In the Sole Empire, a bewildered emperor and his million-strong host hurled themselves at four monsters, while a tide of corpses boiled up from the earth.

The battle had no suspense. The army thundered like storm surf, yet their blades barely scratched the hulks. With each breath, soldiers thinned, while the enemy swelled—some infected by Pus-Bubble Warriors, some Glenza hauled back with necromancy.

The imperial capital lay shattered, a sea of stone ribs and broken walls.

In the distance, the four giants held power enough to erase the host. They didn’t. They toyed with the army like cats with mice.

“Damn it! Those monsters… General, let’s go all in!” A young soldier stared at the four hulks strolling the ruins, blood running hot as wildfire.

The general’s mouth twitched. He scanned the ruined city, then glanced at his emperor, pale as wax.

“No chance. Not a sliver. The only ones who could hurt them—the Magus Council—are dead. Mortals can’t touch those things.”

He worked it through, stone by stone. The pattern was clear.

Earlier, the Council’s cloaked magi had managed to hurt those four. That’s why the Council got wiped. To the general, their wipeout felt absurd to the point of mockery.

When they swarmed the beast shaped from black wind, some magi tripped on stones. Some blasted their own. Some caught flying rubble and went down like felled trees.

They hurt that mound of filth a little, and chased the wind-beast, chests full of triumph. Then the weirdness began. Before they even got close, every last mage died to “accidents.” One after another. How is that not absurd?

The general remembered one crawling back. He wheezed out the tale. He had choked on his own saliva—just a swallow gone wrong—then hacked so hard he spat blood. He lost strength, crawled, told the story, and died right there.

Could anything be more ridiculous?

Killed by a swallow. A cough, a spatter of blood, and a light snuffed. The general had never seen a death like that.

And the strange deaths kept coming. One mage fell; a soldier helped him up. The soldier’s foot slipped; the scales on his glove kissed the mage’s throat and opened it like paper.

Another broke out of the melee and laughed at his luck. He laughed too hard and pulled his back. He toppled onto a broken sword. The blade went clean through.

The examples piled up like driftwood. The general went numb. After enough deaths, he drew a line in the dust: within the black-wind colossus’s reach, people died to freak mischance.

“No hope at all. No Council. No army… Why should I keep obeying that dog of an emperor?”

Dog of an emperor—Larulas had earned the title in his heart. The outcome was obvious now. Fighting on was just feeding a pyre, yet that dog demanded more bodies for “honor.”

His confidants felt the same. Only a few hot-blooded youths still clung to “die but make them pay.”

He weighed it and leaned close to his inner circle. The million were almost spent, the Magus Council was ash. The country was a clay jar in a river.

“General, we should slip out, gather old units, and found a new state.”

A confidant whispered. The general’s eyes slid, unnoticed, to the nobles—earls, the chancellor, the marshal. They traded looks, hungry as wolves. None wished to bow to the emperor after this.

Worse, the emperor looked ready to die locked with monsters. He didn’t want to live. They did. No one wanted to share his grave.

“Move. While the Grand Marshal holds the beasts, we withdraw.”

The general decided in a breath. They strode off to a chorus of imperial curses. The finance minister went further. Forever scolded, he swung onto the emperor’s prized stallion and rode it away. He cut off Larulas’s last escape like severing a rope bridge.

Watching the pack of traitors, Emperor Larulas coughed up a mouthful of dark blood.

With all bonds snapped, he felt hollow as a gourd. A single day—one day—and the Sole Empire of a thousand years unraveled like wet silk.

It wasn’t instant, but look at his former men. Without an army, without the Council, how would he crush them back into line? Collapse was just a matter of the sun rising a few more times.

“Bastards… all of you…” he said, and the words came out bowed with helplessness. Without the roaming thunder of the Magus Council, what was a million men worth? The empire had cowed the world for a millennium by worshiping a dozen magi.

A dozen in one land, while others had one or two at most. That weight alone bent borders. Now the Council had died to freak chance. Without that shadow, foreign magi skulking in the dark would spring like jackals.

Without the Council, an emperor could be swapped and no one would know. The royal house could die, and no one could give truth its name.

When the Council died in absurdity, Larulas knew the empire was finished.

“I won’t accept this!!!”

He roared. A heartbeat later, a mound of dung dropped from the sky and slammed him flat.

“Mmff… mmff… glug… glug…”

And that was the end of the last emperor of the Sole Empire. Last, and most pitiful. When the smoke cleared and scavengers combed the field, they found signs the emperor had fallen into a latrine pit and drowned in filth.

The curtain fell on the Sole Empire. Feges’s and Devila’s squads still had pages to burn.

Once they realized the four disgusting things weren’t on their heels, both teams stopped running. They chose a canyon for a decisive clash.

“I swear… it smells like dung in here. Don’t tell me those four are already close.” Bartley sniffed the faint stink hanging like fog. The four moved too strangely—chasing, then not. His neck prickled for an ambush.

His warning snapped everyone taut. The two teams shelved their grudge and swept the ravine. If those four lay in wait, the six together might stand a chance.

They found no sign of the quartet. But a huge smear cut the canyon floor, as if stamped by that mound of filth.

“They’ve been here. The knife’s edge is the safest perch. Where they’ve trod is their blind spot. They won’t think we’re right under their noses.”

Wutong weighed the ground and spoke calm as still water.

“Heh… if no one’s interrupting, let’s begin.” Feges flexed her fingers, sparks in her eyes. They held the stronger hand. With everyone’s power capped, Tangela’s Titan hit like a falling mountain. And Wutong’s alchemy shone brightest under tight limits.

No matter how she ran it, Feges couldn’t see them losing.

They crashed together in an instant, steel to storm, stone to thunder.

The “champions” brawled. Far off, Grand Magus Omalihas watched from shadow, face pulled long. He hated that Feges chose now to fight. Gathering magic crystals mattered more than blood.

In his watch, the “champions” didn’t care about crystals at all. They cared about testing fists and pride.

Why the killing? Gather the crystals and be done.

The longer he’d lived, the more careful he’d grown. Omalihas studied the field like a fox at a riverbank. The “champions” were too strong. It didn’t match his math.

“We withdraw. While the six ‘champions’ are snarled here, we hunt crystal shards. If they lose, those crystals become our last lifeline.”

He would never call it fear. It was a strategic redeployment—a layer of insurance for victory.

His two teammates hated to abandon their “champions.” Then they looked at the clash. The shockwaves sank hills and bent ridgelines.

After a tenth of a heartbeat of thought, they went with Omalihas. Staying meant nothing but ashes. Leaving was the only choice that still breathed.