The sky above Hjaðningavíg Island was always a dull gray, as if the sun itself were reluctant to look upon the horrors occurring on that land. The wind blowing between the rocky cliffs brought no cool relief, but rather the metallic stench of dried blood mixed with the scent of rust from thousands of broken weapons. This was a cursed land. A natural colosseum forged by arrogance, where the Elf and Dark Elf races had discarded their rationality to defend something they called 'blood honor'.
Yet, on this gloomy dawn, the routine of slaughter came to a halt.
In the middle of a mud field flanked by steep cliffs and a raging sea, an anomaly had split the two poles of power that had long dominated the island. A third army—a coalition of White Elves and Dark Elves from remote and outcast villages—stood tall, forming a circular formation. Above them, a bright green banner bearing the image of three wing feathers fluttered proudly, defying the cold sea breeze.
On the northern cliff, King Hedin Selland stood with a stiff posture that radiated an aura of absolute nobility. His eagle eyes glared sharply at the green banner from behind thin-lensed glasses. His jaw clenched. For someone who worshipped perfection and purity like Hedin, the sight of his race fighting back-to-back, protecting dirty Dark Elves, was a blasphemy that made his stomach churn.
Across the way, on the southern cliff, King Hogni Ragnar chuckled. His previously slouched posture was now perfectly upright. The pitch-black sword in his hand vibrated, responding to the madness and bloodlust boiling in his veins. Hogni's blood-red eyes did not see peace in that mixed army; he only saw a fresh flock of prey.
Without the need to send envoys, the two Kings from opposing poles who hated each other reached the same conclusion: Destroy those traitors first, then we resume this holy war.
Hedin raised his magic staff high. Its crystal tip emitted sparks of white lightning. "Entire mage division, form the execution formation!" he ordered, his voice as cold as ice. "Target that rebel vortex. Burn them to ashes!"
At almost the exact same time, Hogni Ragnar swung his black sword forward. "Charge! Hack them all to pieces! Destroy that green banner!"
Thousands of elite White Elf warriors began chanting their magic spells. Hundreds of flashing white magic circles materialized in the air. From the opposite direction, a sea of Dark Elf warriors surged forward, unleashing a rain of arrows that blotted out the sky like a swarm of locusts.
Caught in the middle of this hellish pincer, the villagers making up the green-banner army began to tremble. They were just ordinary citizens. Seeing the annihilating lightning flashes and the rain of arrows hurtling toward them, death felt so certain.
However, Dina and Vena did not budge.
Vena took a half-step forward, placing her sister slightly behind her back. Her deep red eyes flashed. "They really don't know when to stop, Sister."
"Then, we will stop it for them," Dina replied softly.
The two girls raised the Anemo-Calyx in their palms. Pure turquoise-green light exploded from the crystals.
WHOOSH!
The air around them detonated. Without chanting a spell, without lengthy preparation. In the fraction of a second before the rain of arrows and barrage of lightning struck their army, a giant emerald-green dome of wind materialized from nothingness, enveloping the entire green-banner army.
BOOM! CLANG! CLANG! CLANG!
Hundreds of Dark Elf arrows slammed into the wind wall, only to shatter into pieces due to the incredibly pressurized swirling wind. Lightning magic from the White Elves struck the dome with blinding explosions, but was instantly swallowed whole and deflected into empty air. Ordinary Elven racial magic was nothing compared to the manifestation of the Wind element.
Atop the cliff, Hedin Selland's eyes widened. "Magic without chanting...? A defensive scale that large withstanding the attacks of a thousand-strong army? Impossible! What magic item are they using?!"
Hogni stopped his advance, his eyes narrowing at the giant wind vortex. "This isn't magic... this is a real storm!"
Realizing that ordinary troops would not be able to breach that absolute defense, the combat instincts of the two geniuses took over.
"Out of my way, all you useless fools!" roared Hedin. The White Elf King leaped down from the cliff. He channeled a massive amount of lightning magic into his body and staff. He hovered momentarily in the air using electromagnetic repulsion, his speed increasing sharply like lightning itself. From the opposite direction, Hogni dashed through the ranks of his own army using high-level footwork techniques.
The two falna-less kings, representing the absolute pinnacle of pure Elven racial power on the island, shot toward the eye of the storm.
"I'll handle that crazy Dark Elf," Vena smirked. Turquoise wind armor wrapped around her exotic body.
"I will face King Hedin," Dina nodded, the wind swirling around her.
Hogni arrived first. With a speed that always left his enemies unable to blink, he leaped through a gap in the dust and appeared directly in front of Vena. His eyes radiated dense murderous intent.
"My sword technique is unmatched, little girl!" laughed Hogni. He swung his sword with perfect Iai technique—a horizontal slash designed to cut Vena in two, targeting a blind spot impossible for a novice fighter like Vena to dodge.
Vena indeed had no time to dodge. Her eyes were not yet accustomed to reading master-class sword techniques. Hogni's black blade struck Vena's waist squarely.
CLAAANG!
The sound of clashing metal echoed loudly, but it was not Vena's body that was cut.
Hogni's eyes widened in horror. His proud pitch-black sword—a sword that had reaped hundreds of lives—stopped completely the moment it touched Vena's skin, or rather, the thin layer of wind armor enveloping the girl's body. Instead of tearing flesh, the recoil from the slash brutally slammed into Hogni's arm.
CRACK! The bones in Hogni's wrist fractured.
His sword was thrown backward.
"W-What...?" Hogni jerked back, excruciating pain shooting up his arm. He stared at Vena in horror. "Your body... is as hard as steel?!"
Vena herself had initially closed her eyes, thinking she would die, but upon realizing she was completely unhurt, she opened them wide. She stared at her palm, then at the trembling Hogni.
An incredible epiphany struck Vena's mind.
He's so slow. Vena just realized that with the Anemo-Calyx, the speed of her perception and her physical endurance had leaped to an entirely different realm. Hogni's supposedly deadly attack, to Vena who now possessed power equivalent to Level 3, felt like being hit by a small child with a wooden twig. The absolute wall of level differences in this world was something that could not be bridged by technique alone.
"Your technique is indeed extraordinary, King Hogni," Vena straightened her posture, a confident smile now adorning her face. The turquoise wind swirled faster at the tips of her feet. "But your power... is too weak."
In the blink of an eye—a speed unrecordable by Hogni's naked eye—Vena dashed forward. Hogni had no time to react. A storm-clad kick slammed into the Black King's stomach.
BOOM!
Hogni Ragnar vomited fresh blood, his eyes rolling back in his head. His body shot backward like a cannonball, smashing through three large stone pillars before finally embedding itself in a rocky cliff, knocked unconscious in a single blow. The Dark Elf army screamed hysterically seeing their undefeated king fall like a fly.
On the other side, Hedin Selland had just arrived before Dina.
Seeing Hogni repelled so easily, Hedin's vigilance rose to the maximum level. As a genius mage, he instantly gauged his enemy's power capacity.
"My lightning magic will never miss!" Hedin chanted concurrently (concurrent chanting) with impossible speed, firing a giant lightning spear right at Dina's face, followed by a barrage of high-pressure electric bullets from the tip of his staff targeting vital points. This was a close-range magical bombardment that no mage could dodge.
Dina gasped seeing the glowing barrage of attacks. Reflexively, out of panic, Dina raised her hands and unleashed a blast of Anemo energy forward without any technique. Purely an overflow of mana.
WHOOSH!
BOOM!
A green storm exploded from Dina's palms. The scale of Level 3 magic power backed by the Anemo-Calyx was truly nonsensical to Hedin, an elf who had not yet received a falna.
Hedin's proud lightning spear and electric bullets—annihilating magic feared by the entire island—were instantly extinguished upon colliding with Dina's wind vortex, like a matchstick thrown into a typhoon.
The storm's pushing force continued forward. The crystal magic staff in Hedin's hand cracked and shattered into dozens of shards as it hit the wind wall. Hedin Selland, the haughty White King who always maintained his perfect posture, was hit squarely by the wave of dense air.
"Gah...!" Hedin was thrown into the air, his white robe torn to shreds. He tumbled across the dirty muddy ground, his thin-lensed glasses shattering to pieces.
Hedin tried to get up trembling, fresh blood trickling from the corner of his lips and his forehead. He stared at his now-empty hand, devoid of his proud staff, then stared at his lightning magic smoking weakly on the ground.
Dina walked slowly toward him. There was not a single scratch on the White Elf girl's body.
The two locked eyes.
For Hedin Selland, this moment was the apocalypse for his small world. For decades, he had believed that the elegance and magic of the Elven race were the pinnacle of power. He considered himself the supreme magical entity. But today, an outcast village girl destroyed all his pride and genius magic techniques with just a panicked wave of her hand.
This power gap... this wasn't ordinary magic. This was a realm he had never touched. A realm where the children of the Lower World had to bow to the absolute blessing of a god.
"What... power is this... truly...?" whispered Hedin hoarsely, his pride crushed to dust. His legs lost their strength, forcing him to fall to his knees in the mud of Hjaðningavíg. The perfect White King had been brought to his knees.
Absolute silence descended, enveloping the entire island.
Thousands of White Elf and Dark Elf warriors dropped their weapons from trembling hands. The two absolute existences they had followed and feared all this time—Hedin Selland and Hogni Ragnar—had been defeated in less than a minute. Without tactics, without a fierce battle. Purely crushed by undeniable power.
Dina looked at Hedin kneeling in the mud, then looked at Vena standing not far away. The two sisters realized that in their hands now lay a power that could flatten this entire army if they wished. However, that was not their goal.
Dina aimed the Anemo-Calyx into the air. The storm that had been raging earlier now subsided, turning into a cool breeze that swept across the entire battlefield, bringing the scent of flowers and fading the stench of blood.
"This war... is over," Dina's voice drifted softly yet was heard clearly by every soldier on the island, carried by her wind element. "No more blood needs to be spilled. No more kings need to be glorified. You are free."
On the land of Hjaðningavíg, the centuries-old curse seemed to break by the storm of freedom. Thousands of soldiers dropped their weapons, weeping in relief or prostrating on the muddy ground. Hedin and Hogni remained silent in their positions, digesting the humiliating defeat that opened their eyes to a new reality: that this world was far vaster and more terrifying than they had ever imagined.
However, fate in Hjaðningavíg never allowed peace to descend easily.
Clap... Clap... Clap...
The sound of slow clapping echoing full of mockery broke the sacred silence.
From the direction of the thick fog on the eastern side of the island, black shadows began to emerge. Not ten or twenty, but hundreds. A fleet of black ships had just docked on the coast, disgorging a full platoon of armed troops in dark armor. In their hands fluttered dirty banners—the emblem of Orario's dark faction, Evilus.
In the front row, cloaked mages laughed cynically, leading several ferocious experimental monsters chained by magic.
"What a touching dramatic performance!" exclaimed the Evilus commander leading the fleet, his voice amplified by magic until it was heard all over the hill. "The two strongest kings brought to their knees, and the entire army paralyzed by exhaustion without us having to bother torturing them. Goddess Alecto's plan to harvest suffering from the remnants of Hjaðningavíg is truly blessed today! Capture them all! Those who resist, feed them to the monsters!"
Dina and Vena gasped. Both reflexively raised their Anemo-Calyx. The turquoise crystals glowed brightly, responding to their masters' will with wind vortexes once again surrounding their bodies. Their power had not diminished at all; they still had full energy to flatten the platoon.
However, the Evilus commander smirked slyly. He raised his hand, giving a signal.
In an instant, hundreds of Evilus soldiers spread out at high speed. They did not attack Dina and Vena directly, but rather charged toward the thousands of White Elf and Dark Elf warriors who were sitting limply on the ground without weapons. Poisoned blades were immediately pointed at the necks of the warriors and villagers who had just surrendered. Ferocious monsters surrounded the perimeter, roaring, ready to tear the hostages apart.
Dina's eyes widened in horror. The wind vortex in her hand stalled. The scale of their storm magic was indeed extraordinary, but if they unleashed that deadly attack now, hundreds of their captive kin would also be killed in the radius of the wind explosion. Evilus knew very well how to paralyze people trying to be heroes.
Hedin, who was still kneeling on the muddy ground, glared at the black army's dirty tactics with gritted teeth. Hogni spat out the remaining blood from his mouth, his blazing red eyes glaring angrily seeing the sacred island where they had fought for hundreds of years now trampled by a swarm of death-bringing flies from outside.
"A fourth army..." muttered Hedin, his injured hand gripping the wet earth until his knuckles turned white. His pride, which had just been destroyed by Dina's storm, was now being further trampled by filthy invaders using his people as cheap shields.
Amidst the new despair seizing the island, Hedin and Hogni's gazes accidentally fell upon the glowing turquoise crystals in Dina and Vena's hands. A dark but real understanding struck the minds of the two fallen kings. Their pure sword and magic techniques were not enough to save their people from this slaughter, while the two girls possessing that power were too naive and held back by compassion.
A new thirst—an absolute desire to reverse fate, obtain the power of gods, and tear those invaders apart without mercy—began to burn the remaining souls of the White King and the Black King. The stage of Hjaðningavíg was not over, the curtain for the true act of war had just been drawn.