The burning tower tore the night sky into fragments, and the fallen dragon flag curled into ash upon the scorched earth. When Alger Valeris was awakened by the choking stench of sulfur, three poisoned crossbow bolts were embedded in the pile of corpses at his feet.
"Paladins, hold the breach!" A roar split the air, accompanied by the sound of cracking bones. Only then did he realize that his massive sword was vibrating in his grip, the thorns wrapped around the hilt piercing his palm and drawing fresh red blood.
The city walls screamed.
The towering obsidian ramparts, a hundred meters high, were riddled with cracks, and the faint glow of magical runes flickered like dying fireflies. Twelve defensive towers had already fallen, seven of them shattered. The remaining one was being gnawed upon by a siege beast, granite chunks mixed with the entrails of the defenders raining down like hail. Alger stumbled backward, crushing the helmet of a golden-armored knight underfoot—inside, it still held half-congealed brain matter.
"What the hell is this?" He stared at the thorny pattern on the armor that seemed to be writhing, the scent of disinfectant from the sickbed still lingering in his nostrils. The last image in his memory was the flatline of the heart monitor, not being surrounded by twenty orcs in a sea of corpses and blood.
Didn’t I die on that sickbed?
There was no time to think more, as the sound of something tearing through the air suddenly rang out.
Instinctively, Alger rolled away, and the spot where he had been standing exploded into a three-meter-wide crater. Through the smoke and dust, the sight of a massive battering ram emerged, large enough to be a ship. The ram's head was covered in chunks of flesh, and foul-smelling drool dripped onto his chest plate, sizzling as it hit.
"ROAR——!"
In the foul wind stirred by the beast's charge, Alger suddenly felt a strange vibration. A tremor, older than any battering ram, pulsed through the ground, reaching from his feet and spreading throughout his body. His instincts screamed in terror—fear of death...
The horizon suddenly bulged into a black mountain range.
When Alger realized that it was the scales of some creature, the entire city wall was already cloaked in a shadow that blotted out the sun. A hundred-meter-high pair of horns pierced through the smoke, and a dragon’s breath, thick with sulfur and fire, swirled in its throat. This was no ordinary black dragon—it was a deep abyssal horror, covered in spines from head to tail. Every scale oozed corrosive slime, and the wreckage of twelve magical defense towers swayed on its barbed back.
"Abyssal Dragon Rider!" The shrill scream of a paladin was drowned out by the deafening sound of dragon wings beating.
Alger's sword instinctively swung toward the oncoming beast, but the moment it met the residual blast of dragon fire, the blade twisted like molten wax. He saw his left arm carbonize in the searing heat, his skin peeling away to reveal the faintly glowing blue veins beneath his armor.
Amidst the searing pain from the dragon's breath, a new agony struck as an arrow pierced through his ribs.
Alger knelt in the lava pit carved by the dragon’s fire, staring in disbelief at his own charred body. Then, he collapsed backward, falling into the pile of corpses.
A moment later, Alger heard the sharp clang of steel armor clashing, the ear-piercing echoes of sword and shield colliding, and the screams and groans that came from shattered bones, each sound reverberating like a tremor through the earth.
" Ahem , Ahem ,..."
When he propped himself up once again from the corpse pile, now steaming with green smoke, he was met by a splash of hot blood—a two-headed ogre, twenty paces away, was squeezing the life out of a dead elf priest, its pale golden holy blood mixing with shattered entrails and splattering across his face.
He wiped the thick substance from his eyelids, and through the blurred vision, he saw the iron-clad boots of a beastman warrior standing before him. Following the bloodstained jagged sword upward, he saw the grayish tusks of the orc executioner dripping with saliva, its armor emblazoned with a roaring emblem that sharply contrasted with the sigil on Alger's chest plate.
"Good evening," Alger forced a grin, his lips barely moving. "The blood moon is quite full tonight, isn't it?"
The orc's one eye narrowed into a dangerous slit. Alger noticed the five strings of skull wind chimes hanging from the warrior's shoulder armor, clattering with a sharp, teeth-grinding sound as the muscles tensed. "Maybe I should praise his craftsmanship?"
The orc swung his curved blade down. Alger saw the runes etched into the blade’s edge cutting into his body, blood spraying out in torrents. The snap of his second cervical vertebrae cracking was eerily clear. "I guess this time I’ll die for real," he thought, his last lingering hope before his consciousness faded away.
" Ahem , Ahem ..."
Not long after, Alger’s body twitched slightly, then fell still again. He could distinctly sense that the world around him was still a bloody battlefield, filled with the clash of steel, roars, and screams. The thunderous drums of war echoed across the sky, and the soldiers’ footsteps pounded like thunder through the ground. Alger slowly opened his eyes, carefully scanning his surroundings. Seeing the chaotic melee still raging, he obediently lay flat again, face down, silently enduring the occasional stomp of a passing foot, muttering to himself, "A couple of kicks is better than being sliced with a sword."
As he thought this, a complicated feeling arose within him. He had died many times, but each time, he quietly came back to life without a sound. The strange feeling was growing stronger. Alger felt curious but lacked the courage to explore the bizarre cycle of death and rebirth. He didn’t want to test whether he could dodge the sharp blade of the orc executioner again.
However, after lying still for so long, he couldn't bear the endless silence. Alger was never one to sit quietly. He lifted his head slightly, watching the soldiers move around him, frowning inwardly. "This battle is way too bloody."
He sighed softly, turned his head to look around, and for some reason, he was unsatisfied with the sight before him. After a moment, Alger suddenly felt uneasy, so he subtly shifted his position, finding a more comfortable spot to lie down again. He steadied himself, but as he lifted his head, a look of shock flashed across his eyes—
In the heart of the battlefield, amidst the chaos and bloodshed, a small patch of untouched land had appeared. Only two figures stood there, while the rest of the warriors seemed to deliberately avoid this space. Alger’s eyes widened, fully captivated by the scene before him.
Two figures draped in flowing robes hovered above the battlefield—two mages! Beneath them lay the broken ruins of a black iron tower, snapped in half by the beating of dragon wings. The magical tomes burning in the air scattered like dying fireflies. The gray-haired mage’s left arm was wrapped in a starry astrolabe, which suddenly roared to life. Twelve chains of mithril magic shot out from the void, each link reflecting a different form. His opponent—the emerald-scaled sorceress—smirked, raising her hand. The trail her fingers traced froze the chains into crystalline sculptures, which, upon exploding, transformed into thousands of shrieking blue-flamed ravens, soaring into the sky.
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The gray-haired mage’s eyes remained unfazed, as deep and still as an ancient well. He then focused his staff, channeling the magic that gathered at its tip, drawing half of the ravens into the void. However, the sorceress had already teleported behind him, aided by the blast of the explosion. What she pressed into his back was not a fireball, but a "Light and Shadow Pulse" compressed to its extreme. The sound waves and light distorted as they passed through the prism, shifting into a kaleidoscope of color, transforming into countless blades that tore toward his spine, sending a shiver of dread down his back.
The gray-haired mage’s cloak suddenly hardened into an obsidian shield, which shattered instantly upon impact, blocking the pulse’s attack. The fragments of the shield scattered, imbued with powerful black flame magic that surged directly toward the sorceress. Her emerald-scaled armor reacted, splitting apart and reorganizing into a honeycomb-shaped shield, which activated in an instant. The clash of the two magical forces caused a violent tremor, splitting the space around them into spiderweb-like cracks. Energy spilled out from the rifts, rapidly corroding the ground into swirling dust and sand. After their simultaneous magic collided, the earth became their stage for combat.
As the gray-haired mage summoned a meteor shower wrapped in purple lightning to crash like thunder, the sorceress, having completed her incantations, waved her hand. The gravitational field reversed, freezing all the meteors in midair. Then, the burning meteors transformed into a ruby atop her staff—a gem imbued with the endless power of the fallen stars. In an instant, she crushed the gem with her hand.
Two powerful warriors stood facing each other again, the air crackling with the aftereffects of magic and the electric tension of their clash. The battlefield was eerily silent, as if even time had frozen in that moment, with every gaze fixed upon this confrontation.
Arje lay quietly in the corner of the battlefield, his eyes filled with awe, almost unable to suppress his admiration for the duel.
his was the collision of thunder from the heavens and the power of the stars. The struggle between these warriors was beyond the comprehension of mere mortals. Light and shadow intertwined, flames and frost tangled in the air, each second of this battle filled with indescribable shock.
He had been lying for too long, and his body began to feel discomfort. He involuntarily shifted, trying to stretch his tired form. Suddenly, he looked up and met the gaze of a nearby Silver Knight.
The cold gleam of armor flickered in the dusk. Alger’s eyes swept over the surrounding scene—the torn battlefield, as if even the air had been dyed red with blood. In the sky, the roaring thunder was like the wrath of a god, tearing through the clouds. On the ground, flames and frost intertwined, as if endless disaster was constantly being reincarnated on this land.
But in that moment, Alger felt a strange sense of calm. He noticed that the knight approaching him wore the same armor as he did, their blades facing each other, yet no longer with hostility. He gave a slight smile, signaling the knight, then he closed his eyes again, preparing to relax and let the chaos of the battlefield fade into the background.
However, this brief moment of peace was short-lived. With the sound of wind cutting through the air, the Silver Knight suddenly moved with lightning speed. The spear thrust through Arje's chest like thunder, and blood sprayed out instantly, staining the desolate battlefield.
"Deserters should be punished with treason!" the Silver Knight coldly shouted, lifting his blood-soaked spear, his eyes filled with fanaticism and coldness.
Alger’s breath nearly stopped at that moment, but only one thought remained in his mind, a final scream of disbelief: "This madman! He would even strike at his own!" In that instant, it felt as if time itself had stopped, leaving only endless pain and anger burning in Arje’s heart.
It’s unclear how much time passed...
Alger woke from the long haze as if breaking free from some curse’s grip. He struggled to lift his heavy eyelids. The blood-red sun had long since sunk below the horizon, leaving only the pitch-black night to shroud the battlefield. Thick blood soaked every inch of the land, casting a strange dark red sheen in the dim moonlight. In the distance, the golden glow of purification torches flickered atop the Holy Empire's walls—apparently, the defenders had barely held off the chaos legion's night assault.
He dared not move. The frenzied chaos worshippers would even strike fallen comrades, let alone deserters. Alger crawled, pressing close to the pile of bodies, and his fingertips suddenly brushed against something cold and metallic—a dagger embedded with obsidian, its blade stained with dark purple blood, clearly poisoned. He gripped the dagger tightly and continued to crawl toward the trench’s edge.
Suddenly, a "corpse" slammed into his side. It was a dwarf, with a thick beard caked in coagulated blood. The chainmail he wore bore the insignia of the Shadowblade Vanguard— a wolf’s head. “Kid, if you want to live, follow me!” the dwarf whispered, his voice rough, gravelly as if stones were rattling in his throat. “Before dawn, those holy knights from the Church will come with the ‘Purifying Fire.’ Anyone left in the pile of corpses will be burned to ashes!”
Alger squinted. “You’re playing dead too?”
“What else? The Shadowblade Vanguard charged in the front line, and nine out of ten times, we’re just feeding the Chaos Beasts!” The dwarf spat blood. “Crawl east, through the rotting marsh! In the Black Pine Forest to the north, there are bone wolves of the undead hunters. Once they smell a living person, they’ll gnaw on you like mad...”
“I’ve been cannon fodder in the Vanguard for twenty years. Playing dead is far better than wielding a battleaxe.”
“Following him sounds reliable,” Alger thought, agreeing with the dwarf. “Alright.”
After speaking, Alger followed the dwarf as they crawled through the winding pile of corpses.
As Alger’s gauntlets were about to wear down from crawling, the moonlight suddenly darkened—their crawl had brought them to the edge of the Cursed Forest. Across a stream glowing with eerie blue light, the dwarf gasped as he spotted something on the other side, thirty yards away: thousands of crystal orchids inhaling and exhaling phosphorescent powder in the night mist. Each plant’s roots were wrapped in translucent spirits, and the moving birch trees had faces formed from tree lumps, stretching out air roots toward the fleeing survivors.
“May the furnace of the God of Forging burn these abominations!” The dwarf spat out glowing algae, unbuckling his waterlogged mithril greaves. The stream behind them twisted into a snake-like shadow, with a thin sheet of ice floating atop it, under which the outlines of human-faced fish occasionally flashed. Alger noticed his reflection distorting in the water.
Alger bit down on the broken sword in his mouth, following the dwarf into the phosphorescent stream. The icy-cold current carried them downstream, and along the way, armored figures leapt from the piles of decaying leaves into the water—seventeen deserters from the Vanguard had formed a temporary alliance, struggling to survive in the soft moonlight.
“My sister’s still in Silvermoon City, coughing up blood…” The half-elf archer spat out waterweeds, the blue algae constantly seeping from the gaps in his chainmail. “If we could get our hands on the Immortal Flower from the Holy Fountain Church…”
“Save it, deserter!” The lizardman scout whipped his long, scaled tail, flipping a young knight who was trying to cling to a floating log. “My bride’s still waiting for her dowry in the Thunder Tribe!” Three elf ear tips, embedded in his scales, swayed with the water’s motion.
When the conversation shifted to the water ghost bride in the Black Swamp, Alger felt something slippery brush past his calf. The group suddenly fell silent and quickened their pace, until an ancient boundary stone appeared at the river fork, its inscription seeping blood under the moonlight.
At the fork, the lizardman tossed a crystal bottle filled with fireflies to Alger. “Newbie, be careful. You’ll have to walk your own path ahead...” Before his words could end, their group of deserters swam toward the other bank. Alger tightened his grip on the glowing container and scrambled ashore, not sure how many forks they’d passed.
He wrung out his cloak, embroidered with a golden gorse flower crest, as his boots sank into the decaying soil—the entire forest’s ground was a rotting swamp.
As his damp fingers grazed the bark of an iron pine tree, Alger suddenly felt as if his hands were like bloated swamp onions. He shook his pale fingers, the mithril dagger tapping in his palm like a ludicrous waltz—if the old drunkard had seen this, the dwarf would surely laugh so hard that half the forest’s pine needles would fall.