Chapter 26 – Massacre in the Desert

Valerius felt the impact even before he heard the sound of metal.

When his golden sword collided with the scarlet blade, the force did not dissipate; it flowed down his arms like a tide, making his joints scream.

His feet sank into the gray sand, dragging for nearly a meter as he was forced to step back to keep his balance.

Valerius stabilized his stance, his chest rising and falling in a controlled rhythm.

‘He is strong!’

The thought came quickly, devoid of emotion. Valerius tightened his grip on the sword’s hilt, feeling the numbness in his fingers.

He spent decades mapping the threats of this desert. He knew the attack patterns of the dune beasts and the crude magic of the nomadic shamans, but that… that was an anomaly.

The Sanguine Knight possessed neither the erratic movement of a monster nor the hesitation of a human.

Valerius remembered the knight’s words.

He had mentioned a “Sovereign”.

A small smile appeared on the General’s face, a feverish gleam beginning to dance in his pupils. Valerius looked at the figure before him, admiring the dark symmetry of that armor that seemed to drink the sunlight.

“Magnificent…” he murmured to himself.

The aura leaking from the monster’s body was a physical pressure. It was dense, saturated with a malignant aura so deep that it made the air around it ripple like heat over asphalt.

For a man like Valerius, whose life was dedicated to purification, that presence was the apex of his existence.

The darker the shadow, the more glorious the light required to erase it.

His fanaticism, normally hidden beneath a restrained layer, began to surface.

The Sanguine Knight did not respond. He simply took a step forward, the tip of the red sword tracing a shallow line in the sand.

Valerius advanced first.

His first strike was a horizontal arc, fast and precise, aimed at the creature’s neck.

CLANG!

The knight blocked with a short motion, the impact generating a shockwave that scattered dust around them.

“A creature like you should not exist under this sun!” Valerius said, his voice gaining a tone of solemn preaching as he twisted the blade into a second attack.

CLANG!

“Your very presence is a stain upon creation. Can you feel it? The need to be redeemed by sacred fire?”

He did not wait for a response. Valerius channeled mana into his sword, making the blade shine in a blinding white.

“[Sacred Ignition Strike]!”

As he delivered the cut, the golden blade exploded into high-temperature white flames.

The strike was not meant only to cut, but to incinerate the target upon contact.

The Sanguine Knight tilted his body to the side, letting the blade pass centimeters from his visor, and counterattacked with a direct thrust.

Valerius barely dodged the attack, feeling the pressure nearly break his defense. He spun on his own axis, delivering a new sequence of three rapid cuts.

Clang! Clang! Clang!

Each of the blows was reinforced with [Astro King’s Vigor], increasing the physical weight of his sword with each impact.

Valerius was trying to measure the depth of his opponent’s strength.

He struck with the technique of a master, alternating between physical attacks and short bursts of light to blind the enemy, but the Sanguine Knight was an unshakable wall.

The knight moved with an economy of motion equal to the General’s own, blocking and deflecting with mechanical precision.

Valerius stepped back two paces, raising his sword into a high guard stance, the golden glow of his aura becoming more intense.

He was still testing the ground, comparing his strength with that monster, but his patience was beginning to transform into a burning need for battle.

He needed to purify that monster!

But the Sanguine Knight remained unmoved.

It was a sight that defied Valerius’s logic of combat.

The monster did not seek openings and did not try to counterattack.

He merely deflected.

Each strike of the golden sword was redirected by a minimal movement of the scarlet blade, a play of angles so precise that it made Valerius’s effort seem like a waste of energy.

‘Is he testing me?”

The perception that he was being… tested struck Valerius like a silent insult.

In response, the General shone even more feverishly.

His solar aura expanded, turning the heat around them into a furnace.

He advanced again, a human silhouette compared to the three meters of metal and shadow that the Sanguine Knight projected over the sand.

Valerius moved like lightning, striking from one side, retreating in a blur of speed to avoid a counterattack that never came, and flanking again.

He was a master of war, but there, moving frantically from one side to the other while the giant barely rotated his torso to follow him, Valerius began to show a controlled desperation.

The smile on his face was fierce, almost insane.

“Why don’t you fight, monster?!” Valerius roared, his voice filled with a fanaticism that made him ignore the sweat beneath the armor. “Your existence is a blasphemy!”

He stepped back to a safe distance, planting his feet in the sand and channeling an absurd amount of mana into the center of his blade.

CRACKLE—SNAP!

The air snapped with pressure.

“[Astro King’s Sentence]!”

As he delivered the strike, a pillar of solid light shot from the tip of the sword, hitting the exact center of the chest of the Sanguine Knight’s armor.

CLANG-DOOOOM!

The impact should have been the end of any opponent; it was an ability designed to disintegrate matter at a molecular level through concentrated solar radiation.

But what happened next left Valerius stunned.

The instant the light touched the scarlet metal, the gaps of the enemy armor expelled a dense red mist.

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There was no explosion, nor recoil.

The mist enveloped the light as if it were a starving creature and, in the blink of an eye, the [Astro King’s Sentence] simply disappeared.

It was not blocked or reflected; Valerius’s mana was drained, sucked away by that dark mist until nothing remained but silence.

“What…?”

Was he also immune?

Two monsters immune to magic?

Valerius staggered for a second, his arms suddenly light from the lack of mana in the blade.

The shock in his eyes was visible.

The confusion, however, was quickly crushed by denial.

“Impossible!”

In a surge of adrenaline and fury, he did not allow the enemy to breathe. Valerius leapt forward, attempting a rapid chain attack, delivering a series of desperate thrusts at the joints of the armor, searching for any point that cursed mist could not reach.

Clang!

He was a blur trying to pierce a mountain of metal, his breathing now loud and heavy, while the Sanguine Knight continued to merely…

Observe.

“REE-EEEEEEEEEE—!!”

Valerius was about to begin a new cycle of attacks when another scream of panic shattered the bubble of his duel.

The sound was not of martial determination, but of absolute terror.

The General glanced away briefly, and what he saw made his composure falter.

That mass of humanoid flesh, The Sutured, was not still.

While Valerius was busy with the Sanguine Knight, the soldiers were still fighting, he had simply been too focused to notice.

The creature was now running through the imperial lines, leaving a trail of destruction difficult to ignore.

“He’s immune! The spells don’t work!”

The Sutured stopped in front of one of the elite mages. Before the man could conjure a barrier, the massive stitched hand of the creature closed around his skull.

The mage was lifted from the ground like a rag doll, his legs swinging frantically in the air, until the monster hurled him.

“Waagghh—!”

The mage’s body flew in a low trajectory, hitting a group of soldiers with a dull and violent impact.

CRASH-CLANG!!

The sound of metal armor colliding and the groans of pain that followed echoed through the valley, breaking the vanguard’s structure.

“Keep calm! Close the formation!” Lucio roared, his voice failing as he tried to contain the rout.

The vice-commander drew his blade, trying to advance against The Sutured, but the army’s discipline had become its own trap.

The soldiers gathered in defensive circles, each protecting the other’s back, but their eyes were not on the monster ahead of them, but turned to the sky with primitive fear.

Above them, the Dragonfly Hunter was an invisible executioner because of its speed.

BZZZZZZZZZZ!

The sound of its wings beating at high frequency had become unbearable, a sonic vibration that made the noses and ears of dozens of soldiers bleed beneath their helmets.

Suddenly, a silhouette fell from the clouds of dust.

“NOOOO-AAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH—!”