Jade Territory.
The sentries atop the city walls had just completed their shift rotation.
The new watchman let out a long yawn, leaning his weight against a stone battlent. He swept a lazy gaze across the empty, sprawling plains outside the city. Nothing moved. There was only the gentle swaying of grass in the morning breeze.
Inside the city, the bakery's chimney belched a plu of white smoke. The scent of freshly baked wheat drifted down the cobblestone streets, carrying the promise of a peaceful morning. A group of children laughed loudly in a nearby alley, chasing a stray dog that wagged its tail with frantic joy.
Everything appeared normal.
Count Barton's orders had been drilled into every guardsman's ears: war could arrive at any mont. But the sun still rose, and life, as it always did, demanded to be lived.
Then, a low, resonating hum drifted from the distant horizon, as if the very fabric of the world were vibrating in symphony.
The sentry on the wall straightened up, squinting in confusion toward the source of the sound. The children in the street stopped their ga, tilting their heads to stare at the sky. The baker leaned out of his shop, his face sared with flour.
At that mont, every soul in Jade Territory felt the tremor in their bones.
In the exact center of the sky, a microscopic point of light manifested without warning.
A heartbeat later—it exploded.
Countless lines of ghostly blue energy erupted from the point, growing outward like a frantic, glowing root system. They spread across the firmant, weaving, interlacing, and locking into place.
A gargantuan magic array, large enough to shroud the entire sky, was taking shape.
The sentry's jaw dropped. His halberd nearly clattered to the stones. "W-what in the na of the Gods is that...?"
"Enemy attack!!!" a veteran guard roared, his voice cracking. He lunged for the horn hanging at his chest and blew with every ounce of air in his lungs.
WUUUUUUUU—!!!
The shrill, mournful blast tore the city's tranquility to shreds. The entirety of Jade Territory seethed like a boiling cauldron.
Screams of panic. The barking of commands. The screech of steel being drawn from scabbards. The wailing of children. A thousand discordant sounds rged into a singular torrent of chaos.
Valerius's servant stood behind him, his voice trembling with an incomprehensible terror. "Master... what... what manner of magic is this?"
Valerius's figure appeared at the other end of the castle. He didn't answer. He simply leaped from the high tower window. The elent of Wind caught his body, carrying him like a weightless feather as he hurtled toward the city walls.
On the highest terrace of the central keep, Count Barton pressed his hands into the stone railing until his knuckles turned white. He rembered the illusion from a few nights ago. After a mont's hesitation, he spun around, his cape snapping in the wind.
"Knights! Assemble! Every man to his post!"
The Knights, who had been on high alert, surged from their barracks. The rhythmic thunder of iron boots striking the ground beca a continuous roar.
The City Walls.
Count Barton arrived with his personal guard. He imdiately spotted the figure standing directly beneath the center of the magic array.
A lone, silent skeleton. It was the anchor.
Barton quickly found Valerius, who had just touched down on the ramparts. "Valerius! Do you see that skeleton? Destroy it!"
Valerius didn't need the order. The mont he laid eyes on the creature, he had already begun channeling his Od. As a Tier 3 Mage, he understood better than anyone that an array of this magnitude required a physical node to maintain its stability. Strike the anchor, and the spell collapses.
Valerius raised both hands high. The Fire elents in the atmosphere converged on him in a violent frenzy. A fireball condensed between his palms, spinning and compressing until its color shifted from orange-red to a blinding, piercing white.
[Tier 3 Spell: Bursting Lava]
"GO!"
Valerius thrust his hands forward. The concentrated inferno tore through the air with a screeching trail of fla, a reverse teor aid directly at the skeleton.
Every eye on the wall followed the streak of light. It was enough energy to vaporize a mansion in a split second. This was the true power of a Tier 3 practitioner.
BOOM!!!
The fireball struck with surgical precision. A massive explosion of light erupted in the air, forming an expanding ring of fire. The gargantuan array in the sky flickered violently against the glare before snapping shut like a light losing power.
The deafening roar of the explosion finally reached the ground, seconds late.
After a brief mont of stunned silence, the soldiers on the wall erupted into cheers.
"We won!"
"We brought it down!"
"Long live Jade Territory!"
The euphoria of survival washed away the lingering terror. Even Count Barton felt his tensed muscles relax. He turned to Valerius, intending to offer a word of praise.
But he stopped. Valerius wasn't celebrating.
The Tier 3 Mage was staring deathly still at the slowly dissipating smoke. His expression was grimr than it had been when the array first appeared.
"What is it?" Barton asked, his voice low and serious.
Valerius's voice was dry, laden with uncertainty. "Sothing is wrong. The Mana... it hasn't dissipated."
"What do you an?"
"The array wasn't destroyed by my spell," Valerius whispered. "It was... closed. Purposely."
Barton didn't yet grasp the gravity of the statent. But monts later, the cheering on the wall died down as the others noticed the mage's dread.
A gust of wind swept across the plains, clearing the smoke and lingering flas.
And then, everyone saw.
The cheers were cut short as if by a knife to the throat. A soldier's sword clattered to the floor.
Silence. A heavy, graveyard silence.
The sky had returned to its normal, beautiful state. But the plains outside the city were no longer empty.
A phalanx.
A legion of four thousand knights stood there in a formation so perfect it was terrifying. They sat astride skeletal warhorses, clad in uniform black full-plate armor, lances held upright.
Four thousand identical entities. Four thousand matching auras of Tier 3 powerhouses.
They stood as still as statues.
Behind the phalanx stood a singular figure. It was taller than the other knights, standing on the ground rather than mounted. Its power was unreadable. To the senses of Count Barton and Valerius, trying to perceive that entity was like throwing a stone into a bottomless ocean—it vanished without a trace.
A Tier 5 Skeleton Knight. A true powerhouse on the sa level as a Hero.
Below the wall, the lead entity slowly raised its left hand.
In synchronization with the movent, four thousand undead knights raised their lances as one. The motion was without a hair's breadth of deviation, as if they were four thousand avatars of a single mind.
Then, the hand snapped downward.
THUD!!!
Four thousand lance butts slamd into the earth at the exact sa millisecond. The sound rged into a singular, thunderous boom—like a war drum struck by the Gods.
The entirety of Jade Territory shuddered under the impact.
Four thousand Tier 3 units. In the entire Earldom, there were fewer than twenty individuals of that rank.
Count Barton had to grip the battlent to keep from falling. Greed's words echoed in his mind, mocking him:
"Destruction is the simplest thing in this world."
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