Defiance of the Fall

The surroundings were reduced to a blur as Zac made a beeline toward the frontline. Zac's instincts urged him to emerge through the breach and unleash a massacre, but he remembered Vilari's warning. Rushing headlong into the heat of it might lead him right into a trap, one that might implicate his soldiers too. Besides, there were likely better ways to use his strength than to cull the Kan'Tanu's vanguard.

He could already spot Ra'Klid atop the wall, directing the efforts to shore up the broken section, so Zac changed direction and flew atop the wall walk. Multiple auras exploded when Zac appeared out of nowhere, two of them in the D-grade, but the demons relaxed upon seeing who it was.

"What happened?" Zac asked as he landed next to the Mavai Warchief.

"They struck like lightning," Ra'Klid spat. "It's because of those things."

Zac followed the demon general's gaze and was shocked to see how small the battlefront was. The Kan'Tanu fortress was actually visible in the distance; it wouldn't even take him less than ten minutes to reach it if he ran. Between was simply an empty field, which was currently crawling with enemy combatants. Zac felt like he was looking out at a sea of agitated ants creeping toward their wall, where only some patches were covered by the bloody tangles.

A bloody melee had already erupted below, but Zac could tell that the Kan'Tanu Vanguard didn't have many powerful warriors. The Atwood Army and minotaurs were already pushing them back, and new warriors joined every second. Zac was relieved to see his men fight as a unit, keeping losses at a minimum. Casualties were far higher on the Kan'Tanu's side, though they didn't seem to mind in the slightest.

The source of the constant rumble was the hundreds of pyramids that floated just above the ground, launching one attack after another on their protective barrier. The pyramids were mobile array towers that released dark-red beams that exploded when they hit the barrier. Zac frowned upon realizing the assault was almost one-sided, but it wasn't because the Atwood Army didn't have array towers of their own.

They had bigger fish to fry. Literally.

Nine enormous spheres were rolling forward at a steady pace, each over 200 meters tall and covered in black runes. Three of them had been destroyed by a barrage of attacks, reducing them to building-sized rubble on their way to the wall. The other six were still intact, their runes forming a sturdy barrier as they advanced.

Zac guessed a tenth was the source of the huge crater nearby. His first thought them some sort of Array Wallbreakers, but his eyes widened upon realizing the spheres writhed and wiggled. The things were alive. Unfettered attacks rained down on the creatures from the remaining Array Towers, but the effect was limited. The blast had clearly damaged the defensive arrangements, and taking out the first three had drained the intact Array Towers.

"What the hell are those things?" Zac swore.

"Living bombs, by the looks of it," Ra'Klid grimaced.

"How did they manage to close in on us?" Zac frowned. "They should have been spotted the second they emerged from the other fort."

"That's the thing; they didn't. Four of them just appeared out of nowhere, which was the source of the alarm. The next moment, their army emerged from a sudden sandstorm halfway across the no man's land."

"These creatures are incredibly tough," a shaman next to Ra'Klid sighed. "Our guardians immediately targeted them, but you can see the effect. We only managed to destroy three before the last one reached the wall."

"The thing somehow tapped into the energy powering our arrays just as I arrived," Ra'Klid continued. "You can see the result yourself. Now there's six of them here and another four on the other front. And now their armies are protecting their advance. We can't let them get any closer even if we have to fight outside the walls."

Zac nodded. The outermost wall was clearly the strongest, while the inner one seemed designed to withstand just enough punishment for the army to evacuate. Losing the outer wall meant losing the battle. The generals had to choose between fighting outside the walls or retreating and had picked the latter.

"Now that you're here, we can divide and conquer," Ra'Klid said. "With your permission, I drafted a loose plan. Using our elites, we will launch a raid at the three on the left. I was hoping you could blend with the army below and strike at the nearest one while we draw their attention. They don't know of your existence, so we should use it to our advantage."

"I'll see what I can—" Zac said, but his mind ground to a halt as he honed in on a particular warrior below.

It was a young human fighting alongside Mavai, Zhix, and other humans as they struggled to push back the flood of Kan'Tanu warslaves pouring toward the breach. He was only in the early stages of the E-grade but showcased commendable skill. But skill alone wasn't enough to survive on a battlefield like this. A sudden surge from the Kan'Tanu had cut him off from his squad, and he found himself isolated and surrounded.

The scene was not unique. If anything, it was commonplace. The Atwood Army tried to keep order, but it was impossible with Heart Curses erupting everywhere. The squadmates tried to rescue their companions, but they didn't have the strength to force an opening. Neither was there anything special about the boy. He was just a common footsoldier doing what he could to stay alive until rescue arrived. Yet he was different.

Because Zac recognized that sword.

He had just returned from Ensolus, having dealt with the natives and stabilized the world, when he passed by the Thayer Consortia. Back then, he'd seen a group of teenagers who had yet begun cultivating swing around some swords. Zac had felt something in the youth's glare and gifted him a Spirit Tool Sword he'd picked up during his travels—the very same sword the young man now desperately swung to stave off his attackers.

It was just a short encounter, one that Zac had almost forgotten after almost fifteen years of cultivation. Of course, for this young man, just under five had passed. The teenager had made his way through the F-grade, successfully breaking through. Only to be thrown onto the battlefield. And now his journey was about to end.

Zac was already moving before he knew it, Ra'Klid's warning shouts growing distant as he descended on the frontlines like a bloodthirsty specter. A sanguine beam shot right at him when he lept down from the wall, but an offhanded swing cut the Array Tower's attack in two. All the while, Zac's eyes never left the young man.

He fought with the same determination Zac saw back them, striking down one of the Kan'Tanu. He even managed to destroy the Heart Curse, but doing so opened him up to a deadly strike from another enemy. A stab of a spear radiating a weak Dao of piercing punched a hole through the Atwood soldier's already damaged armor and continued into his chest.

Zac burned with fury as he crashed into the ground like a meteor, eviscerating dozens of Kan'Tanu before they could react. A storm of fractal leaves ripped apart the second wave of invaders, along with dozens of Heart Curses, before Zac knelt next to the boy.

"It's… you," the young man coughed, his voice barely a whisper as his blood joined that of the others in the ground. "Thank… you… for the..."

"Focus on recovery," Zac said as he flooded the wound with his Branch of the Kalpataru while feeding him a top-quality Healing Pill.

It was too late.

The pill went to work, but the soldier's heart had been pierced, and an infusion of hostile Dao had destroyed most of his lungs. He didn't have the Vitality or a constitution strong enough to tide him over until the pill could mend the damage. He exhaled one final time, his hand still gripping the shortsword as the inexorable end of all living arrived. True Death trumped Zac's Dao of Life, and the young man's soul entered the cycle of reincarnation.

Zac might have been able to save the boy if the problem was being implanted by a Heart Curse. He could probably overwhelm these low-grade curses with Void Energy or his Dao Branches, but he couldn't deal with a destroyed heart. At least not while his Creation Energy was completely drained after his breakthrough. What little he'd extracted since then was barely enough to reform a finger, but a heart was asking too much.

It was just one death among hundreds, and the war continued all around him. But it was like Zac had been separated from the world around him as he looked down at the fallen warrior, where his erratic aura ensured neither enemies nor allies dared come close. A small whisper in the back of his mind tried to rationalize the scene. This was the reality of war; hundreds had already suffered the same fate since the early attack began.

Furthermore, this boy wasn't someone close to him—Zac didn't even know his name. Yet something about his death filled Zac with such a suffocating feeling that it almost drove him mad. He'd wrung himself dry working on his breakthrough, making the impossible possible by forming an unprecedented core. He'd stepped into Hegemony in defiance of his fate and conventional wisdom.

But what did it really change? It didn't stop the suffering around him. People, his citizens, were still dying.

A raging storm built in his chest, and his aura formed a deadly domain that made his surroundings impassable for most E-grade cultivators. However, his aura slowly condensed as Zac forcibly restored his mental state. Entering Hegemony might not be enough to save everyone, but it had undeniably made him stronger.

There wasn't anything he could do about the war, but he could swing his axe until there were no enemies left. He could make himself into a bull's eye, where every attack coming his way would be one fewer levied at his people.

"Stop! They have whole squads of assassins targeting leaders!" Ra'Klid shouted, having finally caught up along with six bodyguards.

"I'm going in," Zac calmly said, his momentum surging.

The demon's face collapsed at the response. "They have Heart Curse traps too, where you're doomed even if you survive! You need to be care—"

Ra'Klid swore upon seeing their leader carve a bloody path right toward the closest Living Bomb. The warslaves might as well have been made from straw when faced with the Emperor's axe. It wasn't just the warriors, either. A storm of fractal leaves destroyed one of the thorn shields, and Ra'Klid grimaced when the gory scene below was exposed.

"That maniac!" Ra'Klid swore. "Hurry, protect the Emp—!"

The demon didn't have time to finish his words before two Array Towers were split apart, their explosions creating a ripple of unfettered destruction that consumed over a hundred Kan'Tanu.

"Find him!" Ra'Klid shouted as he rushed forward.

The group set out again, but they only managed to move fifty meters before a line of pure destruction split Ra'Klid's vision in two. He almost felt like his soul would be sucked out of his body from the calls of two churning clouds that stretched toward the sky. One contained salvation and the origin of the Mavai, a golden portal leading to paradise. The other was a cold pit of despair far more wretched than the aura of the Raun.

The huge siege creature didn't even have time to fall apart before an eruption of vines ripped apart a squad of assassins along with one hundred warslaves even further away. It looked like Emperor Atwood was heading toward the next sphere, not bothering to hide his goal. It almost felt like he was intentionally announcing his advance, daring the Kan'Tanu to stop him.

Ra'Klid almost wanted the invaders to take him up on the offer, if only out of morbid curiosity. Was it even possible to stop that man?

"Uh— how do we protect someone like that?" the blade master next to Ra'Klid said, scratching his head in a mix of bemusement and awe.

"That's… Nevermind," Ra'Klid sighed. "Back to the original plan. Call the attack on the remaining Spheres. We can't let the Emperor do all the work."

Zac was a bloody reaper as he roved through the battlefield, leaving whole fields void of any life in his wake as he closed in on the second bomb. Even then, he felt suffocated as he unleashed the area attack of [Nature's Edge] again. He knew his outburst wasn't really changing anything in the grand scheme of things. This was just one battle. There were similar scenes on twelve other worlds, even if not as gruesome as this one. Still, it beat doing nothing, and it helped Zac process the turmoil within.

Unfortunately, tuning things out while dealing with the threat proved difficult, and not just because of the emotional toll. This was the first time he fought since breaking through, and the experience left him stifled more than anything. His Cosmic Core was ready for war, but his body was not, leaving him with an ocean of energy but nowhere to use it.

His partially-upgraded pathways could channel more than ten times the energy compared to before, but to what end? His skills were still E-grade. Zac realized he could push a bit more energy into the skills, making them sturdier and harder to whittle down. But they were ultimately not designed to utilize a Cosmic Core.

It felt like he'd installed a jet engine in an old rickety car. Even puttering at the lowest gear pushed his Skill Fractals to the limit. It was no wonder most D-grade cultivators stayed in seclusion for months after breaking through, fixing their pathways, and upgrading at least one skill.

Another step with [Earthstrider] put him closer to the next bomb, but he found his path barred by a group of six Hegemons. Meanwhile, a bloody dome made out of thousands of pulsating tendrils sprung up around him, quickly forming an impassable cage. Zac could tell that it would take some effort to break out of this thing, even for a Hegemon, and there were already dozens of bloody thorns moving toward him in an attempt to infect his core. Yet Zac only scoffed, glancing in the direction of his army.

It should be far enough.

Not having any skills to leverage his Cosmic Core was a pain in the ass, but Zac differed from most frontier Hegemons in one critical aspect apart from his strength; he was also filthy rich, at least by Zecia standards. A golden talisman appeared in his hand, and a torrent of energy followed.

A burning sun rose above Zac's head, filled with Divine Energy and Zac's Dao. The approaching thorns were all incinerated long before they could reach Zac. The Kan'Tanu Hegemons knew it meant trouble and unleashed a series of powerful attacks while another round of thorns dug into the creation in an attempt at mutual destruction.

The onslaught instantly destabilized the Offensive Talisman, but the sun was never meant to stay for long. It exploded, releasing a wave of golden flames that consumed everything with Zac at the epicenter. The cage didn't even last a second before it was consumed. The flames continued outward, creating an inferno that consumed everything within a mile's radius. Some managed to get out of the way, but even more were swallowed by the conflagration.

Zac had used a Peak-quality Early D-grade Talisman bought from Asta back in the Perennial Vastness. Its destructive might matched that of a Peak-quality Early D-grade finisher, further bolstered by Zac's Dao. The E-grade cultivators that made up the bulk of the army had no way to individually resist these levels of power, and it had arrived too suddenly to form a united front. Nine mobile pyramids were hit, and while none collapsed, only two managed to continue their barrage.

That single attack was expensive enough to bankrupt more than a dozen Wandering Cultivators in the D-grade, but Zac had a whole stack of them in his Spatial Ring. Of course, that one blast had cost him a third of his Divine Energy and put a strain on his pathways.

Zac was the first to be consumed by the sun but barely felt it. A world of golden flames surrounded him, but a swing of his axe created a wind tunnel. He emerged from the inferno unscathed, his body now covered in a plate armor made from bone. The armor was covered in dense golden runes, generating a stable, protective domain that kept the fire at bay as Zac closed in on the Hegemons.

Two had died from the talisman, but the other four had banded together to withstand its assault. Still, these people were even weaker than the Kan'Tanu Hegemons who had been sent into the Void Star. Just withstanding the talisman was testing their limits. Zac descended on the quartet like a fox in the henhouse, [Verun's Bite] roaring with triumphant glee as they fell one after another in quick succession.

The flames abated soon after, exposing Zac standing alone in a field of blackened corpses. Even the closest bomb had been hit by the talisman, and its aura fluctuated precariously after many of its arrays had been singed off. There was only finality and hunger for more as Zac moved to finish the job.

The day was young, and he was far from satisfied.