“In a hurry to make heirs already?” Vivian snapped, her voice landing like a mallet on a drum.

In the Doran Kingdom, custom is tight as winter cloth. A public hug is a bold, wind-cutting act.

Alice froze, then let go in a panic. She turned to the Celestial Spirit, words tumbling like beads. “No, that’s not what I meant! Look, Lance got hurt. I wanted to see if he felt cold. If he’s fading, that’s bad. Right, Lance?”

Vivian didn’t wait. She stole Lance into her arms like snatching fruit from a branch. “How about I do it then, daughter of the Iron Duke? I think he’s not cold at all. He’s getting hotter, like a fevered stove. Oh dear, he looks gravely ill. May I take him home and save him?”

The elf girl smiled with a little wicked curl, like a fox at the henhouse door. Alice pictured Lance carried off and never returned. Her cheeks bloomed apple-red. “No, no, no!”

She marched up and pried them apart, puffed like a bellows.

A soldier approached and saluted Lawrence. The sergeant major listened, and his face unknotted like frost in sunlight. He waved the trio over. “Alright, ladies, spare the boy. I still have business with him. Lance, with me.”

Fulin, wearing Lance like a mask, had been praying for a clean exit.

“Understood.”

“No time to waste. The Duke and the others are waiting.”

Lance said quick goodbyes to Alice and Vivian. He followed the sergeant major to the third floor of the ducal keep. The meeting hall smelled of steel, smoke, and rain-wet cloaks. Survivors were giving their after-action reports.

The Duke’s side bled hard. Thirty-three direct knights down. Five badly hurt. Twenty-one lightly wounded. Six fallen, cold as stones.

A single Charge Knight equals a hundred common soldiers on the field. The price to break this Shadowspirit Legion infiltrator unit was steep as a cliff. The bill came from a Daemon Knight and Dark Spirit mages.

Blazing Sun Layne killed the Daemon Knight. The foe had Earth Knight strength. As a Daemon, his edge turned Battle Aura into liquid fire. He pressed two of our Earth Knights into a grindstone duel. If Steelheart hadn’t cracked an opening, Layne might not have cut him down on the spot.

Yet the Daemon Knight didn’t reap our six dead Charge Knights. The two Dark Spirit mages did, hands dark as ravens.

They were schooled in vicious hexcraft. Of the six fallen, five were tagged by the Soulkill Hex and dropped like snuffed candles. The comatose and broken suffered Nightmares, Attrition, or Withering, thorns under the skin. Without prayer magic to sweep those blights away, their days would be a long road of pain.

The Shadowspirit Legion always brings such mages. To a knight, facing them is walking a fog filled with knives.

Even so, our battle mages stood like lightning rods. Before the enemy could finish a level-6 death-curse, they cast Chain Lightning, a level-3 elemental spell. The bolts leaped like blue snakes and struck both mages at once. Everyone in the courtyard lived because of that crack of thunder.

Then Lionheart Legion infantry arrived like a gray tide. Numbers crushed the rest. The report ended there.

So that’s how this world fights, Fulin thought, a chessboard of steel and fire. Knights lock shields in front. Mages duel from the rear, wind against wind. It isn’t a rule. If a knight sees a gap, he dives a mage’s face. If a mage wins the magic duel, he snipes enemy knights like a hunter in brush. It’s the method of real war. Flexible, free, and cruel.

On raw strength, it’s simple with knights. Those with Battle Aura crush those without, like hammer to clay. Among awakened, the stronger wins.

With mages, it feels like an old western in her past life. Two gunslingers in dust. The one who draws faster and truer lives. That’s why our mid-tier battle mage beat their high-tier Dark Spirit mage.

Two seconds to shape Chain Lightning. Far quicker than a death-curse that needs long, heavy chanting.

Then a thought flashed like sun on a blade. Wouldn’t my quick-cast magic be unbeatable here?

A beat later, a cloud passed over it. People here barely have magic resistance. Without specific warding tools, they can’t resist the right kind of spell. So spells bite deep, like thunderstones in a glass city. No wonder the Dark Spirit mages butchered so many Charge Knights.

It isn’t only mages. Knights live by the same blade-edge law. Without heavy plate, a nick to an artery is a quick river to death. Mages usually hold the edge over knights. But if a mage stands bare of protection and shows a rib of weakness, even a trainee knight can take a head with one swing.

She had to admit it. As a player of Legend of Dawn, she carried game-thought like sand in her boots.

And that was the pity.

This wasn’t a match in Legend of Dawn. It was a real fight, in Mubay City, in the ducal sky garden. On Alice’s birthday night, when lanterns should’ve been stars. The consequences fell like a cracked bell.

Not only six precious Charge Knights lost. Most guests, aside from the truly important, had no shield in the scrum. They weren’t the main target, but many died where they stood.

Worse, the survivors knew a hard truth. The most renowned child of the Golden Eagle Legion’s commander had fallen into a Night Disciple. That unseen traitor opened the gates to the Shadowspirit Legion. Or so it looked.

All that meant the birthday banquet couldn’t calm the frightened crowd. Mubay City’s name would wear a scar. More storms would follow.

Silence pooled in the hall like cold water.

The Iron Duke surprised everyone. His tone lightened like a breeze through leaves. “Look on the bright side, folks. It’s not as bad as you think. We’re alive, aren’t we?”

Layne laughed, bright and loud. “Hahaha! We did alright. We were lucky too.”

“Dawn” Raked nodded. “Right. The vampire princess who surfaced a month ago didn’t show. If she had, we’d be in trouble.”

What—vampire princess? Fulin jolted like a sparrow from a branch. Are they talking about me? Wearing Lance’s face, she stopped drifting and listened hard.

Sergeant Major Lawrence took a sip of clear ale and sighed it out like steam. “Yeah. And it fits the Duke’s guess. The Shadowspirit Legion is as fractious as we are. The Empire tries to grind us down at the front. Maybe those blood-fiends want to grind their own warmongers too.”

“Dawn,” a handsome knight, kept his courtesy polished. “It was your foresight, my lord. The vampire princess slipped in quiet, then suddenly acted brazen. You read it as a signal for the Legion’s plan. Thanks to you, we predicted the time and place. The banquet.”

The Duke nodded, then did the unexpected. He rose and bowed to the room, like a mountain bending to the wind. “That’s right. But I wasn’t sure then. I had no proof. Thank you for trusting me anyway.”

Wait, what are you talking about? Fulin’s thoughts tangled like reeds in a stream. She’d thought they’d tag her as a Dark Spirit Empire scout, a disposable D-rank. Instead, they set her on a high shelf.

From their tone, “vampire princess” wasn’t a court title. It was a combat kind. Daemons often become knights. Dark Spirits, mages. A vampire may be a princess, but she hits like an iron cudgel.

It felt downright surreal to Fulin.

The Duke looked over, gaze sharp as a hawk. “Lance Morrison, did you see that vampire princess? Your brother—sorry, but I must ask. Was his fall tied to her?”

Lance answered, steady as still water. “I saw her. I was in Mubay then. But my brother’s business, I don’t know. To me, he was always like that.”

Murmurs drifted like gnats.

The Duke brooded a moment, then asked, “Lance Morrison, I hear you surged in strength within a month. I’m glad you’re a knight born to it. But most of us aren’t prodigies. It’s hard to accept.”

His face cooled like iron in shade. Fulin felt a thorn of dread. In Lance’s voice, she lowered her head. “I’m sorry I can’t explain, my lord Duke.”

“You did nothing wrong. Yet I suspect you.” Eyes swung toward Lance like compass needles. The Duke went on, voice flat as a blade. “Your sudden gift mirrors your brother’s. It’s easy to think you, like Duncan, made a deal with the dark.”

Lance stared, blank as paper.

Fulin knew it was grave, yet her film-sick brain misfired. Deal with the dark flashed the wrong kind of locker room brawl. She shoved the thought away like a bad card.

Lance answered at once. “I never bargained with the Dark Spirit’s evil gods. My power awakened by chance.”

A red-robed mage stepped from behind the Duke, robe like a flicker of flame. He tossed three fist-sized orbs. They hung around Lance and glowed soft blue, like cold moons.

“What he just said is true,” the red-robe murmured.

Shoulders dropped. Faces loosened, like knots coming free. The Duke’s sternness thawed a shade.

So they were suspicious enough to set a test? Fulin’s heart skipped, then steadied. More than her own peril, she feared the spell’s reach.

If that magic truly reads truth, not pulse and sweat like a crude detector, then a different question could have gutted me. Ask, Are you tied to vampires, and I’d be ash, she thought.

Disguises live or die on luck. Seems mine held, she told herself, breath easing after a scare.

But the room’s faces only darkened, storm clouds gathering again. Fulin knew it wasn’t over. She’d smiled too early.

The Duke’s voice turned heavy with sorrow. “Lance Morrison, I knew you were innocent. But the fallout is dire. We can’t end it here. I, Wood Murphy, twenty-third Iron Duke, must answer to my people and to the Celestial Spirit.”

“Your brother Duncan has fallen into a Night Disciple. You’re his only brother. That alone loads you with suspicion like stones in a pack. We can’t wash it clean. And if we do nothing, the Heavenly Spirit Empire will send inquisitors. Their methods are merciless as winter. I’m only a duke, so…”

His words weighed like iron bars. His face showed a man cutting his own palm to sign. Officers clenched their jaws and lowered their heads.

He let out a long sigh, then struck like a judge’s gavel. “Lance Morrison, you are sentenced to exile beyond our borders. No term. It will be carried out tomorrow.”