The throne room smelled of coffee and iron and the faint, sweet smoke that always clung to Helios' feathers. Morning light slanted through high windows and painted the banners in thin gold. Sam sat at the long table with Vasuki coiled on a low dais, Vlad with one boot on the table's edge, and Gabriel—white armor, black chains—resting a gauntleted hand on the wood as if testing its grain.
"Who makes the best breakfast in Twilight?" Vasuki asked, voice like a river over stone. He watched Sam with a slow, amused interest.
Sam blinked. "You mean besides the city's cooks?"
Vasuki's eyes narrowed in a way that read like a smile. "You do, of course. You make the eggs right. The phoenix heat, the tiger spice—perfect."
Helios chirped from the rafters, a bright, sunlit trill. Dionysus, perched on a pillar like a dark ornament, clicked her mandibles in agreement. Indra, curled at Sam's feet, lifted his head and gave a small, rumbling purr that sounded suspiciously like assent.
Vlad snorted. "Of course you all say that. You're biased—bonds always are. They like the hand that feeds them."
Gabriel's golden eyes crinkled. "I will say this: Sam's porridge is competent. Not the best I have eaten on the Never‑Ending Battlefield, but it will not kill you. That is a rare quality."
Vasuki laughed, a low, rolling sound. "A cook‑off, then. Sam versus Vlad. Winner takes the coliseum for a week."
Sam let out a breath that was half laugh, half exhale of the tension that had been coiled in him for days. "We'll do it after the test," he said. "If I'm still breathing and you're still arrogant, Vlad, I'll take you on."
Vlad's grin was all teeth. "You're on, Twilight Lord. If I lose, I'll wear your robes for a day."
Gabriel inclined his head. "And if you win, the lord cooks breakfast for a week
."
They let the levity hang for a moment, a small island of human noise before the tide of the day. Then Sam stood and the room shifted back into business. Lux, Tide, and Justin followed him out to the training yard, commanders in a line like a blade.
Sam moved with the economy of a man who had learned to make decisions under pressure. He took out the troop tokens—small, heavy disks that gleamed with system light—and began to crush them one by one. As each token dissolved into the air, a shimmer formed and a unit took shape: Moonlight Cavalry in white armor, Sunrise riders in rose gold, Moon Mages with robes that caught the dawn. He assigned each group to a commander as they formed: Lux took the Moonlight flank, Justin the Sunrise, Tide the Mage contingents. The Shade Assassins answered the Shadow King's Ring and slipped into formation; Sam pushed the number to seventy. The King's Guard Golems stood ready, ten Phoenix and ten Tiger constructs humming with rune power. Nature Mages and their Stone Bulls took positions at chokepoints.
By the time the last token dissolved Sam had summoned over seven hundred of each primary troop type. The yard was a living map of his will—two thousand defenders arrayed and ready. He felt the familiar, efficient hum of the System in his bones and the small, private satisfaction of a plan taking shape.
Back in the throne room the Overlord System pinged with a message that made the air go thin.
In one hour all Overlords will be transported to the Infinite Hunting Grounds. The Overlord's entire territory will be transported. All troops, bonds, and champions will be allowed to battle in the first test. Only one Overlord can leave victorious, either through submission or death.
Sam read the alert aloud and the room went quiet. The words were simple and absolute. He looked at his commanders and champions and felt the weight of the moment settle into him like armor.
"Get everyone ready," he said. "If they want a target, we'll give them a fight."
Another system broadcast followed, bright and cruel.
Overlord rankings have been released. The Twilight Lord remains number one on both Planetary and True Overlord leaderboards. Special chests will be awarded to anyone who kills an Overlord in the top ten. A Diamond Overlord Chest will be given to anyone who kills the number one Overlord. The Diamond Chest guarantees three Champion Tokens and one Demigod Fragment. Happy hunting.
The words painted a target on Sam's back in neon. He felt it like a pressure at his shoulders. He had expected the bounty—he had expected envy and hunger—but seeing it spelled out made the danger immediate.
A private message arrived next, addressed only to him. The System had combined two platinum chests into a single chrome chest for the top Overlord. Sam opened it with a small, ritual motion. Four items gleamed inside:
• King's Guard Golem permanent troop token
• Troop Creation Token (created troop will match Overlord's tier at creation)
• Death Gods Summoning Scroll (summons one of the 666 Reapers; small chance of summoning a Soul Reaper)
• Fragment of the Cosmic Beast King (a small soul fragment granting a sliver of divinity)
Sam felt the weight of each item. He crushed the King's Guard token without hesitation; ten new golems materialized and he sent them to Vlad and Gabriel. He held the Troop Creation Token in his palm and turned it over. Ideas flickered through his mind—flying units, shock troops, something that could change the geometry of the battlefield.
Vasuki's suggestion came slow and sure. "Make a flying unit. You have mounted cavalry. Make mounted flyers. The sky is a battlefield too."
Helios chirped agreement, a bright note. Dionysus clicked in the shadows. Indra thumped his tail against Sam's boot as if to say, yes.
Sam smiled. "Dragon knights," he said. "Dark Storm Dragon Knights. Black armor, purple capes, spears that crackle with shadow lightning. Riders on dragons that breathe lightning and shadow."
He crushed the Troop Creation Token. The training yard's ground darkened and shadow rose like smoke. From that darkness ten massive forms shot into the sky—black dragons with wings like storm clouds and riders in black armor with purple capes. One landed before Sam, scales like polished obsidian, eyes deep purple. The rider bowed.
The dragons were not mere beasts; they were storms given scale. Each Shadow Lightning Dragon loomed like a living thunderhead—fifty meters from snout to tail, wingspans that could blot out a sun, and scales the color of oil slicks that drank in light and returned it as a bruise of purple. Their hides were patterned with faint, vein‑like sigils that pulsed when the riders spoke commands, and their eyes burned a slow, deep amethyst that seemed to measure a man's worth in a single look. Horns curved back from their brows in twin black crescents, ridged and chipped from ancient fights, and when they flexed their wings the membranes shimmered with a faint, crackling electricity. Breath was not simply fire or lightning but a braided thing—first a gout of shadow that swallowed light, then a roar of blue‑white flame that seared and stunned, leaving behind a scent like ozone and wet iron. The riders sat in saddles of blackened steel, spears in hand that hummed with shadow lightning; when the dragons dove together the air itself answered with thunder, and the ground below shuddered as if the world had been struck.
"Marcus," the rider said when he dismounted. "I am Marcus, my lord."
"Marcus," Sam repeated. "You will lead my dragon knights. Find space in the city to stage them. Land on my command."
"As you wish," Marcus said, and the dragon folded its wings and settled, a living mountain.
Sam turned the Death Gods Summoning Scroll over in his hands. The scroll was not parchment so much as a skin of night; its ink seemed to crawl when he tilted it, letters rearranging themselves like teeth. The air around the page cooled and the shadows in the corners of the room lengthened, as if the scroll had pulled the light inward.
He bit his finger and let a drop of blood fall onto the scroll. The blood did not sizzle; it sank, blackening the ink where it touched. Black flames licked the parchment—cold, not warm—and the smell that rose was not smoke but something older: iron and rot and the faint, metallic tang of spilled memory. The ash that formed was not gray but a deep, oily black that drank the light. It fell in a slow, deliberate spiral and arranged itself into a circle on the floor, the edges of the sigil serrated like a maw.
Dionysus watched with a slow, hungry interest. Her mandibles clicked in a rhythm that was almost applause. There was a dark, twisted pleasure in her posture, a thing that made the room feel smaller and more intimate. She leaned forward on the pillar as if to better see the feast being prepared. The sight pleased her in a way that made Sam's skin prickle—this was the kind of ritual that would have made her mind sing.
The ash on the floor began to crawl, as if alive. Tiny runes crawled along the sigil's lines and the air inside the circle thickened, tasting of old graves. A whisper rose from the ash, not in any language Sam knew but in the small, intimate voice of hunger. The black portal above the circle did not open with a fanfare; it tore, a slow, wet sound like cloth being ripped from a wound. The sound made Helios' feathers bristle and even Vasuki's coils tighten.
Hands—massive, clawed, and ringed with old scars—pried the portal wider. They were not hands of flesh alone; they were hands that had held skulls and banners and the broken bones of cities. The portal smelled of iron and the cold breath of the deep places. When the hands withdrew a hulking figure stepped through: dark red skin like dried blood, muscles knotted like ropes, long black hair hanging in wet strands, two horns curving back from its skull and a third, black eye set in its forehead. Its mouth was a maw of yellow fangs, each the size of a man's finger. It carried an iron spiked club the size of a tree trunk and it slammed that club into the ground with a sound that made the windows tremble.
Hanzo the Battlefield Butcher roared and the sound was not triumph so much as a promise of ruin. The floor around the summoning circle smoked where the club struck. The shadows in the room leaned toward him like wolves.
Vlad and Gabriel stepped forward, hands on their weapons. Hanzo looked at them and a grin split his face. "Brothers of the Never‑Ending Battlefield," he said. "It has been a long time. I am Hanzo. I am hungry."
Gabriel's smile was a blade. "Then eat," he said.
Dionysus clicked again, a sound like a throat clearing before a feast. She crawled down the pillar and landed on Sam's shoulder, her legs curling around his neck in a gesture that was almost possessive. "Beautiful," she whispered, voice low and pleased. "So clean. So final."
Sam watched the three champions—Vlad, Gabriel, Hanzo—exchange the small, dangerous courtesies of warriors who had met in blood and found a strange, mutual respect. He felt the Fragment of the Cosmic Beast King in his pocket like a hot coal. He pressed it to his palm and let it sink into him.
For a moment the world narrowed to a point of light. A crown of golden fire flashed across his vision and then was gone. His eyes changed—red and purple heterochromia burning with a new depth. The bonds around him stiffened; even Vasuki's coils tightened. A pressure rose from Sam like a tide. It was not merely power; it was divinity's whisper.
The crown had been real, if only for a heartbeat: filigreed gold, impossible, sitting at the crown of his head before it winked out like a star gone nova. The System registered the shift. Sam's tier spiked to Ten. The room felt the change as a pressure on the soul, a subtle compression that made breath taste different. Helios and Indra, closer to the elemental, fared better—Helios' feathers flared brighter, Indra's purr deepened—but the bears and apes and even the hardened champions felt it as a small, insistent weight at the base of their throats. Vlad's jaw tightened; Gabriel's golden eyes widened with a soldier's calculation; Hanzo's grin faltered for a half‑second as if some old ledger had been unsettled. They did not fall to their knees, but each of them stepped back a hair, instinctively respecting the new distance between a man and whatever lay beyond manhood. The divinity did not drown them; it pressed, a reminder that Sam now carried something that could bend fate—and that every ally and enemy would feel that pull when the world tilted toward him.
When the pressure eased Sam nodded to his commanders. "We move in ten minutes," he said. "Make ready."
The black sphere came down like a lid. Twilight folded in on itself and then the world tore away. When the lid lifted the sky was blood red and the ground was churned into mud and metal. The Infinite Hunting Grounds spread out in every direction: a battlefield of discarded weapons, smoking pits, and the bones of other contests. Three other spheres hovered in the distance, each revealing a rival territory and its armies.
Sam raised his Eyes of Horus and scanned. Insect swarms massed in one sector, a tide of chitin and mandibles. Kobold warbands crowded another, a seething mass of spears and crude engines. A host of vampires and shadow‑borne troops lurked in the third, their wards humming with dark hunger. No human Overlords were visible. The System's rules were clear: all troops, bonds, and champions could fight. Only one Overlord would leave.
Sam's deployment was quick and precise. Moonlight Cavalry took the left flank; Sunrise Cavalry the right. The Dark Storm Dragon Knights hovered in reserve, wings beating like thunderclouds. Moon Mages and Shade Assassins formed staggered reserves. King's Guard Golems anchored the center. Nature Mages and Stone Bulls held chokepoints. Champions took forward positions—Vlad at the head of the Sunrise charge, Gabriel where the vampires would try to pierce the line, Hanzo where the insect tide threatened to overwhelm.
The first contact was a living thing. Insects poured like a black river toward the left flank. Kobolds surged in the center. Vampires tried to slip through the shadows toward the rear. Helios rose and became a comet, diving in coordinated Solar Halo strikes that lit the sky and made the vampires' shadows scream. Indra moved with Sam at his side, a tempest of teeth and lightning that opened gaps for cavalry to exploit. Vasuki's coils moved like a living wall, redirecting charges and crushing formations. Kong and Titus landed like twin mountains and smashed through the kobold ranks. Artemis—towering, terrible—led the shock assaults, her Nightmare Roar shattering morale and her Earthsplit Stomp cracking the ground into chasms.
Dionysus fought at Sam's shoulder and at Tide's flank, her webs tangling enemy legs and her black smoke turning sight into rumor. She slipped between blades and spat venom into the eyes of a charging champion, then spun away to weave another trap. Baloo was a living battering ram, and the Shade Assassins moved like shadows that cut.
The rival Overlord's champion arrived like a mountain stepping into the field—armored in black plate that drank light, a helm with a single slit that glowed like a coal. He moved with the slow, terrible certainty of something bred to kill champions. He did not charge; he advanced, and the ground answered.
His first strike was a shockwave. He slammed his great axe into the earth and the impact sent a ripple through the battlefield that shattered the Moon Mages' formation. Runes that had been woven into a protective lattice snapped like glass. A cluster of Moon Mages—caught mid‑chant—were thrown into the air as if a hand had palm‑struck them. Their wards flared and then collapsed inward; the backlash burned their robes and left their faces pale and still. Sam saw the flash of their last spells—half‑formed, beautiful, useless—and felt the cold, immediate grief of a commander who had watched too many good men die for a line on a map.
The champion's next move was surgical cruelty. He planted his axe and spun, the blade a crescent that cut through dragon wing and rider harness alike. Two Dark Storm Dragon Knights dove to strike his flank; the champion met them with a sweep that clipped a wing and sent a dragon into a spiraling fall. The rider's spear arced uselessly; the dragon's wing tore like canvas. One dragon slammed into the ground and did not rise. Another, struck in the flank, convulsed and bled shadow fire before the rider leapt and was swallowed by the mud. The champion did not gloat—he simply killed with the economy of a machine. Where he struck, things broke.
He had a cruel trick for mages. When a group of Moon Mages tried to re‑form a ward, he planted his axe and stomped the rune‑circle. The stomp was a percussive anti‑magic pulse that inverted the mages' sigils, turning their protection into a blade that cut them from the inside. A dozen Moon Mages went down in a single, terrible bloom of light and ash. The sight made Helios' feathers flare and made even Hanzo's grin thin.
Sam watched the losses and felt the cold calculus of command. He could not let the champion pick his forces apart. He had to make the champion fight on terms that favored speed, coordination, and the strange, layered power of his bonds.
Sam anchored the left with King's Guard Golems and a ring of Flame Bulwark. The golems held the line while Sam cast Lightning Prison in a wide arc, a lattice of crackling chains that slowed the insect tide and funneled it into kill corridors. Helios dove through the gaps Sam created, Solar Halo burning the chitin and lighting up the swarm's interior. Hanzo moved like a butcher through the trapped insects—each swing of his club sent a spray of broken carapace and stunned the next wave. Artemis and Kong/Titus formed the hammer: Artemis' Nightmare Roar shattered insect cohesion, and Kong's fists pulverized the larger chitinous brutes that tried to break the prison.
Dionysus crawled through the smoke and webbed the insect commanders—giant queens and broodlords—binding them in sticky, venomous silk. Shade Assassins slipped into the gaps and cut the brood's tendons, turning the swarm's coordination into chaos. Moon Mages, protected by Flame Bulwark and the golems' shields, poured down area spells that incinerated the trapped insects. The tide, once a river, became a series of dying eddies.
The kobolds were a different problem: numbers, crude engines, and a willingness to swarm. Vlad took the center with Sunrise Cavalry and disciplined charges. He used the cavalry to punch holes and the slimes to blind and corrode the kobold engines. Sam paired Indra and Baloo with Vlad's line—Indra's lightning strikes opened gaps, Baloo's mass held them. Vasuki's coils moved through the center like a living battering ram, crushing spear formations and redirecting charges into the waiting teeth of the Dark Storm Dragon Knights.
The dragons struck from above in coordinated thunder—Marcus and his riders dove in tight spirals, spears crackling with shadow lightning. They targeted kobold engines and command nodes, ripping the crude engines apart and leaving the foot soldiers leaderless. Where dragons could not reach, Shade Assassins and Moon Mages created kill zones: Void Vacuum pulled clusters into concentrated blasts, and Moon Mages' earth serpents rose to swallow whole platoons. Vlad's discipline turned the kobold mass into a broken, routed thing.
The vampires were the most insidious. They tried to slip through smoke and shadow, to pierce the rear and take command nodes. Gabriel took the right where the vampires sought to move. He moved like a blade that read intent—Sword God microbursts unmade vampiric wards and cut the shadow familiars that shielded their lords. Helios' strafes made the vampires' shadows scream and revealed their true forms. Sam used Lunar Laser to burn through the wards that protected the vampire leaders, and True Clone drew a champion's attention away from a key paladin so Gabriel could finish the kill.
Dionysus' sin‑webs were perfect for the vampires: sticky, corrupting, and maddening. Vampires caught in her webs found their senses dulled and their hunger turned inward. Shade Assassins slipped through the webbed darkness and took out the vampire lieutenants with poisoned blades. The Moon Mages, freed from the champion's anti‑magic pulse by Sam's Flame Bulwark, cast binding sigils that anchored the vampires and prevented their flight. When Gabriel and Sam struck together—Gabriel's microburst to open, Sam's Void Release to unbalance—the vampire lords fell like rotten fruit.
The rival champion was not defeated by a single blow. He was a problem of mass and momentum, and Sam solved him with a combination of distraction, precision, and raw force. Sam sent his True Clone forward to draw the champion's attention; the double moved like Sam and bled like Sam, and the champion committed to the illusion. While the champion was occupied, Hanzo and Gabriel closed in from opposite sides—Hanzo's club smashed armor seams and Gabriel's microbursts found the champion's joints. Vlad's charge split the champion's support, and a Dark Storm Dragon Knight dove in to pin the champion's shoulder with a spear.
Sam finished the sequence. He used Void Vacuum to pull the champion's balance into a seam, then Void Release to fling him off his feet. As the champion stumbled, Hanzo's club found a gap and shattered the helm's slit; Gabriel's blade followed through the opening. The champion fell with a sound like a struck bell.
But the victory had teeth. The champion's counterstrike had already taken dragons and mages. Sam felt the loss like a bruise. He ordered the Shade Assassins to recover what they could and the Moon Mages to weave memorial wards for the dead. He did not let grief slow him; there would be time for that later.
When the System declared the Hunting Grounds contest concluded, the three territories lay broken and bleeding. The insect tide had been ground into ash and bone; the kobold engines lay twisted and smoking; the vampire host had been unmade and scattered. Sam's forces had taken losses—most painfully among the newly created Dark Storm Dragon Knights and a handful of Moon Mages—but the core of his army remained intact. The champions had done what champions do: turn decisive moments into victory. The bonds had done what bonds do: make a man's will into a living thing.
Sam walked the field afterward, boots sinking into mud and the smell of ozone and burned sigils in his nose. He touched the hilt of his blade and felt the weight of the dead and the living. He set the Champion Token on the table back in the throne room and let his fingers rest on it for a moment. Tonight they would celebrate. Tomorrow they would repair. The System's prizes had given him power—and painted a target on his back. The world would come for him. He would be ready.
In the throne room the bonds gathered—Helios perched like a small sun, Indra at Sam's feet, Vasuki coiled and patient, Dionysus a dark knot of silk, Baloo and Artemis breathing slow and heavy, Kong and Titus towering like living ramparts. Vlad and Gabriel stood at Sam's side, and Hanzo leaned on his club with a grin that was equal parts hunger and satisfaction.
A private message blinked on Sam's wrist. The System had scheduled a demigod trial window tied to the Cosmic Beast fragment. The invitation was cryptic and the time was short.
Sam looked at the ring of faces around him—his bonds, his champions, his commanders. He felt the weight of the Diamond Chest bounty like a shadow at his back and the new, strange light of divinity in his chest. He had won the Hunting Grounds, but the victory had painted him a target. The System's prizes had given him power and a new set of problems.
He set the Champion Token on the table and let his fingers rest on it for a moment. "We celebrate tonight," he said. "We repair tomorrow. And then we prepare. The test is coming."
Vlad's grin was a blade. "And the cook‑off?"
Sam laughed, the sound bright and human. "After the test, Blood General. You'll have your robes."
Gabriel's golden eyes flicked to Sam with something like approval. "Then let us eat and be ready. The world will not wait."
Outside, the city breathed. Inside, Sam felt the thin, bright edge of hope sharpen into something harder: responsibility. He had power now—divinity's whisper in his veins—and with it came the certainty that every choice would echo. He would sleep for an hour, at most. The dawn would bring a trial that might change everything.