The Gamer's POV

By now, all the units of the vanguards on the shore were having their hands full with the lords, just as the late Jesper had surmised.

But things were not really looking good for the cadets at this point. Out of the one hundred and fifteen who had stepped onto the shore as vanguards, more than half of that number had already been killed.

Yet the remaining still held their ground and fought because that was the only option available for them at this point.

As they clashed in a desperate circle of steel and magic, the sun was slowly retreating behind the jagged horizon, surrendering the sky to a bruising purple as dusk began to bleed into the world.

Yet this detail escaped the notice of those locked in the fray, for their world had narrowed down to the panicked rhythm of their own breathing and the singular, primal need to kill or be killed.

Those who were raining down curtains of attacks on the giant lord never stopped, and by now, the bastard had shrunk in size until he was almost the height of a normal man. During the time he was shrinking under the barrage, the long-range fighters had begun to close the distance, as there was no longer a need to fight him from afar.

By the time the dominants had closed in on him, what remained of the lord was nothing more than a shriveled, blackened mess of bones.

Seeing that they had succeeded in killing the monster, a wave of immense relief washed over the cadets. Killing a lord was no small feat, and killing a being of the fourth grade was even harder, yet they had done it.

During this brief moment of respite, Alicia, who had been further away battling the Nagas, began making her way through the chaos to meet her unit. They were among the group that had just finished off the giant lord, and she was desperate to regroup as the Last Resort command had been given.

When she was a hundred meters from them, she suddenly halted as a harrowing sight caught her eye to the left. She saw her childhood friend, Roben, holding hands with three other people. Their bodies were fraying at the edges, dissolving into pale green leaves that were being swept away by the salted wind.

The moment she saw that, her heart sank and she let out a piercing scream in sorrow at the grotesque beauty of their passing.

But barely a few seconds into her grief, a cadet suddenly intervened in a blur, sweeping her off her feet. At that exact moment, an explosion, which came from the direction of the giant lord, suddenly ripped through the space where she had just been standing.

The force of the blast was so immense that both cadets were thrown backward through the air, after which they crashed onto the sand with a heavy, bone-jarring thud. For a moment, Alicia’s ears rang and her vision went hazy. She coughed up the white sand that had filled her mouth and lungs, then tried to lift herself off the ground. When her vision settled somewhat, she saw Xavier lifting himself up.

With her ears still ringing, Alicia turned to look around. Scattered across the shore lay the charred, blackened bodies of dominants. There were also dozens of scorched Nagas who had been fighting the hollow ones not too far away. The hollow ones remained unharmed due to their immunity to magical attacks, but they had all been thrown down by the sheer force of the shockwave.

Looking amidst the smoldering wreckage of the line, Alicia saw that there were a few beings who had survived. One was a three-meter-tall demonic creature that looked like a brown wolf with two horns and red eyes. That massive beast was Levi in his Ruined World form.

He was struggling to stand from the ground after being knocked down by the concussive force, and seeing the way his fur only smoked without catching flame, Alicia could tell that he had survived due to some sort of resistance to fire attacks.

Not too far from where he knelt, Alicia could see a dome of ice that had broken and fractured in a dozen places. The dome shattered completely after a few seconds, revealing the Frostfang saber, Glazier.

’W-what happened?’ Alicia shivered as she looked around, searching for the cause of the explosion.

It did not take long for her to find the silhouette standing just beyond the remains of the fallen giant lord.

Alicia’s attribute granted her sight far beyond that of a normal cadet, and the detail she saw was enough to turn her blood cold.

The figure was another lord, but his presence felt far more malevolent.

He wore a pair of glasses, though the lenses had shattered, leaving only the dark frames which sat angled oddly on his face. His body was emaciated to the point his bones threatened to tear through his parchment-like skin, and most of his clothing had been incinerated, leaving only scorched rags clinging to his frame.

Pale flames licked at his sunken chest and spindly limbs, and the sand around his feet had fused into a ring of black glass. The flames continued to lick at the sand, serving as evidence that the explosion had erupted from his own body and consumed everything within a few hundred meters in a circle.

However, the most terrifying part of this lord was that his head was cocked back at an unnatural, broken angle with his jaw unhinged. Protruding from his open throat was the hilt of a sword, carved from what looked like flaming, blackened driftwood.

Alicia watched as the lord reached up with both hands and grabbed the hilt of the sword. Then, painfully, like a rusted blade being dragged through gravel, the man began to pull the sword out of his mouth inch by agonizing inch.

As the length of the blade emerged, the flames licking his body intensified, turning the surrounding air into a shimmering haze of heat that made the very world around him seem to blur.

The sword in his hand then burst into flames, followed by his head which ignited in a sudden, violent flare, making him look like a skeletal torch standing against the dying light of the shore. The fire consumed what remained of his hair and scorched the dark frames of his glasses, yet the Lord remained eerily still.

Seeing that, Alicia paled and remained petrified. But then, Xavier grabbed her hand to help her up, while yelling, "Pull yourself together, Alicia!"