Chapter 218
The first warning came as a low ripple beneath the earth, so faint it might have been dismissed as the groan of settling roots, yet every Lazarus guild member felt it through their boots. Moments later, the fog appeared on the far side of the lake: a heavy, unnatural mass spilling out of the swamp's direction like a living curtain. It crawled across the lowlands in deliberate pulses, swallowing reeds, stones, and shoreline one breath at a time.
The lake itself, sixty acres of wide and deep, placid water formation ,began to transform. A pale skin of frost flashed across its surface, spreading in vein-like webs. Ripples froze mid-motion. The wind died. A cold, metallic taste swept through the clearing, prickling every exposed patch of skin.
The encampment lay on an elevated ridge above the shore, ringed with sharpened wooden stakes driven deep into the earth, their tips glistening with frost. Tents flapped uneasily in the sudden cold. Warriors tightened their cloaks. Even the horses snorted and stamped as the unnatural winter crept closer.
The five lesser clans, each with about fifty warriors, watched the fog emerge from a hundred meters away. Instead of urgency, they wore smirks, the arrogance of men who had survived too many battles and learned the wrong lessons. Their representatives strutted forward with spears resting lazily on their shoulders, muttering about how "creatures already dead" were beneath even the effort of sharpening blades.
"Witchcraft puppets," one boasted."Barely worth a morning warm-up," another agreed."They've faced worse. Everyone here has," the clans murmured among themselves.
They did not move faster, did not reinforce the line, did not even acknowledge the scouts' reports that warned of speed, strength, and retained combat skill among the undead.
Meanwhile, the Lazarus team moved in silence—efficient, disciplined, and grim. Cody, Farrah, and the guild members were already shifting into a tight defensive formation, shields angled, lines locked. They knew what Draugr truly were: fast, tireless, unfeeling, and bred for slaughter. Their demeanor contrasted sharply with the noise and swagger of the lesser clans.
Jarl Shieldmaiden Astrid Skyrend's forces—two hundred warriors—followed suit. About half of them, the veterans and the loyal heavy tankers, mirrored the Lazarus posture. Their commander barked orders, shields slammed together, and iron rang. Yet even among Astrid's warriors, arrogance lingered. Some still muttered the same foolish bravado as the clans.
Astrid herself stood motionless, jaw locked, eyes fixed on the creeping fog. Inside, she felt the familiar tightening, the instinct before a storm breaks. This was no mindless undead swarm. This was something older.
By the time the fog had claimed nearly a third of the frozen lake, it began to thicken. The edges blackened, not white mist but smoke, dense and unnatural, rolling like breath from a great beast. The lake's only land-access path,a narrow ten-meter strip curving along the water—vanished beneath it.
Then it stopped.
The fog simply halted mid-crawl, as if obeying a silent command.That alone should have sent every warrior running back.
Astrid's voice cut through the air like an axe."Fall back to the ridge! FORM UP!"
The Lazarus team obeyed instantly. Astrid's veterans followed. But the lesser clans…
They sneered.
Five representatives, sons and daughter of proud chieftains, stepped forward, raising their banners and shouting for their men.
"We'll earn the glory!"Let us see these undead for ourselves! "Before they even reach the path!"
Nearly two hundred fifty of their warriors surged past the defensive stakes, running downhill toward the fog, spreading out in a loose, undisciplined formation. They reached about sixty meters from it,close enough for the cold to sting their lungs.
Astrid hissed a curse.Cody Lazarus slammed his shield into the ground and shouted, "GET BACK,
you damn fools!"
but it was already too late.
the first spears
The fog did not advance.
It exhaled.
From the wall of smoke came a sound, a wet, echoing crack, like something huge tightening sinew and bone. Then...
Long, barbed spears shot out of the fog in perfect synchronization. They flew with the force of ballista bolts, cutting through air with shrieks so sharp the sound alone made warriors flinch.
The entire frozen lake,every acre, every brittle patch of ice, lit up with movement. Spears erupted from below, from the fog's front, from hidden rows further back, rising like metallic fangs.
Dozens.Hundreds.
In a single heartbeat.
Men did not even have time to scream. One moment they were charging; the next,
A spear punched through a chest, lifting a warrior off his feet.Another tore through a shield and buried itself in a skull.Three impaled a clustered group, pinning them together like insects.Others smashed legs, pierced throats, shattered ribs.
Blood sprayed in long arcs across the frozen lake, steaming as it hit the ice.
The fog pulsed.Then came the scream.
A sound so sharp, so inhuman, so steeped in ancient malice that even Astrid flinched. It sliced through the air, tearing courage from the heart like meat from bone.A scream that told every living thing:
We are here.We are awake.We are hungry.
The lesser clans finally realized their mistake, but by then, two hundred of them were already down.
Some were skewered to the ground.Some were dragged screaming into the fog.Some simply disappeared beneath the ice as if the frozen lake itself swallowed them.
The massacre lasted less than five seconds.
Even if Daniel in his Netherborn form would dropping from high above in freefall, could not have saved a single one of them.
The fog shuddered as if something immense were breathing inside it—then split apart with a tearing hiss, parting in thick, writhing sheets. From within that heaving veil, movement stirred. Slow at first. Heavy. Deliberate. Like the ancient limb of a titan awakening after centuries entombed beneath ice. One massive arm appeared, then another, their silhouettes grotesque and wrong in shape, and then two more pushed through the vapor, each limb bending with unnatural strength. The fog peeled back in long, clinging ribbons, unveiling the nightmare that had been waiting beneath its cover.
A Draugr Nuckelavee stepped out from the thick fog , onto the now frozen lake.
Seven feet tall. Thick as a fortress gate. A monstrosity sculpted from rotted flesh, exposed sinew, and blackened bone. What little skin remained draped from its frame in ragged sheets, swaying as it moved. Four arms jutted from its torso in a mockery of life—two at the shoulders, two lower by the ribs,each gripping a spear longer than any mortal man. Its head was a warped fusion of human and decayed horse skull, jaw hanging open in an eternal gaping scream, its empty eye sockets lit by a suffocating blue flame that flickered like dying stars. Every breath it exhaled poured out in vapor so cold the very air around it crystallized.
Then the fog behind it surged like a living tide, and the army marched forward.
A wall of nightmares emerged, stretching across the width of the lake, rank after rank stepping onto the ice with synchronized precision. Nearly two thousand Draugr Nuckelavee, each a towering abomination armed with spears that had already tasted flesh. Behind them thundered the second wave, five hundred Draugr Berserkers, monstrous silhouettes plated in crude armor stitched directly into their rotting muscles. They charged like herd beasts with the fury of storms, every footfall sending violent tremors through the lake and the clearing beyond.
The sound of their advance was indescribable, a deafening avalanche of claws, bone, frozen sinew, rusted armor, and pounding weight.A sound that devoured courage.
The 240 warriors of the five lesser clans had begun their retreat—but shock froze their limbs, and terror hollowed their lungs. The fog had stolen their distance; their arrogance had stolen their time.
Now the truth stood before them.
They were trapped between the lake and death.
"retreat! move!"
"they're huge, gods run!"
"help! help!"
Their shouts dissolved into panic. Their formations fell apart in seconds. Men trampled over their own allies in desperate, stumbling flight. Shields trembled in unsteady hands. Weapons clattered uselessly to the ice.
But running did not matter.
The Draugr were faster.Hungrier.And upon them.
The first warrior raised his shield, and the first spear that met him didn't stop. It tore through wood, arm, heart, and spine in one brutal thrust. He collapsed instantly, pinned to the ice like discarded parchment.
A second swung an axe at the nearest monster's knee, a desperate strike fueled by sheer terror. The Nuckelavee didn't even react. Two lower arms snapped forward, driving twin spears into his stomach with surgical precision. The upper arms grabbed him, and tore him open with a wet, ripping sound that echoed across the lake.
Ten men tried to form a shield wall, but a Berserker crashed into them like a boulder downhill. Their formation exploded. Shields splintered into shards .Bones shattered under the weight of rotting muscle reinforced with bone armor. Three were crushed beneath its sheer mass, blood bursting across the ice in violent arcs. The rest were hacked apart by claws carved from sharpened femur.
One warrior managed a lucky strike, driving a short sword into a Nuckelavee's throat. For a heartbeat, the creature paused. Then it tilted its head, rotated its lower arms, and rammed a spear clean through his chest. Before the man's scream could escape his lungs, the Draugr lifted him and slammed him into the frozen lake hard enough to crack the ice beneath him.
Another warrior slipped on the slick surface.Three spears pierced him before he even touched the ground.
A man with a shattered leg tried to crawl away, dragging himself through blood and frost.A Berserker stomped on his back, and his spine burst outward in a spray of bone shards and steam.
One young fighter reached within thirty meters of safety—his breath fogging in frantic gasps, eyes wild with hope, only for a spear to burst through his ribs from behind, lifting him off his feet.His body dangled for a moment, twitching, before the Nuckelavee hurled him across the lake.He hit the ice in a broken heap.
Within seconds, not minutes, not moments, the 240 warriors were gone.
No survivors.No screams lingering.No groans of the dying.
Only red-stained ice.Only broken weapons.Only severed limbs cooling in the winter air.Only the fog rolling forward again, hungrily swallowing everything.
The lake had become a grave.
The clearing, a silent stage.
And the undead army, unstoppable, immaculate in their killing, marched toward Astrid Skyrend's living line.
The earth trembled first, subtle at the beginning, a faint quiver under the frost-hardened soil—then deepened into a rolling vibration that made weapons rattle against shields and tents sway on their wooden stakes. Astrid Skyrend stood at the front line, boots planted firmly on the frozen ground, eyes narrowed against the drifting veil of fog that still clung to the lake. Her jaw locked so hard it ached; she could taste the metallic tang of her own blood where she had bitten her tongue in fury and dread. She knew the lesser clans had been fools, but she had not expected their arrogance to cost them all this dearly.
Two hundred and forty warriors erased from existence in mere seconds.
Not defeated.Not wounded.Erased.
Her tankers, one hundred hardened warriors who had sworn their oath to her and her alone—shifted into formation with silent, practiced precision. Their round shields overlapped, runes glowing faintly along the rims as Seiðr pulsed through them like weak, flickering veins of lightning. Even they, the veterans of countless border wars and giant hunts, felt the air grow heavier with every step the enemy took.
Behind them, the Lazarus Guild tightened their stance. Unlike the Skald-born, they carried themselves with a strange calmness born not of bravado but of cold, battlefield memory. Their eyes were sharp. Their breaths controlled. The tips of their weapons shimmered with pre-charged mana, a foreign radiance compared to the raw, primal glow of Seiðr. Cody and Farrah stood at the center of their formation, exchanging a single look, one shared understanding: This will be bad. Far worse than the others realize.
But nothing, nothing,could fully prepare the living for what marched toward them now.
The fog distorting the far edge of the lake suddenly twisted inward, sucked into a massive pressure swell like breath pulled into the lungs of a giant. The entire clearing dipped—earth sinking a fraction of an inch, before a thunderous, bone-shaking pulse rolled across the land.
The undead army had begun their charge.
The sound hit next.
A deafening, layered cacophony of thousands of feet striking ice and earth at once,like boulders crashing down a mountainside. The frozen lake groaned under their weight, fracturing in thin white lines as the first ranks of Nuckelavee stormed forward, spears raised in perfect hunting formation.
A wall of towering, four-armed corpses, each seven feet tall, each howling silently through hollow skulls illuminated by dead-blue fire.
Behind them, the Berserkers,five hundred monstrous silhouettes, armor fused directly into arm-thick flesh,pounded forward like enraged mammoths, the ground quaking beneath their stride. Every step sent a tremor running through the soil and straight into the hearts of the living.
The wind changed.
It carried with it the cold of burial chambers long sealed, of graves cracked open, of death that remembered how to walk. The fog thinned just enough to reveal countless spear tips reflecting the dim winter light, like a field of jagged stars descending on them.
Astrid lifted her axe, voice low but steady.
"Hold the line."
Her command carried through the camp with the weight of iron. Shields dropped. Seiðr flared. Boots dug into the frozen ground.
But for every heartbeat the undead advanced, the living felt smaller.More fragile.More aware of the truth:
This was not a battle.
This was an eruption of death, pouring into the world with unstoppable hunger.
The clearing, once a simple logging field carved from the forest, now felt like the mouth of a vast beast, and they stood on its tongue, waiting to be swallowed.
Far above, hidden in cloud and mist, Daniel hovered like a silent star, watching the tide of death race toward the living.
And below him…
The first impact was seconds away.
The Tide of Death had not merely reached the living, it swallowed them whole.
The ground quaked in rolling pulses as the Draugr horde thundered forward, each footfall a dull, bone-deep concussion that rattled shields and armor. Mud rippled. Tree roots trembled. The very air shivered as if bracing for impact.
Astrid Skyrend's eyes burned, the frost-blue in them hardening to tempered steel. Her jaw locked until her teeth ached, the metallic taste of blood seeping into her mouth as she glared at the oncoming storm of undead flesh and iron.
Around her, her veteran tankers tightened their grips on axe hafts and spear shafts. These were warriors used to breaking shieldwalls, to charging beasts twice their size—but even they felt the cold crawl of dread sliding up their spines. The Lazarus Guild, by contrast, moved like a machine forged from discipline and experience: shields angled, stances lowered, runed armor humming with restrained power. They stood calm, silent, and waiting, the deadly patience of hunters who knew the kill would come to them.
But the undead did not march.
They crashed.
The first wave of Nuckelavee- Draugr,towering seven-foot nightmares with four arms, rotted sinew bulging beneath pallid flesh, hurtled from the fog with a speed that mocked their corpse-swollen forms. Their four spears blurred like a forest of lightning, stabbing, sweeping, and tearing with impossible precision. Behind them, the heavier berserker-class Draugr barreled forward, each step a hammer-strike, each roar a jagged echo of rage held beyond death.
The clearing became a living storm, a hurricane of rot, steel, and murderous intent.
Astrid's warriors flinched under the monstrous impact.A dozen lesser clan fighters were hurled aside instantly, bodies snapped like dry branches. Spears punched through armor as if it were soaked cloth. Four-armed undead tore men in half with the brutal ease of beasts accustomed to slaughter.
But still, Astrid did not break.Still, her line held.
"stand fast!" she barked, her voice cutting through the chaos like a war horn. "shields up! let them bleed for every step!"
The undead did not pause. They didn't even react. They were hunger and instinct wrapped in rotting muscle, driven by a hatred older than the clans who now struggled beneath their blows.
The ground was already slick with blood. The fog was turning red.
The second wave hit next, five hundred armored Draugr berserkers pounding into the fray like living battering rams. They slammed into the mixed clan ranks, sending warriors sprawling. Their axes, warped and rusted, carved red arcs through the air. Their helmets were fused to their skulls, their armor melded into their decaying muscle. Every movement was a grotesque blend of strength and inevitability.
And above all the noise, the screams, the tearing flesh, the clash of metal
Astrid heard the low, synchronized rumble of the Lazarus Guild stepping forward.
Not panicking.Not rushing.Not breaking rank.
They braced.
Because they knew this was only the beginning.
The undead were not trying to win the battle in a single charge.
They were trying to smother the living, drown them in sheer unstoppable weight.
And the living, Astrid realized, were already halfway submerged.
The three guilds, East Lazarus Guild, High Strategy, and the White Devil Guild, had arrived months before the current battle, their presence a product of experience gained in the Empire of Graves Quest. After clearing the perilous dungeons and claiming victory, they were granted one full year of unfettered access to the Second Floor, a reward that became the crucible in which their skills, knowledge, and ingenuity were honed. During that year, they had dissected ancient texts, experimented with arcane formulas, and crafted weapons attuned to Seiðr energy, transforming ordinary arms into rune weapons, each capable of channeling vast reservoirs of energy and focusing destructive force with precision.
Unlike these guilds, Daniel had faced subtle restrictions, Sigma's veiled attempt to sabotage his progress on the Second Floor. Each limitation was designed to deny him full access to knowledge and control, to hinder his ability to craft comparable tools or gain unrestricted insight into the arcane mechanics that governed the realm. Yet Daniel had adapted, relying not on pre-made tools but on the limitless potential of his void armor and the Chaos Engine, which merged his learning, instincts, and energy into a single adaptive weapon. He had no time to refine runes into weapons as the guilds had, but he compensated with a fluid, unpredictable form of power, a raw and entirely personal force that defied conventional methods.
Now, on the frozen clearing at Mälaren, this contrast between raw adaptability and engineered precision became starkly apparent. Jarl Shieldmaiden Astrid Skyrend coordinated her front-line troops with the practiced efficiency of a commander who knew the limitations and strengths of every man and shield under her command. Her tankers, heavily armored and disciplined, formed the backbone of the defense, locking their shields in interlocking patterns while maintaining a tight phalanx that could absorb frontal assaults. Their presence created corridors of controlled movement, guiding the flow of battle, and ensuring that the guild's magic could reach its maximum potential without interference from errant skald-born warriors.
Farrah's vines and Cody's shockwaves acted in synergy with these formations. As the Draugr approached, roots twisted around enemy spears, channeling the monsters into predictable paths; shockwaves split their ranks, leaving exposed targets for the tankers to strike. Astrid shouted orders, coordinating shield walls to pivot around the guild's magical constructs. Heavy axes smashed through bodies ensnared by vines, while spears struck at creatures toppled by shockwaves, turning the battlefield into a synchronized symphony of martial skill and supernatural precision.
The lesser clans faltered, still recovering from the earlier massacre, but the guilds' careful deployment allowed Astrid's forces to hold, push, and adapt in real time, leveraging the guilds' magic to enhance the effectiveness of mundane weapons. Rune-infused spears glowed, axes shone faintly with energy, and the tactical flexibility of the tankers created openings for calculated, controlled strikes rather than chaotic charges. Where raw strength had failed earlier, strategy fused with supernatural power now held the tide.
The battlefield became a living tableau: shockwaves bending frozen ice, vines twisting in counterpoints to spear thrusts, shields clanging in rhythm with the pulse of Seiðr, and Astrid moving along the lines like a conductor guiding the tempo of death and survival. The contrast could not have been more apparent: the Draugr relied on size, brute force, and numbers; the combined guilds and tankers relied on timing, precision, and arcane augmentation, proving that careful orchestration, even in the face of overwhelming supernatural power, could turn the tide of chaos into a controlled counterassault.
But where Astrid Skyrend fought
the undead shattered.
Astrid surged forward with a roar that cut through the chaos.
Her shield smashed into the first Draugr berserker, caving its fused helmet inward. Her axe followed, carving a crescent of steel that severed an arm and split rotted bone.
The monster didn't fall.
So she tore its head off with her bare hands.
Another lunged.Its rusted axe swung in a brutal arc—she caught it on her shield, shoved upward, and rammed her knee into its chest with such force the creature's spine snapped.
"This is how you face death!" she bellowed at her staggered warriors. "With fury! With purpose!"
A berserker twice her mass tried to crush her beneath its weight.Astrid rolled aside, came up under its guard, and drove her axe through its throat so deeply the blade stuck.
She wrenched it free with a spray of blackened ichor.
Her tankers rallied behind her, forming a wedge that slammed into the Draugr line. They fought like wolves fighting giants, small, fast, furious, but Astrid was the storm at the center, carving space with each brutal strike.
She fought like she intended to shame death itself.
Yet even in her fury, she noticed something
The undead did not behave like mindless beasts.They moved with purpose.They reacted to pressure.They reinforced weak points the moment the living broke through.
Someone was controlling them.
Deep within the fog, high above the battlefield atop a mound of twisted roots and corpses,a silhouette stood watching.
Unmoving.Silent.Observing every motion of the living as if studying prey.
A Draugr unlike the others, taller, armored in black plates fused to its rotting frame.Red embers burned in its skull-like eyes.
It lifted one hand.The entire Draugr vanguard shifted direction instantly.
It tilted its head.The berserkers adjusted their strikes in unison.
It did not breathe.It did not blink.It simply watched…
…waiting for the living to tire.
Waiting for the moment to crush them.
Astrid felt the presence before she saw it.Her gut twisted.Her breath frosted.
"That thing…" she whispered. "It's thinking."
Farrah followed her gaze and her expression darkened.
"No," she corrected."It's commanding."
Cody tightened his grip on his gauntlets."Then we take its army first."
But even as he said it, the fog behind the commander stirred
and more shapes began to move.
Above the frozen clearing, the air itself seemed to shiver. Daniel hovered, a dark silhouette against the cold, gray sky, his Netherborn void armor rippling with liquid darkness that reflected the chaotic light of the battlefield below. The fog over the lake recoiled slightly at his presence, twisting into whorls as if sensing an intelligence far beyond mere life or death. His amethyst eyes glowed with unearthly calm, scanning the hundreds of combatants below, not with human sight but through Omni-Resonance, perceiving the flow of Seiðr energy, the tension in muscles, the fear and resolve pulsing through each heart.
Farrah and Cody Lazarus, standing side by side, froze mid-motion. Shock froze the blood in their veins as recognition struck, Lord Daniel Laeanna Rothchester, the Netherborn who had recuperate due to the wounds he gain nearly a months ago, right after the Empire of Graves quest was cleared , had returned.
His very presence radiated command, authority, and a terrifying power tempered by calculation. Farrah's hands trembled as she instinctively began weaving defensive vines, stronger, faster, and more precise than any she had ever managed, as if her magic responded to his unseen guidance. Cody's hands crackled with concentrated energy, shockwave patterns adjusting in real-time, each pulse synchronized subtly to Daniel's will.
From above, Daniel did not just observe, he manipulated the battlefield. Using Omni-Resonance, he detected the exact flow of energy in the Draugr below, their deathless bodies pulsating with dark Seiðr. He nudged the currents, amplifying weaknesses, subtly redirecting the undead's path into zones where the guild's magic and Astrid's tankers could strike most efficiently. The Nuckelavee and Berserkers staggered slightly mid-charge, as if the very ground and air conspired against them. Farrah's vines snapped tighter, restraining bodies with impossible precision, and Cody's focused shockwaves detonated exactly where the Draugr's momentum would work against them, creating openings for Astrid's shielded phalanxes to pierce through with axes and spears.
The battlefield had transformed into a living extension of Daniel's consciousness. Every strike, every pulse of magic, every footstep of the tankers, now resonated in perfect orchestration. The chaos of the undead charge, their raw, brutal power, was being met not with mere defense but with controlled, devastating counterforce. Where once the lesser clans had fallen in seconds, now the undead were met with calculated opposition: bodies were flung, limbs shattered, the ice beneath them cracking and splintering, yet controlled so that no friendly soldier was caught in the collapse.
Farrah whispered, barely audible over the roar of combat, "He… he's coordinating with us… it's like he can see through the battlefield itself."
Cody's fists glowed, sending another targeted shockwave forward. "It's him… it's really him. We… we have to follow his lead."
Even Astrid, standing firm at the center of her phalanx, felt the shift in the tide. Her tankers' heavy shields moved with newfound synchronicity, pivoting to trap Berserkers in lethal choke points, while spears and rune-enhanced weapons cut through the undead with unerring accuracy.
From above, Daniel's Netherborn form shimmered and expanded subtly, a dark, amorphous presence feeding into the battlefield without directly touching it, bending space, energy, and perception to his will. His void armor pulsed with the memories of every battle he had fought, every tactic learned, every skill honed, and now it functioned as a living strategic interface, guiding his allies and confounding the undead. The apocalyptic chaos of the Draugr army was still immense, yet under Daniel's subtle manipulation, it became predictable, manageable, and lethal in response.
Below, the guild members' magic erupted with precision. Vines struck at exactly the right moment to restrain multiple Berserkers. Shockwaves split lines of Nuckelavee before they could strike. Astrid's tankers pivoted and advanced where Daniel's will indicated, cleaving, striking, and holding the front line with synchronized discipline. The battlefield was no longer a chaotic slaughter—it had become a symphony of strategy, magic, and raw willpower, all orchestrated from above by a figure long thought gone, now returned in the terrifying and awe-inspiring visage of the Netherborn Lord.
Daniel's shadow stretched across the frozen lake as he descended, the Netherborn void armor flowing like liquid night around him, each ripple reflecting the shattered chaos below. His descent was silent, yet the air itself seemed to bend, vibrating with the weight of his presence. The Draugr halted mid-charge, Nuckelavee spears frozen in the air, Berserkers' stomp caught mid-motion—and a tremor ran through the undead army. Not fear, exactly, they knew nothing of fear,but an instinctive reverence for power beyond decay, for something older than gods and more precise than death itself.
As Daniel's boots touched the ice, the frozen surface shivered like glass about to crack. His eyes, glowing amethyst, scanned the battlefield, perceiving every pulse of Seiðr, every spike of adrenaline, every flicker of life and death. Even from this proximity, the Draugr flinched as if their rotting bodies recognized a force that could unmake them with thought alone. The air grew colder, each breath of the undead mist crystallizing instantly, and the fog that had poured off the swamp seemed to recoil, curling away from him as if it were a living entity wary of their master.
He lifted a hand, and the ground around him rippled, not with physical force but with sheer, perceptive intent. Nuckelavee trembled, their four arms twitching as though anticipating strikes that would never come, while Berserkers staggered backward a step, armor clinking against frozen ice unnaturally. Even the fog-wrapped lake seemed to hesitate in its advance. For the first time in generations, the tide of undeath had hesitated, uncertain before a single strike.
Daniel's presence did not just freeze the undead, it reshaped the battlefield's energy. Where Farrah's vines had constricted, they now thrummed with his power, snapping with additional weight and precision. Cody's shockwaves struck with timing so perfect it seemed predestined, scattering groups of Draugr before they could close. The combined Seiðr from the Lazarus guild flowed into Daniel's awareness, allowing him to coordinate their magic with perfect foresight, anticipating the undead's instinctive reactions.
The lesser clans, watching from the backlines, could barely comprehend what they saw. Their arrogance faded in an instant, replaced with a trembling awe as the Netherborn Lord moved with authority and lethality without striking a blow yet. Spears of the Draugr, raised confidently moments ago, now wavered like reeds in a storm; rotting limbs shivered involuntarily as if their bodies remembered the primal weight of a being far above them. Even their advance became hesitant, fragmented, the fear of Daniel's presence seeping into their unnatural minds.
Astrid Skyrend's tankers adjusted instantly, sensing the shift. Shields raised higher, formations tightened, axes poised, and every movement reflected confidence drawn from witnessing a force they had never imagined possible. Where once panic had spread like wildfire among the living, now determined focus anchored the soldiers' hearts, emboldened by the Netherborn hovering above.
Daniel's descent had raised the stakes immeasurably. The battlefield had shifted from a chaotic slaughter to a tense orchestration of death, where even the unstoppable Draugr now hesitated before each step, each lunge. For the first time, the living had leverage. And yet, Daniel knew this pause was fragile, the undead retained centuries of cunning, and only the perfect alignment of strategy, magic, and force would turn hesitation into annihilation.
The moment his boots pressed fully onto the ice, the ground seemed to hum under him, a low vibration felt in every bone. His presence radiated outward, a silent declaration: any who stand against him would be undone, and any who follow him would see the impossible made real.
Daniel's boots sank slightly into the frozen earth as he advanced, the Netherborn void armor folding and flowing around him like liquid shadow. Each movement was deliberate, calculated, yet terrifyingly fast, the subtle pulse of his Omni-Resonance giving him perfect awareness of every Draugr, every Berserker, every tremor in the ice and soil beneath their unholy feet.
He struck first. His fist, sheathed in the living void of his armor, swung forward, not with the swing of a man but with the force of a collapsing tower. A Draugr Nuckelavee tried to intercept him with a four-armed spear sweep, but Daniel's void limbs bent and shifted mid-motion, absorbing and redirecting the force. The spear shattered against the flowing black metal as though it were made of brittle bone. The creature reeled, legs splintering beneath it, and Daniel's secondary arm lashed out, striking another Nuckelavee in the chest. The undead staggered, their form momentarily unraveling as if the void itself ignored the natural rules of flesh and decay.
Farrah's eyes widened. She saw how Daniel's movements seemed to resonate with her vine walls. Where his fist tore through the Draugr's ranks, Farrah's plants coiled and shot upward in precise tandem, constricting limbs and hurling bodies like living catapults. It was almost as if Daniel's Omni-Resonance projected his intent into the battlefield itself, guiding her magic to amplify his strikes, a synchronous dance of nature and void. Each Draugr that fell was measured and precise; there was no chaos here, only orchestrated devastation.
Cody's shockwaves followed. He cast them in rhythm with Daniel's physical strikes. Where Daniel struck a Berserker across the ice, Cody's focused wave smashed the remaining legions, knocking hundreds of Draugr into the frozen lake, their limbs breaking under the combined force of void and Seiðr. The two of them—Daniel in his full Netherborn glory, Cody projecting controlled devastation, created pockets of annihilation, zones where undead fell in perfect synchronization, unable to recover before the next onslaught.
The battlefield became a shifting tableau of horror and beauty. Daniel tested his new skills in real time. He extended a limb of liquid void into the air and then shattered it outward, producing a ripple of shadow-energy that tore through multiple Draugr. The creature's rotting flesh evaporated into black mist, yet the void flowed on unbroken, ready for another strike. Every swing, every sweep was both a test and a calibration. The Draugr became his instrument, their reactions feeding back into his perception, allowing him to refine the integration of his Omni-Resonance with his physical power.
Meanwhile, the Lazarus Guild saw a new development in the rune symbols embedded in their weapons. The runes, long thought to operate in simple patterns, now glowed with added intensity, responding to Daniel's presence. Farrah noticed the vines bending slightly toward Daniel's strikes, carrying additional Seiðr-infused energy. Cody saw the shockwaves crystallizing, breaking into subwaves that expanded with pinpoint accuracy. The guild realized that Daniel's void energy was interacting with the runes, catalyzing a synergy far beyond ordinary Seiðr activation. Their weapons no longer just amplified their own magic, they were now conduits for the Netherborn's orchestrated destruction.
As the battle raged, a Nuckelavee attempted to close the distance on Farrah's wall. Daniel pivoted mid-air, striking the creature with a spinning uppercut that lifted it off the frozen surface. At the same moment, Farrah's vines wrapped its limbs, and Cody's focused shockwave sent it crashing into the lake's edge. The ice shattered, spraying fragments that cut into dozens of lesser Draugr behind it, who now hesitated as Daniel's mere presence projected a shadow of inevitability, convincing them that death was already written.
The combined effect of Daniel's raw Netherborn power, Farrah's nature manipulation, Cody's shockwave control, and the newly awakened rune synergy transformed the clearing into a landscape of apocalyptic precision. The undead fell like crops beneath a scythe, yet the battlefield remained controlled, measured, and alive, as if Daniel's will itself flowed through every strike, every blast, and every surge of Seiðr.
Even from hundreds of meters above, Astrid Skyrend's tankers and loyal warriors could feel the shift. The fear that had once gripped the frontline melted into disciplined awe. Shields raised in perfect timing, axes swung in coordination with the guild's magic, and the lesser clans who survived the initial massacre now stared at a vision of combined supernatural strategy, witnessing firsthand the terrifying and calculated fusion of raw strength and precise Seiðr mastery.
Daniel hovered above the frozen clearing, void armor shifting like a living shadow, eyes glowing faintly beneath the helm as he surveyed the battlefield with an intensity that seemed to pierce not just the fog but the very souls of the Draugr below. His Omni-Resonance, now pushed past twenty percent, pulsed like a heartbeat across the land, connecting with the Lazarus Guild's runed weapons, Farrah's sentient vines, and Cody's shockwave spells. He inhaled slowly, letting the latent power of the Netherborn surge through him, and then exhaled, letting the energy spill outward, not as a simple attack, but as a resonant orchestration of annihilation.
The frozen lake below began to quiver. Ice fissures raced outward from points where Draugr had set their weight, cracks glowing with black-blue void energy as if the earth itself was bleeding. Daniel extended a void limb downward and tapped it against the ice; the impact was not physical, but metaphysical. The ice shuddered, then exploded in shards of jagged, floating crystal, hurling the nearest Draugr into the fog like ragdolls. Simultaneously, the mud along the open path churned into living quicksand, rooted by Farrah's amplified Seiðr, and entire groups of Berserkers found their legs swallowed and immobilized.
Then Daniel's focus shifted. He traced invisible lines through the battlefield with his mind, marking clusters of Draugr, their Berserkers, even the remaining lesser clan survivors who now scrambled in fear. With a gesture of his arm, the very ground warped, bending into unnatural ridges and channels. Vines and roots from Farrah's walls extended into these trenches, weaving into the terrain to create a labyrinthine trap. Cody's shockwaves tore through the frozen air simultaneously, splintering ice and mud alike, funneling the undead into zones of concentrated destruction. It was not chaos, it was apocalypse-level chess, each move calculated, each strike amplified by both physical might and mystical resonance.
The Draugr army faltered, their coordinated charge unraveling as the terrain itself betrayed them. Nuckelavee stumbled on shards of ice, claws useless against shifting root walls. Berserkers slammed into hidden pits filled with mud and twisted vines, their momentum turned against them. Those who tried to regroup found themselves cornered by invisible tendrils of void energy, subtle but unrelenting, forcing them to split or collapse under the weight of inevitability. The battlefield became a symphony of controlled devastation, a weaving of nature, rune magic, shockwave physics, and Netherborn manipulation.
Daniel raised both arms, the armor around his shoulders spreading in flowing, blade-like projections that sliced through the air. From his palms, black ribbons of void extended outward, connecting with the Draugr's residual dark energy. Each ribbon siphoned the unholy essence from the undead, destabilizing their cohesion and causing dozens to crumble mid-stride, bones snapping and sinew dissolving into spectral mist. He tested his new skill, "Void Resonance Convergence," a technique that merged battlefield perception, energy manipulation, and physical power. The effect was total: for a few terrifying seconds, the Draugr became puppets of his will, stumbling as if fighting invisible chains, and their attacks faltered against the coordinated assault of the guild below.
Farrah and Cody's eyes widened as they observed another phenomenon in their runes: Daniel's energy seemed to unlock a higher-tier resonance, allowing the runes to channel more Seiðr with less personal expenditure. Farrah's walls could now extend dynamically, reacting to enemy movements before they occurred. Cody's shockwaves fractured the ice with preemptive precision, hitting zones where the undead would be, guided by Daniel's psychic imprint across the field. The Lazarus Guild realized that Daniel's presence didn't just empower them, it elevated their abilities beyond the ordinary limits of magic and Seiðr, creating an integrated system of destruction that made the Draugr's formidable powers seem pitiful in comparison.
From above, Daniel observed the battlefield like a conductor commanding an orchestra of death and order. The Draugr charge had transformed into a panicked, fracturing tide, Nuckelavee lurching and stumbling into void-riddled fissures, Berserkers hurled into trenches of roots and mud, their monstrous screams swallowed by the blackened wind. Even the surviving lesser clan warriors fell to their knees in awe and fear, watching the living embodiment of apocalypse reshape the land itself with his will.
And as Daniel descended lower, ready to strike personally, the battlefield had already been rewritten: the frozen lake was shattered, the open path torn into chaos controlled only by his mind, and the Draugr army's unstoppable advance had slowed into a measured retreat, or collapse. In that moment, the living and supernatural forces coalesced into a single, terrifying machine of destruction, and the undead realized, even instinctively, that the presence above them was not a warrior, but a harbinger of absolute, inescapable ruin.
Daniel stepped forward, and reality itself seemed to lean away from him, as though the world understood instinctively that something far beyond mortal or monster was about to unleash its wrath.
His aura thickened, a luminous black pressure that rolled outward like a forming storm wall. The Draugr closest to him,massive Nuckelavee and armored Berserkers, staggered as if pushed by invisible hands. Their bones creaked. Their spears rattled against trembling fingers. Some even dropped to one knee, overwhelmed by the primal instinct of prey facing a predator wearing the shape of a man.
The frost on the ground cracked.The air vibrated with a deep, thrumming resonance.The sky dimmed, not from clouds, but from Daniel's presence bending ambient mana toward him like a hungry vortex.
Even Astrid Skyrend, who had faced giants, spirits, and corrupted beasts, felt the hairs on her neck rise.
From her front-line position, Astrid braced her shield and scanned the battlefield, watching Daniel tear through undead giants as if swatting flies. When the shockwave of his last strike rolled past her, she dug her boots into the soil to stay upright.
A spear-wielding Draugr lunged at her.She intercepted it with a shield bash that split its skull but even this kill felt small compared to the cataclysm unfolding at the center.
Astrid exhaled a steadying breath.
"That one… that man…" she muttered, eyes tracking Daniel's blurring silhouette. "Is he, by the Nine what in the frozen name of the All-Father is he?"
Farrah Lazarus, nearby and weaving vine walls with sweeping gestures of her staff, answered without looking.
"A headache for whatever he's fighting," she said sharply, controlling a tangle of roots that wrapped around three Draugr necks and snapped them like wet branches.
Astrid frowned. "That doesn't explain anything."
Farrah exhaled, sweat glistening across her brow from mana exertion, then spared Astrid a brief glance.
"His name is Daniel Laeanna Rothchester," she said."Netherborn. Our Guild Lord. And the reason we're not dead already."
Astrid blinked, gripping her shield tighter."Netherborn… like the old tales? The Dark Wanderer? The one who bends the boundary between life and death?"
Farrah shrugged, vines bursting from the ground and forming a wall that redirected a Berserker charge.
"If the stories scare children, multiply that by ten. Then it's close."
Astrid felt something inside her twist, a mix of awe and fear.
"And he fights for you?" she asked breathlessly.
Farrah corrected her with a grim smirk."No. He fights for what he believes is worth protecting. We just happen to be standing on the same battlefield."
Before Astrid could reply, a deafening explosion flared at the center.
Both women instinctively turned.
Daniel swung the gunblade downward, and a tidal surge of void-black fire exploded outward in a sweeping arc. The ground in front of him fractured open, splitting the clearing as though struck by a divine hammer.
A wave of Draugr,at least forty, were lifted into the air like brittle leaves caught in a superheated gale.
Those closest disintegrated instantly, turned to drifting ash.
Those further away ignited, their flesh evaporating while their bones glowed white before collapsing into powder.
The shockwave rolled across the battlefielda deep, thunderous roar that rattled armor, shook trees, and shredded the fog into spirals.
Astrid's eyes widened, her voice barely a whisper:"Spirits preserve us…"
Farrah only nodded grimly."That's Daniel on a calm day."
With wrath and grace, Daniel moved through the undead ranks like a phantom general orchestrating the end of an era.
Every slash tore fissures through the ground.Every bullet burned holes through the Nuckelavee the size of shields.Every step he took carried a ripple of Netherborn gravity, making Draugr sink into the earth as if drowning in invisible mud.
He twisted his blade.
He carved through three Berserkers in one motion.
He fired a concentrated rune shot.
He erased an entire platoon of undead in a beam of white flame that melted the air around it.
But Daniel wasn't simply fighting, he was testing the battlefield, shaping it, molding it.
He subtly shifted terrain with micro-resonance pulses, conjuring slopes beneath Draugr feet, trapping them in pockets of collapsing soil, or pushing them into funnel points where Farrah's vines and Cody's shockwaves could obliterate them with precision.
This was not chaos.This was not madness.This was orchestration, a symphony of destruction.
And Daniel conducted it with effortless wrath.
Astrid watched in silent disbelief as Daniel vaporized another charging monstrosity.
Now she understood why Farrah and Cody looked at him with reverence.Now she understood why the Draugr shuddered at his approach.Now she understood why the air itself bent around him.
She whispered, almost reverently:
"He's not a wanderer… He's not a warrior…"
Farrah nodded once, adjusting her grip on her staff as vines lashed through Draugr skulls.
"He's the storm that walks."
And as Daniel raised his gunblade,void energy spiraling around the barrel, fire gathering in a coiling vortex,every Draugr on the field, instinctively, irreversibly, knew the end had come.
Even undead creatures were not supposed to hesitate.
Yet the Nuckelavee did.
They stood at the far end of the frost-blasted lake—massive, skinless horse-revenants with exposed muscle cords and rider-forms fused to their spines—snorting clouds of black vapor. Their usually mindless hunger fractured beneath something older, deeper, and infinitely more terrifying than their own animating curse.
They could feel it.
Not death-energy controlling the creature before them…
…but the creature controlling death-energy.
Daniel, armored in obsidian void-plating that pulsed like a living eclipse, walked across the ice with the slow, implacable cadence of a divine executioner. The remaining Nuckelavee had witnessed what he did to their kin just seconds earlier: ten bodies turned to dust in an instant. No lingering spirit. No returning corpse. No corruption left floating. Whatever he was devouring, it erased the very concept of undeath.
Something not even ancient necromancers could do.
A primal fear, echoing from the remnants of the lives they once had, crawled up their undead spines.
The lake beneath Daniel had frozen solid moments ago when the fog condensed into rime-crystals, yet his footsteps shattered it again and again. Each step detonated with explosive cracks, spider-webbing fissures across the ice like a piledriver slamming into a glacier. Shards leapt upward, suspended briefly as if the air itself recoiled from his presence.
Netherborn chaos-energy hammered downward with every footfall—deep, heavy, seismic.A ring-shaped fracture spread outward. A ripple of frost lifted from the surface like a wave of shattered glass.
Even the Nuckelavee flinched.
Daniel stopped at the perfect killing distance.
His gunblade, still in his left hand—hung low, its runes dimming to a deep ember-glow. With his right hand, he slowly lifted his arm, palm open toward the horde. His Void Armor responded like a living conduit; lines of purple-black light streaked across its plates, converging at his wrist.
Then it happened.
A new rune ignited.
No, two.
A fire rune symbol materialize with help of his void armor, as large as a full-sized warrior shield, flared into existence before Daniel's open hand.A second rune, nearly identical but etched with counter-directional strokes, spun above the first—rotating so fast it became a ring of molten-red light.
Farrah froze.
Cody's breath caught.
"By the gods…" Farrah whispered. "He—he's overlapping them. Not combining… not reinforcing… but harmonizing two fire-runes at once!"
The two runes synchronized.
Not fused.Not stacked.Not merged.
Harmonized.
The runes pulsed together with alternating beats—like two hearts sharing one body. They produced a resonance that throbbed through the battlefield, shaking snow from pines, cracking the remaining ice, sending tremors through every corpse still moving. The air around Daniel distorted with heat so intense it bent light into rippling waves.
Cody screamed into the comms:
"SKALD-BORN! SHIELDS UP! BRACE FOR IMPACT! NOW!"
But the warriors were still mid-battle, locked with Draugr who had clawed their way through the initial defenses. They didn't understand. They didn't see what was forming in Daniel's hand. They only felt the temperature spike, the ice groan, the sky tremble.
And the Nuckelavee?
They knew.
They felt their tether, the necro-thread that animated their undead bodies, strain as Daniel's death-energy manipulation began pulling every corrupted soul toward him like a black hole.
The horde stumbled back.Muscles tensed.Hooves scraped frozen ground.
Too late.
A vortex of swirling red rune light formed between Daniel's fingers, compressing into a point of incandescent fury.
His voice, colder than the lake beneath him, carried across the battlefield:
"Plasma Genesis version two, Rune Harmony...Cataclysm."
The runes slammed together.
A soundless flash exploded outward
followed by a roar that shredded the air itself.
The lake didn't just crack.
It erupted.
Solid ice liquified then instantly vaporized in a line directly toward the Nuckelavee. A beam of harmonized fire-energy, dense as plasma, sharp as a blade, tore across the battlefield. Where it passed, matter didn't burn.
It ceased to exist.
Draugr caught in the edge dissolved into ash so fine it vanished in the wind. The Nuckelavee in the beam's path were erased mid-charge, their screams cut off before reaching their own throats.
The wave continued, splitting glaciers, warping the ground, carving a new trench through the lakebed itself.
Farrah choked on her breath.
"He… he just rewrote the rune structure of flame. That's not magic anymore. That's annihilation."
Cody watched, stunned.
"And he controlled it… with one hand."
The beam faded slowly, leaving a scorched path of steam, vaporized fog, shattered ice, and absolute silence.
Daniel lowered his hand.
Not a single Nuckelavee remained standing.
The battlefield itself had been rewritten by Netherborn will.
And he had only used a prototype of his new technique.
The East wind surged first.
A cold, mountain-born gale that slammed across the battlefield and shoved the superheated steam aside like curtains ripped open by a titan's hand. As the haze parted, the world did not reveal victoryIt revealed silence.A silence so total that warriors froze mid-movement, healers paused mid-bandage, and even the dying stopped crying out.
Because what stood before them was no longer a battlefield.
It was a wound carved into the skin of the earth.
The frozen lake, once thick enough to hold wagons, had not cracked.It had not shattered.It had ceased to exist, vaporized into spiraling, ghost-white steam pillars that drifted into the sky like souls fleeing the realm.
Where the lake once lay, a monstrous crevice tore through the landscape—nearly a mile long.Five feet deep at its shallowest.Far deeper at places where the ground had liquefied then cooled into glass, the blast carving into bedrock like a burning quill writing across the earth.
The trench ended only because it met the mountains.
And even there, the devastation did not stop.
The mountain's face looked punched inward, stone bowed like clay. Entire shelves of rock had collapsed, avalanches thundering down in slow echoing waves. The echoes rumbled for minutes, like the mountain itself protested the wound inflicted upon it.
The swamp clearing, birthplace of the undead horde, was unrecognizable.What once was tangled mire and half-frozen muck was now a plowed wasteland, earth peeled aside in long furrows, trees uprooted and hurled like snapped javelins. Roots hung exposed like the veins of a flayed beast. Mud had fused into blackened glass, splintered and smoking.
Nothing about this was natural.Nothing about this was survivable.Nothing about this was possible.
Farrah found her voice first, though it quivered like a wire stretched too tight.
"He didn't burn the lake…He erased it," she whispered. "He erased water. He boiled the land. He split bedrock—and he did it with a spell he invented twenty minutes ago."
One Skald-born commander—his beard rimed in frost and dust, armor dented by undead claws—stared at the crevice like it might swallow him next.
"This is not battle," he murmured."This is a calamity given form."
Another commander, blood still dripping from a cut above his brow, shook his head in disbelief.
"If that blast turned even a few degrees toward the village…"His voice cracked."We would have lost everything. Every home. Every family. All the way to the outer cliffs."
Cody stepped beside Farrah, rune-spectacles sparking as they tried to interpret the lingering energy. The lenses flickered violently, overwhelmed by what they detected.
"This isn't fire… or chaos," he muttered."It's annihilation harmonics. The runes didn't burn matter—they erased the bonds that hold matter together."
The nearby warriors shifted uneasily. Even those hardened by years of Draugr hunts—the kind of warriors whose lullabies were battle cries, felt something ancient and primal coil inside their chests.
Because what Daniel had done was not a spell.Not a weapon.Not even an act of war.
It was a fundamental rewriting of reality.
Then came the footsteps.
Heavy.Dragging.Wet stone against metal.Something breathing like a bellows drowning in tar.
From the last scraps of fog, a shape broke through.
A twenty-foot mountain troll, undead, stitched by death-energy, its skin a granite mosaic of rot and exposed bone. Its ribs jutted out like broken ledges. One arm was gone, charred away entirely by Daniel's blast. Its remaining hand dragged a war axe large enough that a boar, or a horse, could be cleaved in one swing.
Compared to the troll, even a charging bull elephant would have looked like prey.
It shouldn't have been standing. Not after that devastation.But there it was, limping, steaming gore hissing from the stump, death-energy dripping from its jaw like molten tar.
Drawn toward Daniel's aura.Drawn toward the command of death it sensed.Drawn like a dying moth to a star made of poison.
Astrid Skyrend raised her frost-spear, its runes flaring in defiant blue. Her armor smoked from claw marks and frost backlash, but her stance remained iron.
"Shield-wall forward!" she barked. "No one breaks. The beast goes through us before it reaches the wounded!"
Her two commanders stepped up beside her.
"That monster survived that?" one whispered.
"No," the other replied grimly."It didn't survive. It endures because something keeps forcing it to move."
Astrid inhaled through her teeth before shouting:
"We face what stands, not what died!"
Behind them, the Lazarus Guild non-combatants scrambled to stabilize the injured. Alchemical mist hissed as it cleansed infection. Binding wraps glowed faintly as they knitted flesh. But even the trained Guild healers couldn't hide their trembling hands.
They had seen Daniel fight before.
But never like this.
A young Skald-born warrior, barely twenty winters old, shoulder shredded, looked up at Farrah, eyes wide and glassy.
"H-He is one of you? One of your Guild?" His voice wavered between prayer and terror.
Farrah's gaze didn't move from the troll limping across the flattened swamp, the miles-long scar Daniel had carved etched in fire-lit devastation.
"He is a Lazarus," she said softly, her voice low, haunted. "But… he is also something far older now. Something that chooses to stand with us again."
"Again?" the young warrior stammered. "You mean… that being wages war beside your clan?"
Farrah's green eyes flicked toward Daniel's silhouette, veiled in steam and chaos. "Something like that. He is unpredictable. And what you're witnessing… it's not even half of what he can do."
The warrior's voice caught, almost breaking. "Not even half? Then… he's a god!"
Cody, standing beside her, shook his head, soot flecking his rune-glasses. His voice hitched, awed. "No… he's still human. Well, he still bleeds red blood. But what he became, the Netherborn… it's something different. Something that bends death and chaos to his will."
Farrah nodded. "The Netherborn form, what you saw… that's his other side. A being forged from both life and unlife, able to manipulate matter, energy, even the very death in the world around him. And yet… he's still him."
Cody adjusted his rune-specs, a low hiss escaping as the sensors struggled to comprehend the residual chaos. "And whatever he's becoming," he murmured, voice tense, "he's not finished."
Astrid shifted slightly, lowering her spear by an inch but keeping her eyes locked on the troll. "What do you mean… not finished?"
Farrah didn't break her gaze from Daniel. "Every strike he lands, every movement he makes, he learns. He pushes the boundaries of the Netherborn lineage, teaches himself new ways to fight, new ways to control chaos, new ways to end his enemies. Every second he fights… he grows stronger."
Cody's voice dropped to a whisper, scanning the battlefield. "We're not watching him unleash his full power, Jarl… we're watching him learn how to use it. And with the speed he's mastering it, nothing, nothing, will survive if he decides it."
Astrid's jaw tightened. "And that troll?"
Cody's eyes flicked toward the lumbering mountain of flesh and bone. "It doesn't understand enough to fear him yet. But soon…" He nodded toward Daniel, now striding through the steam and shattered earth, gunblade in hand, chaos energy shimmering along its edge. "…soon it will."
Farrah added quietly, almost to herself, "And everything else out there… every Draugr, every monster… every threat we've faced so far… it will learn fear. Because him standing there, in that form… it is death given shape, and it chooses who dies."
The young warrior swallowed hard, eyes wide, as the thunderous sound of Daniel's boots echoed across the scarred battlefield. The swamp, the ice, the shattered earth—all trembled under the presence of the Netherborn.
The troll's footsteps tore through the shattered swamp like thunder ripping through valleys. Each strike of its massive, gore-caked foot dented the earth, shattering the blackened glass of Daniel's previous blast. The war axe it wielded the size of a grown man, swung in wide, slow arcs, threatening to cleave anyone caught within its terrifying radius.
But Daniel did not flinch.
He hovered just above the ground, the smoke from the evaporated lake curling around him, his black-silver gun blade humming faintly with residual chaos energy. Omni-Resonance rippled outward in subtle pulses, just twenty percent of its full capacity unsealed, but enough to let him feel the battlefield as if it were a living entity. Every heartbeat of the troll, every vibration of its massive muscles, every corrupted particle of energy feeding Mira's presence inside it pulsed through him like a song of death.
He saw her, the shadow of Mira, now something inhuman, her essence fused to the troll's body like rot and black fire entwined. Her eyes glowed faintly through the gaps in the corrupted flesh, the unmistakable spark of her mind still there, but twisted, broken. Daniel exhaled once, sharply. There was no hesitation in his gaze. Mira was no longer human. She needed to die.
The troll raised its axe, smashing the ground and sending shards of blackened earth spiraling like shrapnel. The shockwave would have flattened lesser beings instantly. Daniel moved. He vanished in a streak of void-light, reappearing just beneath the troll's right arm. He twisted his body upward, slashing the gunblade in a diagonal arc along the massive limb. Chaos-Resonance energy cascaded from the blade, slicing through sinew, muscle, and partially decayed bone. The troll staggered—not out of pain, but recognition. The energy was foreign, controlled by something it could not comprehend.
He vaulted over the swing of the war axe, spinning in midair as the gun blade's barrel spat a rapid-fire of rune-infused Ignition Rounds. Each bullet carved arcs of white-hot flame through the troll's armor-like flesh. Steam hissed as molten bone vaporized, a ringing echo of chaos energy shaking the swamp like a drumbeat of apocalypse.
The troll roared. A sound that could have toppled mountains, its fury focused entirely on Daniel. Yet Daniel's Omni-Resonance allowed him to anticipate every micro-shift in its staggering, corrupted form.
He pivoted, striking again. The gun blade's chaos-edge split the troll's leg, severing a tendon so massive that it would have anchored a mountain. The creature stumbled, but Daniel did not stop.
He knew Mira's location inside the troll. Omni-Resonance guided every slash, every shot, every pulse of energy toward her corrupted core.
With a twisting leap, he activated a martial technique reserved for monsters and Netherborn alike. The gun blade became a spinning whirlwind, black and silver arcs cutting through both matter and spiritual essence. Ignition Rounds fired continuously, each rune-carved bullet seeking Mira's corrupted consciousness.
The troll screamed, not for itself, but for the shadow of Mira within. Its axe swung wildly, but Daniel's martial rhythm was perfect. He danced among the monstrous arms, dashing over fallen trees, sliding across shards of ice and stone, and striking again and again with precision so fast that each slash seemed to occupy a different place in space simultaneously.
Finally, he landed on the troll's shoulder, spinning the gun blade in a vertical arc. Flames erupted along the spine of the blade, while the chaos edge tore into the back of the troll's head. Mira's presence flared like a black sun, twisting, screaming, reaching for control, but Daniel's Omni-Resonance, even at twenty percent, suffused the battlefield, guiding the energy around him like a conductor orchestrating an apocalypse.
With a final, deafening swing, the gun blade pierced the troll's chest. The Ignition Rounds embedded in the core erupted, consuming corrupted flesh and spiritual energy alike. Mira's essence screamed in a voice that cracked reality itself.
The mountain troll fell to its knees, then collapsed forward in a storm of shattered earth, fire, and black smoke. The swamp trembled, the ground torn in long fissures from the force of Daniel's attack. Mira's last echo, the twisted, corrupted shadow, dissolved into nothingness, leaving the battlefield eerily quiet for the first time in hours.
Farrah's jaw dropped. Cody's rune-glasses hissed and smoked, trying to interpret the aftermath. Astrid Skyrend tightened her grip on her frost-spear, her voice almost a whisper:
"By the gods… that was… a single being?"
Farrah didn't answer immediately, her eyes glued to the spot where Daniel now hovered above the ruined swamp, gun blade humming softly.
"Yes," she said finally. "But he is more than a single being. He's a storm… and a lesson. Mira… is gone. And yet, the battlefield itself remembers what just happened."
Cody added, voice low and trembling:"And we're still alive… somehow. Only because he chose to fight with us. again"
Astrid's eyes narrowed as she surveyed the devastation. Her remaining warriors shivered under the oppressive weight of the Netherborn presence.
"Then we move forward," she said, voice firm but haunted. "Because if he fought like this… what else is still coming?"
The swamp lay in ruins, the lake vanished, the crevices deep, the forest torn apart—and in the center of it all, Daniel hovered, gun blade ready, eyes glowing with that same terrifying, commanding light.
The apocalypse had paused… only for a heartbeat.
The battlefield fell into a tense, almost unnatural hush. The steam of Daniel's previous cataclysm still drifted across the swamp, curling around the shattered trees and gouged earth. The lake had vanished, replaced by a scar of ice, mud, and molten stone.
Daniel strode carefully across the terrain, his gunblade dragging slightly over the fractured ground, eyes scanning. The remaining Draugr, disoriented by the loss of their animating death-energy, were slower, weaker, hesitating in their movements. The energy that had poured from the marshlands—the dark pulse that had sustained the horde, was gone. With it, the undead no longer moved with the uncanny precision of the full army. Many collapsed back into the earth as if the soil itself had been reclaiming them.
Yet Daniel knew better. The remaining creatures, though fatigued, were still formidable. Those who lingered retained the instincts, reflexes, and remnants of power that had made their kind so dangerous. Even at a fraction of their strength, a direct clash could still mean death.
Farrah stepped forward, crouching beside a wounded Skald-born soldier while keeping one eye on Daniel. Her voice was calm, though there was a tremor of awe beneath it.
"See that?" she said softly to Cody, nodding toward Daniel. "He's not just walking the battlefield—he's inspecting it. Each movement, each glance… he's calculating, testing. He watches the undead, watches the terrain, and watches us."
Cody's rune-lenses hummed, recording the residual chaos energy in the air. "He's always testing," he murmured. "Not just the enemies. Anyone he thinks might align with him… anyone who could be part of his reasoning. That's why he steps carefully, why he observes before he strikes again. Netherborn… that's how they learn and judge."
Farrah's green eyes followed Daniel as he moved closer to the remaining Draugr. "He doesn't just kill," she said quietly. "He measures. He probes. He tests the limits of those around him, even allies, to see if they are… worthy of trust. If their intent aligns with his… or if they are too weak to understand. That's the nature of a Netherborn."
The ground vibrated faintly beneath Daniel's boots. Even the air seemed to recognize the presence of a being attuned to life and death simultaneously. The remaining Draugr trembled as he passed, their hollow eyes flickering with an unspoken dread. They sensed the difference: this was no controller of death-energy, they were facing the master of it.
Astrid Skyrend, her frost-speared hand still raised, observed in silence. She could see now why the younger Skald-born warriors had stared in disbelief. The Netherborn was not merely a fighter, he was a storm that judged and executed simultaneously, bending both battlefield and enemy to his will.
Farrah glanced at Astrid, speaking just above the wind's hum. "That's why he survives, Jarl. That's why he becomes stronger each time he steps into battle. Every move, every opponent, every ally he learns, he tests, and he decides who is worthy. He's not just a weapon… he's the arbiter of his own order."
Cody added, adjusting his rune-lens again, eyes wide as he scanned the lingering undead. "And the Draugr… they can feel it. They know that the energy they relied on… that's gone. He doesn't just fight them, he turns their own power against them, even passively. The swamp itself remembers who commands it."
Daniel paused mid-stride, eyes flicking toward the far edge of the scarred battlefield, toward the last of the struggling undead. A ripple of black and green energy danced around his gun blade, faint sigils of his rune harmony forming in the air. Even without striking, the remaining Draugr hesitated, unsteady, their connection to the death-energy of the marshlands fractured completely.
The battlefield seemed to hold its breath.