Chapter 79

Chapter 79
I rode up front in a modified HUMVEE—its wheels enchanted to glide over cursed terrain, its roof converted to a turret. Felix sat beside me, scanning the horizon with a mana scope. Elvie stood behind me, her axe strapped across her back, glaring at every gust of wind like it owed her money.
Karl rode a bike next to us. Kael flanked our rear column. Agnes, cloaked in a combat dress woven with phoenix silk, moved with the mobile mages.
“We’re getting close,” Felix muttered.
“How can you tell?” I asked.
He held up the scope. “Because the air’s dying.”
He was right.
The temperature dropped. The grass turned brittle. And even Flare snarled above, wings jittering.
That’s when the earth cracked.

It began with thunder—but not from the sky.
The ground beneath our second column erupted. A geyser of black fire tore upward, engulfing two entire squads. Screams rang out. Shadow vines coiled out and dragged warriors under.
Then, from the hills and cliffs ahead… they rose.
One hundred thousand.
Demons, beastkin, orcs, shadow beasts, ogres with tusks as long as spears. Mutated griffins with rotting wings. Massive centipede-like creatures with glowing red eyes. Goblins by the thousands, armed with jagged obsidian blades.
And at their center—on a throne of writhing bone and flame—sat the Demon Lord.
He was huge. Easily four meters tall, cloaked in spiked black armor that pulsed like it breathed. His face was a skull of molten shadow, his crown jagged like it had been torn from a dragon’s heart. A massive glaive rested across his lap.
He raised a single hand—
And hell broke loose.

"All units, defensive formation!" I shouted, grabbing the comm crystal in my collar. "Gunners, light ‘em up!"my voice rang out across the battlefield.
Artillery roared.
My frontline opened with railgun bursts, the enchanted cores ripping holes through charging beasts. Mana rockets streaked through the sky, exploding into clusters of fire and holy energy. My snipers—perched on floating stone discs enchanted to hover—began raining headshots with mana-tipped bullets.
The royal army shifted like a single organism. Shields rose. Barriers shimmered. Lightning mages crackled to life, sending spears of white-hot energy through goblin waves. Fire mages called down meteor rain. Earth summoners pulled up barricades and spiked walls.
A shadow loomed overhead, blocking the faint sunlight. Flare dove like a burning comet.
She slammed into a pack of ogres, vaporising them in a single divine burst. Silvarya leapt from her back mid-flight, crashing into the enemy ranks with a scream that split the clouds. Divine fire erupted from her blade as she cleaved through dark hounds and summoned beasts.
But for every ten we killed—twenty more came.
The Demon Lord laughed, his voice a rolling storm. 
“You came to burn my land?” he roared. “I will feed your bones to the black sun!”
He raised his glaive—
And hurled it.
It struck a royal knight battalion like a meteor. An entire squad vanished in one blast. The shockwave knocked over even my vehicles. I grit my teeth, pull myself up, and grab the turret controls.
Death was everywhere. It hung in the air, thick and suffocating, mingling with the stench of blood and burnt flesh. Knights, mages, elves, beasts—too many lives had been lost. My chest tightened as I stepped over broken bodies, my eyes darting between fallen friends and foes alike.
This wasn’t a battle. It was a massacre.
“Push forward!” I bellowed. “We cut through their flank—NOW!”

My warriors fought like possessed titans.
Karl leapt from his bike, slicing through ogres with glowing axes. Agnes unleashed a chain of holy glyphs that exploded like sunbursts. Felix fired from the turret with dead precision. Elvie engaged a demon general in single combat, their clash shaking the battlefield like drums of war. And me? I loaded the Gauss cannon mounted to the truck’s frame. It hummed with antimagic energy. I locked on to a giant beast charging toward our mages—some kind of stitched-together hydra of bone and black tar. I was fired. The shell punched through its skull, ripping it apart in a blast that cratered the earth. Still, they came. Still, we held. But the battlefield stank of blood and ash.
Smoke curled through the wind like the breath of some dying god. All around me, the scorched plains of the deserted land were reduced to a hellscape—lit by the dim fire of burning corpses and shattered siege weapons. Shattered pieces of demon beasts twitched in black puddles of tar. Limbs, armor, and twisted steel were scattered like broken toys.
The sky, once gray, now glowed a sullen red—tinted by mana fire and the lingering effects of necrotic spells. Lightning had scorched deep trenches across the dirt. Hundreds of craters scarred the field, some wide enough to bury a building in. But the line held.
Barely.
My warriors—my Free Blades—stood tall amid the wreckage, drenched in sweat, dirt, and gore. Their breaths came hard. Some dropped to one knee to bandage wounds, and some cried over fallen brothers and sisters. And yet none fled. Not one turned away. 
“They’re enchanted,” Felix said, his voice grim. He stepped forward, placing himself protectively in front of me. “Probably dark magic. They’re multiplying faster than we can kill them, but we will never give up, my lord. We will fight.”
Desperation tightened my throat but that pride hit me harder than any explosion. They were mine. My people. And they had survived. But this wasn’t a victory. Not yet. Because the bastard wasn’t finished.
However, my fists clenched around the hilt of my sword, the frustration mounting. A two-headed beast lunged, and I ducked, driving my sword deep into its throat. My purple magic pulsed through the blade instinctively, blackening the creature’s veins as it disintegrated into ash.
I looked around, the battlefield was chaos. Flare, Silvarya, Karl, Elvie, Ella, Kaen and Igor fought tirelessly alongside us, but even they were slowing. My warriors were falling one by one, their strength no match for the endless waves of ferals. It felt like we were fighting a losing war but I will never give up. Never.
Meanwhile, the Demon Lord had watched the entire first wave unfold from his grotesque throne—crafted from what looked like the ribcage of some ancient dragon. The throne pulsed, alive with red veins of mana. His twisted crown flared every time he lost another general, another beast.
But he didn’t flinch. He didn’t move. He was enjoying this. Arrogant.
Then came the laugh.
It was sharp, cruel, and rang across the battlefield like a bell of doom. I turned, my blood running cold.
He believed that his dark magic could raise the underworld itself to drown us. That no matter how many we killed, he could raise ten thousand more from the corpses of the damned. His confidence bled into the battlefield like venom.
I saw it in the way the demons attacked—reckless, savage, like they believed death was just a pause. I saw it in how their dead twitched, even now, some trying to pull themselves back together. I dodged some of the arrows again, just barely, as rage surged through me. Fear burned away, leaving only the sharp edge of fury.
But my people didn’t break. Felix, face cut and goggles cracked, knelt beside me reloading the turret. Elvie had lost her helmet. Her face was streaked with soot, her axe red and steaming. Miss Agnes—her robes in tatters—was directing the clerics and barrier mages to push forward and retrieve the wounded. She never stopped moving, even when she limped.
And Flare—dear god, Flare—circled above us like a divine wraith, her wings trailing fire. Silvarya stood on her back like a war goddess, blade raised, cloak whipping in the wind. We had all survived the first hour of hell. But then—she roared. Not a battle cry.
A warning.
My heart locked in my chest the moment I saw him move. The Demon Lord slowly stood—each motion cracking the ground beneath him. He stretched his neck like he had just woken from a nap. And then, without a word, his throne of bone shattered behind him, dissolving into ash.
Every demon on the field stilled. Even the wounded. Even the dead. And then they laughed—this deep, guttural, unified sound that shook the sky. Because their god was coming.
The Demon Lord stepped forward. His glaive burnt black in one hand, and his other hand twisted the air itself, shaping some foul sigil of ancient power. His armour shifted like smoke and scales, reflecting no light, only shadow. He was wrong to look. Like staring into the heart of a void. He raised that burning glaive and pointed it toward my command vehicle.
Toward me.
“DIRK!” His voice boomed across the battlefield. “You, who hide behind machines and mortal flesh! Come. Fight me. Let your fire test my abyss.”
The air trembled. My blood didn’t run cold—it boiled. This was no longer about strategy. This was about me and him. Fuck you, bastard.
I stepped forward and gripped my sword—an alloy of Earthsteel, laced with divine ore blessed by the Tree—and stepped off the vehicle. My boots sank into the bloodied dirt. My armour hummed, mana circuits glowing a dull red. My HUD blinked with warnings, but I disabled them all. No distractions.
I walked past the line of my warriors. 
They tried to protest.
“My lord—!”
“Sir, let the mages wear him down first—!”
I raised my hand. “Hold formation,” I said, loud enough to carry across the blood-soaked line. “This is mine.”
And just like that… silence fell. Like snow. Not the comforting kind. The kind that settles in after a storm, cold and heavy, blanketing the dead. Thousands of eyes turned to me. My warriors—beastkin, dwarves, humans, mages, knights, all of them—stood frozen behind shields and broken barricades, barely able to breathe. I could feel the fear radiating off them. But also… the belief.
Fuck!
They believed in me. And that scared the hell out of me more than the Demon Lord ever could.
Hell. Could I actually defeat him? I swallowed hard and stared up at the monster standing at the ridge. He was watching me with those endless, abyssal eyes. Mocking me with his stillness. Power leaked from him in waves. It made the dirt crack beneath his boots, made the shadows dance and warp, and made the sky darker just by his existence.
And me? I had my sword. My armour. My system. My… stats. Still 10. All tens. 
Strength: 10
Agility: 10
Magic: 10
Endurance: 10