The Cindralisk, upon realizing it had been detected, did not move immediately.
It remained crouched, its scaly skin poorly camouflaged against the gray sand, until Valerius's killing intent became unbearable.
"Do not kill it yet," the General ordered, his voice low and heavy with authority, making the soldiers lower their staves. "Follow it. It will deliver the heart of that tribe to us on a silver platter."
The Cindralisk leapt backward and began to run, sliding down the slopes of the dunes with desperate agility.
The imperial troops did not fall behind; the elite horses galloped at full speed, hooves sinking into the sand as they pursued the lizard.
Lucius led the right flank with a fierce smile, his eyes locked on the prey, desperately hoping that trail would lead him to redemption before the General.
Within a few breaths, they crossed a narrow valley between two mountains of sand.
And suddenly, the wind stopped.
The Cindralisk scout stopped running.
It climbed to the top of the last dune and stopped there, looking down. Yet it no longer seemed afraid. It straightened its body fully, rising into a posture of relief.
"Looks like it gave up…" Lucius commented, stopping his horse beside Valerius while keeping his eyes fixed on the lizard, afraid of losing the trail.
"It knows there's nowhere left to run."
Valerius, however, pulled on the reins of his steed, making the animal neigh.
He wasn't looking at the lizard.
His eyes were fixed at the base of the dune, where three presences were beginning to emerge.
"No, Lucius," Valerius murmured, and for the first time that day, his hand slid to the hilt of his sword. "It didn't give up. It reached its destination."
Down below, guarding the entrance of a rocky fissure where hundreds of yellow Cindralisk eyes watched in panic, stood three figures.
The Sanguine Knight stepped forward, his crimson armor absorbing the sunlight in a way that seemed to drain the heat from the air itself. Beside him, The Sutured—a grotesque humanoid creature—remained motionless, its body a mass of flesh stitched together by threads.
Hovering above them, the Dragonfly Hunter beat its translucent wings at such a high frequency that the sound vibrated in the soldiers' teeth. The giant dragonfly possessed multifaceted eyes that gleamed like jewels, monitoring every movement of the army from the sky.
The aura of the servants crashed against the Empire's vanguard like a physical wave of pressure.
The horses, which had faced the giant serpent without hesitation, began to retreat, neighing in pure terror.
"W-what… what is that?" Lucius stammered, a chill running down his spine. "Those aren't ordinary monsters…"
The Sanguine Knight raised his arm, pointing his massive sword toward the army of two hundred men.
"Withdraw."
The metallic, deep voice echoed through the valley, making the ash on the ground tremble.
"This domain is under the protection of the Sovereign."
Valerius narrowed his eyes, feeling the crushing power emanating from the trio.
But a smile spread across his scarred face.
"Sovereign?"
Valerius squinted, but there was no anger in his gaze.
His eyes shone with a feverish intensity, almost devout—like a lunatic who had finally found a masterpiece worthy of being destroyed.
To him, the overwhelming aura radiating from those three figures was not merely a warning of danger.
It was a call.
It was something so powerful, so dark, that his soul as a purifier cried out to erase it.
Below, the Cindralisks were immersed in absolute anxiety.
Their yellow eyes darted frantically between both sides. They looked at the soldiers with traumatic terror, recognizing those white armors.
Members of their tribe had encountered similar groups in the desert before and had been incinerated without mercy, leaving behind nothing but the memory of burning flesh.
But at the same time, their eyes turned toward the three defenders ahead.
They had never seen beings like these.
The aura of the Sanguine Knight, the grotesque presence of The Sutured, and the predatory buzzing of the Dragonfly Hunter made the Cindralisks tremble.
It was a different kind of fear—instinctive, as if their very DNA recognized they were facing predators that did not belong to the desert's natural food chain.
Kaelen, positioned just behind the three monsters, was sweating cold.
His breathing was short and ragged. He had guided those three abominations back to his tribe, which was now crowded inside the darkness of the rocky fissure.
Looking back, he saw hundreds of yellow eyes glowing in panic.
The nest the soldiers had destroyed earlier—where they encountered the snake—had actually been one of their old dwellings.
The tribe had not planned an elaborate trap.
It was simply the harsh reality of the desert.
Cindralisk tribes were constantly invaded by stronger monsters, suffering losses and being forced to relocate in haste. The tribe's Chief, in an act of desperation and cunning, had decided to move the people to a fissure near the feeding territory of the Sand Serpent, using the monster as an unwitting guardian.
This was where his tribe lived.
The soldiers provoking the snake had been an accident. They had sent a scout to monitor enemy movement, but the result had been the revelation of the lizards' current location.
Valerius let out a short, dry laugh devoid of humor as the gleam in his eyes intensified.
"Magnificent…" he murmured, ignoring Luciu's trembling beside him. "Such brilliant light demands proportional shadows to be tested."
He raised his golden sword, and the sunlight seemed to converge upon the blade, creating a pillar of brilliance that blinded anyone who looked directly at it.
"Soldiers! Steel your hearts!" Valerius roared, his voice now filling the valley and drowning out the buzzing wings of the Dragonfly Hunter. "Today's purification will be special. Let the light show no mercy!"
Kaelen felt sweat running beneath his scales at those words—a damp chill contrasting with the dry desert heat.
He looked at the massive back of the Sanguine Knight and the deformed silhouette of The Sutured, but the mathematics of the battlefield were too cruel to ignore.
"Only three…" Kaelen murmured to himself, his voice faltering. "The Sovereign sent only three…"
In his lifetime of experience in the desert, numbers meant everything. A larger tribe defeated a smaller one. A pack of predators defeated a lone prey. Seeing only three defenders against an army felt like a death sentence.
His yellow eyes turned forward again, where sunlight struck the humans' armor, creating an endless sea of golden and white reflections.
There were at least two hundred soldiers there.
A wall of metal against three solitary figures.
Even after sensing the overwhelming power of the three monsters, Kaelen's survival instincts screamed.
The lizard tightened his grip on the shaft of his bone spear, his claws trembling slightly.
He glanced back at the members of his tribe gathered in the fissure. They trusted him. They believed he would bring salvation.
"Retreat," the voice of the Sanguine Knight echoed again, without turning around.
The sound of the Dragonfly Hunter's wings above them intensified—a frantic buzz that seemed to mock Kaelen's hesitation.
Kaelen took a shaky step back, feeling the weight of the monsters' aura vibrating in the air.
The Sanguine Knight took the first step.
His feet sank into the sand with a dull sound, making the ground tremble beneath the imperial soldiers' boots.
Beside him, The Sutured began to move. The creature did not possess the bearing of a knight, yet each stride displaced meters of sand as the stitches along its body stretched grotesquely.
THUMP!
The servants began to accelerate.
THUMP!
The rhythm of their steps shifted from a march to a gallop.
THUMP!
"Quick! Grade Three Containment! Now!" The soldiers finally reacted. The commander shouted, his voice breaking at the sight of the two figures advancing toward them.
The white-robed mages with golden details stationed in the rear acted in unison. Staves were raised, and the desert lit up with a web of light.
Golden ropes, woven from pure solar energy, lashed through the air like living whips, launching toward the knight's legs and the stitched torso of the humanoid.
The ropes tightened.
The crackle of energy trying to burn flesh and metal echoed—
—but the servants did not even falter.
THUMP!
The Sanguine Knight simply kept advancing, the golden ropes stretching to their limit before snapping like rotten silk threads under his brute strength.
Beside him, The Sutured did not even attempt to evade. The containment spell cut into its gray skin, but the wounds sealed instantly over the glow of the magic, swallowing the light.
THUMP!
"They're accelerating!" a mage shouted, sweat pouring behind his metal mask. "The bindings won't hold!"
The rhythm of the steps changed again.
The two monsters began to run.
Sand was hurled backward with each heavy stride, creating a cloud of dust framing the monstrous silhouettes.
THUMP! THUMP! THUMP! THUMP! THUMP!
"They're coming!"
"Quick!"
"Move!"
Impact spells and spears of light struck the servants' shields and chests, exploding into useless sparks.
"Monsters…" a soldier on the front line murmured, his voice fading as he took a trembling step back, his metal shield shaking in his hands. "They won't stop… Why aren't the spells stopping them?!"
Panic spread even to the mounts.
The elite warhorses that had faced colossal monsters without hesitation now reared in pure desperation.
Soldiers cried out in shock as they were thrown off and trampled by their own horses trying to flee from that aura of death.
Some men, paralyzed by terror, could barely hold the reins, watching the two three-meter silhouettes grow before their eyes like mountains of iron and stitched flesh coming to swallow them whole.
"Hold the formation, damn you!" Valerius roared, his voice battling the deafening sound of the Dragonfly Hunter's wings as it swept over the army in a sonic dive, the pressure of the air throwing dozens of men to the ground.
The General leapt from his steed, his feet digging into the sand. He did not look back as he ran to take the front of the formation.
His golden sword began to pulse with a solar light so intense it resembled a small star trapped in his grip.
"By the light that guides us, by the sun that never sets!" he began to chant, his voice rising in a fanatical crescendo. "[Domain of Helios]! [Vigor of the Star King]! [Armor of the Sacred Sun]!"
With each word, Valerius's body became enveloped in white flames, his aura as General expanding to try to contain the black tide approaching.
The red giant drew his massive blade and swung it toward him.
Valerius raised his own heavy sword.
CLANG!