High noon on the day of battle, the sun a pale coin over the Eroded Plains.

The Carl Margrave’s host reached the field first, and Count George’s troop came after, like chess pieces settling on a rain-dark board.

Carl’s side brought ten thousand, an iron tide in block after block that filled the plain like growing shadow; George had five hundred, two thin formations like lonely islets.

An hour passed; the agreed bell tolled in the heart like a drum; both sides declared ready, two storm fronts facing across a sea of mud.

The noon sky had been clear, yet clouds rolled in like ink, and a fine rain drifted down like gauze with no warning.

Under that gray ceiling that pressed like a lid, the commanders rode out, two mountains staring across a narrow valley.

A horn thrummed like a bronze bull, and the Carl Margrave came on horseback. “Carl Elmond, ninth lord of House Elmond.”

After him, his general, the Rose Knight, Reina, followed in his wake like a petal on steel wind. “Reina Grandi, royal-named Rose Knight of Maple City.”

Her soft-rose hair and rose-tinted skirt-armor glowed like dawn, her figure round yet proud like a drawn bow, a single bloom in a forest of spears.

Carl’s ranks rippled like wheat in wind; whistles flew like sparrows, and talk crackled like kindling, and when they heard she was a powerful Charge Knight, their morale flared like a bonfire.

After Carl’s side made their bow, it was Count George’s turn. He didn’t ride; he sat in a palanquin shaped like a boat yet not, like a coffin on shoulders, comic as a puppet on a plank.

“George Lindberl, sixth head of House Lindberl.”

His presence was thin as smoke beside the other’s flame; his voice wavered like a reed, and in face, build, clothes, even mount, he was overshadowed like a candle near daylight.

If Carl looked every inch a white-horse prince, George was a greasy uncle with small eyes, a blow to spirit like cold rain, yet their hearts hitched to Lance like a rope to a post.

The Flame of Chaos Knight, Lance, entered as a spark meant to catch, riding a great cat like a dusk cloud, ringed in wreaths of fire like halos.

He leaped down like calamity-fire from the heavens; water splashed like shattered glass, and steam rose like ghosts from a battlefield pond.

When the mist peeled back like a veil, Lance struck that flamboyant JoJo pose and cast his name like a thrown spear. “Lance Morrison, named Flame of Chaos by the Iron Duke of Mubay City!”

George’s soldiers burst with a shout like surf, only 431 throats, yet the sound swept like a storm. “Lance! Lance! Lance!”

Relief first, then focus—Fulin savored the effect like sweet tea, held the JoJo pose like a banner, and watched the enemy faces like reading clouds.

Many of Carl’s men looked spooked, their iron surety dented like thin tin; they’d counted on numbers and a famed general, yet a Flame of Chaos Knight threw dice into their bowl.

Truth under the smoke—Fulin playing Lance wasn’t much stronger than before; she had raised Warrior Bloodline to Lv.2, Strength, Endurance, and Battle Aura to Lv.2, and Agility to Lv.3 like a tempered spring.

Even so, Lance couldn’t beat Reina head-on, but the stat spread cut at her gaps like a chisel, so beating Lance wouldn’t be easy, like trying to net wind.

With that and a long-laid plan, Fulin already held victory on paper like a drawn map; now she needed to turn ink into earth.

Lance drew the Sirius Sword, the blade catching rain like silver grass, and declared, “I’ll say it straight. I’m very strong. Stand before me, and you’ll surely lose.”

Carl’s side, still singed by that earlier thunder and light, held their tongues like clamped lids, and only Reina saw the bluff like a seam, and spoke with a sigh like falling petals. “Lance, you really won’t surrender?”

“Why should I?” Lance sliced a ripple like a fish-scale and stepped forward like a stone cast.

“I’m stronger than you. You can’t beat me. Look how few you brought; you’re leading them to die,” Reina said, her voice clean as a drawn blade.

“Not necessarily. I’m careful. I don’t move without certainty,” the Sirius Sword drank Battle Aura and swelled like a heavy katana, its edge pointing like a lightning rod. “So, Reina, you’ve already lost.”

Reina shook her head, and a breeze combed her rose hair like willow silk; her smile held old warmth like late sun. “Yeah… back then you always showed off, then kept losing to me, and I didn’t mind… but war isn’t play. Can’t you just concede once?”

Unease first, then thought—Fulin felt the tone graze like a feather, half-flirt, half-sigh, as if a sky-high poser became only a stubborn boy before Reina.

But playing Lance was simple as a drumbeat: keep the swagger to the end like a held note.

“Sorry. I can’t,” Lance said, voice flat as iron.

The maiden-soft shine dimmed from Reina’s face like dusk, and she drew her long sword with a breath like steel rain. “Fine. But this time I won’t hold back. Be ready, Lance!”

“Wait,” Carl’s voice pinned the air like a nail, cooling Reina like shade. He rode up, rain beading like chips of glass, and addressed Lance. “You’re Lance Morrison? A strong and brave Charge Knight indeed.”

“Thanks,” Lance said, the word a small knife.

Carl glanced back at Reina, whose gaze clung to Lance like a magnet, then raised his voice like a banner. “How about it, Lance Morrison? Join me.”

Count George nearly slipped from his boat-coffin like a bar of soap, and Osborne, Jeremy, and Dewey stiffened like drawn bows, fear biting like frost that the youth might waver.

“Impossible, Lord Carl,” Lance answered, and his companions’ breath eased like slack ropes; pride lifted his chin like a spear haft. “Crescent Pass belongs to Count George by right, yet you covet it and wage war.”

“This is an unjust war, a blade without cause,” he said, words beating like drums. “If you succeed, nobles in Golden Bay City will copy you and join the plunder. Then what?”

Carl shaded his contempt like a hood and spoke in a calm as a deep pond. “Isn’t that good? In war, mercenaries get work and reward, knights win glory and wealth, like sparks in dry grass.”

“Five hundred years ago, the Sun Knight Taylor rose from victory to victory like a hawk on updraft. You’re young and able. Don’t you dream of becoming that great?”

Lance smiled like a closed fan. “Never.”

“What? Why?” Carl’s brows knitted like black twine, as if hearing a fish sing.

“Tell me, Lord Carl—does a fish fare better in a creek or a river?” Lance asked, voice light as rain.

“The creek,” Carl shot back like an arrow, and a heartbeat later he flinched like a struck bell—he’d heard himself slip.

“Exactly. So I choose a quiet corner like a cove, and a peaceful life like still water,” Lance said. “I’ll help Count George so everyone can live in peace. Any problem with that?”

Those words ran against Carl’s ambition like water against fire, and rage flashed like flint. “Utterly foolish! Beyond reason! …Enough. Rose Knight, take this fool down!”

“Forgive me, Lance!” Reina’s answer hit like thunder, and she burst forward in a spray like shattered rain.

Water leapt like silver fish as she arrived in a blink, her sword howling like wind about to fall; Lance’s eyes widened like moons, too late to move.

“Got you!” Reina cried, voice cutting like a whip.

Fear first, then grit—Fulin couldn’t even see when Reina primed her enhanced technique; one clash, and Lance skated the cliff edge like a leaf over rapids.

But Lance had been sharpened for this like a tailor’s knife, with Agility at Lv.3 like a coiled spring; though he seemed late, his body had already slipped a fraction like a shadow-step.

By a hair like a moth’s wing, he slid past the Rose’s flashed chill, and survived the first pass like a candle in wind.

As Fulin had read in the clouds, Reina’s blistering pace eased like a storm losing teeth.

She kept striking, strokes falling like rain, but Lance matched her rhythm like drum to drum, steps quick as foxfire on wet grass.

He slipped left and right like eels, and with the last dodge he opened six meters like a drawn curtain, cleanly outside her arc.

He exhaled, cold sweat like pearls. “That was close.”

Relief first, then warning—Fulin’s palms were damp like dew; she knew Lance had Charge 3 while Reina held Charge 8, a gulf measured by the number of Battle Aura stones lit like stars.

So each hair’s-breadth dodge had been a knife-edge; a single clean hit would’ve hurled him like a tossed log, even if blocked.

In a pure duel, a fall is nothing but dust, yet this was a stage with an audience, and jeers could roll like thunder, shifting morale like tides.

If Lance went down, George’s five hundred—held together by belief like glue—would break like brittle clay; they’d come because they trusted Lance to bring victory.

For their trust, and for that highest plan of a quiet life like a hidden spring, even in hard weather, Fulin had no reason to yield.

Now, at last, Lance found room to bite back like a wolf.

He slipped between her chained blows like smoke, gathered Battle Aura, and unleashed a Secret Sword Blazing Fire like a sunrise.

The heat hit hard like a kiln, but a miss is wind through fingers; Reina slipped past it lightly like a dancer. “Not bad~”

“Heh. I’ve got to go all out to dodge you, but you slip past me easy,” Lance said, wry as rain. “That’s the gap.”

Distance opened by flame like a river between banks, and Reina called, voice lilting like a feather. “How about surrender~?”

“No. Never,” Lance said, and the Sirius Sword rose like a mast, the Battle Aura fire thicker than before like stormcloud flame. “Take this—Secret Sword, Blazing Fire!”

The technique was power, not reach, like a hammer not a spear, and Reina laughed from beyond range like a bell. “Who are you aiming at?”

Fulin knew her own script like a map; Lance wasn’t aiming at flesh, but at the shallow marsh where water kissed the calf like glass.

“You took the bait!” he shouted, and dropped the cloud of fire from the Sirius Sword into the water like molten sun.

Underwater, the fire didn’t die; sustained by Battle Aura, it burned like a heart that refused to stop, as long as the fuel held.

That submerged blaze birthed steam like rising spirits; layer upon layer wrapped the field like stacked gauze, and sight shrank to a fist.

In a breath, Lance had conjured a thick fog like a mountain’s shawl with Secret Sword Blazing Fire, and his figure melted like ink in water.

Hiding wasn’t the true aim; it was a tide turning underfoot, and if they missed the warning wind now, the price later would hit like hail.

Reina thought he meant to run, or to shoot from fog like a hunter; she called into the gray like into a cave. “Hide if you want. You can’t.”

In truth, threat was all she had; she wouldn’t step into that murk where vision was a blindfold and ground was enemy ground, traps possible as snakes in reeds.

The mist born of steam had covered only a small patch. In under a minute, it raced across the Eroded Plains like a gray tide. Visibility plunged, a curtain yanked down over the world.

Twenty kilometers. Fifteen. Ten… One. The fog felt wrong, thick as poured ink.

Panic rippled through Carl Margrave’s army, hearts fluttering like caged birds. Carl couldn’t sit still; heat climbed his neck like a spark. He called for the High Mage: “Angus! Get this damned fog gone.”

“Small matter,” Angus said, stepping in like a shadow through rain. He raised a staff set with three magic stones and pointed skyward. He cast the Elemental Gale; mana rippled like rings on water. A force‑8 wind roared from nowhere, a wolf howl that stripped the plains bare.

Soon the wind died and the fog peeled away like wet silk. A fine drizzle still fell, but sight returned to its earlier reach.

Only then did Carl’s side see Lance, sharp as a sword point against gray. “I didn’t run,” he said. He hadn’t hidden in the fog; with Count George and the rest, he’d stepped back to a farther strip of the Eroded Plains. They stood in a single line, razor‑neat, like brushstrokes laid by a strict hand. Each body floated a finger above the water, as if an unseen plank held their soles.

Carl Margrave, voice carried by an echo spell, shouted, “Lance, what are you planning?!”

Lance gave no answer. He slid the Sirius Sword away and shouted first among his men, “We won!” The soldiers beside him shouted too, a drumbeat of joy: “Oh! We won!”

Confusion hit Carl first, heavy as a stone in the gut. He had ten thousand troops, two generals unscathed, and he himself was fine. The other side clearly saw that, yet they cheered like festival firecrackers. Many lowered their weapons, clapping and capering like a village dance after harvest.

Carl wasn’t just confused; irritation burned like grit in his eyes. He raised his command sword and barked, “Advance, advance!”

Carl’s soldiers were baffled, but an order was a charge. Ten thousand moved forward like a rolling wall, a tide pushing across wet stone. The quickest at the front broke into a full‑on surge, boots drumming like hooves.

Unease knotted in Reina before reason, a cold thread tugging her heart. If they met no resistance, they would be crushed under ten thousand like grain under a millstone. By outcome, that was surrender, yet it didn’t fit Lance. In her mind, he was proud and stubborn; if he had chosen to resist, would he fold so easily?

Angus was different, his senses tuned to currents like a fisher feeling river skin. He’d felt a strange ripple from afar—no mana, just something that gnawed at the edge of thought. He turned his gaze along that path, eyes narrowing like shutters in wind.

What he saw cracked his calm: the Eroded Plains were flooding. A few hundred meters to the left, a roaring sheet of water had spilled, a silver torrent swallowing ground. In clear sight, such a flood would have been spotted early, a warning flag on the horizon. But that suffocating fog had veiled its approach, a blanket smothering the world.

The scale was wrong—wildly wrong. The leading wave stood near five meters high, like a small ocean breaker under storm winds. A flood like that could drown any grown man, a dark mouth closing over breath. Worse, Carl’s ten thousand had already pushed out into danger. The frothing front had fully closed, less than four hundred meters from swallowing the soldiers on the edge.

“Trap! Trap! Fall back now!” Angus screamed, his voice tearing like cloth.