On the morning after the snow and ice melted, the eve of winter's end, the northern outpost opened its gates.
Barricades were cleared, trenches filled, and heavily armored troops redeployed to the frontier. Human panting and footsteps mingled with the snorting and clatter of horses, weaving into an ominous roar. Before the bugles sounded, the mist of war gathered over the outpost, poised to unleash a storm that would sweep across the southeastern corner of Tasmalin Province.
After over half a year of blockade, they seemed to have finally cast aside their fear of the plague here and were preparing for a full-scale assault.
The watchtowers detected the situation immediately, and the southeastern garrison assembled in kind. This battle was inevitable, and when it finally arrived, the Tassamarin forces breathed a sigh of relief. Captain Harriet's new troops and the Amazon warriors had trained through the winter. They were tense but not panicked, swiftly organizing their ranks. The time the northern army spent filling the trenches was enough for them to fully arm themselves.
The human forces in the southeast corner formed battle lines suited for combat, wielding weapons crafted by the Dwarves of the Forge. Dwarven craftsmanship had reached its zenith in the age of cold steel. Amazon warriors lay in ambush along the flanks, concealed by the remnant trees. The trenches filled, northern soldiers poured through the gap in the sentry posts, cavalry leading the charge.
The horns sounded.
A long stretch of open ground separated the armies. Before close combat began, the cavalrymen already felt a surge of quiet triumph. This was open, unobstructed terrain—flat as the eye could see, sloping gently from north to south. The incline offered perfect conditions for a cavalry charge. The northern cavalry descended the slope like iron balls dropped from the heavens. Their sheer momentum alone would scatter the opposing forces, let alone the rows of gleaming spearheads.
This appeared to be a strategic blunder by the enemy. As the scouts had reported, their forces here consisted mostly of infantry. A single season of sporadic training could neither produce many competent cavalrymen and warhorses nor forge a significant number of battle-ready archers. They failed to react in time, neglecting to secure roadblocks along the charge route or disrupt the advance before it began. Once the cavalry began their full-speed charge, the outcome was already half decided.
The most laughable part was that their frontline defense against the cavalry consisted of crossbowmen.
Just as airplanes fear colliding with birds, one might assume charging cavalry should dread incoming arrows—yet such theoretical assumptions proved overly idealistic. Though crossbow bolts possessed considerable power, their rate of fire was exceedingly slow. During the charge, they could only manage a single volley. The limited number of crossbowmen and bolts in the southeast corner were insufficient to create an effective hail of arrows. Having archers confront charging heavy cavalry head-on was like pitting eggs against stones. The resistance they offered was less than a patch of muddy ground. The cavalry captain surveyed the flat, dry terrain ahead, convinced the first charge would be flawless.
The southeast corner's troops remained motionless—neither closing the distance nor scattering to evade. They calmly aimed their arrowheads forward, watching the steeds grow closer until they stumbled.
A series of screeches erupted across the "flat, open" ground as dwarven traps, perfectly camouflaged with the terrain, unleashed their power the moment they were triggered. Spring-loaded iron traps snapped the horses' legs. The steeds collapsed in anguished cries, hurling their heavily armored riders from their backs. The dozens of kilograms of plate armor served as both protection and burden; many knights snapped their necks upon impact, while others were unable to rise immediately.
Only then did the archers begin their harvest.
The Artisan Dwarves had long laid traps at every strategic vantage point near the outpost. The army's maneuvers were designed around these traps and the terrain, while the Amazonian archers operated flexibly outside the main force, tasked with disrupting, tearing through defenses, and delivering finishing blows. Home-field advantage helped mitigate the numerical disadvantage as the battle in the north quickly erupted into fierce combat.
Meanwhile, in Red Gum County, some distance from the battlefield, other events were unfolding.
The remaining patrol officers maintained order between Red Gum County and Antler Town. All outsiders who had arrived in the circus wagons were politely escorted into Red Gum County's jail. If they were truly innocent, Tarsha would compensate them for their losses afterward. In such extraordinary times, it was necessary to act cautiously first and be magnanimous later.
Before the fighting commenced, they obediently surrendered all weapons and allowed guards to escort them into cells. Douglas even cheekily asked for a drink to calm his nerves. Once the battle erupted and the main force advanced onto the battlefield, the star rider, who had been sprawled lazily on the ground, rose and tapped on the iron bars.
Red Gum County Jail wasn't large; cells were adjacent, allowing prisoners to see one another. The guard glanced at the man tapping the bars. Douglas flashed him a sly grin and began drumming a tune on the ironwork. The sound traveled along the interconnected bars, echoing through the interconnected cells.
A song filled the prison.
It was a beautiful melody, so lovely that even within the gloomy confines of the prison, it lifted spirits and soothed the soul. Douglas paused his tapping, leaning against the bars, chin resting in his hand, lost in reverie.
"See?" he said to the guard. "I told you the circus background music was worth listening to."
The guard could no longer hear Douglas's chatter. His ears and mind were filled with this clear singing, reminding him of home, of spring, of all beautiful places. His worries dissolved in the song, his muscles relaxed within its melody. Before the guard could even yawn, he slid slowly to the floor like a puddle of mud. He closed his eyes, his face serene, snoring loudly.
This incredible song, soft as a whisper, carried through the corridors, through the cracks in doors and walls. The guards instinctively listened to the faint sound. When they made out the arrangement of syllables, when the gentle melody seeped into their ears and hearts, sleep arrived as promised.
"Explanation!" Tashar barked, his spectral form darting toward the source of the song.
"I don't know!" Victor exclaimed incredulously. "A minstrel without instruments couldn't possibly lull such a large crowd to sleep with a lullaby alone. Humans have basic resistance, you know? Only a pure-blooded sea nymph or fairy who specializes as a minstrel could achieve this. But if there were pure-blooded magical creatures here, neither you nor I would fail to sense them!"
After witnessing Jacqueline clutching her harp everywhere she went, Tashar had questioned Victor about bards.
Bards were another class possessing extraordinary powers, their instruments serving as weapons. To be safe, Tashar had confirmed with Victor the scope of a bard's abilities. Humans of this profession could enhance allies' capabilities or inflict debuffs on enemies through their music. A bard without their instrument was like an archer without a bow—hardly a threat.
But the current situation clearly didn't match Victor's description.
"Impossible!" he raged, staring at the sleeping creatures scattered across the ground. "Only a small beast with low magic resistance could be knocked out by a lullaby!"
A fleeting thought crossed Tasha's mind, but it vanished as the destination materialized before her eyes.
Song filled the air within dozens of meters, radiating from its source. People lay sprawled everywhere, fast asleep. The silent girl sat in the prison cell, humming expressionlessly. Just as Tasha passed through the wall to reach the source of the melody, she finished her song.
Killing the bard wouldn't undo the completed melody's effect—at least, that's what Victor claimed. But he'd been wrong so many times before... Tasha hesitated. Using a ghost's one-time skill to eliminate her here would simultaneously deplete Red Gum County's sole mobile surveillance camera. Creating a new ghost and returning it to position would take considerable time, leaving a vast area without visual coverage.
The watchtower's surveillance had significant limitations; its line of sight couldn't penetrate buildings. While Tasha's spectral form lingered beside Jacqueline, she couldn't see what was happening in the other cells.
Not only the guards had fallen asleep, but the prisoners too. Only a few remained standing, unmoved by the song. Someone entered from outside, dressed in ordinary clothes, wearing an ordinary face, holding a set of cell keys. Douglas reached through the iron bars and waved at him. The cell door couldn't stop Mr. Ordinary—how could you expect a broken lock to hold back such a skilled thief?
Only now did the Ghost notice something amiss. As the thief neared the cell door, Tashu acted decisively, charging toward him.
[Full Moon - Wild Call]Ready, the Ghost shifted from invisible to translucent. Claws materialized on Tasha's hands, briefly solidifying, thirsting for the blood to come. Closer, closer still, she approached swiftly from behind. Those who saw her froze in terror, but they had no time to utter a warning.
It was the thief himself who dodged.
Did he hear the faint whistling of the claws, or did he sense it instinctively? Without looking back, he rolled swiftly to the side. For the first time, this infallible skill missed its mark. No matter how powerful the force, it was useless if it couldn't connect.
The prison floor cracked as massive claw marks tore through the rock. Rolling a meter away, the thief didn't pause to see what had attacked him, sprinting swiftly to the side. Only after gaining three meters did he turn slightly, his dagger flying with precision toward Tasha. The blade pierced her spectral form, embedding itself in the floor.
The first second passed.
The thief tossed the guard's corpse at her, blocking her sweeping claw strike. Tasha plunged through the body and lunged at him. Her mist-like form had its drawbacks—she passed through the corpse and right through the thief. Even with her abilities, only her claws remained solid. She repeatedly overshot as the thief spun, wasting precious time. Controlling the specter felt like using a mouse with abysmal sensitivity—utterly unsuited for combat.
Second second.
He darted like an oiled rat, never engaging head-on. Her movements were too swift, her spectral form nearly dispersing, until she finally seized another chance to strike. Tasha dove like a hawk. The thief drew another dagger from his boot, clashing blades against the claws overhead. The blade shattered into fragments under the claws' immense force, its sharpness so intense the fractures ran straight through the hilt. But the thief had already discarded the blade and fled a split second before it shattered. He squinted at the ground nearby, contemplating a way to deal with the phantom.
This was the last image Tashar could see.
Three seconds ended, the side effect began, and the phantom shattered into fragments during the fight. The thief remained alert for a second before swiftly vanishing into the shadows.
Douglas's cell door swung open. The rider saluted with two fingers and stepped out. Next to be released were the girl and the old man—the only two others who hadn't lain down to sleep. The cell keys were dismantled. They opened cell after cell, kicking the sleeping figures awake. Those roused quickly departed, heading for the adjacent weapons room. They had been searched before imprisonment, but the confiscated items were not stored far away.
They retrieved weapons from the room and guards, reclaimed the spirit-banishing talismans, and delivered finishing blows to the necks of the sleeping prisoners. The old man took his staff, the girl her harp, and Douglas retrieved his hat and rope. Half the group then scattered outward, charging toward the residential quarters with oil and fire.
The remaining garrison forces soon found themselves scrambling to respond.
"What do we do next?" Douglas asked, looking at the thieves. "Boss?"
The thief addressed as boss glanced at the old man. Alexander stepped forward, took a deep breath, raised the wooden staff, and bellowed.
BOOM!
Goblins scattered in panic across the dungeon, scrambling like a nest of startled rats. Nearby artisan dwarves looked around in bewilderment, wondering if a minor earthquake had just struck. Tashan stared in astonishment at the gaping hole in the dungeon floor—the first time in its long history that the dungeon's terrain had been altered by an external force.
What had happened was plain to see, though utterly unimaginable. A gaping hole, barely wide enough for two people yet several meters deep, had opened in the ground, leading straight into the dungeon. That was several meters of solid earth and rock! The old man's wooden staff had literally smashed through the surface, sending earth and stone tumbling into the passage below. Now, nothing stood between the dungeon and those above ground.
"Follow me!" Alexander commanded in a deep voice.
They leaped down, one after another, the group of ten entering the dungeon. Classic game imagery flashed through Tashan's mind—a party of heroes, and the dungeon they were about to conquer.
It was time to test some possibilities firsthand.
As the tenth person plunged downward, he was startled to find his feet didn't touch the ground. Before he could even attempt to wriggle in midair, a colossal force from an unknown source seized him and slammed him into the ceiling with a thud.
The dungeon ceiling was incredibly hard.
He wasn't the only one. At the exact same moment, six figures shot upward. Before they could react, their entire bodies were smashed into the ceiling, heads first. The sound of watermelons shattering echoed overhead as Douglas pulled Jacqueline out of the way of the falling rain of blood. The next second, six bodies with shattered skulls crashed to the ground, their bones twisted into grotesque shapes from the secondary impact.
Douglas clicked his tongue. The thief frowned. The other two remained unflinching. Tasha stared at the four unscathed figures, her expression grave.
That single strike had consumed staggering amounts of magic. The skill Dungeon Master truly lived up to its description—its mana cost seemed limitless. She could sense the magic expended on these four was several times that used on the other six. Yet that multiplied mana had only managed to lift them off the ground briefly.
Facing a full-scale battle simultaneously, Tasha couldn't risk her mana reserves gambling on further attempts to deal with them this way.
"Professionals," Victor said numbly. "Thief, Templar, Bard... and what else? Four professionals."
Only now did Tasha truly grasp the power of professionals—and they hadn't even begun formal combat yet.
In this world, she acknowledged that non-human races possessed unique powers, yet she had never truly grasped their true might. The adventurers were still human, yet they were not merely well-trained individuals, nor were they charlatans like qigong masters. Their very existence represented a qualitative leap beyond ordinary people. She had underestimated the adventurers, and Victor, after being repeatedly proven wrong, had misjudged the current state of this world, believing adventurers had become legends like the creations of the Abyss or the Celestial Realm.
Then certain things made sense.
If professionals possessed such extraordinary privileges, dungeon lords couldn't simply eliminate them internally. If this thief had stealth skills to conceal his presence, patrols and watchtowers alike couldn't stop him from relaying intelligence. What was unfolding now had likely been meticulously planned.
The northern offensive tied up the bulk of forces, compelling Tarsha to divert magical resources to that front. The simultaneous disruption here kept the garrison busy with cleanup operations. Under these circumstances, the dungeon lay wide open for this small squad to infiltrate.
But what were they here for? They could never possibly locate the core within the subterranean labyrinth...
Alexander snapped the wooden staff.
No, not snapped—unlocked. His hands parted the sturdy staff to reveal a battle-axe within. The blade gleamed coldly, its top adorned with sharp spikes, appearing unexpectedly slender in the staff and the old man's thick palms. He drew the long-handled battle-axe, slashing his own arm. Blood flowed down his wrist toward the pendant he'd somehow clutched in his hand.
The old knight's hand gripped the Nameless One's palm. The pearl within the palm was soaked in blood, suddenly glowing with a soft light. This light flowed like water onto the ground, then split into two streams. One pointed straight toward a wall, the other wound its way along the floor, vanishing into the corridor ahead.
"They actually succeeded..." Victor murmured. "A divine spell that doesn't need a god."
Without Victor's explanation, Tasha could see the spell's effect.
Both beams of light—one direct, one circuitous—led unmistakably to the heart of the dungeon.
The northern battle raged fiercely. Marion, transformed into a wolf, charged across the battlefield. She reinforced the crumbling front lines precisely as planned. Her sharp teeth and claws tore through enemy after enemy, yet every individual on the field was but an insignificant ant in the grand scheme of the war. Even this ferocious white wolf was, at best, merely a small beetle.
The southeastern sector was undeniably outnumbered. Home-field advantage, traps, undead units, morale, and unnatural potions could level the odds between the two sides, but withdrawing forces from any corner was a perilous gamble.
Or rather, withdrawal would be futile—the battlefield was too distant from here.
The four-man squad raced through the dungeon. None knew how the old man interpreted those two beams of light. Sometimes he followed the winding one, other times he shattered walls. Veins pulsed on Alexander's forehead as golden light flared upon his battleaxe. Solid outer walls crumbled before him like tofu, shattered like ice. Even as goblins relentlessly reshaped the terrain ahead, they drew ever closer to their destination.
The male Amazons left behind were indistinguishable from ordinary humans; sending them to block the path was akin to sending them to their deaths. The remaining skeletons and zombies in the graveyard crawled from the ground. The paladin spotted them through a wall; the glow from his battleaxe made their bones sizzle and smoke. When the sharp metal finally fell upon them, they melted almost like butter. These undead soldiers, easily slain by the paladin, were utterly destroyed, reduced to irrecoverable scrap.
The rogue flung his throwing knives. Suddenly, a forest of spears erupted from the ground ahead. The triggered trap showed no further reaction. He crouched down in front, fiddling with the trap's mechanism, a peculiar smile spreading across his face.
"Traces of haste," he remarked. "Freshly crafted dwarfwork, made just moments ago."
This gentleman possessed an utterly ordinary appearance and a perpetually bland expression. Yet when he smiled like this, it made anyone feel uneasy. It was a smile tinged with... bloodlust? Cruelty? Coldness? In short, a twisted grin that seemed to slip out from beneath the skin of an abnormal creature. He stood up and waved to the other three.
"I've always wondered whose craftsmanship is superior—mine or the dwarves'—but I've never seen a living one," he remarked. "I'll get to work. You needn't worry about any further traps ahead."
The thief left the group. He didn't advance further, merely tapping his fingers slowly against the wall. Behind the trapdoor, in the workshop, three artisan dwarves peered through a peephole-like device at the thief's smiling face outside the door. Terrified, they huddled together, exchanging nervous glances.
Their mutual glances lasted only a moment before the peephole went blank. The thief slipped into stealth mode. Though his presence could still be detected within the dungeon, no message could reach the artisan dwarves—under the Clan Pact, only the clan chieftain who had signed the contract with Tarsha could maintain constant telepathic connection and sensory sharing.
The newly forged specter was already racing toward that location.
Meanwhile, the goblin army blocked the path of the remaining three-person squad.
Their distance from the dungeon core had shrunk to a point where even frantic construction efforts were futile. The construction crew began acting as combatants. Earth rats the size of calves charged at the brave squad one after another, aiming to scatter them, overwhelm them, and beat them into confusion. Under Tarsha's orders, the goblins avoided Alexander, focusing their attacks on Jacqueline. Douglas constantly shielded the little girl, slowing their progress.
"We must move!" Alexander frowned, "Douglas!"
Douglas's lasso snared a goblin, and the trapped creature became less responsive to Tarsha's commands. He rode the goblin's back, one hand gripping the reins, the other cradling Jacqueline, his legs kicking away goblins lunging at him. Without turning, he shouted back, "Why don't you go ahead!"
"A paladin never abandons a comrade!" Alexander snapped angrily.
"Douglas never abandons any lady, especially not on the battlefield!" Douglas retorted, rolling his eyes. "You can consider me... ah, my hat! ...consider me what was it now? A willing sacrifice! Er, long live Erian?"
The harp began to play, and Jacqueline, finally steady, started to sing and play. It was a stirring battle hymn, its melody spiraling above the other two, bolstering their strength. Douglas straightened his back and even snatched his hat back from the goblin torrent where it had fallen. "I feel full of power!" he shouted. "Come on, leave us be, old man!"
Alexander's brow furrowed tightly. He dodged, yet couldn't escape the music's embrace. The faint golden glow above his battleaxe reignited. His face set in resolve, he nodded, turned, and swung his axe.
Like the dead earth and stone, the shifting earth and rock failed to block Alexander's path.
The aged paladin began to sprint, his legs pounding the ground as holy light coiled around both his body and his axe. He grasped the Nameless Hand once more, squinting to discern any cracks in the pearl—a task too difficult for his failing eyes.
The old knight suddenly recalled the young priest of Saros—laughably ignorant, yet in some ways enviable. Young inheritors... Alexander had searched for sixty years, traversing all of Eryan. Those qualified lacked interest; those interested lacked perseverance. In the end, he found nothing, and thus he became the last.
It was the most fitting conclusion.
Alexander drew a breath and crushed the pendant that had accompanied him through his entire life.
The silver, nameless hand melted away the instant the pearl shattered, its brilliant silver light merging into the paladin's body. His muscles no longer felt weary; the old scars that ached during rainy days and strenuous activity faded from view. all that time had taken was momentarily restored. His face grew younger, save for the deep furrows between his brows that refused to fade. Alexander roared as he smashed through the final wall, revealing the core of this evil edifice hidden behind thick stone.
It was a grand hall, its center occupied by a shimmering pool. An unnatural blue glow reflected off the ceiling like a pillar of light, within which pulsed a demonic crimson stone—a broken heart.
Between Alexander and that heart stood the woman with the wolf skull, blade raised.