The southern highway shone under the midday sun. Recent magical repairs left the cobblestones gleaming. Hours ago, the road was wide, fortified, peaceful.
But now, the route had tightened into a gilded noose.
The caravan flaunted opulence and menace. Fifteen wagons advanced in disciplined formation, spaced for optimal defense. Armored vanguard carriages led and followed, bristling with spiked wheels, rotating mana cannons, and mounted shock-rods.
Between these vanguards rolled ten soulcarriages. Their sleek obsidian frames were etched with glowing suppression runes and sigils of ownership. Black mirrors on wheels.
Each blacksteel-bound unit was a prison for the best slaves money could buy. Not worn laborers. Not bred stock. These were noble-blooded, battle-trained, magically gifted elite captives—freshly acquired, never before sold.
The cages weren't iron bars. They were engineered showcases.
Soulsteel plating. Glass-reinforced slits. Formation locks guarded each unit. Internal stasis fields stabilized cultivators. No hope for escape. No room for resistance.
Two of the carriages had extra protection, marked with golden glyphs on their sides. Inside were the merchant's most prized captives: three master dwarven smiths from Deepflame Hold, each renowned for their skill and worth more than a minor noble's estate.
Five noble-born elves were held nearby, young and refined, rumored descendants of highblood houses near the Davona-Alta border. Etchings of heritage marked their ears; fire remained in their eyes, though suppression collars stifled every trace of their power.
The other eight carriages held a mix of magical and martial talent that isn't often found in one place:
- Elven druids, spellcasters who are bound to nature and have a special love for long-lost herbcraft.
- Mage-healers, who learned their healing arts in the sacred groves and are very good at it.
- Young commoner elves who are beautiful, flexible, and exotic but not trained.
- Dwarven engineers, rune carvers, and blacksmiths, their hands are tied not only by chains, but also by the fear of death if they try to shape sigils with their fingers alone.
- Five dwarven brewmasters-alchemists, who are hard to find even on the black market, are said to be able to make potions that can change fate itself.
Ten cultivators were the real danger: six mages, Core Realm Ranks 4 to 9; four fighters, levels 7 to 10. Collars glowed as they fought for breath. Their work brought only pain.
None of them knew how to fight. None of them could get away.
Each slave was a brand-new, not-recycled or broken soulbound asset. Along the Davona-Alta border, black-robed soulmasters carved their bindings, which were paid for in blood and silence.
It was a floating fortune. A legend of the black trade in motion.
In the middle of the carnage, Bernard Lothan, the master-merchant of the Eastwind Guild, sat shaking.
He crouched behind the broken axle of his command wagon, face pale, sleeves soaked in sweat. He clutched the red soul register—a lifeline. Its gem glowed, making him twitch. It wasn't just a death record. It tallied debt.
Because it tallied debt.
"My elves... my smiths... gods above, those collars cost more than a palace dome..." he whispered, voice broken.
Every heartbeat felt like his chest was being flayed alive.
He wasn't simply afraid for his life—he watched his legacy bleed away.
Three years.
Three years. Backroom deals. Favors exchanged with corrupt generals. Nights bribing nobles to fake missing person reports. Secret auctions in vaults. Forged seals. Silent assassins to remove objectors. Villages burned, all to smuggle one elf.
And now?
Now the Black Fang Bandits had come.
The Black Fang Bandits were more regimented than a gang. Dressed as brigands, but moving with enforcer discipline. Their attack was swift and precise. More warband than thieves.
No slave had yet been harmed. Not one collar cracked. Not a single cage breached.
But ruin approached in moments.
"Open cage eight!" the Black Fang commander roared from atop a hill of bodies. His armor was half-looted military gear from the southern warfront. His eyes glowed with the strength of the Unity Realm. His voice rang like an executioner's bell.
"Take the cultivator girl—intact. Soulmark's still clean. She'll fetch a prince's ransom in the red auction."
"Aye, Commander!" shouted a lieutenant, dragging over a sledge rune key while three others formed a barrier around the soulcarriage.
Inside, the cultivator girl in question—no older than twenty, with silver hair and trembling lips—watched the glowing key approach her carriage. Her body twitched. She tried to summon even the smallest strand of qi to resist.
Nothing.
The collar burned.
A tear slid down her cheek, but she didn't cry out.
In the other cages, children sobbed. A young elf boy clung to his sister, whispering, "Don't look. Don't look." A dwarven engineer grunted through gritted teeth as the light of the outside world spilled through the view-slit of his prison.
Even the master dwarf in the golden-marked cage finally shifted.
His cold gaze narrowed at the bandits closing in.
Still bound.
Still shackled.
But his fingers curled into the beginnings of fists.
No one moved to help.
The defenders were defeated. Of the fifty-five who had guarded the convoy, only nineteen were left. They huddled near the supply wagons, gasping for breath and staring at the bandits like dying animals.
One of them, a mercenary with a shattered glaive, whispered, "They'll take the slaves… they'll take all of them…"
Bernard covered his ears.
He didn't want to hear it.
Didn't want to believe that this was how it ended.
He would be executed. Sued. Hunted by nobles. Tortured by the black market cartel for failed deliveries.
He would be worthless.
And then it happened.
The air changed.
The wind, which had carried nothing but smoke and screams, suddenly pulled upward.
Every horse in the convoy screamed.
Every bandit froze.
The sky had grown darker. Not storm clouds. Something else. Something immense.
Something alive.
It seemed as if a god's hand had cast darkness across the trees. A thunderclap followed—not from the clouds, but from the very crown of the sky.
A roar came next.
Low. Deep. Ancient.
And then it showed up.
They saw it.
A dragon.
It came down to pass judgment.
And on top of it sat a silver-haired person, still as a statue, with eyes of the deepest sapphire watching everything happen.
The wind shrieked even louder.
And the slaughter hadn't even started yet.
The shadow did not recede.
It had grown.
The shadow stayed. It grew. It swallowed the battlefield, spreading over the bloody highway like a silent storm. Black Fang Bandits—convoy looters, noble killers, village burners—froze, staring upward as a vast winged shape descended.
The wind howled, spiraling.
Leaves burst from trees.
The ground itself shivered.
And then it began.
The sky cracked.
Nimbus, the Azure Tempest Dragon, descended. Judgment incarnate. Lightning danced across his wings and down his spine in bright arcs of raw power. His roar echoed over the hills, a warhorn of thunder. Trees bent. Horses fell. Men collapsed.
And on his head, between his curved, sparking horns, he sat.
Charles.
Hair of silver and blue shimmer. Eyes of deep sapphire, cold and unreadable. His robes fluttered, his blade remained sheathed, and his posture remained unchanged.
He did not rise.
He did not draw.
He did not need to.
Charles looked down at the bandits with the calm detachment of a god watching insects in his temple.
The Black Fang commander's voice cracked.
"W-Who the hell are you?!"
Charles responded only with a glance. And then, with the calm of a man discussing lunch:
"Kill them all. Leave no bandit alive."
No flourish. No ceremony.
Just a command.
Nimbus roared in response, and then it started.
They dropped.
Seven bolts of lightning and steel hurled from the dragon's back, plunging like meteors cloaked in capes and blades.
Kael landed first—his claymore Gravemeld hitting the ground like a mountain falling.
A shockwave burst outward, toppling trees and snapping bones. Earth erupted in jagged spires beneath him as he swept the massive blade in a wide arc, cleaving through four bandits with a single swing.
The ground tried to swallow him.
Instead, the earth obeyed.
"Hold the line, huh?" Kael muttered, stepping forward as runes glowed across his boots. "Time to teach them what unmovable really means."
He swung again, this time upward, sending a spike of compressed rock through the chest of a fleeing spearman. Blood sprayed into the air.
Wendy was already gone.
Her daggers—Whisperfang and Galecrux—flashed once.
And a head rolled free.
Then another.
Then a third, though no one saw her move.
She reappeared behind a shield bearer just as he turned. He blinked, confused.
She tapped his shoulder.
He turned to find his own spine opened cleanly.
"Too slow," she whispered.
She vanished again.
Every breath of wind now carried death.
Karel spun midair, cloak snapping, as his Sunpiercer Longbow lit aflame.
Three arrows notched.
Three arrows fired.
They curved mid-flight, shrieking through a protective barrier and punching through three separate skulls.
Bandits screamed and scattered. He laughed.
"I feel generous today. First man who drops his weapon gets a head start!"
One bandit did.
An arrow exploded beneath his foot, launching him skyward like a firework before he exploded in midair.
Karel grinned. "I lied."
Donald moved like a ghost.
His sword, Stillfang, emitted no sound—only blood.
Wherever he walked, bandits dropped in silence. One even stumbled three paces before realizing his heart had been pierced from behind.
"Pitiful tactics," Donald muttered, slashing upward. "Loud. Lazy. Predictable."
He turned mid-strike, deflecting a blade with the side of his cloak and slit the attacker's throat with a flick of his wrist.
Andy didn't just land; he crashed to the ground with force.
His descent shattered a bandit campfire and collapsed an entire food wagon.
"YEAH! That's what I'm talking about!"
His axe, Ironhowl, glowed blood-red, screaming with joy each time it struck. He waded through bodies like a berserker reborn, cleaving men in half, sending limbs flying.
One bandit tried to retreat—Andy caught him by the throat and hurled him at another.
"I'm having a spiritual moment!" Andy roared, laughing like a man possessed. "Say hello to your spleens!"
Borris entered like a fortress in motion.
The Stoneward Bastion armor wrapped him like living granite. His Crumblebane Shield glowed with sigils as he advanced into the largest group of enemies—and did not stop.
Blades clanged. Spells bounced. Arrows shattered.
Nothing touched him.
He raised the shield, activated Titan's Aegis, and slammed it down.
A ripple of seismic force exploded outward, sending ten men flying. One struck a tree so hard his spine liquefied.
Borris grunted. "Weak."
And above them all floated Rob, cloak fluttering, staff aglow with spinning runes of air and storm.
"I bring poetry!" he declared, flinging his staff outward. "And pain!"
Tempest Pulse erupted—a wall of slicing wind that tore through three swordmen. Typhoon Waltz caught archers mid-draw and spun them like ragdolls.
He twirled.
Arcs of controlled lightning struck three bandits trying to form a shield wall.
"Ah," Rob sighed, sipping from a floating teacup, "you should've read the weather."
Down below, the remaining defenders and slaves simply watched.
The caravan personnel, some still holding bloody swords, dropped to their knees.
The slaves inside the cages were stunned. The noble elves who moments ago trembled now stared through the glass slits of their carriages, watching their would-be captors slaughtered with the grace of a well-rehearsed ballet.
The dwarf with iron skin stared unblinking as a cloaked warrior severed the leg of a Black Fang lieutenant mid-spin.
Even he—unshaken until now—felt something stir.
"…Who are they?" whispered a bound cultivator mage in carriage eight, voice trembling.
Outside, the field was carnage.
Smoke. Fire. Blood. Screams.
One of the elite bandit lieutenants—a Core Realm Rank 9 berserker—howled and charged toward Charles, leaping high with a dual-bladed glaive raised above his head.
Charles didn't move.
He didn't have to.
Nimbus's horns pulsed.
A bolt of white-blue lightning lanced from the sky, reducing the man to ash before he crossed ten feet.
Charles sat still. Calculating.
Watching.
The battlefield wasn't a test.
It was a statement.