Chapter 35

Chapter 35: Chapter 35

The charred remains of the borderlands smelled distinctly of wet ash and rusted iron, a fragrance I was quickly learning to associate with my own terrible life choices.

I rode near the front of the 5th Cohort, my new bastard sword resting comfortably across my back. I had spent the previous night drawing an immaculate, flawless map of our marching route, detailing perfect chokepoints and retreat vectors. It was a brilliant outline. Naturally, I abandoned it two hours into the march when my horse refused to cross a particularly muddy stream, forcing me to guide my unit straight through an unmapped thicket.

"You’re overthinking the route, Elvit," Miklas rumbled from his massive warhorse beside me.

"I’m calculating where there could be an ambush, Captain," I replied, flashing him a bright, sunny smile that completely masked the anxiety in my stomach. "Logically speaking, if I were a barbarian, I would drop a burning log exactly on my head right now."

Miklas just snorted. He wasn’t worried, and looking back at the procession behind us, I couldn’t entirely blame him.

The entire 7th legion was marching behind us. We were comprised of ten cohorts, nearly five thousand legionnaires in total. Each cohort was commanded by a Captain operating at the catastrophic Bud Burst level. Ten walking natural disasters, leading thousands of heavily armed Dormant Bud soldiers. The minor skirmishes we had encountered over the past three days hadn’t even slowed our pace. Whenever a small warband emerged from the woods, the vanguard simply swallowed them whole.

I had tested my new sword during one of those brief clashes. I had planned a sophisticated, five-step parry to disarm a charging warrior. Instead, I had panicked, swung the blade like a baseball bat, and relied entirely on the static electrical discharge of the Mystic Runes of the Sky. The shock had paralyzed the man’s arms long enough for me to thrust the blade through his throat. It was messy, impulsive, and totally off-plan, but logically, a dead enemy was a dead enemy.

The dense forest suddenly gave way to a massive, sprawling basin.

It was a wide, grassy plain, completely encircled by a high ridge of ancient, dark pines. The moment we marched into the center of the clearing, the hairs on my arms stood on end. My instincts screamed, perfectly aligning with my logical assessment: we were standing in the center of a kill bowl.

A low, resonant horn blast shattered the freezing air. It sounded like wind howling through a hollowed-out beast’s skull.

From the tree line surrounding the plain, the shadows began to move. They didn’t charge immediately; more and more barbarians filled the ridges until the green grass was entirely consumed by a sea of fur, mud-caked armour, and rusted steel.

"Thirty... no, forty-five thousand," I whispered, approximating, doing a quick mental math. "Three full warbands."

They carried banners depicting massive, coiled serpents and jagged, snapping turtles. The Snake and Turtle Tribes.

"Form up!" the ten Captains roared in unison, their voices echoing across the plain, their voices boosted by the ember.

The 7th Legion didn’t flinch. Shields locked into place, forming a massive, interlocking iron square in the center of the plain. But the barbarians had learned from the massacre at Trivi. They didn’t just throw bodies at our shields.

From the front lines of the Turtle Tribe, towering warriors stepped forward. They carried massive, tower-sized slabs of hardened, magically reinforced earth. Behind them, the Shamans of the Snake Tribe raised staves made of twisted swamp roots. A thick, venomous green mist began to pour from the wood, rolling down the grassy hills toward our formation.

"Poison," Alysia hissed, drawing her scimitars.

"Hold your breath and trust the Ember!" Miklas yelled, drawing his broadsword.

The horde crashed into us.

The impact almost threw me off balance. I drew my bastard sword, the blade instantly humming with static electricity. I had promised myself I would stay behind Kaelen’s massive shield. That was the smart, logical plan.

But the moment a Snake warrior vaulted over the shield wall, his spear aimed at a younger legionnaire,I stepped out of formation, swinging the bastard sword in a wide arc. The dark steel bit into the warrior’s spear shaft. The electrical discharge flared, traveling up the wet wood. The warrior convulsed, his muscles locking violently. I didn’t hesitate. I reversed my grip, using the long hilt to drive the pommel directly into his face, shattering his nose before delivering a lethal thrust to his chest.

I grinned, a bright, slightly manic expression. "Well, that worked perfectly."

But the battlefield quickly dissolved into absolute chaos.

The weight of forty-five thousand barbarians pressed in from all sides. The venomous mist stung my eyes and burned the back of my throat, forcing my Dormant Bud to work overtime just to filter the toxins from my blood.

A massive Turtle Tribe warrior broke through the line near me. He was easily seven feet tall, wielding a club made from a petrified tree branch. I calculated the trajectory of his swing , ready to dodge once he was close enough to swing it.

I dodged too late.

The club clipped my shoulder, sending me sprawling into the wet grass. The pain was blinding, I scrambled backward, doubting everything—my strength, my tactics, my survival.

He raised the club for a killing blow.

Suddenly, a massive, armored figure intercepted him. Miklas caught the petrified club with his bare, gauntleted hand. The Ancient Rune on his neck blazed with blinding white light.

But out of the barbarian ranks, a Turtle Tribe Chieftain emerged, radiating an aura of raw, bestial power. The Chieftain swung a massive warhammer forged from condensed obsidian. When Miklas’s broadsword met the hammer, the shockwave flattened the grass for thirty yards, knocking me off my feet again.

"Get up, Elvit!" Yuni yelled, his spear flashing as he dispatched two Snake warriors.

I pushed myself up, my breathing ragged. I felt like a fraud. I was struggling to survive a random melee. I gripped my bastard sword, the static charge stinging my palm, and threw myself back into the fray, relying on stubborn aggression rather than elegant planning.

The battle raged for an hour. The 7th Legion was an elite force, but the attrition was brutal. We were surrounded, fighting a berserker enemy.

Then, the air pressure in the basin violently shifted.

The biting cold of the borderlands vanished, replaced instantly by a suffocating, arid heat. I stopped fighting, parrying a weak thrust from a dying barbarian, and looked toward the center of the Imperial formation.

Commander Erula Fion Buros stepped out from the safety of the command cohort. She removed her pristine white gloves, dropping them onto the grass, which instantly withered, turned brown, and curled into ash beneath her boots.

"Boring," her voice echoed, magically amplified, cutting through the roar of forty-five thousand warriors.

She raised both of her hands. Etched across her forehead, glowing through her pale skin like a brand fresh from the forge, the Ancient Rune of Fire ignited.

The venomous green mist pouring from the Snake Shamans’ staves flash-combusted, turning the poison cloud into a rolling wall of white-hot plasma. The firestorm expanded outward with a deafening roar.

It hit then the barbarian front lines.

The Turtle Tribe’s hardened mud shields baked, glowed a blinding orange, and melted into pools of liquid glass. Thousands of warriors were incinerated in the span of three seconds, their bodies reduced to drifting grey ash before they could even draw breath to scream. The heat was so perfectly, ruthlessly controlled that not a single Imperial legionnaire felt more than a warm summer breeze, while thirty yards away, the earth itself was turned into a scorched, bubbling wasteland.

Miklas seized the distraction, channeling a massive surge of lightning through his blade to decapitate the Turtle Chieftain in a flash of ozone.

I stood there, my sword lowered, the static fading. I had spent hours doubting my own abilities, struggling to execute a simple parry, fighting a desperate battle for survival. And in five seconds, with a flick of her wrist and a single element, Erula had erased five thousand men from existence.

It was utterly illogical. It was completely unfair.

I couldn’t help it. I let out a sharp, breathless laugh, masking the profound, existential terror creeping into my chest. The Empire didn’t need my plans. They had gods walking among them.

"Advance!" Erula’s bored voice commanded over the crackling embers.

The 7th Legion surged forward, marching over the glassed remains of the enemy vanguard, completely breaking the morale of the surviving warbands. The battle was over.