Chapter 161: The Shadow’s Ultimatum
Chapter 161: Chapter 161: The Shadow’s Ultimatum
Chapter 161: The Shadow’s Ultimatum
The Vanguard Plaza was a graveyard of shattered concrete and broken armor.
Draven Mordis stood quietly where the Level 200 Elder had just been crushed into a microscopic singularity. The suffocating pressure of the Cult’s magic was completely gone.
Draven turned away from the empty sky. His boots crunched against the rubble as he walked past the surviving Vanguard Knights.
They parted for him immediately, their eyes wide with a mixture of absolute awe and sheer, primal terror.
The masked boy in the black coat had just done the impossible, and none of them dared to even breathe too loudly in his presence.
Draven ignored them. He approached the center of the plaza and knelt beside the massive, unmoving body of Lord Commander Gunther Stillbane.
Gunther’s dark skin had turned a sickening, ashen gray. Thick black veins bulged violently against his neck. Cassian’s ’Widow’s Kiss’ poison was aggressively shutting down his internal organs. He had minutes left to live.
Draven did not cast a magic healing spell. He did not pull out an antidote. He placed his gloved hand flat against the center of Gunther’s broad chest.
[System Skill Activated: SSS-Rank Vector Authority]
[Sub-Skill: Microscopic Perception]
Draven closed his pitch-black eyes. His perception of reality instantly shifted, bypassing the physical world and zooming directly into the cellular level of the Lord Commander’s body.
He could literally feel the kinetic movement of the poison. It was a chaotic, acidic cluster of invasive chemical vectors, aggressively tearing through Gunther’s blood cells and eating away at his heart walls.
Draven took a slow, steady breath.
[Sub-Skill Activated: Cellular Suture]
He applied absolute microscopic kinetic force. He isolated the chaotic vectors of the Widow’s Kiss and violently reversed their flow.
Gunther’s massive body spasmed.
Slowly, the toxic green and black sludge began to physically seep out of the pores of Gunther’s skin, forced out of his bloodstream by Draven’s gravitational pull.
But as the poison traveled outward, its acidic nature burned and damaged the surrounding internal organs even further.
Draven didn’t flinch. Wherever the poison tore a hole, Draven used Cellular Suture to forcibly stitch the damaged tissue back together, manipulating the very friction and binding force of Gunther’s cells to instantly regenerate his heart and lungs.
It was an agonizingly complex process. Draven was effectively performing microscopic open-heart surgery using pure physics.
Aegon and Bram immediately stepped forward, forming a tight, protective perimeter around their Captain. Reina, Nyx, and Lucien joined them, their weapons drawn, their eyes scanning the ruined plaza.
The surgery took an entire hour.
The surviving Vanguard Knights simply watched in stunned silence. The mysterious people in the masks had saved their city, but they still possessed the raw power to eliminate everyone present.
The rest of the Vanguard had scattered to pull trapped citizens from the debris, but those remaining in the plaza were completely lost.
One of the Knights, a young man clutching the bloody helmet of his dead squadmate, looked up at the Eclipse Hunters. Tears streamed down his dirt-stained face.
"If you were this strong..." the Knight sobbed, his voice cracking with grief.
"Why didn’t you come sooner? Why did you let them die?"
Draven’s squad listened. They did not respond.
Aegon stared straight ahead. Bram kept his heavy arms crossed. They did not need to offer excuses.
This was not a fairy tale where the heroes magically appeared to save everyone before a single drop of blood was spilled. This was reality. It was brutal, it was unexpected, and it was entirely unfair.
The silence hung heavy over the Vanguard. Some Knights broke down crying into the rubble. Others stood tall with hollow pride.
Some stared at their broken swords, heavily contemplating retirement. There were a hundred different thoughts swirling in the plaza, but zero conviction.
They were a broken army that desperately needed their Commander to guide them.
Suddenly, Gunther’s golden eyes snapped open.
Cough! The Lord Commander violently hacked up the last puddle of neutralized black venom. His survival instincts kicked in instantly.
Recognizing he was surrounded by unknown figures in masks, Gunther roared, his earth mana flaring as he tried to throw a massive, brutal punch directly at Draven’s head.
Draven didn’t move. He simply reached into his jacket, pulled out a heavy gold and silver medallion, and held it up directly in the path of Gunther’s fist.
Gunther’s knuckles stopped exactly one inch from the metal.
He stared at the crest. It was the official insignia of Lord Commander Helion Goldmane of Bastion Seven.
"That’s a rude way to thank your saviors," Draven said smoothly, completely unfazed by the near-lethal punch.
"But sure. You know these cannot be forged. Check for yourselves."
Draven tossed the heavy badge onto Gunther’s chest.
Gunther picked it up, his massive fingers tracing the runic engravings. He felt the unique mana signature of Helion Goldmane locked inside the metal. The hostility immediately drained from the giant’s face. These weren’t assassins; they were the backup Helion had promised.
Gunther grunted, pushing his massive frame up from the concrete. He looked at Draven, then at the rest of the Eclipse Hunters.
"Helion sent some real monsters this time," Gunther muttered, his voice hoarse. He wiped the dried blood from his mouth.
"Come to my quarters. We got a lot of intel to share."
Gunther took one step toward the Vanguard tower, but he stopped.
He looked out at the plaza. He saw his men crying. He saw the doubt, the fear, and the absolute lack of spirit in their eyes. The Lord Commander’s expression hardened. He couldn’t leave them like this.
Gunther turned around, facing the broken remnants of his army. He rolled his massive shoulders, his hood casting a dark shadow over his glowing golden eyes.
"Why y’all lookin’ at me like it’s over?" Gunther’s deep voice boomed, completely shattering the silence.
"I ain’t dead yet! You really thought some green juice and a wrinkly old dude in a bathrobe was enough to erase me from my own block? Man, quit playin’."
A few of the Knights looked up, stunned to hear the swagger back in his voice.
Gunther’s grin faded. His golden eyes sharpened, sweeping across the weeping soldiers.
"Yeah... I know. I see it," Gunther said, his voice dropping into a raw, heavy timber.
"I see my Knights hurting. I see that weight on your shoulders. And trust me... I feel it too."
He paused, looking down at the bloody concrete where Cassian’s mutated corpse had fallen.
"Cassian sold us out. My own brother," Gunther admitted, the words visibly hurting him to say.
"That cut deep. But hear me when I say this... Blood don’t make family. Loyalty does."
Gunther stepped forward, spreading his massive arms wide to encompass the entire plaza.
"Y’all... y’all are my family! Every single soul standing on this concrete! Every scar we took today. Every victory. Every damn funeral! We built this together!"
The earth beneath their feet began to subtly hum, resonating with the Lord Commander’s rising passion. The mourning Knights slowly stood up from the rubble.
"The Cult came into our home," Gunther preached, his voice rising in volume, dripping with pure, unfiltered defiance.
"They thought taking our family would break us. They thought taking down the foundation would make Bastion Six fold! Nah! All they did was give us a reason!"
He pointed a heavy, metal-clad finger directly at the crowd.
"So don’t talk to me about retirement! Don’t talk to me about giving up! And for damn sure, don’t stand there quiet! I need that fire back! I need that noise! You take that grief right now, you pack it into your fists, and you turn that pain into something they can’t survive!"
The Vanguard Knights tightened their grips on their weapons. The tears stopped falling. The doubt vanished, instantly replaced by a burning, weaponized rage.
"Because we ain’t walking out of these walls to defend ourselves anymore!" Gunther roared, his golden eyes blazing like miniature suns.
"We’re walking out to end an empire! We’re gonna hit the Eclipse so hard their prayers turn into screams! We’re gonna bury that whole damn religion so deep the sun forgets it ever existed!"
Gunther slammed his massive metal gauntlet against his chest plate. The sound echoed like a cannon shot.
"Now tell me!" Gunther roared, his voice projecting across the entire ruined district.
"WHO HOLDS THE LINE?!"
"THE LAST ONES!" the Knights screamed in absolute unison, their voices tearing through the night sky, completely reborn.
"AND IF THE LAST ONES FALL?!" Gunther bellowed, his voice shaking the remaining glass from the buildings.
"THEN WE STAND AGAIN!" the Vanguard roared back, slamming their weapons against their shields and the broken concrete in a deafening rhythm of war.
Gunther looked at his men. The foundation was set. He gave them a firm nod, then turned back to Draven.
"Alright," Gunther said, his hood energy perfectly masking the exhaustion in his bones.
"Now we can talk."