A thousand violent notes, war cries, clashing steel, shrieks, and inhuman roars, rose together, a deafening storm that swallowed the whole of level six. in that uproar, a brutal free-for-all cracked open its jaws.
The very first collision came when the tight phalanx of the imperial Guard smashed into the ghostly vanguard of the Demonic Soul Army.
Spears stabbed straight through the vaporous wraiths, meeting only chill fog that felt like mockery. Bone blades, however, pierced breastplates as though the metal were paper.
One young guardsman thrust, missed, then felt a blade kiss his throat. He fell, clutching crimson, eyes wide with disbelief, and the wraiths fed on before the blood cooled.
“Channel your power into the steel, souls hate soul-fire!” Rylan bellowed, his voice ripping through the chaos.
Golden energy flared along his saber. One sweeping arc struck a wraith, the specter screamed, curled into smoke, and vanished.
Soldiers copied at once, sheathing every spear and sword in trembling light. Dark mist burned away, yet the wraiths kept coming, an endless tide slamming again and again against the staggering line.
Leonel swung his Blaze Sword, flames roaring from the crimson edge. Each broad strike birthed a rolling firestorm that swallowed dozens of souls at a time. Within the inferno, the wraiths writhed, then crumbled to drifting ash.
“Now that’s more like it!” Leonel laughed, heat and smoke curling around his grin.
He vaulted high, bringing the burning blade down on a twin-axe soul general. Axes crossed, the general blocked, but the fire scorched its smoky body, drawing curls of black vapor. Leonel barely landed before fresh wraiths surged behind him, bone daggers stabbing for his unguarded back.
“Behind you!” Yuliana’s warning cut through the air. She arrived in a blur, sword trailing teal wind.
A vortex of that light battered the daggers aside, shattering them to dust. Back to back, sword and flaming blade moved as one, carving a bloody ring amid the shadows.
“Thanks,” Leonel panted, wiping sweat and soot from his brow. “There are too many, we can’t hold forever.”
“Hold on,” Yuliana answered through clenched teeth, sword darting forward to impale another wraith. “A way out always shows itself if we last long enough.”
Beyond the wraiths, tens of thousands of Demonic Cultivators surged into the melee as well. Long scorned beneath humans, beasts, and especially the aloof sky-born clan, they now tasted a chance to rise, and they fought like beings starved of pride.
Not far off, Thastrum burst into golden radiance. Each hammering Gold Cloud Fist scattered clusters of wraiths like smoke before a gale, his strikes landing one after another, relentless as a war-drum.
Thastrum burst through the hazy black tide like a tiger loosed from an iron cage. Every blow of his golden fists shattered the formless shades, their howls snuffed out the instant they met his aura.
A towering soul-giant lurched forward, iron hammer whistling downward. Thastrum sprang into the stroke instead of away from it, knuckles blazing.
Metal met flesh. The clash cracked the air. The hammer spun end over end into the storming darkness, and the giant staggered. Before the phantom could steady itself, Thastrum‘s next punch crushed its chest. The creature’s body of mist exploded into drifting sparks.
Spearmen fashioned of shadow poured in from every direction, points darting like a nest of vipers. Thastrum whirled, parrying shaft after shaft, but steel tongues still scraped his skin. Golden light guttered across his arms, dimming with each fresh cut.
Farther back, Half-Beast King Imorn, still bleeding from Oronin’s earlier strike, forced himself upright. Gold markings crawled across his striped hide again, and the claw on his right paw flashed as sharp as tempered glass.
