currently taking place along the main roads. It wasn’t easy, of course. He had just witnessed something beyond awful: a sight so terrible that it left Alex feeling rattled and shaken. Surely, it was only natural that he felt as though he needed to take a moment—to at least make an attempt at processing what he’d seen. But he knew he couldn’t.

And why?

Because Alex, more than anyone else present on this battlefield, had a responsibility to remain focused: a responsibility he’d accepted by choice. Regardless of why he joined the Lords of Justice, it was now his duty to keep pressing forward no matter how horrible or how painful it became. Quite simply, a man in his position didn’t have the right to slow down just because something had upset him. He’d known this would be the case when he, a twenty-four-year-old, former high-school science teacher, had willingly accepted the role of a world leader—along with whatever baggage that happened to come with.

And so, for the sake of the bigger picture, he put all his attention on surveilling the war effort—even knowing that it likely wouldn’t matter. Once again, he had to remind himself that it was still probably far too early to learn anything useful, and that the leveled members of the Lords of Justice were probably only first getting started. In all likelihood, he wouldn’t be able to draw a clear picture for at least another few minutes.

At least, that was what common sense would dictate.

But common sense would be wrong, thus by extension, he was wrong. Once again, Alex was wildly off the mark. And now, becoming unsteady on his feet, Alex swelled with anguish as he realized straight off the bat that he wasn’t just wrong; to the contrary, he was very, very wrong. Not only wasn’t the fight in its earliest opening stages, but in some places, it had already concluded.

Alex’s fingers trembled on the binoculars as he observed the battle taking place on 1st and East Cadence, which caused his vision to blur. Then, he nearly dropped them entirely as, in a panic, he began swiveling his head from left to right, then back again, trying his best to understand just what he was seeing and why he was seeing it. For as he surveilled the field of battle, the results were dramatically, overwhelmingly worse than what he’d been expecting. It was to the extent that he struggled to comprehend how his forces were performing so terribly.

The Lords of Justice…is this really the best my guild can do? Gods, please tell me this isn’t so.

To be clear, things were still significantly better than they would have been if the Royal Roses had not managed to perform several full, merciless bombing runs on the MLRS artillery that had, until moments ago, been their greatest threat. Compared to that, they were now a great deal better off. But by no means whatsoever did that make their current situation good or even remotely acceptable. Even going with the most optimistic of outlooks, one could possibly say that things had gone from catastrophic to merely terrible.

They’re not cut out for this. These people…they’re inept!

With the MLRS systems being either destroyed, disabled, or presently out of commission, a brand-new problem had emerged, and it was one that Alex had not foreseen existing—at least not to this extent. Right now, all along the frontlines, the leveled members of the Lords of Justice were getting absolutely pulverized. And this was true no matter where he scouted with the binoculars. Everywhere he checked, they were losing. And they were losing so badly that the sight of it sent nervous sweat trickling down his back.

Why is this happening?

Although the level-1 troops that made up the mechanized infantry brigades had taken a tremendous beating on their charge to the highway, only a single leveled-squad from the 12th brigade had suffered any real damage; thus, the other squads that had now fanned out and had begun to engage the Gentlemen in PVP were going into the battle perhaps somewhat rattled, but otherwise fresh and unharmed.

Yet, at the foot of every tactically significant street that intersected with 1st Avenue, the men and women of the Lords of Justice were getting their tails handed to them so viciously that Alex was tempted to look away. And it wasn’t even that Alex had expected his new guild to crush the enemy in leveled PVP combat, either. He just hadn’t expected them to perform this terribly: to lose this badly. It was so one-sided that Alex genuinely wasn’t sure whether or not it was still possible for them to turn things around. And as it turned out, he was not alone in this concern.

“Pull them out!” Olivir shouted over the Comm. The vampire’s voice came across as stunned and alarmed. “They’re not fit for war. I can’t even believe what the hell I’m seeing. Lord Oren, get them out! This is unwinnable—and also unwatchable!”

“It’s…it’s not,” Alex whispered into the Comm, caught in a state of shock, even as he observed the absolute carnage being inflicted upon his guild.

To the west, just three leveled members of the Guild of Gentlemen were annihilating a full squad of ten from the Lords of Justice—of which only four were actively participating in the fighting, as the enemy’s lone mage had successfully landed an AOE mesmerize on the other six, causing them to become dazed, motionless, and totally zoned out of it. The four men and two women simply stood by, their mouths drooling as their four compatriots were torn apart by two men with greatswords.

With those four dead, the two men calmly went around to the other mesmerized six, and they methodically executed them one at a time. They likely were not even aware that it was happening, too. And as Alex watched them die, one by one, the most horrifying part of all was that he felt relief of all things, because at least they were being killed professionally and quickly with some semblance of dignity as compared to what had happened to Lady Theolina.

The same was not true elsewhere, unfortunately. It seemed the treatment faced by the Lords of Justice came down to the whims of whoever they fought. Many members of the guild did in fact fight honorably. Yet, on some streets, the Gentlemen behaved like crazed marauders, doing their utmost to humiliate and brutalize their foes, even those who had already been beaten and incapacitated, such as a man who screeched in terror as he crawled along the street. Both of his legs had been sliced off, and now, wounded, he attempted to flee on his belly.

“No, no please!” he begged as a woman wielding a spear sadistically walked slowly behind him, deliberately letting him crawl away for a bit as if to make him think he had a chance to survive before at last moving in to claim her kill. “Please, no! N—agghh!”

She ran him through, slamming her spear down such that it pierced his spine and exited through his belly on the other end of his body. Yet still, he did not die. So she pulled it out, laughed at him, and then ran him through once more, only this time, she sodomized him with the weapon. Alex recoiled and briefly lowered the binoculars as he was gripped by a wave of pure revulsion. The world was reverting to its old ways.

One common theme Alex had seen described very often in books about ancient wars was that, in these kinds of battles, the side that believed it was winning often committed acts of cruelty that violated every known norm of human decency, and indeed, he had now just witnessed two such instances back-to-back of members of the Guild of Gentlemen deliberately sexually humiliating their victims. Thus, Alex was left to wonder: should he be as shocked as he was by all this? Was he a fool for thinking that this kind of behavior was a relic of the past, and that even in the worst-case scenario, surely, humanity would not regress back to this level of barbarism?

Of course we are, Alex thought, struggling to take in the entire, overall situation. This is what the Guild of Gentlemen have done to us. And we’re letting them get away way it. Gods, how is it even possible for the Lords of Justice be so unbelievably incompetent?

To Alex’s eyes, both sides were comprised of rich elites who leveled up off carefully curated mobs on their private estates, and therefore, to him, neither the Gentlemen nor the Lords of Justice came across as particularly adept. But even then, a disparity still very much existed, as the Lords of Justice were uniquely lacking in skill. They did not even seem to know how to properly use their own abilities.

Towards 1st and Main Street, the 6th ranking member of the Lords of Justice shouted out, “Blade Lunge!” and began to perform a series of motions. Yet Alex did not need to hear him shout those two words to know that he had just activated that ability, as it was an extremely common sword skill that any adventurer would have encountered time and time again in their travels. The moment he’d raised his right arm at a slight angle while shifting his back foot, Alex had known exactly what ability he’d activated. Any experienced adventurer would. And likewise, any adventurer would know never to use it in the way that the man had just used it.

What is he doing? Alex wondered, baffled by the display of ineptitude.

Although it was a common ability, Blade Lunge was still a fairly powerful, three-hit combination skill. But because it took away control of the user’s body and locked them into a specific series of exact, precise movements, it was imperative that one never, ever activate it on targets—neither sentient nor mob—that were not crowd controlled. The only exception was in circumstances where a mob’s attack patterns were so well known that its movements could be predicted with certainty.

Outside of that, locking one's body up in an ability was among the easiest ways to die in the adventuring world. And it wouldn’t even necessarily be a death in the conventional sense, either. Several years ago, Alex had personally witnessed an adventurer use this very same ability, Blade Lunge, to inadvertently run himself out of a dungeon and into the void of space, where he died within seconds and floated off towards the infinity.

For this reason, Alex was not surprised by what happened next. The man, having activated the ability, performed the three-hit motion exactly as any other would. His sword began to glow a dark purple color, and he delivered two very fast slashes, one upwards, and one downwards. Both missed, though it did not look as though it was due to his opponent’s familiarity with the ability, but rather, it came across as more like two lucky dodges. Not that it mattered. The result was still the same.

Stolen novel; please report.

Having missed the first two of three total attacks, the ability continued. The man bent his knees, extended his sword in front of him with both arms, and then he was blasted forward, his feet skating across the ground as though there were wheels beneath them, pushed ahead by an unknowable force. His opponent merely jumped out of the way, and then a mage from the Guild of Gentlemen emerged from behind two tanks to begin firing off exploding balls of light, all of which landed squarely in the middle of the man’s back, as he was unable to turn himself around or control his movements until the ability completed.

Paralyzed by his own attack, the unfortunate man ended up in about fifteen different pieces as the mage’s projectiles detonated against him upon impact, turning him from a singular entity into mere chunks of human flesh. And through it all, Alex was taken over by a sense of denial: a sense that things could not be as they currently seemed.

“It’s over,” Olivir said to him. “Accept it.”

“This is not over,” Alex insisted. “We will not concede!”

“Are you nuts?” Olivir asked. “Gods, open your eyes! This is unwinnable, Lord Oren. I’ve never seen anything so one-sided. I didn’t expect your guild to do this badly, but they are. We’ll just have to let the Elves handle this.”

Alex firmly shook his head. “And allow hundreds of thousands of innocent people to die? Absolutely not! How can you say this is over, Olivir? We’ve only just begun fighting a few minutes ago.”

“Yeah, and that already seems too long as is. Listen to me, Lord Oren. I might look like a kid, but I’m over two-hundred-years old, and while that’s young for a vampire, it’s still given me a great deal of wisdom. Right now, your entire guild is on the verge of being wiped out. And what then? The Elves will still erase Shadowfall Coast from the map just the same. The only thing you can change right now is the number of people who die today. You honestly need to just get your people the hell out of there while you still can. I’m sorry, but that’s how it is.”

Alex struggled to tamp down on his anger. “You want me to order them to retreat after you sacrificed so many of their lives?”

“I never would’ve done that if I realized how…how incapable your guild is.”

“A bit late for that now, isn’t it?” Alex asked. He opened his mouth to say something else, but he paused as High-Lord Kolorn Besh’s voice erupted over the line. The man was now screaming into the Comm, demanding that Alex order a full retreat and let the Elves demolish the city instead. Plainly, he agreed with what Olivir was saying on the Comm, and now he was becoming desperate to salvage as many lives as he could.

“We must pull back!” he shouted. “Lord Oren, this is unwinnable!”

Unwinnable, Alex thought. There’s that word again.

It was an awful word. It was a word that repeated several more times in his brain.

Unwinnable. Unwinnable. Unwinnable.

Alex tuned his guild-leader out, as the man continued to demand he order a full retreat of every soldier in every brigade. Not only would that be a disgrace worse than death, but it would be giving the Guild of Gentlemen a win on a scale that would haunt the Lords of Justice for the rest of history. Yes, things were very bad, but giving up was not the answer! Even if…even if it was beginning to look like this really was as unwinnable as Olivir and High-Lord Besh were claiming.

And to make matters all the more humiliating, the Guild of Gentlemen weren’t even resorting to any of their clever, yet underhanded “tricks.” They were simply winning fights through sheer superiority, the extent of which seemed to surprise even them, as they began to shift strategy, going from defensive to offensive. It was as though they suddenly sensed that they had the ability to end the Lords of Justice in its entirety right here and now: to completely eradicate the entire guild.

Alex gripped his blade even more tightly as he noticed that several-hundred troops—and a few leveled squads, as well—were currently storming their way back through the grasslands, retreating all on their own. Fleeing. Many of these cowards even shamelessly darted right past him as they ran for their lives. But they were few in number, as the vast majority of the leveled squads were currently too entrenched to disengage from combat even if Alex gave the order. It was likely impossible for them to retreat now: the enemy wasn’t going to allow them to leave.

“Lord Oren, I order you to declare a retreat!” Kolorn yelled at him over the Comm. “Do it now! While there’s still something left of our guild to save!”

Not only did High-Lord Besh fail to realize the futility of his demand, but he—like Olivir—did not seem to grasp that, from the outset, giving up had never been an option today. Everyone should have known the stakes of coming here. This was an all-or-nothing battle to determine the worthiness of humanity: to prove to the rest of the world that humans still had the ability to correct, self-improve, and change. If they fled like cowards and allowed the Elves to do their dirty work in the worst way possible, it would not only reflect poorly on the human race, but it would destabilize all of North Bastia, too.

Right now, the world was on fire. An entire city had been destroyed by a weapon of evil. The hatred and vitriol this had caused was reverberating through every level of society. People everywhere were on edge. And what no one seemed to understand—what no one seemed to get—was that destroying a second city in its entirety was not going to help mend these problems. If anything, it would only make them worse.

Why couldn’t people understand this? Why couldn’t they see?

It did not take a genius to predict the consequences of another mass killing. If the Elves destroyed the city, then west of here, in the Guild of Gentlemen’s capital region of Tomb of Fire, the people would launch an uprising, which would perpetuate the cycle of violence and revenge. No matter how it may have seemed in the moment, annihilating Shadowfall Coast would not truly go down as a victory in the long run. It would only make things better in the short term before gradually making them even worse than they currently were.

They just don’t understand. They just don’t get it!

With High-Lord Besh’s increasingly frantic voice still shouting into his ear, Alex continued to take in the situation through the camo-colored binoculars pressed against his face. And there was just no sugar-coating what he saw. Things were bad: really bad.

It wasn’t even just that they were losing, but more so that the areas where they were being crushed the worst were the sites of their most-significant objectives, with their biggest—and probably most decisive—failure taking place on the most important target of all: 1st and Haven Street, an objective of such vast, incalculable value that merely calling it the “most important” failed to convey the sheer depth of its significance to them. It was for this reason that the plurality of their forces had been dispatched there—and also the reason why the enemy had placed its strongest units there as well, including their MLRS systems.

Though victory did not absolutely require they succeed on 1st and Haven, the fact of the matter was that if they did manage to capture it, then everything would change. It was to such a degree that even if they failed everywhere else—and to be clear, they were failing everywhere else—the Lords of Justice would nevertheless still prevail if only they could achieve success on that one main road.

But right now, they were failing there as well, and to Alex’s distress, he realized that the extent of their failure was larger on 1st and Haven than anywhere else they were fighting. Of all the locations where battle was taking place, it was 1st and Haven where the Lords of Justice had suffered their highest number of casualties in the shortest span of time.

With a start, Alex saw that just about all of the leveled members dispatched to 1st and Haven had already been killed. They’d just been totally slaughtered. Their brightest flame of hope…extinguished. And much like the death of Lady Theolina, it had all happened so fast.

Becoming enraged, Alex nearly crushed the binoculars as his hand clenched up with fury as he took in the sight of the mass number of bodies littering the street. It wasn’t just a “few.” It wasn’t even just a “lot.” It was most: most of their people. Their deceased forms were now decorating the foot of the road like pieces of discarded litter, and their equipment and weapons were being greedily scavenged by level-1 infantry in the Guild of Gentlemen who were starving to experience a taste of leveled life.

Disgusted, Alex witnessed several young men literally shoot, stab, and kill each other as they fought like vultures over a low-level headband that probably only gave just a point or two into strength. As a testament to how badly the Lords of Justice had been stomped, the Guild of Gentlemen were now actually being forced to divert resources into stopping their own side from infighting as young men and women—but mostly men in this case—tore each other apart in some kind of insane, corpse-looting frenzy.

One kid managed to pry a pair of gloves off the dead hands of the 16th ranking member of the Lords of Justice. And then, as he broke away from the crowd, tears emerged from his eyes as he stared at the equipment as though it were a religious artifact. Yet before he managed to slide his hands into them, a short, stocky pal of his approached from behind, jammed his knife into the kid’s neck, and then ripped them free before turning around and fleeing the battle entirely. The look of glee on his face was haunting. But it didn’t last. An officer of the Guild of Gentlemen pointed his staff at the boy and vaporized him before he could turn the corner.

We’ve fared so poorly that they’ve turned to killing each other for the right to loot our corpses.

Alex struggled to come to terms with how poorly they had done: this, despite the fact that the Royal Roses had bombed 1st and Haven into oblivion. Yet it didn’t seem to matter. They had been utterly crushed. In fact, it was difficult to understate just how many people the Lords of Justice had actually lost.

Given that some number of their members naturally had to stay behind to maintain order, the roughly 35% of those Alex had sent to 1st and Haven proportionally represented about 25% of the whole guild. And nearly all of them were dead. Meaning, in other words, that a quarter of the entire guild was now gone—dead. Alex, who High-Lord Besh had placed his trust in, had used this trust to lead an entire fourth of the whole Gods-be-cursed guild into damnation.

But it had not been without cause.

No, there was a very justifiable reason why 1st and Haven Street was so important, for it was their quickest path to victory. And this was all because the road led straight down to 5th and Haven Street, the location where King Morrison and all of his top commanders and strategists resided directly in middle of the city in their command structures.

From the very beginning of this operation, Alex had known that their only realistic—and narrow—path to success involved capturing King Morrison and his closest allies, forcing them to disclose everything they knew about the weapon, and making use of this information to disarm and destroy their production capabilities before Queen Vayra’s religiously self-imposed deadline came to pass. It was almost certainly their only way of earning a true victory in this war.

And all because the zealous woman misinterpreted what Adamus actually wanted from her…

Well aware of his inability to change her mind, Alex had been forced to concoct a strategy of not just preventing any more weapons from being launched, but from any coming into existence in the first place—even if they were immediately contained and destroyed. And it was all because Queen Vayra—and by extension, all of her Elves—genuinely, sincerely believed that “their Lord” would be offended over such semantics.

And so, the plan was for the Lords of Justice to push from 1st Avenue down to 5th and Haven Street while the Elvish were meant to push up from the south highway through 10th Avenue, and together, they were supposed to surround, capture, and interrogate the top brass of the Guild of Gentlemen. It truly was the only way.

Yet now, in this very moment, as High-Lord Besh and Olivir chewed him out over the Comm, and as Alex continued to watch the men and women of the Lords of Justice endure a stunning, crushing defeat of proportions rarely seen throughout history, it was here that he spotted something else through the eyepieces of the young soldier’s binoculars. It was here that he finally snapped.

And it was all because of something that, on first glance, one might consider innocuous, but on a deeper level, implied so much more about the situation than it might at first seem. And of all things, it was the sight of ten or so flying unicorns dashing across the sky that ended up setting Alex off. It was the sight of Queen Vayra herself, leading a band of her best green- and white-cloaked warriors southeast in pursuit of the dragon, which at this point, was now circling around the Piercing Thorn while magical projectiles launched by mages aboard kept it at bay.

Seeing this, Alex lost his cool—and nearly his mind as well. Because there was significance in this: significance that was not readily apparent at first, but was very much there. Yet through this one act alone, the ugly truth was revealed: that Queen Vayra, as well as her Elves, had given up on saving the city.

And they were done pretending otherwise.

“Why?” Alex asked into the Comm, after quickly switching frequencies. It was the only word he could think to speak. Yet to his aggravation, Queen Vayra acted as though she had no idea what he was talking about. And maybe she didn’t. Maybe she didn’t even realize what her own actions were conveying.

“Hello?” she replied. “Human boy, I’m busy. What is it now?”

“Why!” Alex shouted at her. “Tell me why!”

“Why what?” she asked, sounding bitter and annoyed.

Alex lowered the binoculars, and now he did crush them in his fingers. “Why are you and your Elves chasing after that drake?”

“Isn’t it obvious, human? Our esteemed allies in the Royal Roses require our assistance.”

Alex’s temper and emotions spiked to such as degree that it took all of his self-control not to scream. “You’re supposed to be pushing north towards 5th and Haven. Why are you there and not where you’re supposed to be?”

“And who are you to tell me where I'm meant to be?” she snapped.

Barely able to contain himself, Alex massaged his temples as he felt both overwhelmed and confused. He opened his mouth to reply, but then he closed it, as he realized this argument would be a waste of time. Unbeknownst to even her own self, Queen Vayra had let slip more than she realized. Namely, that she no longer had any intention of saving Shadowfall Coast, and she likely never did.

Even from the very start of this operation, all of her gestures of cooperation—they were likely intended as nothing more than a way to later justify her actions to the global community. They were so that she could claim she had done all she could, but that there was no other way to stop the Guild of Gentlemen aside from bombarding the city with magic from a safe distance and then running through and knocking down whatever remained.

In fact, Alex didn’t even need to investigate the situation to know exactly what happened, because the more he thought about it, the more obvious it became. Queen Vayra, stubborn and hardheaded, had ignored literally all of his warnings. She likely had gotten reckless while fighting in the south highway, and Alex was now willing to bet she’d lost a significant number of her Elves, maybe as many as ten, which to their race, was a lot.

That’s exactly what must’ve happened, he thought.

Yes. It was the only logical conclusion. She had stormed the south highway, underestimated her enemy, and having lost an unacceptable number of Elves, she was now biding her time and attending to other tasks, and all for the sake of building up the necessary moral justification she’d need to later excuse her command to launch what was, essentially, an Elvish nuke on the city: more complex, but with the same ultimate outcome. Only worse in some regards, because as terrible as the nuke had been, there were survivors, however few. No one was going to survive this.

I’ve had it. That's it. I've had it!

Alex raised his sword. He’d had enough. He wasn’t going to lose. He wasn’t willing to lose. He didn’t care if he had to go in there and save the city by himself. He didn’t care if he died. He wasn’t giving up. He wasn’t surrendering. Not even the Gods were going to stop him. He’d had enough!

“All units,” he said into the Comm. “Listen to me, and listen to me carefully! Every single one of you now has a choice to make.” With his feet tapping against the street, he began to walk towards the city, slowly at first, but soon he entered into a jog.

“You can retreat if you want,” he continued. “You can run. You can go home to your mothers. Or you can pull off and follow behind me to 1st and Haven Street. I am going to break through—even if I have to do it by myself. If you’re still willing to fight, then stand with me. I’m either going to succeed or die.”

“Alex, what are you doing?” High-Lord Besh shouted at him. “Where are you going? We’ve lost far too many good people today as it is. Stop!”

Alex ignored him, and now, he went from a jog to a sprint—exploding forward in the direction of the city. Deftly, he hopped over a trench, then hopped again over a series of sandbags, and then he sprinted dead center on the northern highway. Like before, he burst forward with such speed that, each time his feet slammed down against the road, he blasted through a chunk of it and then kicked it behind him as he tore up an entire section on his way to where it split via several exits. He took the one that said Haven St. North.

He knew he was being reckless. He understood this could be the moment of his death. But his will was simply too strong. He knew what he wanted to achieve. He understood the world he wanted to create: to live in. But even more than anything else, it was his time to step up: the same way his former student, Zachys Calador, had been called to do on multiple occasions now.

How many times had it been?

How many times had Alex watched that seventeen-year-old boy put his head on the chopping block so that no one else had to suffer? If Alex had only been capable of doing so, he would have taken the boy’s place every single time. Yet the opportunity had never arisen. But now, he could feel in his heart that this was his do-or-die moment. And he was okay with dying. Because truly: it would be so much better to die than to live in the world he’d glimpsed just a few moments ago. A world where people were slaughtered in awful wars, but only after being tortured or sexually abused. Where animals calling themselves men stomped in the heads of brave women for having the courage to stand up to them. If this was the direction Galterra was heading, then all the better to die here today.

I’m coming for you, Allistair Morrison of the Guild of Gentlemen!

In no time at all, Alex arrived at the foot of the entrance to 1st and Haven, yet even as fast as he’d made it, there were no living members of the Lords of Justice by the time of his arrival. There were, however, about thirty-five members of the Guild of Gentlemen guarding the city’s entrance, and every single one of them reacted with the same look of bewilderment and disbelief as they noticed him arrive all alone by himself.

“Is that Lord Oren?” a short man wielding two purple swords asked aloud. “The 3rd ranking member of LOJ? Surely it’s not…”

“I think it is!” a broad-shouldered woman armed with a slingshot announced cheerfully.

“A…Alex?” exclaimed an immeasurably sad, confused voice that belonged to none other than Wexzel Ultdern, Maric’s younger brother. The hurt in his eyes was unmistakable. Immediately before him were corpses: or rather, a pile of corpses. None of them were recognizable, as they were all charred, burned, and blackened. Even their equipment was missing, which indicated that, not only had they been roasted alive, but whatever had burned them had been strong enough to cause all of their equipment to suffer a full break.

And it was only now, as Alex narrowed his eyes discerningly, that a piece of the puzzle became solved. At last, he understood why his guild had failed so miserably. The answer was obvious in hindsight. Up close and personal, he could now see that, mixed in with all the usual junk-tier guild equipment, the Gentlemen had also armed themselves with various pieces of dragon loot. But as far as the burned members of the Lords of Justice were concerned, their deaths were clearly due to the second-most powerful piece of equipment that had dropped during the raid.

The staff.

Alex remembered it now: he remembered it vividly and in great detail. Upon Ziragoth’s death, there had been two artifact-quality items that had dropped. The first had been the ring, and the second had been the staff. Alex had even personally inspected the staff with his own two hands, bringing up its stats and marveling at them shortly before the festive dinner event. In fact, he could even visualize it in his mind. He could actually recall the item as though its information was floating before his eyes at this very moment.

Name

Ziragoth’s Staff of Eternal Dragon’s Fire

Level

105

Rarity

Artifact

Dexterity

+85

Constitution

+85

Intelligence

+90

Ability 1

Dragon’s Inferno

Cooldown

20:00 (minutes)

Range

500

Description

The user calls down a massive inferno from above in target area, dealing 50,000 damage per second + additional damage that scales highly with intelligence for 5 seconds. Each second, all affected targets suffer -5% to magic and armor resistance for 10 seconds, stacking each tick.

Ability 2

Dragon’s Retaliation

Cooldown

1 (week)

Duration

5:00 (minutes)

Description

Transforms “Ziragoth’s Staff of Dragon’s Fire” into a flaming sword, immediately granting its user +85 strength; additionally, the user now has a 45% (non-luck-scaling) chance to ignite their target upon any successful contact with any non-ability-modified melee attack. Ignited targets are burned from the inside, suffering 20% direct HP damage each second for 5 seconds (limited to 4% on non-sentients and 0.4% on bosses). This damage cannot be mitigated with resistances. Against bosses higher than T3, this proc can only occur once every 180 seconds.

So that’s how he did it, Alex thought, the truth finally becoming illuminated before him. That’s how they died so fast that I didn’t catch it happening.

Alex, who now stood a mere fifty feet away from the edge of the city street, glared defiantly at the much larger force of Gentlemen who hungrily eyed him. From the way they were acting, it was as though they could hardly believe their luck. He was, after all, the 3rd ranking member of a guild they were at war with. He supposed that, from their perspective, the fact that he’d shown up here all alone was an act of extreme fortune. Hell, for all Alex knew, they might’ve been right. He just didn’t care anymore.

“Thank you for making our life so much easier,” a tall, muscular man wielding a greenish longsword and wearing a set of hardened, brown-leather armor said to him. He began to take several steps forward, and so did an equally tall, equally strong man beside him. The two of them broke away from the pack and began to approach, and there was murder in their eyes. The fact that they looked so similar indicated they were twins. The man’s brother wielded a morning star as a weapon, and the spikes atop it radiated a constant red fire, suggesting it came from the dragon, as typically guild weapons were low-level and lacking in the kind of visual effects often seen on dungeon gear.

The fact that Alex did not recognize either of the two meant that they must have been low-ranking. He doubted either were even in the guild’s top 50. But from their arrogant attitudes, one might think they were in the top ten.

“Easy, Daviks,” Wexzel said, caution in his words. “You and your brother have no business fighting him.”

“This little bitch?” Daviks, the sword-wielding one, asked angrily, causing his identical twin to laugh. “The science nerd?”

“He’ll kill you in a heartbeat. We should attack together.”

“Thirty-five on one?” he exclaimed, sounding outraged. “We can take him.” Greedily, he licked his lips. “Lots of ranks gonna be up for promotion when this war is over. I hear the Royal Roses just snuffed out a few of the top 20s down on the coast. I bet if me and my bro are the ones to bag the third-in-command, maybe we finally crack the top 30.”

Wexzel grunted. “If you attack him without the rest of us, you will die.”

The man called Daviks laughed. “Oh yeah?”

“Yes. The reason being is that the man’s—”

“A former adventurer,” Alex finished for him, widening his stance and measuring his breathing as the tall, sword-wielding guild member approached, his brother occupying the space opposite him. Alex ignored them and stared directly at Wexzel. “I want all of you to stand aside and let me through. I’ve come to kill your king.”

Upon his words, around three quarters of them erupted into a bout of hysterical laughter. He didn’t blame them. It was tough talk coming from a lone science teacher at the end of his rope. Still, Alex meant every word, however suicidal. But of course, they did not take him seriously. But what they did not know—and what Alex did know—was that following a brief nod Daviks sent his brother’s way, his brother was going to use an ability called Morning Breaker.

How did Alex know this? Very simply. That ability, which only worked when using a morning star as a weapon, had an unusual range requirement. Rather than have a maximum range, the user needed to be exactly between a range of 50 and 55. It would then launch the user upwards, into the air, cause him to flip twice, and then the user would descend with incredible force, slamming the spiked weapon down on whatever surface was beneath the user in the targeted area. Then, any targets in the general area—including those not directly struck—would be stunned for up to 6 seconds.

Shifting his eyes to the right while keeping his head straight, Alex noticed the position Daviks was taking. He’d slowed, hanging just a bit back. Alex doubted trash like him had any genuinely threatening ranged abilities, so most likely, he was going to wait for his brother to attack and either kill or stun Alex. If the latter, he would then advance, and from there, he’d likely dash forward and slice his sword around a few times. But if he did opt to use abilities, Alex was willing to bet he’d open up with either Sword Rush II or Berating Slice.

Alex took a deep breath, and then he released it.

He was different from the likes of Zach. Zach, based on everything Alex had seen from the boy, was exceptionally talented when it came to reading his opponent’s body language. And while Alex himself was fairly adept at dueling and reacting, he had never before seen anyone with Zach’s raw talent for predicting enemy movements. It was a natural gift that he was born with: and Alex was not on that level whatsoever.

What Alex did have, however, was a near encyclopedic knowledge of every non-unique ability he’d ever come across in the world of adventuring. He knew them well. He knew them very, very well. He knew them so well that, often, other adventurers would approach him and use him for a reference when they themselves could not recall certain details.

As far as Alex was aware, there were only four types of inner exertion abilities. There were the normal ones that everyone had, the unique ones that were incredibly rare and that few people had, and then there was legendary non-unique, which was even rarer than baseline unique. Finally, there was a type that was so rare Alex had not even known it existed at all until Zach had come around: legendary unique. He still couldn’t believe that was a thing.

Regardless, the point was that more than 99% of inner exertion abilities were simply called inner exertion abilities, and not all were made equal. In truth, these abilities deserved a rarity system all on their own, and over the years, many adventurers had tried to come up with one, but few could agree on how to rate and grade them. But going off a general sense, Alex doubted that anything these two had would have been classified as anything other than the most common of common—by any adventurer’s standards.

Ahead of him, Wexzel stepped forward and extended his hand as if to gesture for caution. “Don’t do it,” he warned. “I can’t save you.”

“We don’t need saving.” Once again, as though he believed he was being clever, Daviks gave another very quick, very brief nod to his brother, and then the man began to move—and fast.

Without a single word of warning, the spiked end of his morning star began to light up with reddish-colored sparks of energy, which danced off the end of his weapon, the very first sign that he was about to use Morning Breaker. And indeed, within just a mere fraction of a second following these sparks, the man launched himself into the air, rising nearly fifty feet above the ground, where he promptly forward-flipped twice and roared out, “MORNING BR—”

Before he could finish speaking, Alex had already whirled his body to the left, removed his left hand from his blade, and then made a waving, flicking motion with it while activating the Medium-Low exertion ability, Light Dart II.

As he flicked his wrist, an incredibly fast-moving dart made of pure light popped into existence between his pinched thumb and index finger, and he threw it. With a high-pitched whistling, the dart zipped upwards and across the air, penetrating the man’s throat even as he was still calling out the name of his ability. Alex watched as it went straight through his neck, exiting the back of his head a moment later. Now, his words ended with a gurgle, and then he fell back to the ground, already dead upon impact. His morning star fell out of his uncurling fingers, rolling a few times along the street and nearly making it to the sidewalk.

“No!” Daviks screamed, rushing forward.

Recklessly, he swung out with his blade. Alex sidestepped, causing him to go running straight past him, and while still wielding his blade in just his right hand, he then made a spinning, downward slash, cutting the man open along the back of his neck and causing him to drop to the ground and begin writhing in pain on the concrete, fatally wounded but not dead. Luckily, Alex was nothing like these animals, and he quickly plunged his blade downwards and through the man’s brain to end his suffering.

“Next.” Alex beckoned as he pulled his summoned blade free and shook off the blood. “I’ll take on every single one of you at once. Just know that there’s nothing in all of existence that’s going to stop me from reaching your king. I don’t care what it takes: you’re going to let me through.”

The thirty-three members of the Guild of Gentlemen widened their eyes. It seemed that, now, at least, they were willing to take him as seriously as their 3rd in command, Wexzel Ultdern, did. Good. Alex wouldn’t have it any other way at this point. This was what he should’ve just done from the start.

It was what Zach would’ve done.