Chapter 96: The Curse of Calamity
The Royal Armada stretched across the frozen tundra for miles.
Millions of heavily armored men, siege mages, and heavy cavalry lay completely motionless in the snow.
They were not dead. They were trapped in a profound, biological coma induced entirely by the Warlord’s new Tier 9 artifact.
The Heart of Ruin pulsed steadily on Lucifer’s hip, projecting the suffocating Fear of the Predator aura.
Lucifer sat on his Nightmare Steed at the edge of the five-mile Cryo-Pylon ring.
"The perimeter is secure, Grand Marshal," High Ranger Celeste reported. She rode her armored dire wolf up to Lucifer, her scarred face tight with adrenaline.
"The Vanguard is inside the walls. The Star-Kissed Elves are manning the upper battlements. We are ready for the ascension protocol."
"Good," Lucifer said smoothly.
He didn’t turn his Nightmare Steed around immediately. His void-swirling eyes scanned the massive, unconscious Royal army.
Lucifer’s eyes stopped on a small, frantic movement near the rear of the collapsed Royal formation.
It was a single rider.
He was not charging. He was fleeing.
The rider was frantically whipping a massive, heavily armored destrier, desperately trying to put distance between himself and the Citadel.
The man wore thick, silver-plated armor adorned with the blue and gold crest of the Royal Vanguard.
"General Kain," Lyra noted, her blue eyes narrowing as she tracked the fleeing commander.
The Dawn Saintess rode her white mare up to the command group. "He was the one shouting in the War Room. He commanded the center column of the Armada."
"He survived the Event Horizon," Elara added. The Eclipse Valkyrie hovered a few feet off the ground beside Lucifer, her Twilight wings beating softly. "And he is not paralyzed. He is wearing a high-tier mental ward."
Lucifer opened his system interface, zooming in on the fleeing general.
[System: Hostile Entity Identified.]
[Name: General Kain (Level 42 - Royal Commander)]
[Status: Fleeing. Mental Ward Active.]
General Kain had watched the center of his army get swallowed by a black hole. He had watched the rest of his millions of soldiers drop like cut wheat.
He was a seasoned veteran, but his pride was completely shattered. He was running back to the capital in absolute terror.
Lucifer was not going to leave a loose end.
"I will fly him down," Elara stated, leveling her violet-flaming spear.
"No," Lucifer said. A cold, absolute smirk touched his lips. "He is a coward. A clean death by a Valkyrie’s spear is too honorable for him."
He reached into his Dimensional Vault.
Lucifer bypassed the explosive Cataclysm Orbs and the massive chunks of Star-Metal. He pulled out a small, dull iron ring.
It was an item he had looted from a shattered bandit chest during his early border purges. He had saved it specifically for a target just like this.
[Item: Ring of the Calamity Eye (Cursed)]
[Tier: Epic Accessory]
[Effect: When activated and targeted at a hostile entity, it permanently alters probability fields around the target.]
[Debuff: Luck -99,999.]
In his past life, adventurers treated this ring as a joke item. It didn’t deal physical damage or cast fireballs.
It just caused extreme, cartoonish misfortune. A warrior wearing it might trip on a flat rock or have their sword shatter on a training dummy.
But against a fleeing commander on a battlefield littered with ice and magical anomalies, extreme misfortune was a death sentence.
Lucifer slid the dull iron ring onto his left index finger.
He didn’t activate Void Step or Zephyr’s Grace. He sat perfectly still on his Nightmare Steed, watching General Kain desperately whip his destrier across the frozen tundra, roughly three miles away.
Lucifer pointed his iron-clad finger directly at the fleeing general.
"System," Lucifer commanded smoothly. "Activate the Calamity Eye. Target: General Kain."
[Target Locked: General Kain (Level 42)]
[Applying Curse: Probability Collapse.]
[Luck Stat: -99,999.]
The ring flared with a sudden, sickly yellow light. It did not shoot a beam or a fireball. An invisible wave of pure, concentrated bad luck washed across the tundra and slammed into the fleeing commander.
Miles away, the curse took immediate effect.
General Kain was riding at a full, panicked gallop. His heavy warhorse was foaming at the mouth, its iron-shod hooves tearing up the frozen earth.
Suddenly, the horse’s front left hoof struck a perfectly smooth, completely flat patch of black ice.
It wasn’t a hole or a rock. It was an impossibly slick spot created by the freezing aura of the distant Cryo-Pylons.
The massive destrier lost all traction.
The horse stumbled violently, its front legs buckling under the heavy armor. It pitched forward, launching General Kain out of the saddle like a catapult stone.
Kain shrieked as he flew through the air. He hit the frozen ground hard, tumbling head over heels in his thick silver plate armor.
He didn’t break his neck. He rolled to a stop, groaning in pain, completely covered in snow and dirt.
He tried to stand up. He pushed himself onto his hands and knees, gasping for breath. The mental ward of his amulet was still protecting him from the Heart of Ruin, but the panic in his chest was absolute.
As he stood up, his heavy iron boot caught on the scabbard of his own ceremonial broadsword.
The heavy, enchanted blade had been jolted loose during the fall. It was sticking halfway out of its sheath.
Kain tripped over his own weapon.
He fell forward, his arms flailing wildly to catch himself. As he fell, the heavy broadsword fully dislodged from its scabbard.
It flipped perfectly in the air, landing blade-up in a shallow depression in the frozen earth.
General Kain landed directly on top of it.
SHING.
The enchanted steel blade pierced the weak point of his heavy plate armor, sliding effortlessly through the gap between his breastplate and his gorget.
The sword drove straight through his throat, pinning him to the frozen ground.
Kain gasped, blood spraying from his lips. He clawed weakly at the hilt of his own sword, his eyes wide in absolute, horrifying realization. He had impaled himself.
But the Calamity Eye was not finished.
The sky above the frozen tundra was clear, but the ambient magical energy from Lucifer’s earlier Event Horizon spell was still bleeding off in the upper atmosphere.
A single, stray arc of chaotic, residual black lightning tore down from the clear blue sky.
It didn’t hit a Cryo-Pylon or a towering Paladin-Mech. It was drawn perfectly to the highly conductive, enchanted steel of General Kain’s broadsword, currently sticking out of his neck.
CRACK.
The black lightning bolt struck the hilt of the sword with deafening force.
The high-voltage electrical discharge surged through the metal and directly into Kain’s body.
The general convulsed violently, his silver armor sparking and superheating in seconds.
The electrical shock instantly fried his nervous system and overloaded the magical ward on his amulet.
He stopped twitching.
A fraction of a second later, the sky directly above the corpse whistled.
During the localized spatial tear that Lucifer had opened to the Umbra earlier, a massive chunk of petrified black wood from a floating island had been sucked through the rift. It had been trapped in the upper stratosphere for the last twenty minutes.
It finally fell.
The flaming, twenty-ton piece of Umbral debris plummeted from the sky. It did not hit the empty plains. It struck General Kain and his dead warhorse dead center.
BOOM.
The meteor impact completely pulverized the electrocuted, impaled general, burying him in a smoldering, fifty-foot crater.
[System: Hostile Entity Eliminated.]
[Target: General Kain (Level 42)]
Lucifer watched the plume of black smoke rise from the distant crater.
He lowered his hand. The dull iron ring on his finger crumbled into useless gray dust, the single-use curse entirely expended.
Elara stared at the smoking crater miles away. The Eclipse Valkyrie’s golden eyes widened slightly in sheer, morbid disbelief.
"Did he... did he just trip on his own sword?" Elara asked, her voice laced with genuine shock. "And then get struck by lightning? And then hit by a meteor?"
"The probability was against him," Lucifer stated smoothly, a cold smirk touching his lips.
Lyra leaned on her silver broadsword, shaking her head slowly. The Dawn Saintess had never seen such a brutal, comical end to a high commander.
"It is a terrifying magic. To bend fate itself just to ensure a man stumbles."
"It is efficient," Lucifer corrected her. He pulled the reins of his Nightmare Steed. "The Royal Armada is officially decapitated. The King has no Vanguard, no generals, and no shield left to challenge our authority."
He turned his mount away from the frozen, paralyzed Royal army.
"We are done here," Lucifer announced.
He rode back through the massive, black-stone gates of the Citadel of Obsidian. Elara, Lyra, and Celeste followed him inside.
The heavy iron portcullis slammed down with a deafening, final crash, locking firmly into the bedrock. The massive oak doors swung shut, sealing the fortress entirely.
Inside the main courtyard, the thirteen million mortal soldiers stood in perfect, silent ranks. They looked up at the Warlord as he rode to the center of the keep.
The army was completely secure. The perimeter was locked.
Lucifer looked up at the high, golden observation deck of the Spire of Celestial Convergence.
Sarah stood at the railing, her starlight aura burning brightly. The Oracle looked down at Lucifer and gave a single, firm nod. She was ready.
Lucifer drew his ruby-red longsword. The Heart of Ruin on his hip pulsed a steady, heavy beat of absolute dominance.
He didn’t give a grand speech. He didn’t promise them glory or gold.
He raised his glowing sword high into the crisp mountain air.
"Ascend," Lucifer commanded.
Deep beneath the bedrock of the Citadel, King Thrain slammed his massive forge hammer onto the master control console of the Aether-Forge. The dwarf fully engaged the Void-Core Reactor.
The ground did not shake. The entire world dropped away.