Only a few minutes after Ravian fell asleep, far from the capital and the official borders of the Viera and Twilight Empires, red blood mingled with purple across a rocky plain bathed in brilliant moonlight.
The cries of humans and Rassasians rose together, and the clash of swords against shields and spears thundered across the battlefield, while the hooves of hybrid horses bearing beast blood crushed earth and bone beneath them indiscriminately, regardless of side.
Human blood ran red, while Rassasian blood was dark purple, and the two colors had mingled until it became impossible to tell which army some of the scattered limbs belonged to.
In the military reports, this battle would later be recorded as no more than a medium-scale skirmish—if even that.
Yet no one fighting at its heart would have described it as a skirmish.
A force from the Twilight Empire had moved during the night to seize control of this neutral territory, a low-lying stretch of rocky ground far from the immediate borders of both empires, yet suitable as an advanced staging ground for any army seeking to launch a deeper offensive later.
Viera’s scouts spotted them before they could establish their positions, prompting nearly two thousand fighters to be pulled from the border camp to intercept them, while the opposing Rassasian force numbered more than five thousand.
The Twilight Empire held the numerical advantage beyond any doubt.
In practice, however, the humans held a slight advantage on the battlefield.
"Close the gap!"
Darius’s voice cut through the noise of battle as he ducked beneath a hooked blade that swept over his head, then planted one foot forward and drove his shoulder into his attacker’s chest.
The Rassasian before him was a half-Rassasian, with a jaw longer than it should have been and a mouth crowded with sharp teeth, while an irregular bony protrusion jutted from the left side of his forehead.
The half-Rassasian staggered backward, but Darius gave him no opportunity to recover his balance.
Darius rotated the massive sword in his hands before bringing it down diagonally from one shoulder to the opposite side of the chest, tearing through the thin armor and the flesh beneath it as purple blood erupted across his chest and arm, staining both with the battlefield’s brutal glory.
Darius was broad and powerfully built, with cropped brown hair and scars spread across his body and arms as though his flesh were a complete record of every battle he had fought and survived.
He was also one of the six elites who formed the heart of the Death Squad under Malrik’s command.
Now, with four of the squad’s elites away on a mission to the capital, he fought alongside the unit’s remaining soldiers at the front of the human formation, wielding his massive sword beneath a dense coating of his aura.
The aura neither separated from the sword nor transformed into a blade that could fly through the air. Instead, it remained bound to the metal and Darius’s arms, reinforcing his muscles, hardening every blow, and multiplying the force flowing from his body through the blade and into the necks of the enemies before him, allowing him to cut them down without hesitation.
This was the power of the Ninth Rank.
It was immense compared with the strength of ordinary soldiers or even the physical boost granted to newly awakened Tenth-Rank fighters, yet unlike the Eighth Rank, it still required a body or physical weapon to remain connected to.
A pure-blooded Rassasian lunged at him from the side, his features far more human than those of the half-Rassasian who had just fallen. He possessed smooth gray skin reminiscent of a dark elf’s, though brighter, while the proportions of his face and body appeared almost entirely human except for his pitch-black eyes and the pointed teeth visible between his lips.
He thrust his spear toward Darius’s neck, but the massive sword rose from below and knocked the spear aside before Darius stepped forward and swung the blade horizontally.
The Rassasian retreated at the last moment, yet the sword’s edge still sliced through his armor with relative ease, bit into his abdomen, and left a deep gash bleeding purple across it.
"Spears forward!" Darius shouted without pursuing him. "Don’t let them break the line!"
The humans relied on their formations to withstand the onslaught and offset the enemy’s overwhelming numerical superiority.
The soldiers behind him moved immediately, striking the butts of their spears against the ground in unison before lowering their points toward the next wave.
Their discipline was the primary reason for the humans’ slight advantage.
The half-Rassasians charged the wall of spears without hesitation, some seizing the metal points with their bare hands even as they pierced their palms, attempting to drag them downward and open a gap for those behind them. Others even tried to vault over the lines, willingly allowing the spears to carve through their bodies in the process.
The half-Rassasians did not form the majority of the Twilight Empire’s army; their numbers were far lower than those of the pure-blooded Rassasians, yet that did not make them any more valuable.
Quite the opposite.
Their bodies were more deformed and their features further removed from the human form, while the pure-blooded Rassasians regarded them as tools that could easily be sacrificed, which was why they were driven to the front of nearly every assault.
The infiltrator who had assumed Tom’s identity—Claria’s assistant—before attacking Ravian inside Malrik’s tent had been one of them. This was also why Ravian had been able to defeat him with relative ease despite possessing virtually no knowledge of combat techniques compared with the half-Rassasian.
The first wave crashed against the human wall of spears, and dozens fell, yet the sheer weight of their bodies forced the human line several steps backward.
"Hold!" shouted one of the formation commanders near Darius at the center of the line, driving both feet into the ground like a nail hammered deep, determined neither to bend nor be uprooted.
The soldiers dug their feet into the dirt while the second line raised their shields over the heads of the spearmen.
In the next instant, arrows flew from behind them.
Hundreds of arrows obscured portions of the moonlight before descending upon the Rassasian army. Most were ordinary arrows, but dozens carried traces of magic; frost coated some of their heads, while the shafts of others were reinforced with mana to make them harder and faster.
Even this magic was not independent.
It remained bound to the physical bows and arrows used by the Ninth-Rank fighters and did not manifest in a separate form capable of existing alone in the world.
The arrows pierced the foremost ranks, and several half-Rassasians collapsed atop one another, but the pure-blooded Rassasians raised their shields and continued advancing from behind them.
Then the humans’ entire left flank trembled beneath the pounding of hooves.
Viera’s cavalry charged astride massive hybrid horses carrying beast blood in their veins—creatures taller than ordinary horses and far thicker in bone and muscle, with armored plates covering their chests and heads.
The riders lowered their lances in a single formation before crashing into the side of the Rassasian army.
Their lances pierced bodies, and the force of the impact hurled several fighters into the air while the horses’ hooves trampled everyone who fell beneath them.
The Twilight commanders did not hesitate; instead, they intensified their assault as if they cared nothing for their losses—and that was the worst kind of enemy anyone could face.
Viera’s commanders, however, had noticed that the relentless assaults were steadily exhausting the human lines.
Behind the ranks engaged in direct combat, some distance from the front, stood the greater part of the human army.
Several individuals stood out clearly among them.
One was a broad-shouldered man, though not excessively so, with short black hair and an expression so stern that it left no room for humor. A slight frown creased his face as he monitored the course of the battle, calculating every move his forces were about to make.
Then, without hesitation, he shouted to the soldiers in a voice that shook the entire battlefield.
"Cavalry! Beware the ambush!"
This stern man with short black hair and a full suit of metal armor was one of the Viera Empire’s faction commanders serving in Karius Dmitri’s company—Caesar Ashfon, the Bloody Black Blade.
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