Kane braced his boots into the stone, his muscles coiled to unleash the absorbed kinetic energy into Commander Myla’s guard, but the blow never landed.
High above them, the clerestory windows exploded inward in a blinding shower of stained glass and spatial distortion.
Ten figures dropped through the falling shards simultaneously, landing in a perfect circle formation across the polished floor.
Five men and five women rose from the crouch as one, clad in matching Tier III Moon-Silver armor trimmed with brilliant royal gold.
They weren’t border militia.
One man wielded a greatsword that visibly distorted the air around the blade; beside him stood a spearman spinning armor-piercing wind lances, an archer whose drawn arrowheads kept flickering in and out of reality, a heavy shield-bearer shrouded in reflective wards, and a tall mage whose fingertips dripped with fresh iron-wood seeds.
Flanking their right were five women of equal menace, one trailing frost from a cryo-botanical staff, another cracking a braided beast-tamer’s whip, a shadow-dancer balancing twin stilettos, an illusionist whose veil blurred the light around her face, and a cold-eyed sorceress whose mere presence caused the ambient mana in the room to turn sluggish and stagnant.
Leaping backward out of Kane’s reach, Myla wiped a smear of blood from her lip with a fierce sneer.
"You thought the border garrison was all Elves had?" Myla spat, her rapier humming as she backed into the golden-armored formation.
"The Queen does not leave her gold unguarded, barbarian."
Planting his gravity-enchanted greatsword into the flagstones, the lead Elven vanguard fractured the stone floor all the way to Kane’s boots.
"Surrender the vault, humans. You are standing in a royal tomb."
Rutheus spat on the polished silver floor, bringing his own greatsword up with a reckless laugh.
"Ten more fragile fencers! Sounds like a fair fight for once!"
’My system interface is flashing red across every tactical channel,’ Kane thought, watching his mana regeneration numbers plummet the second the cold-eyed sorceress stepped forward.
’These aren’t standard border guards; they are Tier III royal knights operating on a synchronized hive-mind enchantment. That suppression aura is already cutting my mana regeneration in half.’
Fuck. I really forgot this game was set in hard mode.
Before Rutheus could even finish his laugh, the vault descended into chaos.
The ten golden-armored champions moved without a single shouted command, refusing to fight individual duels as they systematically dismantled the Bloodfang front line.
Thora locked weapons with the gravity vanguard and the twin-spearman at the center of the room.
Catching the spearman’s thrust in the hook of her halberd, she snapped the tip off with a clean twist, only for the shield-bearer to step in and pulse a reflective kinetic ward that bounced her own brute momentum straight back into her ribs.
While she stumbled, the frost-mage swept her staff, freezing the hinges of Thora’s greaves until the metal locked tight.
In a flash of silver, the greatsword vanguard slammed the flat of his blade across Thora’s shoulders, pinning her to the stone floor under tenfold gravity.
Across the room, Sira went down fighting like a cornered wolverine.
She chopped through a rising wall of iron-wood vines and sank her axe deep into the shadow-dancer’s shoulder, but the illusionist’s veil flared with a blinding pulse.
Suddenly swinging at empty air, Sira screamed as her eyes and ears were robbed of sensation.
A braided whip wrapped around her ankles, jerking her off her feet before a kinetic blast slammed her into the central stone column, leaving her motionless on the flagstones.
"Kane... break through the left... their formation is..."
Thora gasped under the crushing gravity field, her breastplate groaning against the floor.
"Quiet, barbarian," the greatsword vanguard commanded, pressing his boot flat against her halberd shaft.
Parrying two blinking arrows that materialized inches from his face while deflecting a spatial thrust from Myla, Kane let his eyes burn with intense system blue.
"Seraphine! Take Firlia and get out through the balcony! That is an order!"
Seraphine hesitated in the shadows near the coin chests, her wooden stiletto dripping with Elven blood.
"I do not leave my lord."
"Go! Tell the northern tribes what happened here!"
’Thora and Sira are down, but still breathing,’ Kane calculated, his eyes darting toward the vault entrance where Rutheus and Brak were bleeding from dozens of shallow cuts, desperately shielding the retreating infantry from the wind lances.
’If I trigger a full Warlord’s Overdrive now, the kinetic backlash inside this closed room will kill my own wounded officers before it kills the elves.’
Standing alone in the center of the vault, Kane gripped the leather haft of his war axe as blue system mana erupted along the double blades.
Four of them, the gravity vanguard, the twin-spearman, the suppression sorceress, and Commander Myla, lunged at him from four different angles at once.
Even outnumbered four-to-one under a suffocating suppression field, the Bloodfang Warlord was terrifying.
Channeling [Tier III Warlord’s Impact] into his boots, Kane ignored Myla’s rapier grazing his shoulder and swung his axe in a brutal upward arc that shattered the spearman’s remaining shaft into splinters.
Slash.
Reaching through the shower of wood, his broad hand clamped around the suppression sorceress’s throat, choking off her aura instantly before he threw her bodily across the room, smashing her into the shield-bearer’s reflective ward with a bone-rattling crash.
Spinning on his heel, Kane raised his axe high, ready to cleave Myla down the collarbone, and froze.
Five paces away, the gravity vanguard had shifted his blade, holding the vibrating, distorted edge of his greatsword less than an inch above Thora’s exposed neck.
Across the floor, the whip-wielder had her braided leather wrapped around Sira’s throat.
Kane held his swing mid-air.
He didn’t drop his axe out of weakness or panic; he lowered the blade slowly, his shoulders rising with cold warlord authority as he locked his eyes onto Myla.
"Drop the axe, Barbarian," Myla said, her voice steady even as her hands trembled from the sheer killing intent radiating off the man before her.
"Or your commanders die where they bleed."
"If a single blade breaks skin on my people, I will let myself overload the ley-lines beneath this floor," Kane growled, his voice vibrating through the walls.
"We will all burn, and Sylvander will lose its royal guard in a basement."
Myla swallowed hard, glancing at the battered state of her golden-armored champions; her sorceress was gasping on the floor, and her spearman was unarmed.
"What do you propose?"
"Bind me. Take me to your Queen," Kane commanded, tossing his mana-forged axe onto the silver ingots with a resounding clang.
"My soldiers leave this valley alive with their weapons. You get the Bloodfang Warlord in chains. That is my only offer."