Colonel Yuter was not in a good mood. Despite relentless Kylian artillery bombardments, the Hylian Army–bolstered by the efforts of the Hylian Five–refused to break. What had once been the Blue Army's overwhelming advantage had dwindled to only a narrow edge.
Thus, Kylian casualties were quickly rising. Casualties on the Kylian side had risen to one hundred men, the largest amount of casualties the Blue Army had ever experienced in its creation since year three. Even the Coalition war only resulted in tens of casualties. The Hylian Army was indeed worthy of the name of the strongest army on the continent.
Of course, the Hylian Army experienced even worse casualties in total, in the thousands. Yet despite losing nearly half of its combat effectiveness, the Hylian Army was still holding strong.
What troubled Yuter even more than the rising body count was the consumption of ammunition, specifically cannon and artillery shells. Before the war, the Kingdom's stockpiles held just 2,594 assorted artillery shells, 224,018 rifle rounds in storage and additional tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands still in production. On paper it seemed impressive, but peacetime training alone consumed dozens of shells and tens of thousands of bullets annually. Compared to the modern US producing ammunition in the billions and having tens of billions of rounds in storage, the Kingdom really does not have much ammunition at all.
Now, with the war dragging on two fronts and supplies stretched across the long route from Kylia City to New Rosa, the forward depots at New Rosa contained a mere 2,000 field-cannon shells, 200 heavy artillery shells, and 80,000 rifle rounds.
Colonel Yuter watched the battlefield. The eastern front—where the Hylian Army was attacking from—had buckled again. The Hylians had learned not to bunch up together and had spread out. Worse, the terrain offered them protection. The steep ridges and winding gullies of the New Rosa highlands made cavalry flanking impossible, and infantry counterattacks were being chewed apart by precise Hylian bomb arrow storms.
To the west, downriver, lay the only path left: retreat along the New Rosa River toward the coast.
But that retreat would mean abandoning the city. New Rosa contained a third of the Kingdom's wartime supplies. Food, arms, medicine—all packed into temporary warehouses, old city granaries, and repurposed manors. What couldn't be built underground had been stored behind sandbags and hastily raised earthen bulwarks. There was no rail line, most of Kylia's supplies arrived by ship, carefully routed along coastal lanes and upriver. Trying to move supplies from Riska City in the north had proven too dangerous—the inland roads were narrow, wild, and unguarded. Marching on foot around to the coast took too long.
Even if the army could escape west, the only other supply base—Riska City—was hundreds of kilometers north, and the roads were narrow, dry, and barely defended.
And now… their ammunition was decreasing fast.
Yuter turned to the supply officer. "How long?"
The man looked pale. "If we keep up the current rate of fire... the artillery will run dry in four hours."
"What about Rifle Rounds?" Yuter felt a sinking feeling as he questioned the officer.
"Fi…Five minutes sir!"
"Blayt!"
Despite Kylia's industrialization, the Kingdom struggles to produce enough ammunition to supply its soldiers. During peace time, military production only allows a Kylian rifle man to fire 5 rounds annually. Once ammunition runs out, the Blue Army will be overrun by the Hylians.
Yuter clenched his hands.
They could not retreat to the east—the Hylians were there.
They could not run north or south—Riska was too far and mountainous terrain.
And if they fell back west to the coast, they'd lose New Rosa's stores. Supplies that would take years to rebuild. Supplies that might determine the survival of the entire southern front.
They had to hold.
He turned to the logistics officer.
"Prepare orders for the 2nd infantry battalion," he said. "They'll hold the eastern front. Tell them…"
He paused.
"…tell them there's no line to fall back to."
The officer nodded grimly and left. With this action, Kylian casualties will rise drastically. Kylian soldiers are no match for Hylian soldiers in close combat, however new rosa can not be lost. For this battle the Kylians would have to pay with their lives.
Yuter stared eastward, over the stone wall, to the horizon.
That moment, a bright light flashed on the battlefield.
…
"Die! Die Already!" Atari cackled menacingly as he kicked the body in front of him.
King Atari, wild-eyed and breathless with malice, drove his fists and boots again and again into Kylia's limp, battered form. Her body, though bruised, seemed unbreakable—barely dented by his best efforts, and yet Atari's pride demanded total domination. The purple-black aura of his blade flickered in Kylia's grip, its corruption writhing across her skin. Every punch, every kick landed with the dull clang of flesh upon steel; every attempt to pry the sword from her hands only sent writhing black energy burning up Atari's arms. "Why! Won't! You! Die!" he screamed, his face, once kingly, now contorted into something bestial.
Then—a hum from deep within the battlefield, subtle at first, then rising. Kylia's body twitched. Light the color of a blue hypergiant star bled from her wounds and cracks in her skin, following the veins of plasma filaments that shimmered through her hair. The air itself began to warp, the taste of ozone thickening, every soldier in sight pausing, eyes drawn by terror and awe toward the broken ground where King Atari kept beating the fallen Valor.
Kylia's body arched. Her eyes snapped open, glowing blue-white, and the broken earth beneath her liquefied into sloshing magma from the heat. The hum became a howl, then a shriek.
A blinding pillar burst from around her, cyclonic and raw, expanding and stabilizing into a titanic column of plasma—ten meters tall and three meters wide. The column screamed skyward, disintegrating snow, mud, and armor, its base ringed in delirious heatwaves. The ground within several meters instantly vitrified. All at once, the field was day-lit, the entire battle painted blue and white with incandescence as the plasma's energy thundered outward.
King Atari—mid-blow, still sneering—had no time to react. The column erupted straight through him. Unthinkable heat and force vaporized him—armor and body, —so completely that not even ash was left behind. One moment, a king; the next a couple of embers in the violent updraft.
The shockwave swept outward, tossing the Hylian champions down as if they had been hit by a hurricane, leaving them ionized and smoking along the crater's rim. Plasma arcs licked hungrily for dozens of meters, searing trenches into the churned mud and cutting off any hope of approach. The Hylian King was gone, and the entire Hylian Five, now four, held at bay by the surviving corona of destructive heat, stared in horror at what remained.
As the last echo of King Atari's cackling abuse vanished beneath the roar of energy, a transformation unfolded at the center of the ruined battlefield. The glow from Kylia's eyes grew impossibly intense—bright as the surface of a blue hypergiant. Around each iris, two sideways black K's spun in a tight, hypnotic orbit, symbols of a power never seen before in this world.
Lightning-bright fissures radiated from her body, and the searing heat turned splinters of debris to vapor mid-air. In a heartbeat, the uniform plasma column—ten meters tall and three meters wide—expanded and twisted, taking on a new, terrifying shape.
In place of the simple pillar now loomed a giant of pure, star-hot plasma: the plasma giant. It towered ten meters above the battlefield, a spiraling vortex of white-blue plasma. Two massive arms jutted from the top funnel of this vortex, thicker than trees, spun with intricate filaments of ionized light woven together like colossal muscles—layer upon layer, without any hint of bone beneath. These arms flexed and flexed, crackling with the intensity of ten million degrees Celsius.
The main body was shaped like a wormhole, a wide circular base that narrows exponentially a meter up, spiraling straight for several meters before spreading out like a funnel on top. There, instead of a head and shoulders, was a spiral that inverted into the giant and as it took form, plasma poured away from the giant's base like a dress rippling in the breeze. The ground beneath melted away, leaving a halo of molten earth surrounding the figure. Its arms swept in slow, majestic arcs, sending ribbons of plasma coiling several meters through the thick, smoky air. With every flicker, chunks of Hylian armor and weaponry at the periphery of the blast evaporated in showers of sparks.
Unlike her practiced plasma ribcage—pirated from the naruto world—this creation was undeniably Kylia's own: its defence only slightly worse than sasuke's skeletal susanoo but its power was far greater.
Within the blazing opaque creation, Kylia's dark figure stood, her glowing eyes, each with two spinning sideways K's were the only features visible amidst the silhouette of her masterpiece. Friends and foe alike watched—some paralyzed in terror, others falling to the earth in worship or despair. The Hylian Four recoiled, shadows flickering behind the goron leader's battered fiery shield.
"I-I-Its the myth god Perun!" Some Kylian and Rosian soldiers exclaimed with devotion.
"Huh? What is happening?!" Rosa exclaimed, having just woken up from being beaten several minutes ago.
"Run!" King Dorephan yelled at the Hylian soldiers.
The Rito and Gerudo leaders, being the most agile, began fleeing from the towering construct. Kylia, peering through the opaque shimmering plasma, reacted at the sudden movement.
"Pew! Pew! Pew!" hundreds of plasma filaments from the top of giant's funnel rushed out with a stabbing movement, targeting movement within 100 meters.
"Argh! Help me! No! Noooo! Crunch! Crunch! Crunch!" Dozens of Hylian soldiers wailed as plasma filaments impaled those within range in an instant. At nearly the speed of light the plasma filaments had fried several dozen Hylian soldiers, including the Rito leader, to death.
"Hiss…" The sound of charred bodies cooling filled the silence that followed. Blackened remains smoldered in grotesque shapes, shadows seared into the rocks like afterimages after Hiroshima.
Only Rosa, Dorephan, the Goron and the Gerudo leader were left standing in the area. Rosa, Dorephan and the Goron leader were able to survive because they did not move and Kylia did not detect their movement. The Gerudo leader survived because plasma filaments are basically just a fancy way of saying lightning. It's not easy for a gerudo leader to die of lightning.
The Gerudo leader raised her curved blade, charging the storm of divine fire ahead. Her crimson scarf snapped in the violent winds, hair whipped into a golden blur, and her voice cracked through the chaos:
"Die to my lightning!"
"CRACK-BOOM!"
The bolt collided with the Plasma Giant—and vanished.
The Gerudo leader froze.
She didn't know plasma was already an ionized state. That throwing lightning at it was like throwing wood into a fire.
The Plasma Giant's upper vortex shifted.
In an instant, the entire upper body tilted forward. With a shuddering rumble, one massive, incandescent hand launched downward—.
"BOOM—!!"
A sonic boom thundered across the field as the Plasma Giant moved at Mach 1, crossing a hundred meters in a blink. A shockwave pulsed outward, hurling dirt, limbs, and armor into the air.
Before the Gerudo leader could even raise her weapon again, a searing-hot hand the size of a small delivery van smashed into her with a force of 500 tonnes.
"WHAM!"
The impact cratered the earth, a shockwave of molten dirt spiraling outward. Her bones shattered, her armor fused to her flesh, and her body was then squished like a bug beneath the sheer, star-hot pressure of the blow.
And then—
The giant dissolved.
The brilliant vortex of plasma scattered into motes of light. The spiraling arms unraveled into glowing threads, dancing upward into the sky like fireflies vanishing at dawn. The heat collapsed inward, leaving behind scorched earth, twisted metal, and glassy black rock that used to be soil.
At the center of it all—
Kylia, on one knee, panting, her hand braced on King Atari's dark blade. Her once royal blue hair and feathers had darkened into prussian blue. Her entire body was covered in bruises, all of them born from Atari's beatings. Her uniform, made up of her own hair, was actually burnt and torn.
"HAHAHAHAHA!"
…
Across the field, the Hylian lines were buckling.
King Atari was gone. The army was in chaos—command lines shattered, morale broken. When Kylia had unleashed her wrath, entire formations had evaporated. The once-unbreakable Hylian phalanx was now a writhing mess of fleeing soldiers, bleeding survivors, and shattered discipline.
The Blue Army rallied.
Kylian infantry surged forward under the thunder of war drums, their eyes wide with renewed faith.
Blue banners lifted.
Rosian archers loosed volleys over cover. Cavalry flanked the tattered right wing. Hylian soldiers—leaderless, bleeding, burnt—fell by the dozens.
Kylian casualties plummeted as they regained control of the battlefield.
…
On a rocky ridge of a large crater, Dorephan rose to his feet.
His trident trembled in his grip.
"Sound the retreat!" he roared, voice booming like a tidal wave. "All units fall back!"
A moment later, the Goron leader added his bellow, louder still: "Pull back! This battle is lost!"
Horns blared from behind the lines—deep, mournful notes like the cries of dying whales.
The Hylians hesitated.
Then ran.
What remained of the once-mighty Hylian army streamed toward the rear, dragging wounded behind them, commanders shouting into the wind as the Kylian army cheered in triumph.
A turning point of the war has come.