Chapter 176: Taboo of Desire

The humans’ slight advantage began turning into a clear advance.

The Twilight Empire’s lines were gradually forced back across several stretches of the plain.

Their Eighth-Rank fighter was forced to retreat from Malrik after losing his right arm.

The faction commander wielding the two swords could barely remain on his feet before Frank, while his partner continued bleeding under Caesar’s relentless pressure.

Despite watching all of this unfold before his eyes, the Rassasian company commander did not move.

He merely raised one hand.

A deep horn sounded from the rise upon which he stood, followed by three more horns across the Twilight Empire’s army, and the announcement was unmistakable.

A full retreat.

The Rassasians’ movements changed immediately.

The pure-blooded Rassasians began retreating in organized groups, while the remaining half-Rassasians were driven forward to form a moving wall of living bodies that covered their withdrawal.

The wounded faction commander fighting Frank opened a rift directly before himself after suffering a stab wound to the stomach from Frank, then passed through it with difficulty and reappeared several meters away beside his partner.

It wasn’t a great distance, but it carried him beyond the reach of Frank’s green aura.

The woman retreated alongside him, keeping her final ice spear suspended before them.

"Leaving so soon?" Caesar asked.

The Rassasian commander wiped the purple blood from his mouth, his eyes blazing with rage, but offered no reply.

Frank regarded him coldly while the green aura arms moved in preparation to pursue him.

"Leave them."

Karius’s voice reached them from the rise, causing Frank to frown.

Even so, the glow of Frank’s aura began to fade.

Frank looked toward the opposing company commander, who cast them a murderous glare before beginning to withdraw with his guards without personally intervening in the battle.

Karius did not move either.

The two Rassasian faction commanders retreated behind the ranks of their guards, one of them mortally wounded, then withdrew with the rest of the fleeing army.

As for the half-Rassasians abandoned behind them, not a single one retreated.

Perhaps they had never been permitted to do so in the first place.

They crashed against the human lines in one final, desperate assault, but no longer possessed the numbers required to break them.

Darius ordered the spearmen to hold their ground, while Malrik and the Death Squad’s soldiers swept continuously along the flanks to eliminate the remaining resistance.

Some of the cavalry attempted to pursue the retreating army, but a black banner rose from Karius’s position.

"Stop!" Caesar shouted the instant he saw it, his voice shaking the entire battlefield. "No one goes beyond the edge of the plain!"

The horses reluctantly came to a halt while the Twilight Empire’s army continued retreating into the darkness.

The Viera Empire had won the battle.

But the victory had been neither clean nor easy.

...

Once the fighting ended, Karius descended from the rise and walked among the corpses, shattered armor, and discarded weapons with no obvious owners.

Frank walked beside him, the manifested arms behind him having disappeared as his green aura returned to his body, while Caesar sheathed his sword after wrapping a superficial, frost-marked wound on his forearm with a strip of cloth.

Malrik reached them several minutes later, his battle-axe resting across his shoulder and purple blood covering his armor.

Darius arrived after him, his massive sword even more heavily drenched in blood than his commander’s axe. Malrik dispatched his opponents cleanly and quickly, whereas Darius favored brute force over swift kills—or rather, brute force was simply what he excelled at.

"The formations are stable," Darius reported with impeccable military formality before pausing for a second and continuing. "But we have hundreds of wounded, and some of the spear units have lost more than a third of their men."

"Begin with the wounded who can still be saved," Karius ordered. "Then count the dead on both sides and separate the pure-blooded Rassasians from the half-Rassasians in the report."

Darius nodded and left to carry out the orders.

Frank looked toward the retreating army, whose only visible remnants were distant shadows beneath the moonlight.

"They retreated early."

"Two of their faction commanders were on the verge of dying in a relatively small battle like this," Caesar said, the regret of failing to kill the female Rassasian commander still visible in his eyes.

Frank shook his head, his narrowed eyes returning to the distant figures fleeing across the plain.

"Their lines hadn’t collapsed completely. They still had enough soldiers to maintain the pressure, even if they could no longer win."

Malrik rested his axe across his shoulder.

"They also didn’t send any beasts, Commander Frank, and they committed the pure-blooded Rassasians to the battle from the very beginning. Something changed during this particular skirmish."

Karius remained silent as he looked toward the opposing rise.

The Rassasian company commander had already departed.

He hadn’t participated in the battle or attempted to save his two faction commanders personally, yet he had suspiciously monitored Karius’s reactions throughout the entire skirmish, as though he had merely been ordered to test the waters.

"Perhaps they were testing how many soldiers we could pull away from the camp," Caesar said.

"Perhaps," Karius replied.

"Or they wanted to learn which faction commanders are currently stationed at the border," Frank suggested.

"Perhaps," Karius repeated curtly.

Everyone looked at him.

His repetition wasn’t a sign that he agreed with either possibility.

Quite the opposite.

"Send a report to Thorvin, Frank, and double the number of scouts and patrols until dawn," Karius ordered. "Don’t allow any group to pursue them beyond the plain, and thoroughly inspect every route leading to the camp so they can’t take us by surprise."

Frank and Caesar exchanged a glance before Frank stepped forward.

"Do you believe this battle was merely cover for something else?" Frank asked.

Karius looked at the corpses scattered before him, then at the land the Twilight Empire had spent hundreds—if not thousands—of lives attacking, only to abandon it before suffering a complete defeat.

"I don’t know," he finally said. "And that’s the part that troubles me."

The wind swept across the plain, carrying with it the scent of red and purple blood.

The humans had won the land.

But Karius didn’t believe the Twilight Empire had come for the land in the first place.

The Twilight Empire was ruled by the Rassasians—more specifically, by Emperor Falk XVII—yet the empire itself stood beneath the patronage of a ruler on a vastly higher level.

In truth, merely calling that entity a ruler diminished what it truly was.

The empire stood beneath the protection of a Taboo faction—one aligned with the Seven Deadly Sins.

More precisely, its patron was one of the most dangerous and terrifying entities in the entire world.

The Deadly Taboo of Desire.