Nero watched the destruction spreading out beneath him. He stood high above his army, held aloft by long black tentacles of pure darkness that stretched into the night sky. Beside him stood Xersies, from whose back two wings of light had emerged, beating in a steady rhythm..
On his other side was Ester, standing upon a disk of dark, stinking blood. His yellow eyes seemed to gleam through the raven mask as he gazed into the distance.
Nero's army was in the middle of destroying a medium-sized city on the road to Gloris. There had been little resistance until now.
First, the power of Nero's army was on a level far beyond the small force of perhaps ten thousand men that the city called its military. Second, the defenders were completely unprepared.
This was the first city they had attacked, and so far, no one in this world knew of their assault, at least, that was what Nero believed. Yet he also knew that no matter how quickly they tried to kill every survivor, the news would inevitably spread, and the further they advanced, the stronger the defenses would become.
Nero felt an overwhelming sense of urgency. They had to keep moving! He let out a long, sharp whistle toward the ground. A Polykenas instantly looked up at him. Without hesitation, the soldier bellowed the command to the army. Angry hissing rose from the ranks as the Polykenas were ordered away from their destruction, but they obeyed at once. Nero commanded several dozen to remain behind and kill every last survivor.
And so they moved on, like a natural disaster rolling over the planet, spreading out in all four cardinal directions.
Two months passed. Slowly but surely, the news spread across the planet until even the most isolated village had heard. With it, the defenses grew stronger. Where they had once advanced like a fish through water, it was now as though they were moving through honey.
Shire stood on a high hill, surveying the land. Behind him stretched a vast army: three million four hundred thousand warrior Polykenas and about one thousand eight hundred mage Polykenas. Originally, there had been four million, but they had fought many battles already and lost around three hundred thousand. Most had died during the assaults on cities—at the defensive walls or in open-field battles against enemy armies—but some had been killed by desperate men, women, and even children, who attacked them unexpectedly with knives or swords in their homes. They lost three hundred thousand Polykenas, but they had not yet even reached a third of their planned conquest.
The casualty ratio was shocking, even to Shire. They had already lost two hundred mage Polykenas, and the fighting was only getting harder. But that was to be expected. The losses were higher than he had initially predicted, but that was precisely why Shire had assembled the largest army.
He looked without emotion at the massive city ahead of him, its walls nearly twenty meters high. Thousands of people stood atop them, staring down at him and his army. A few even flew through the air alongside the towers. The church had already lost its power here, and the users of so-called "forbidden" magic had emerged from their hiding places.
They had begun to cause serious problems for Shire. Most were weak, barely at the lower threshold of magic, but some experts posed a real threat.
Shire grunted and looked at Istric, who stood beside him. Istric studied the flying humans, each wielding a different type of magic, and sighed.
"They aren't powerful enough to threaten the golden Patron," he said, "but there are enough of them to delay us for a while. I don't know if we can hold them off long enough to get you to the wall. Even if the blue and red Patrons fight with us, we're still outnumbered three to one…"
The main force of the Polykenas army consisted of warriors—they had no way to simply smash through these walls. But Shire was strong enough to shatter them into dust with a single strike.
After considering how to deal with this fortress, he chose the simple way. "Attack," Shire commanded. His voice was deep and rumbling, like the growl of a wolf.
At once, the army began to move. Shire whistled, and his general gave orders to the black Patron. The mage Polykenas took to the air, flying slowly toward the wall. Magical auras spread out as they began charging their attacks.
The humans on the city walls paled when they saw the army advance. Horns sounded. Bows were drawn, arrows lit aflame. Only one person seemed entirely without fear. Sitting cross-legged beside the king of the city, his eyes closed, he breathed in and out calmly while everyone around him prepared for battle.
"It begins," the king said with a trembling voice.
The man slowly opened his eyes, exhaling as he rose to his feet. He looked over the Polykenas army, and then his gaze found Shire, still standing on the hill. This was their leader. The man knew that if he killed him, it would be a devastating blow to the demon army.
Shire seemed to feel the man's gaze. His six eyes met the stranger's, and an ugly smile spread across his face, a smile that could fill even a tiger with fear. But the man wasn't afraid; instead, he actually smiled back.
Shire tilted his head slightly, and then he moved.
He was fast. Too fast. The army was at least two kilometers from the city, yet in a single heartbeat, Shire had already closed half the distance. The ground cracked as he propelled himself forward with explosive force.
"STOP HIM!" the king shouted. "IF HE REACHES THE WALL, IT'S OVER!"
Several mages tried to move, but the white demons were unleashing their attacks now—lightning, flames, light, wind, water, earth, blood, and a hundred other spells tore toward the walls with brutal force.
The mages on the wall immediately began defending, barely managing to hold back the onslaught. But some of the stronger ones managed to counterattack. Soon, the two armies reached a stalemate. Although the white Polykenas were more powerful than the human magicians, there were significantly more of the latter. And so neither side seemed to be making any progress. Meanwhile, the army of warrior Polykenas, led by the black Patron, was still over one kilometre away.
But that was exactly what Shire had wanted. They were focused entirely on Istric and the others, ignoring him. He was alone; nobody saw him as a real threat.
He was nearly at the wall now, already drawing back his fist for a strike when the ground beneath him suddenly began to rumble. Shire leapt aside as gigantic stalagmites of metal erupted from the earth. Landing lightly, he kept sprinting toward the wall, ignoring where this attack was coming from.
Then a man appeared before him, the same one who had smiled at him earlier. Shire ignored him and tried to rush past, but the man raised his hands. A breathtaking aura burst from him as his magic swelled up. In the next second, a massive wall of metal rose up to block his path. Snorting, Shire struck it violently, as if such a thing could stop him. But as his hand met the surface, the metal suddenly became liquid and flowed over his body.
Within seconds, he was bound, crashing to the ground as more and more metal wrapped around him. Only his head remained free. The unknown mage was lifted high into the air by a colossal pillar of metal. He flicked his fingers, and a small spear of metal shot from his palm, growing larger as it flew, fusing with more and more metal until it became massive.
It hurtled straight toward Shire's face. If it struck with that force, even Shire would die.
Istric saw it and immediately dove downward to help, but a woman blocked his path with a violent wave of water, sweeping him away. Istric broke free at once; it had only been a small obstruction, but it was enough. It would be too late to save Shire in time.
But how could killing Shire be so simple?
Shire grunted as his muscles swelled. Aura erupted from his body. His eyes flared as he finally activated his magic.
His power surged to an incredible level, and the metal around him shattered into dozens of fragments. The spear was already in front of his face, but with unnatural speed, he caught it in midair, spun on his own axis, and hurled it toward the wall, high up, where the king was standing.
The man's face twisted in shock as he saw it. "Fuck," he swore, raising both hands. His magic spread out; it was his spear, filled with his own energy, and now he immediately commanded it to dissolve. But it was too fast, he couldn't react in time. The spear had already smashed through the wall, leaving a massive hole.
Fortunately, the king had already been moved away, but dozens of people still died. The man breathed in relief when he saw the king unharmed. But this relief only lasted a second before he realized Shire's scheme.
Shire was moving once more. But instead of attacking the man, he was now at the wall. He drew back his fist and unleashed his full strength into a single blow.
Like a meteor, his fist slammed into the wall. A massive shockwave spread outward, and a huge cloud of dust swallowed everything.
When it cleared, everyone saw a hole nearly a hundred meters wide in the wall, and now the main army had finally arrived.
Like a tsunami, they flooded through the hole into the city, destroying everything in their path.