Chapter 97: The Verdict of the Fallen Messiah
The atmosphere in the tent was thick with the scent of old parchment and the hum of the Avrem. Leornars stood over a stone table, his gaze fixed on the empty space where a map should be. He didn't look like a conqueror; he looked like an architect of inevitability.
He turned his head slightly toward Zhyelena. "Get me a map of the Durmount Kingdom. Every natural landscape, every terrace, every hidden fold in the earth. I want the world they think they can hide in."
Zhyelena didn't nod; she simply ceased to exist in that space. A sonic boom rippled through the room a second after her departure.
She was a blur of silver and crimson, her feet barely touching the mountain peaks as she crossed the border. To the common eye, she was nothing more than a sudden gust of wind that smelled faintly of ozone. She breached the Durmount capital's perimeter, leaping across rooftops with the grace of a predatory cat. She didn't head for the palace—palace maps were for pride; library maps were for truth.
She slid through the window of the Royal Archive, her boots clicking softly on the marble. She paused, smoothing the creases of her dress and flicking a stray silver hair from her shoulder. With the poise of a noblewoman, she approached the desk.
The elderly librarian looked up, blinking. "Oh! Hello there, dear. You're quite late. How can I help you?"
"Hello," Zhyelena said, her voice like velvet over a blade. "Where can I find a comprehensive topographical map of the kingdom?"
"Aisle seven, tucked among the history books," the librarian said with a gentle smile. "Planning a trip?"
Zhyelena found the map, its edges yellowed with age. She rolled it up and walked back to the desk. She looked at the librarian, a brief flash of genuine pity crossing her eyes. "You are a good person. Truly. It's a shame."
"A shame? What is—"
The librarian's words hit empty air. Zhyelena was gone.
Back in the war room, Leornars had already cleared the table. Zhyelena appeared in a swirl of shadows, laying the map flat.
"Since you were Lurtra's former princess," Leornars said, his finger tracing the jagged lines of the border, "I trust you know the locations suited for guerrilla tactics. The places where a desperate man might feel brave."
Zhyelena leaned over the table, her eyes narrowing. "I know every cave and hollow. But Lord... why? Our numbers are overwhelming. We could march through the front gates and end this by noon."
"Numbers are a blunt instrument," Leornars replied calmly. "The nobility are like rats. When the house burns, they don't fight the fire; they find the holes they dug months ago. I don't want a siege. I want an extermination of their hope."
Stacian, standing in the corner with her hands folded, added, "Correct. The possibility of them receiving aid from treacherous border towns or foreign mercenaries is never zero. We close the holes first."
Zhyelena understood. She vanished into Leornars's shadow, reappearing a moment later with a second map—the Avangard territories. She pointed to a series of caverns near the Lurtra town border. "Here. If we station troops at these three junctions, the nobility will have nowhere to run but into our blades."
"Perfect," Leornars said. "Take two thousand of the undead. Seal the exits."
His gaze shifted to the rivers. He picked up a pen, the ink appearing blacker than night. He marked the great dams that sat like crowns above the capital. "Stacian. Reroute the tributaries. Make the rivers feed the capital directly. Break the banks, overflow the dams. I want a wave pool that washes away the very memory of their streets."
Stacian bowed, a small, cold smile on her lips. "By your will, Lord Leornars." She vanished into a fold of space.
In the Grand Chamber of Durmount, the smell of incense had been replaced by the stench of terror.
"Silence!" Duke Valerius roared, slamming his fist onto the mahogany table. "The King is dead! The wards were erased like chalk on a board! The White Plague is not coming—he is here!"
"I heard he didn't even draw his sword," Countess Elara whispered, her silk fan shaking in her hand. "He spoke, and the King's soul simply... evaporated. No afterlife. No rebirth. Just a void where a man used to be."
"Which is why we are leaving," Valerius hissed. "The Lurtra tunnels. Now!"
They scrambled into the dark, clutching gold and ancient titles as if they could buy their way out of a conceptual trap. They panted, their expensive boots splashing through the muck of the tunnels they had spent months secretly digging.
"Once we hit the Neutral Zone," Lord Maros wheezed, "he won't bother with us. We'll be ghosts."
"He doesn't need to follow you," a voice echoed through the stone.
The nobles froze. At the end of the tunnel stood Zhyelena. Her eyes glowed a predatory crimson, reflecting off the blade of her dagger.
"Scum,I guess Lord Leornars was right, you are rats in the dark" she spat.. The nobles tried to turn back to flee till heavy footsteps echoed behind them as the knights of Avangard began to appear behind them as Zhyelena stood Infront of them., their eyes drawn of color upon the realization of their defeat, one charged to Zhyelena with a rock, she instantly vanished instantly appearing behind him holding his head as the body dropped down.,a cruel smile on her lips.
The screams that followed never reached the surface.
At the mountain tributaries, Stacian pulled a map from her pink purse, checking the coordinates with a bored sigh. She lifted a single finger toward the rushing water.
"[Chain Breaker: Revert to the Old World]."
The laws of physics screamed as they were rewritten. The river didn't just overflow; it bucked like a wild animal, the very ground tilting to force the water toward the capital. Stacian moved to the dams, her presence shattering the stone structures by sheer proximity.
A massive wall of water, a literal mountain of liquid destruction, surged toward Durmount.
Leornars floated high above the chaos. Below, the remaining knights of Durmount were attempting a desperate march toward Lurtra to flank the invaders.
"I'm not interested in a long, boring battle," Leornars said to the air. "Zhyier. Break them."
Zhyier sheathed his daggers and looked down at the knights from the cliffside. "You heard the King. Break them apart!"
The Avangard troops didn't use arrows. They picked up boulders the size of carriages, hurling them with unnatural strength. The sound of metal crushing bone was rhythmic and terrible. The knights tried to flee, but Zhyier slammed his palms together, erecting a shimmering violet barrier. They were trapped in a slaughter-box.
The Cathedral of Libera stood as the final bastion of the old world. The High Priest knelt at the altar, his eyes wide with madness.
"Oh, Gods! Libera! God of Law! Save your children!"The roaring of the water had been replaced by a sound far more unsettling: the rhythmic, hollow thlap-thlap of waves hitting the second-story windows of the capital.
Durmount, once a jewel of marble and gold, was now a stagnant basin. The flood hadn't just brought water; it had brought the silt of the mountains and the debris of a broken civilization. Thousands of bodies—knights, servants, and the very horses they rode—bobbed in the gray expanse like discarded dolls.
Leornars descended from the sky, his boots touching the surface of the water. He didn't sink. He walked across the liquid grave as if it were solid glass, the water beneath his feet freezing into thin, blackened ice with every step.
"Report," Leornars commanded.
Zhyelena appeared beside him, her dress miraculously dry despite the chaos. She looked out over the drowned city, her expression unreadable. "The capital's heart has stopped. The lower districts were submerged within minutes. Those who survived are huddled on the rooftops of the Great Library and the Royal Palace. They are waiting for a rescue that isn't coming. The rats have been exterminated"
"And the survivors?" Leornars asked.
"The soldiers are ready," she replied, gesturing toward the cliffs.
On the ridges surrounding the city, the Avangard troops stood in perfect, terrifying silence. They didn't cheer. They didn't celebrate. They simply watched. Among them, the 2,000 undead servants Leornars had granted Zhyelena stood like statues, their red eyes glowing in the twilight.
"Stacian," Leornars called out.
The space beside him folded, and Stacian stepped out of the void. She was holding her pink purse, looking over the flooded landscape with the critical eye of a gardener looking at a patch of weeds.
"The rerouting is permanent, Lord Leornars," Stacian reported. "The geography of this region has been altered. Even if they tried to drain it, the land itself now 'desires' to be a lake, the water stays."
"Good," Leornars said. He looked toward the Royal Palace, the only structure tall enough to resist the initial surge. On its wide, flat roof, a few hundred survivors—mostly high-ranking officials and their guards—were huddled together.
"Durmount scums huh? How... unfortunate" he said coldly in a calm tone, he fired a helveklev on the mass as he spotted a priest holding his rosary,he vanished. The priest hel his rosary his eyes to the skies.
A shadow fell over him as Leornars appeared on the roof looking at the priest his eyes glowing brightly crimson.The Priest looked up to see Leornars standing amidst the burning roof. In his left hand, he casually held the severed head of a nun; in his right, a flickering sphere of Dark Aria.
"God?" Leornars asked, his voice a low, terrifying hum.
He crushed the Dark Aria, and the resulting void-flame vaporized the altar and the ceiling in an instant. The holy symbols melted into slag.
Leornars stepped closer, his crimson eyes burning through the smoke. "I asked you a question, Priest. What God?"
The Priest could only gurgle in terror.
"There is no law here but mine," Leornars whispered, leaning down until his cold breath touched the priest's ear. "Tell me... where is your God now?"