Meanwhile, Lucien's battlefield was becoming its own war.
The gargoyles regrouped fast.
Too fast.
Kharzun had cultivated them, just as he claimed.
They moved like trained executioners.
The Starsteel King raised its fragmented arms, and the pieces of the fallen gargoyles began to twitch.
Grave Magic Attribute bled into the battlefield.
Not necromancy in the crude sense.
This was a battlefield recycling engine.
The starsteel gargoyle used its Law of Reforging to treat corpses as "raw material." Grave magic supplied the missing impulse. The dead did not resurrect as themselves.
They rose as half-formed components. Stone and miasma fused into modular limbs that could be called back and welded into the starsteel king's body.
Each time Lucien's group shattered a gargoyle, the starsteel king grew more complete.
It was a disgusting logic.
Kill us, and you feed me.
The Lionmane King moved like a tactician.
It did not hold a barrier constantly.
It watched.
It waited.
