Chapter 178: Exalted Ones | Volume 1 End.

The violent purple tear in reality had grown enormous, its distorted edges now stretching to roughly the size of an ordinary commoner’s house, and monsters continued pouring through the opening in relentless waves.

Dark Thorns, Rusted Reapers, and various other Warrior-ranked monsters emerged in groups of three before immediately throwing themselves at the knights stationed at the forefront.

The knights still outnumbered them, but numbers alone did little to ease the pressure because the monsters were physically stronger, and unlike the humans facing them, they seemed to possess no instinctive fear of death.

An Exalted Knight could kill one with a single swing, yet the knights deliberately refrained from releasing their Aura.

They were saving it as the true danger hadn’t arrived yet.

If the Exalted monsters emerged while they had already exhausted their Aura, the consequences would be disastrous.

Steel repeatedly flashed through the battlefield as knights cut down monster after monster, while claws and crude weapons tore into armor and flesh in return.

The air smelled overwhelmingly of blood, most of it belonging to the monsters, but the deaths of humans were impossible to ignore.

Bodies were rarely left intact.

Bestial monsters ripped knights apart with enormous maws and vicious claws, while humanoid creatures hacked them into unrecognizable pieces of flesh.

Blood soaked the eastern road and spread across the camp’s ground until the earth itself seemed stained red.

And at the far end of the battlefield, Berlic Draveon stood with his hands folded behind his back, watching everything with an unnervingly calm expression.

His thoughts kept returning to Daemon and Berman.

Both of them were his most trusted knights for more than a decade, and he believed without question that they would complete their respective tasks.

Failure had never even entered his mind.

They were merely ordered to kill a bastard with no skill and two women who were barely clinging to their lives.

How could they possibly fail?

Berlic’s expression remained composed as another knight cleaved through a Dark Thorn, but then a strange humming sound suddenly reached his ears.

He narrowed his gaze toward the rift.

The sound was deeply unsettling, and the longer it continued, the more it resembled the slow breathing of some enormous monstrous entity lurking on the other side of reality.

Then five monsters stepped through the rift.

The battle halted almost immediately.

Knights who had been cutting down the Warrior-ranked monsters froze in place, their weapons still raised, while the four remaining Exalted Knights stared toward the creatures with grim expressions.

Before today, Kilmir had possessed seven Exalted Knights participating in the rift raid.

Belthon was dead.

Daemon and Berman had been sent away from the battlefield.

That left only four Exalted Knights.

Yet five Exalted monsters now stood before them.

The first resembled a Dark Thorn, but its skin was blue while the red portions of its body were white.

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Beside it stood a creature resembling a centaur, its body covered in black fur. Its eye sockets were empty, while two twisted, wooden horns protruded from its ears. Its mouth was sealed so tightly that it seemed as though it did not possess one at all, and a crude dark spear rested in its hand.

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At the center stood a humanoid monster whose appearance would have been almost human if not for its dark skin and wide swirls and strange markings covering it, resembling countless screaming souls trapped beneath its flesh. Its eyes were completely purple with white irises, while its fingers were like sharp, scissor blades.

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To its left stood a wolf as large as a carriage.

Its white fur was covered in random red spots, and twisted fangs protruded from a mouth that appeared to open sideways. Its eyes burned with barely contained fury as it stared across the battlefield.

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The final monster resembled a knight.

Gray stone armor appeared to have been carved directly onto its body, concealing everything beneath it except for two still, red eyes. A crude sword rested in one hand while a marble shield covered the other.

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The Exalted Knights remained tense, ready to unleash their Aura the moment the creatures advanced, but instead of attacking, the central humanoid monster slowly raised one of its sharp hands and threw something.

The object landed several meters away from the knights and rolled across the blood-soaked ground.

It resembled a small lantern, roughly the size of a person’s hand. Its body was encased in dark metal, and a pale white wisp floated inside it.

[Image]

The knights immediately stepped away in panic.

Fear spread through their ranks as they stared at the strange object, none of them willing to approach it.

The object continued rolling for several moments before finally coming to a stop.

Then, without warning, all five monsters turned around and stepped back into the rift.

One after another, their forms disappeared into the violent purple tear, leaving the knights staring after them in stunned silence.

No one understood what had just happened.

For several seconds, the battlefield remained unnaturally quiet, and then the knights felt an uncontrollable sense of relief.

They had been expecting a battle against five Exalted monsters.

Instead, the creatures had simply left.

Berlic’s eyes remained fixed on the strange object lying among the blood and broken earth.

His calm expression did not change.

Then his voice resounded across the battlefield.

"Bring that to me."

One of the knights picked up the lamp and ran toward Berlic. Then he knelt before the City Lord and raised the item to him.

Berlic took the strange object and examined it for a moment before his eyes fell on a string of letters carved at its side.

He tilted his head as it was in a language that he didn’t know.

It read: Bring her to me.

On the other side of the city, Elias eyes trembled, and he let out a groan before his eyes opened and immediately fell on the orange screen before him.

[The host has obtained a Space-time Shard.]

[The requirement for breaking the seal on Three-Star Harmonic Dragon Physique has been realized!]

[Space-time shard: 1/100]

"What is this...?"

[Volume 1 End: The Cursed Dragon of the West.]