Before anyone could react, a round, melon-smooth head dropped with a dull thud, the cut clean as a laser line. On Brick’s dead face lingered a hint of delighted shock, frozen like frost.

Medith turned, storm-dark, toward the mercenaries. Under that winter-knife gaze, heads bowed like wheat in a hard wind, as if a single glance could scar the soul.

She flicked Flame Lady; not a fleck of blood touched it, flame without smoke. She sheathed it in one smooth breath, then roared like thunder splitting a ridge: “Everyone! A nation has law, a home has rules. For the army—the emblem of both—that’s twice as true.

“I don’t know your internal codes. And I owe you an apology. I acted without sanction and beheaded a man who wasn’t mine to judge.

“But! If you err, you shoulder the cost. Before that, all are equal under the sky, and now more than ever.

“Who has no bitter story? Who doesn’t want to live? Those soldiers whose lives he stole—didn’t they have families? Didn’t they cling to breath like candles in wind?

“No! That’s honeyed poison—self over justice dressed up in sweets. However pitiable he looked, the one due execution must be executed.

“Set that precedent, and tell me—does it feel fair to you, or to the dead, when the scales tip like that?

“Remember this. Wherever we stand, we cannot abandon faith, and we cannot abandon rules. Because we are human—

“Without rules, the world has no outline; lose that bridle and we turn into demons, into cattle, like beasts slipping their yoke.

“You’ve seen the Southern Kingdom. Even there, chains of strict codes bind like iron, or the house falls in a storm.

“I don’t say this to excuse my impulse. I say it to warn you. A thousand-mile dike crumbles from an ant’s hole; small cracks drown great ships.

“That’s all. I apologize to you—but I do not regret it.”

Her voice rang like steel on stone, driving straight through to the heart. The fog in people’s chests thinned like mist in sun; faces set firm, as if hearing a bell of truth.

“Yes—justice will prevail—”

“Yaaaoooo—”

“For tomorrow—fight—”

“Medith—Medith—Medith—”

…

“Heh. I’ve been a sorry castellan, haven’t I…” Gerald laughed at himself, helpless as a man watching rain soak a field, yet faintly relieved.

“Commander…” Gulo stood beside him, the past days’ rise and plunge carving him gaunt. Stubble shadowed his jaw like scrub on a cliff, his eyes sunk like dry wells.

Medith said nothing. She rose from the delicate wooden chair and walked to the open balcony, gaze reaching like an arrow across the distance.

Far off, thin pillars of fire-smoke rose like funeral incense. The reaper hadn’t withdrawn. They’d been stunned by the sudden strike, that was all. Once they steadied, with a commander’s cold mind and a flood of troops, even blades like Medith’s would splash helplessly against the tide.

All around, the wide plain bristled with Hexclaw Legion banners, a forest of claws. More than ten new outposts had sprouted today alone, roots set for a long war. Inside the walls, fewer than two thousand could still fight; minds frayed and bodies battered, their edge dulled like nicked steel.

They were good—better than most—but against a regular ace army, the gap was a canyon. She could patch intel and tactics like bridges over rapids, but hard strength was a cliff she couldn’t climb for them.

Strictly, this siege was bleaker than Sia City. The gap wasn’t just numbers; it was a full-field crush. If not for Powell’s intel, for breaking the Blackblood War Chariot, for drawing Sia City’s people from the jaws— that day was certain defeat. With that war chariot parked at the start, one volley would’ve ended the game.

“Seems… my ability is the key to cracking the board…” Medith’s pink fist tightened, a small stone trying to hold a mountain. Somewhere along the road, the weight on her shoulders had doubled. Each time they lived through a dead end, others saw her brilliance like fireworks.

They didn’t see the bill beneath the glow—how many lives and prices paid for each “impossible” win. Medith had died once for Sia City. Sais nearly lost herself to inner demons. Melia fell. Countless lives and heroes dusted the path like withered leaves.

“This road… too long, too hard.” A hush of sorrow rose in her, like dusk swallowing light. The future looked black as a sealed well, and for a breath she didn’t know where her next step should land.

“Medith.” Sais seemed to read her heart. She slipped close from nowhere, arms circling Medith’s waist like a warm sash.

“I’m fine.” Medith gently pried Sais’s hands away. In front of others, she still wouldn’t flaunt what lay between them. Not fear of exposure—fear of everything it would drag in.

Show tender love, and the fact she is human would leak like light through a crack. Her life-bound subordinates were fine. But for the new, outside strength she’d just taken in, that would sour the pot. The Lina Sisters’ early mess would repeat like a shadow.

Let a commander’s awe slip, and raising it again is like hauling a boulder uphill. In a deadlock, disobeying orders is suicide; the tragedy is, the commander then has no hands free. No time to cut rot, and no heart to.

Every sword counts. She said often, “Disobey, and I’ll cut you down,” but she rarely did. If you reach that point and still see defiance, hope’s already feather-thin. The rule is more a bell than a blade.

“Medith! Bad—something happened!” Iling popped up from the wall edge, wind in her voice. She’d vaulted up the stone, using her sword like a piton, climbing heavy and mana-costly—a signal flare of urgency, with stairs just a dash away.

She pulled a long tube from her chest wrap. Medith opened her mouth, but Iling cut in, quick as a flicked knife: “I looted it off the field. Must be what they use for recon. Don’t ask—just look. You’ll see why it’s scary…”

Recon? Medith lifted it, half-doubting. Suddenly, a scene two kilometers away leapt into her eye, crisp as a hawk’s view. She dropped the tube and strained her naked sight; five hundred meters was her edge, even at full focus.

For the Elf Clan, that was standard range. This thing made it fourfold, like night turned noon.

No time to marvel. Medith swept the tube’s gaze across the field. Farther out, a lone flag sprang up like a thorn from the earth. Her heart jolted. With her memory, there was no way she’d missed it before—this one was new-grown.

She narrowed her eyes and opened her ability. Emerald irises turned milky, a pure white glimmer pulsing like a pearl’s heart. She snapped her gaze wide. The view surged closer again, and the flag’s sigil sharpened through the glass.

A six-petal rose, radiant as a star, cut through by a sword. Petals drooped like tears, a bloom withering in midair.

“Segireneto?!” The name spilled out. She hadn’t thought they’d appear now—the god-slaying army that once handed her a death.

…

“Commander Erig, Master Sergeant Manto—your support came like rain in a drought,” Harrison let out a long breath, his brow clearing like sky after a storm. “Because Medith cut in, I had to split forces to seal the ring. With her ability, she could break out anytime. If I didn’t, Dawnlight might slip out to spread the word.

“We were at a loss. Now, the board’s clean.”

Erig wore his old pure-white war armor, presence heavy as thunderheads. Over these days, his aura had thickened like brewed tea.

Medith didn’t know: after she defeated Erig, his brother Sinis died, and walking the knife-edge of life and death let him break his bottleneck. He’d reached tsunami-class.

But while he grew, so did Medith. She had already climbed to a height no one else on the continent could touch, a lone peak under snow.

“Didn’t expect it. Ten months apart, and I’d meet our old enemy again,” Manto said, unlike his usual high perch, his tone leveled like a blade laid flat. “To be honest, she’s one of the last people I want to see.”

His greatest pride was gone. In the battle at Sia City, he’d eaten Medith’s Magic Breaker at near zero distance, wounds deep as trenches. Later, cornered, he’d overdrawn his Lawbreaking Ability when it was already hollowed out.

It hit hard, but it was his last Magic Breaker—his final thunder.

Now he was as ordinary as rain. Months of quiet had sanded down his arrogance. With his old skill and sense, he swam the New Kingdom like a fish in clear water, power in his hand, the king’s closest of the close.

But the moment his Lawbreaking Ability scattered like ash, he stepped down from the altar and passed the torch to those behind.

The man who fought that world-shaking duel with Hippo, the riptide called Mansto—that man truly died that day.

“Times have changed. Medith’s strong, but she can’t face two armies,” Erig said, rock-solid. “I brought three thousand elites and five thousand regulars, plus me and Master Sergeant Manto. With your remaining troops, that’s plenty to erase them.”

Harrison shook his head, a blade cutting a thought. “No. We cannot engage them head-on.”

“I’m not a fool,” Erig said, stepping forward, eyes on the hazed outline of the fortress like a hunter sizing a cliff. “Charging a wall like that without a plan is moths to a flame. Besides, ‘that one’ is inside. With her ability, the castle’s airtight as a sealed jar.

“Assault isn’t on the table.”

Across the continent, how many forces could field over ten thousand against under two thousand and still fear to strike? Only Medith could cast that kind of shadow. Her name had become a force of its own; speak it, and hearts tilted like compasses to a lodestone.

Manto kept silent and stood shoulder to shoulder with Erig. The old battlefield lay not far, close as a scar under a sleeve. He couldn’t feel joy. Not fear, exactly—more a dusk-deep melancholy. A strange tide lapped at his bones, and he had a hunch.

This war would cut the knot for both sides. Win or lose, one side would be erased, root and branch.

Erig and Manto stood at the army’s front like twin pillars. Behind them, unseen, Harrison’s mouth curved in a strange, knife-thin smile.