The Gamer's POV

Once Juliana got to the front of the line, she quickly unfurled the parchment, then yelled in the foreign language of her inner sanctuary.

In response, the air, which was already thick with the chaotic noise of explosions, suddenly vibrated as the buzzing of a hundred wings began to drown out the sounds of combat. In the next instant, dozens of ink-drawn insects surged out of the painting. As they swarmed into the open air, their forms expanded and solidified, growing until they reached their true, monstrous sizes.

They flew in a singular, devastating formation toward the obsidian horde. When the two swarms collided, the entire atmosphere seemed to ignite because just as the obsidian creatures had the ability to explode on contact, these flying insects also detonated, erupting into violent, chaotic clouds of red flame that consumed everything in their path.

Observing that the cadets were successfully holding the line against his creations, the Lord raised his left hand, where the dark ink of a kusarigama tattoo shifted against his skin. With a practiced motion, he reached into the marking and pulled the heavy, chained weapon into reality.

Then he began to whirl the weighted end in a blurring circle, the chain whistling through the air, before he stepped forward into the explosive chaos unfolding in front of him.

He did not seem bothered by the fiery detonations or the desperate attacks of the cadets and just dashed through the wall of smoke and heat with a singular, terrifying focus. Swinging the heavy weighted end of the chain, he smashed one of Roben’s clones the moment he reached the front of the formation. The wooden construct shattered into a thousand splinters under the sheer kinetic force of the strike.

At that moment, a cluster of Juliana’s flying insects swarmed him, forcing him to swing the sickle blade in a wide, defensive arc. The creatures exploded in a violent sequence of red flames upon impact, but he did not seem to be hindered by the heat or the blast. If anything, the only sign of the assault was his trousers, which were now singed and tattered at the hem, revealing his legs.

Without slowing, he continued his relentless advance through the smoke, clearing a path with the whistling chain before he leapt out of the wall of fire. Juliana looked up to see him descending like a shadow from above. Her eyes widened behind her spectacles, but before she could even draw a breath, the heavy sickle blade of the kusarigama came down with a sickening, wet thud, splitting her skull from the crown to the jaw in one fluid motion.

Her blood splattered across the discarded drawings, staining the volcanic wasteland on the parchment with a deep, fresh crimson.

Like a predator sensing the next kill, he spun on his heel and leapt at the cadet standing closest to him. Before the boy could even raise his hands to defend himself, the Lord’s massive palm clamped onto his face with bone-crushing force, pinning his head as he smashed the boy’s skull into the sand with enough momentum to crater the ground beneath them.

The Lord moved among the cadets in a terrifying blur of cold, efficient slaughter. He did not waste a single motion as his body flowed from one kill to the next with a brutal grace that left no room for the cadets to form a coherent thought, much less a defense. He vaulted toward a tall, lanky boy wielding a spear of flickering blue flames. Before the cadet could level the weapon, the Lord spun in mid-air, his boot connecting with the boy’s jaw with such sickening velocity that it sent his head spinning off his shoulders in a spray of crimson.

The moment the Lord’s bloodied feet touched the ground, he lashed out with the kusarigama. The weighted end of the chain whistled through the air until it connected with the temple of a girl nearby. The impact was so jarring that it sent her body spinning into the wet sand, her skull caved in by the dense iron before she even realized she was a target.

The man then landed in a low crouch before lunging at a group of three who had finally managed to cluster together. One raised a transparent shield of shimmering mana, but the Lord simply drove his shoulder into the barrier with the weight of a freight train. The construct shattered like a falling mirror, and before they could recoil from the magical backlash, he drove the sickle blade deep into the first cadet’s chest. He twisted the steel to ensure the heart was shredded, then used the dying boy’s weight as a meat-shield against a bolt of lightning from the second.

The third cadet tried to flee, but the chain of the kusarigama snaked out like a living thing, wrapping tightly around his ankles and jerking him backward. The boy hit the ground face-first, and before he could even roll over to scream, the Lord was upon him. He brought his heavy boot down with enough force to collapse the boy’s ribcage into his lungs, the sound of snapping bone lost in the roar of the surrounding battle. The air was filled with the smell of ozone, scorched wood, and the heavy, metallic tang of fresh blood as the Lord continued his silent, predatory sweep through the ranks, leaving a trail of broken forms and discarded lives in the wake of his relentless advance.

It did not even take the Lord a full minute to liquidate the unit, and before long, only Roben and one other member of his unit were left alive.

The man then lunged to finish the two remaining cadets. He cast the heavy kusarigama aside, then reached behind his lower back and pulled out two wicked, serrated daggers as he moved. But just as he closed the distance to drive the blades home, the second survivor reacted with a desperate, frantic speed. A short boy with shock-green hair leapt forward and grabbed Roben by the collar of his armor. By the time the Lord’s daggers slashed through the empty space where their throats had been a heartbeat before, the air rippled and both the boy and Roben vanished into thin air.