The first war was just a game that ended before anyone took it seriously. Yet before they did, the fabled Sole Empire had already become history.

— Saint Sorcerer Tico, On the Nature of War

Inside the Sole Empire’s palace, Amelie lifted her eyes to the vault of heaven. Her brow drew tight like a bowstring. She sighed, a cold mist leaving her lips.

“You should… evacuate this place.” Her voice fell like frost. She spoke to the lone figure before the throne. He sat regal and still, a man in his thirties. The empire’s banner-mark burned on his robes like a scar.

He wavered, eyes caught in a storm. In Ouyang’s words, the man still wanted to “push one more rescue,” like a doctor pounding a stopped heart.

“No other way?” His question was brittle as dry bamboo. He was the current emperor, Larulass. Amelie had chosen the most powerful man under heaven, to start from the highest peak.

But disquiet settled in her chest like winter snow. Power at the start meant nothing. Even with the world’s apex as her partner, she stood alone, a lone lamp in a long night.

An emperor couldn’t bridge the gulf in Demon King numbers. Amelie was strong, a blade honed by storms. Yet under the ceiling below godhood, her edge was blunted. The enemy had two more Demon Kings. She could stall two, her shadow long and unwavering. Who would face the third? Larulass, with iron and ink?

She shook her head, the motion a falling leaf. This couldn’t be salvaged. Ten minutes ago, she felt Feges’s scent drift like smoke. By the time her mind tightened, it was too late. Three presences ringed the imperial city like wolves around a herd. Prepared. Patient. Pitiless.

Sensing them, Amelie ordered Larulass to disperse the palace residents, like scattering sparrows before a storm. Save the living from the flood.

Larulass obeyed, the command a drumbeat. He did not withdraw the army. He left the spears standing like a forest.

“I’ll see if a thousand years of the Sole Empire has no strength to resist.” His pride rose like a red sun. He knew Amelie was a blade among blades. Those “champions” cut just as deep. Still, he wouldn’t bend early. He’d gamble thunder against thunder.

The Sole Empire, a thousand-year ancient realm, called itself One like a mountain peak calls itself high. Larulass wouldn’t let that pride die in his hands, like a jade seal slipping into mud.

She understood. Cold understanding is winter rain. In her eyes, he was foolish. A million soldiers against Demon Kings? Ants against a tidal wave.

Her nature was cool as moonlight, and she barely knew Larulass. Warning him, clearing the civilians, was already more than courtesy. If he wouldn’t listen, she owed no slow explanations, no tea poured twice.

Ten minutes carry like drifting petals. As she expected, the enemy struck at that heartbeat. Three violent surges burst from three directions. Their aim was the palace, a single ember—Amelie.

As a high-ranked Demon King, Amelie’s strength was near the summit. Her ambition was a wind that never sleeps. Her path began when she walked out of the Nine Hells, when she denied elders ossified like old stone.

“Watch,” she said, pride ringing like bronze. “My sword art belongs to me alone. I—Amelie, Second Swordsman—cut with that pride.”

Her blade rose, and the world split into half-ink, half-snow. One side was white so bright it burned eyes. The other side was silence-black, a grave without sound.

Far away, Ouyang watched the sky’s wound. Thought pooled in his gaze like deep water. “The Law of White and the Law of Black. Black and white, forever circling.” In his view, her swordsman’s road already reached high ridgelines. To fuse Black and White into the blade—her realm towered.

“This foolish girl… ah.” His sigh drifted like falling ash.

Ouyang stepped on the void like a cool stone. Regret pulled at his mouth. Beside him, Dufei, Moqi, and Glenza all let out the same long breath, like wind through pines.

That sword, the one that seemed ready to split sky and earth, didn’t cleave the heavens. But the imperial city cracked clean in two, a canyon opening like a mouth. From the palace outward ran a long rift, ten meters wide at least. Length? Who could measure a dragon’s tail at first glance.

Inside the city, Feges and the others stood pallid as paper. They stared at the spot where Amelie had stood. An absolute Demon King, a blade that could cut the world, had been there. Now, there was nothing. To show off her peerless sword art, she reached too deep into the well. Her force burst beyond the limit. And she was out.

“Ahaha… knew it. An IQ stomp.” Feges laughed, dry as old bark. Her aim was met. Still, bitterness prickled like nettles. Why did it feel so hollow?

Think of those knocked out so far. None left the field because their projections were shattered by others. Each fell by their own hand, like candles drowning in their own wax.

“Anyway… cheer for our grand success.” She produced a glass of red wine as if plucking a plum from air. Confidence flared; even the drink was prepared.

Suddenly, something pitch-black fell from the sky. At first, it was only a dark dot, like an ink flea on paper. As it dropped, the shape swelled. A foul stench spread like rot in summer heat.

“Ugh—” Feges gagged, her wineglass shattering on stone. “Move… move! We’re in an ambush!”

If the ambushers were Devila’s trio, Feges wouldn’t flinch. Worst case, trade blows and titles. If it was those other men, better dodge the edge, like farmers sheltering from a typhoon.

Boom— A massive mound of steaming dung plummeted, carving a new clearing, earth exploding like clay pots.

“Damn it, run!” A familiar voice cracked through the stink. Feges blinked—Devila’s trio were also in the city. They’d waited to pick heads after her team and Amelie cut each other up. Instead, a volcanic turd flushed them out.

Not just the steaming heap. A giant fell from the clouds, skin knotted with boils like a diseased hive. Yellow pus dripped in ropes from swelling blisters. Wherever it stepped, sticky slime spattered the ground, a trail of sickly lacquer.

“Captain Crap. Pustule Warrior. Block them! Don’t let them run!” On a giant beast made of black storm, Ouyang stood under a night cloak. He pointed like a general on a ridge, commanding filth and fever.

Too bad Captain Crap and Pustule Warrior ignored Ouyang’s call, like mongrels pretending not to hear the whistle. Dufei and Moqi had the same thought anyway. Keep those people. Shut the gate.

Rumble, rumble— The two abominations thundered toward Feges and Devila’s team, leaving streaks of dung-brown and slow yellow slime. The ground became a spoiled canvas.

Glenza wouldn’t be outdone. He first called up a massive skeleton frame, a bony mount clattering like windchimes of bone. Dufei sat on Captain Crap’s crown. Moqi coiled atop Pustule Warrior’s head. Ouyang had his storm-beast. How could Glenza not ride? To walk on foot was to be looked down on, like a beggar at a banquet.

He waved his cudgel. Countless corpses clawed up from the earth like fish through ice. Skulls gathered in clusters, then knit into a towering skeletal warrior, a bone colossus. Glenza flew to its skullcap, pleased as a cat on a warm tile. He lifted his staff and roared to the carrion army. “Sons, smash those bastards!”

Feges risked a glance back. One look, and her heart dropped like a stone in a well. Never thought—never ever thought—those four had learned to huddle together. A flock now, not stray crows.

“Run! Don’t look back. Don’t you dare.” On the other side, Devila sprinted while shouting at Bartley and Eunice. One backward glance, and fear would catch them like a hook.

In the palace, Emperor Larulass hadn’t yet returned to himself. His mind still held Amelie’s earth-shaking sword, like thunder lingering after lightning. And then… how had it become this rolling chaos?

At last, face set like carved wood, Larulass gave the order. A million soldiers and over a dozen imperial patron sorcerers surged like a tide. Their aim: stop the four giant monsters.

Mid-chase, Ouyang’s four noticed swarming ants below, hopping and stabbing with toothpick spears. The ants… attacked them?

“Strange. We’ve left them be, and they come poking the tiger?” Dufei’s temper flared like a match. “Screw chasing those clowns. I’ll grind these ants into paste.”

“Heh… amusing,” Ouyang said, tone light as drifting smoke. “If they want mutual harm, then let harm be mutual.”

He stayed unconcerned, a cold moon on black waves. Meanwhile, Captain Crap, Pustule Warrior, and Glenza’s bone colossus all edged away from Ouyang. They kept distance from his storm-beast like birds skirting a snare.

Ouyang wore the Calamity Cloak. Dufei’s trio treated him as a walking disaster zone. He hadn’t even brought Bai this time—proof of how vicious that cloak’s field could be.

The cloak’s disaster domain covered roughly where the black wind beast roamed, a storm belt. Avoid the beast’s touch, and you avoided the curse. Four colossal monsters, and a carpet of reeksome dead. Because one dogged thought in Larulass’s crown—one “I refuse” like a spark—the four decided to squat in the capital and not budge.

So later ages smeared Larulass black as dung in their books, turning him into a byword for calamity, a stain no rain could wash.

They dumped every “worst emperor in history” hat onto his head, stacking them like bowls in a sad kitchen.

Truth is, Larulass only wanted to resist. He misjudged the gap, a farmer mistaking a flood for a stream. If he had known the future, if he’d seen the four as mountains, even with a hundred hearts, he’d never have stood against those lords.