The Norfall Barrens. The Threnodian's battlefield.
Tacet Discords poured in like the tide, wave after numberless wave. No one could remember how many they'd fought. It didn't matter. Their bodies moved on instinct, roaring as they raised their weapons and charged.
The Tacet Discord Tide before them was an apocalyptic tsunami.
And they were the last wall standing against it.
Every Midnight Ranger on the field, every Black Shores operative, was a hero of Civilization beyond any doubt. The lights of ten thousand homes still burned because of their courage.
Yet even these hardened veterans, these warriors who'd stood against a Threnodian and refused to break, found their gazes drawn upward with something close to reverence. There, atop the highest point in the camp, stood a dark silhouette.
If they were heroes, then she was a legend. A miracle. The kind of warrior-sovereign the prophecies of Septimont spoke of.
"Lampylumen Myriad, Thundering Mephis, Tempest Mephis, prioritize the targets I've marked. Feilian Beringal, hold the defensive line. And Impermanence Heron, one more rain of fire. Turn this entire field into hell for them."
"GRAAAAHHH!!!" The five Overlord-Class Echoes answered as one.
Her voice reached them and they obeyed. If the Echoes were extensions of her own limbs, then her kill count eclipsed every other combatant on the field combined.
The Impermanence Heron was the crown jewel among them, an unkillable bomber circling overhead and vomiting streams of purple flame across the battlefield like napalm runs. As the Overlord-Class Echo best suited to wide-area devastation and aerial strikes, it had become the most terrifying bird on the field. After today, no one in Jinzhou would ever speak of the Impermanence Heron as a symbol of nightmares again.
Its purple fire consumed endless enemies, sending wave after wave of Tacet Discords screaming into oblivion. When the dust settled, the Impermanence Heron would be the most celebrated Overlord-Class Echo in all of Jinzhou's history.
Five Overlord-Class Echoes, shared between the two Rovers.
Five armies unto themselves.
The pressure they lifted from the human forces was immeasurable.
But the most important weapon on this battlefield was Rover herself.
Every Tacet Discord that fell had its Frequency devoured by Abby. And as one of the only two Vessels of Sound in existence, she absorbed it all, leaving Ovathrax nothing to feed on.
Whenever a section of the defensive line buckled, she stepped forward and teleported straight into the crisis.
One swing of her blade. Countless enemies, erased.
"So this is a Rover's power?"
"She's a god of war."
"Is it my imagination, or is she getting stronger?"
"Having someone like her on our side... it's the first time I've felt safe all night."
"Wait, don't tell me she's our leader?"
The Black Shores member who said that last part shuddered as a sudden chill ran through them. A certain someone with a camellia pinned to her chest was smiling at them with an expression that was sweet in all the wrong ways, one that said you know too much.
Elsewhere on the line, another cluster of Tacet Discords punched through the fire net and reached the forward positions.
A Midnight Ranger's eyes went wide. He swung his sword at the nearest one, but the blade had been ground down through hours of nonstop combat. It shattered on impact.
It's over. I'm done.
The Tacet Discord's scythe-like arm arced toward him. He squeezed his eyes shut, teeth clenched against the unfairness of it, bracing for the end.
It never came.
The Blake Bloom card he'd been given earlier blazed to life. A black portal swallowed him whole in the instant before the scythe connected, and the Tacet Discord's arm carved through empty air.
The Tacet Discord stared at the space where its prey had been.
Before it could process what had happened, the Rangers around it hacked it to pieces.
The soldier opened his eyes and found himself not in the afterlife, but in the field hospital inside the camp. He wasn't the only one. Black Shores members and other Rangers blinked into existence around him at irregular intervals, some barely scratched thanks to the speed of the teleport, others bleeding heavily.
Medical teams descended on them within seconds. Among the healers, a small blonde girl with green eyes stood out, a plant-attuned Resonator whose Forte closed wounds in the time it took to blink.
"What... what happened?"
"Looks like we got pulled out."
"Was it that card Yangyang handed out?"
They stared at the Blake Bloom cards the dark-haired girl had distributed at the start of the battle, realizing they owed their lives to a piece of card stock.
Back on the line, Rover exhaled. Not quite fast enough on that last one.
Ovathrax fed on the Frequency of the fallen and could turn the dead into Tacet Discords. Efficient killing wasn't enough. She had to minimize losses on her own side.
Of course, even without that strategic calculus, if she could save a single life, she'd do it without hesitation.
This was the system she and the male Rover had devised together.
The Blake Bloom cards worked on the same principle as Scar's goat-skull cards: constructs born from a spatial Forte. She could open a portal using any card as a coordinate and teleport its holder to safety. In effect, every fighter on the field had been given a second life.
It wasn't easy.
"Yangyang, how are you holding up? Can you keep going?"
The girl beside her had her Tacet Mark blazing on her forehead, and streaks of her dark hair had shifted into luminous blue feathers. Breath of Winds was running at full power.
"I'm fine, Rover. I can keep going!"
"Don't push too hard."
She knew the girl wouldn't listen, but she said it anyway. The reason she could teleport endangered fighters so quickly and precisely was Yangyang. The girl's Forte let her sense the condition of every person on the battlefield simultaneously. The instant anyone faced a killing blow, Yangyang flagged it, and Rover pulled them out.
My own senses are sharper than hers, but I can't split my attention across this many people at once. Only Yangyang's Forte can maintain that kind of wide-area awareness. Thank god she's here.
She let herself breathe. Her own strength was worth a thousand soldiers, but this war hadn't lasted this long on her back alone. Everyone was giving everything they had.
Baizhi was performing emergency repairs on critical defense equipment. Chixia was escorting a supply convoy from the rear. Danjin fought shoulder to shoulder with the troops, cutting down Tacet Discords as they came. Jianxin was in the field hospital, fighting a different kind of battle to keep the wounded alive.
Every person she'd met in Jinzhou was fighting.
Including him.
Through her Tacet Mark, she could feel him clearly, her partner on the other battlefield, swinging his blade with everything he had.
The warmth of it settled something in her chest. They weren't side by side, but it still felt like they were fighting together.
Then she frowned.
Hold on. Why does it feel like things are getting intense on his end? He and Jinhsi went to rescue the Sentinel, didn't they? So why does it feel like he's brawling with a Calamity-Class Tacet Discord?
"That... that can't be right."
Worry flickered through her as she looked toward the direction he'd gone, wondering what he'd walked into. But she clamped it down fast. She knew what she needed to do right now. Her gaze swept back to the endless Tacet Discord Tide surging toward them, and she made her decision.
Every last one of them was about to become experience points.
"Everyone's been fighting long enough to build up some serious fatigue. Yangyang, tell the troops they can rest for a bit. This next wave..." Her eyes narrowed. "Is mine."
"R-Rover? What are you going to do?"
"Abby, open wide. Dinner's coming."
"Ugh, I was going to ask for more digestion time, but... fine! Let's do it! I'm ready!"
The defenders watched as she walked toward the Tacet Discord Tide alone. Thousands upon thousands of monsters charged her, intent on removing the single greatest obstacle to their advance.
Her golden eyes were terrifyingly calm.
"Space. Bend to my will."
One of the five pocket dimensions she and the male Rover had constructed together the day before unfurled across the battlefield. In a single breath, it swallowed every Tacet Discord in sight, dragging thousands of them into a sealed dimension.
The Tacet Discords had approximately half a second to be confused.
"Now then. Time to clean house."
The pocket dimension was bare, unfinished, like a building with the scaffolding still up and no paint on the walls. It had never been meant to last. A single-use weapon didn't need interior decorating.
What it did have was a floor covered in explosives.
She activated her Flight module and rose into the air, looking down at the trapped horde with zero emotion. Then she spoke to her Pangu Terminal.
"Detonate."
The blast consumed the pocket dimension from the inside. Nearly ten thousand Tacet Discords were annihilated in an instant, reduced to nothing but a shower of golden Echoes that Abby swallowed whole.
Using the clearances Jinhsi had granted them over Jinzhou's arsenal, and their own authority to mobilize Black Shores resources, the two Rovers had packed their pocket dimensions with enough ordnance to level a mountain. That meant five entire waves of Ovathrax's army they could erase before they ever set foot on the real battlefield.
The technique could only be used five times. Their pocket dimensions were still too fragile to survive the detonation. But that was the point. The blast destroyed the pocket dimension along with everything inside it, leaving the outside world untouched.
When the Rangers and Black Shores members on the line saw her stroll back from the vanished pocket dimension with a stronger aura than before and not a single Tacet Discord in sight...
Every jaw on the field hit the ground.
"Where... where'd they go?"
"Did she wipe them all at once?!"
"Who is this woman?!"
"Ha! That's her for you. Incredible!"
Camellya watched with bright, hungry eyes, thrilled by this display of Rover's true power. Her mind drifted to the male Rover who always stood at this woman's side, and the Bloom Bearer's heart clenched with a fierce, wanting ache.
Once this battle was over, she was latching onto both of them. No question.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
You can read 35 chapters ahead and more soon on Patreon.com/NiaXD