Episode-585
Chapter : 1149
"The opening act is over," Ben said, his voice a low, flat rumble that carried across the silent, ruined square. "Send out your master."
The first wave was broken. The true battle had just begun.
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The silence that descended upon the square was heavier and more absolute than the one that had greeted their arrival. It was the silence of a vacuum, the stillness that follows a cataclysm. The five hundred Curse Knights were gone, reduced to a thick, grey carpet of bone dust and metallic fragments that coated the cratered cobblestones. Ben’s two magnificent steel golems stood at his side like twin gods of war, their polished surfaces unscratched, their silent forms radiating an aura of absolute, unyielding power.
Sir Raghav, at the fortress gate, was a statue of frozen shock. The serene, fanatical confidence that had been his armor was gone, shattered by the casual, overwhelming display of power he had just witnessed. He had sent a wolf pack to deal with a lion, only to discover the lion was, in fact, a dragon. His mind, which had been so certain of his master’s inevitable victory, was now a chaotic whirlwind of disbelief and a new, chilling emotion: doubt.
Lloyd finally moved, stepping up to stand beside Ben. He let out a low, appreciative whistle as he surveyed the absolute devastation. "Well," he said, his voice a dry, sarcastic drawl that was a jarring counterpoint to the grim scene. "I was going to offer to help, but it seems you had it covered. You really should have warned me you were going to redecorate. It's a bit… minimalist for my taste."
Ben didn’t even glance at him. His one good eye remained fixed on the fortress, on the figure of Raghav. "This was merely the greeting," he stated, his voice flat. "The true army is within."
"Oh, I’m counting on it," Lloyd replied cheerfully. "It would be terribly disappointing to come all this way for just one dance."
Their gallows humor, their casual disregard for the army they had just annihilated, seemed to finally break Raghav from his stupor. A flicker of his old, fanatical fire returned to his eyes. He drew himself up, his shock being burned away by a renewed surge of righteous fury.
"You think this is a victory?" Raghav spat, his voice cracking with a mixture of rage and disbelief. "You have destroyed mere puppets! You have witnessed nothing of the true power of the Unholy Palace!"
As if on cue, a new sound began to emanate from the fortress. It was not the clang of arms or the marching of feet. It was a low, resonant, and deeply unsettling hum, like a million angry wasps trapped in a giant’s skull. The black, vein-like cracks on the fortress walls began to pulse with a more intense, sickly purple light.
And then, from the battlements, a new figure appeared.
It was Viscount Rubel.
He was no longer the stout, grasping politician Lloyd remembered. The man who stood on the fortress walls was transfigured. He was clad in a suit of ornate, black plate armor that seemed to be fused to his very flesh. His face was pale and gaunt, but his eyes… his eyes were no longer human. They were two burning pits of the same demonic, red fire that had animated his legion. He held no weapon, but power rolled off him in suffocating, oily waves. He looked down upon the two cousins in the square below, and he began to laugh.
It was not the triumphant laugh of a king. It was the high, unhinged, and ecstatic laughter of a madman who had just seen God and found him wanting. The sound echoed through the ruined city, a sound of pure, joyous insanity.
"Magnificent! Oh, magnificent!" Rubel shrieked, his voice a high-pitched, grating thing. He clapped his armored hands together in a gesture of genuine, theatrical applause. "Ben Ferrum! The forgotten son of the dullest man in our line! Who knew such power slept in your veins? And Lloyd! My dear, disappointing nephew! The drab duckling has learned to bite!"
He spread his arms wide, a mad king embracing his ruined kingdom. "You have come! You have come to witness my ascension! You have come to kneel before the true King of the North!"
Chapter : 1150
His laughter subsided, replaced by a searing, fanatical tirade. He delivered his gospel of grievance, his voice a raw, screaming testament to a lifetime of perceived slights. "This throne was stolen! Stolen from my father, Gideon, the rightful heir, by your treacherous grandfather, Malachi Ferrum! He was a brute, a thug who valued the strength of a sword arm over the wisdom of the mind! He and his line have been a poison in the veins of this family for generations!"
His burning gaze settled on Lloyd. "And your father, Roy! The perfect son of the usurper! A man so blinded by his own arrogant pride that he could not see the true power rising in his own house! He cast me aside! He humiliated me! He sought to erase me!"
He pointed a single, armored finger down at them. "But the world has a new law now! A law of power! A law of will! I have embraced a power that your pathetic, honorable house has feared for a thousand years! And with it, I will burn away the corrupt, illegitimate branch of Malachi and reclaim my father's stolen legacy!"
The sheer, unadulterated madness of his proclamation was a force in itself. This was not a political move. This was a holy crusade, and he was its one, true prophet.
As his final, screaming words echoed into silence, a new sound began. A soft, rhythmic, clicking sound that started behind him and grew in volume. A sound like a million pieces of bone stirring in their sleep.
A sea of red eyes ignited in the city behind the fortress. From every dark alleyway, from every shattered doorway, from the very cracks in the earth, they emerged. A new army. An army that dwarfed the one they had just destroyed.
An army of five thousand.
They poured into the streets, a silent, disciplined, and endless river of death, their red eyes a galaxy of malevolent stars in the gloom. The suffocating aura of despair returned, a tidal wave of hopelessness that was a hundred times more potent than before.
Lloyd and Ben stood their ground, two lone figures before a rising ocean of damnation. The odds had shifted from unfavorable to impossible.
The sheer, breathtaking scale of the new army was a sight that would have shattered the minds of lesser men. Five thousand Curse Knights filled the streets and squares of Ashworth, a silent, unblinking sea of death that stretched as far as the eye could see. The air itself grew thick and cold, heavy with the weight of their collective, soulless malice. It was a force that could not be fought, only endured until it consumed you.
Lloyd and Ben did not flinch. They stood shoulder to shoulder, their expressions unreadable masks of cold, hard focus. This was not a moment for fear. Fear was a useless emotional response, a corrupting variable in a purely tactical equation. This was a moment for assessment.
Ben’s one good eye, a blazing shard of blue light, swept across the horde, his mind already performing the grim calculus. "Five thousand units," he stated, his voice a low, clinical monotone. "The vast majority are standard-class legionnaires. But I am identifying… two hundred, possibly three hundred, command-class units interspersed. And…" His voice trailed off for a fraction of a second as he focused on the figures standing directly behind Rubel on the fortress wall. "And at least ten King-Level entities acting as his personal guard. The three we heard before, and seven new signatures."
Lloyd’s own analysis was running on a different, more horrifying track. He was not just counting the enemy. He was trying to comprehend their origin. An army of this size could not have been raised from the graveyards of Ashworth alone. This was a force of unprecedented scale. The logistics of it, the sheer number of souls required to animate such a legion, pointed to a crime so monstrous, so absolute, that his mind shied away from the conclusion.
But he had to know. The question had been a cold, dark stone in his gut since the news had arrived from the north. The timing was too perfect. The numbers were too close.
He raised his head, his gaze cutting through the gloom, past the five thousand soldiers, to lock onto the gleeful, insane eyes of his uncle on the fortress wall. He did not shout. He did not roar. His voice was a quiet, cold, and terribly clear thing that carried across the square with an unnatural, chilling precision.
"Uncle," he said, the word a blade. "A question for you. This magnificent army you've raised… all these new, loyal subjects. Are these the good people of Gazef?"