Squelch—!
The broken warblade wrenched free of flesh. Lorin poured everything into offense, no breath spared.
He crashed into the Marl Kingdom rebels like an old beast making its last countercharge, ragged but fanged, shredding anything that dared close.
Squelch, squelch, squelch!
Time blurred like blood in rain. Trapped deep to cover Nana Toki’s retreat, Lorin felt pressure pile like mountains on his back.
His nicked blade had been overworked to a half-length stump, jagged as a torn fang. His armor had sloughed off like molted bark, leaving corded muscle bare to the cold air.
Yet the ring of bodies around him held tight as a steel dam. The ghostly malice in the air pressed like deep water on his lungs.
These bastards just don’t end!
He hacked down a lunging foe, then flicked a glance toward the cave in the mountain’s flank, a dark mouth under stone.
Her Highness and the others should be out by now.
Time to quit this nest of wasps myself.
Kill—!
Murderous intent flooded like a spring tide. Blades came down like rain. Alone, Lorin braced as the wave crested.
Boom—!
A peerless aura burst from the forested ridge behind, a thunderclap under the ribs of the mountain. Lorin’s head snapped up.
A red pillar speared the sky behind him, a torch from earth to heaven, flinging up a thick, surging breath of life like sap in spring.
Even at hundreds of meters, every soul felt the terrifying vitality coiled inside that crimson beam, like a dragon in a well.
"What is that!"
Someone in the crowd cried out as a scarlet point leapt from the light. A heartbeat later, right beside Lorin, the rebel ranks erupted with a sky-splitting detonation.
A brutal shockwave blossomed from the center, a storm-front that flipped everyone, Lorin included, like leaves in a gale.
The hit slammed like a cannon round. In a blink, a thousand Marl rebels shattered, their line breaking like rotten ice.
Cough, cough... cough!
Lorin clawed out of a cracked pit in the earth, filthy as a miner, half-sword in his fist. He barely found his feet when a rebel with a gleaming longsword barreled at him, fear forgotten.
"Hah!"
A red figure ripped past Lorin in a streak, sharp winds trailing like knives.
The soldier before Lorin never even saw the striker. His skull burst like a crushed gourd.
"Yu... Ang?"
Dust settled like gray snow. Lorin climbed clear and stared at the man standing before him. His pupils pinched to points.
Muscle slabs stood out like chiseled stone under the open air, cables winding and knotting like coiled ropes. One look, and Lorin felt the terrible power caged in that iron frame.
He didn’t dare imagine taking one punch from him.
"You—"
"Kill!"
Lorin drew breath to ask how Yu Ang had reclaimed his body and rushed back. No time.
The rebels, tossed by Yu Ang’s shockwave, rallied like ants on a crumb and charged the two again. Lorin raised his half-blade to meet them.
Yu Ang moved first. He shot into the mass like a stormfront, straight and ruthless. Heat burned in his eyes like banked coals. Sweat flung from every strike like rain under sun, and every motion shook the air.
If Yu Ang’s training was steel hammered a hundred times, his fighting now was force that crushes mountains.
His blows fell like a summer squall—fierce, fast, dazzling. He gave no breath, no gap, no mercy.
Lorin felt it in his bones: if Yu Ang caught the tiniest slip in that crowd, he’d drag them into ruin in an instant.
...
Meanwhile, in the back mountain forest:
"Host..."
"What?"
"What did you use on Yu Ang just now?"
As Nana Toki walked steady as a metronome, guiding Ling'er Long and Kurus back toward the cave, the System in her head finally broke. Its voice rang like a tapping spoon. "I sensed a power in that drop of blood you pulled. It’s not of this world. Dare I ask where you got it?"
"Ah... that? Just a drop of ordinary blood. I begged it off an idiot, back when."
System: ...
"Host, do you think I’ll swallow that utterly unconvincing line? (￣へ￣)" The System did not buy a single syllable of Nana Toki’s brush-off.
If that was ordinary blood, it would livestream washing its hair upside down.
It really was just a drop of blood.
They reached a vantage where they could see Yu Ang and Lorin fighting shoulder to shoulder, ants under the trees. Nana Toki sighed. "If you have to know, I grabbed it back in the Nesting Phoenix plane."
The Nesting Phoenix plane?
The System blanked out. What, how did you grab it?
"Remember when Nesting Phoenix fused the Phoenix Flame?"
"I remember. So?"
"After that, I got it from her. I planned to use it to extend my life when the clock ran dry. But you, genius, yanked my life back while I wasn’t looking. So I never used it. It’s been sitting in my hidden storage, gathering dust."
System: ...
That sounded suspiciously like it was the System’s fault.
Wait—how can this host smuggle stuff out of other planes behind me?
Also, that’s not even the main point, is it? The System finally caught the glare in the details.
When did you even talk to Nesting Phoenix about this?
It had zero memory of that.
This host keeps getting more mysterious.
"None of your business. Private talk between girls. You nosy up any more, and when this plane wraps, I’m reporting you to your master for sexual harassment."
System: ...
Honestly, if not for testing whether she could save cannon fodder by crooked methods, Nana Toki wouldn’t have used Nesting Phoenix’s stuff on someone else. Maybe when the experiment ends, she should carve him up and refine the drop back?
She watched the fight below and did mental math, knives clicking like abacus beads.
Down in the valley, the battle neared its end. Against Yu Ang, fused with Nana Toki’s drop of blood, the Marl rebels weren’t even in the same game. They were true cannon fodder; he was a cannon-fodder shell packed with protagonist cheat and pay-to-win steroids, a walking bug.
Comparable? Not even close.
So of course, the end was Yu Ang steamrolling straight through.
Even when Yu Ang led Lorin back to Nana Toki’s perch, none of them—including Yu Ang himself—understood what had happened to his body.
"What? Did you lot suddenly get your eyesight back, fall for this princess’s nation-toppling beauty, and now you can’t stop staring?" Nana Toki cocked a brow at four pairs of burning eyes that looked ready to strip her bare.
Yu Ang: ...
Lorin: ...
Kurus: ...
Ling'er Long: ...
System: ... This host is probably not well.
"Your Highness, what happened to Yu Ang?" The Protagonist Lord swallowed his snark and voiced what everyone felt. Hours ago, they’d watched Yu Ang limp and need a shoulder. One blink later, he was a war god on pay-to-win feed.
People block, people die?
Hacks?
Even hacks aren’t this shameless.
"What happened? He looks fine to me." Nana Toki waved it off. Explaining was a pain. She chose to play dumb. "Ever heard of the miracle of life?"
Lorin: ... Miracle your banana.
She wouldn’t say. They couldn’t press. After a quick breather on the spot, Nana Toki led them straight toward the Marl Kingdom’s capital.
She’d wanted to slow-roll for a few days. But the trump card was out. If she didn’t push the plot fast, she worried Heaven’s Will would refuse a bug like Yu Ang and hard-delete him.
That would be a loss.
For safety, Nana Toki sent Kurus back to the Hedon Kingdom with a handwritten letter to drag in reinforcements. The letter laid out her situation plain. If their king wasn’t an idiot, he’d know what to do.
As for Kurus’s worry that hardliners in Hedon might balk, Nana Toki trusted the fate of Dragonbreak City had already reached their ears. Unless they had a death wish, they wouldn’t oppose.
She also counted the Four Heavenly Kings possibly peeling off troops to intercept Kurus. She had that on the board. As long as he didn’t pull fancy stunts, her safety talismans (ahem) would see him home.
So.
After sketching a tight—well, tight-ish—plan, Nana Toki took the remaining three and strode in force straight for the Marl Kingdom’s capital.
This time she’d set the stage in the open and let them see.
Me, your princess, I’ve come to clean out your house.
Open up—community outreach just arrived!
