Chapter 81: The King’s Successor
The first rays of dawn began to crest over the Eastern Fortress, spilling a soft orange glow across the jagged mountain peaks and the smoke-choked battlefield below.
Ethan remained still, the Eternal Sovereign Blade lowered at his side.
There was no clean end to it. Peter’s sword hung loose in his grip, not because he’d lost, but because some part of him had simply stopped believing the fight mattered anymore.
His mind was still caught in the final movement he had just witnessed—the profound principle hidden within Ethan’s execution of the Fourth Form, and the fleeting illusion that had appeared behind him.
For a moment, Peter wondered whether his exhausted mind was playing tricks on him.
But as Peter stared into Ethan’s cold eyes, the uncertainty burned away. The impossible execution, the Fourth Form, that final quiet principle—it all pointed to the same truth. After everything he had spent his life searching for, the answer was standing right in front of him.
The King’s successor... We’ve finally found him.
Around them, both the Bluemoon soldiers and the elite mercenaries stood frozen, watching the two figures at the center of the passage. Moments ago, Ethan’s blade had rested against the throat of the legendary mercenary leader. Now the weapon had been lowered, yet Peter still hadn’t moved.
No one understood what had just happened.
"Do you still intend to continue?" Ethan asked, his voice calm and devoid of emotion.
"No..." Peter took a slow, painful breath.
A familiar throb suddenly pulsed beneath Peter’s ribs, sharp enough to steal his breath for a moment. His body swayed, but he steadied himself and forced the pain aside.
Then he raised his gauntleted hand.
"Stop!" Peter’s raspy voice boomed across the pass. "Stand down and lower your blades!"
For a heartbeat, confusion rippled through the mercenary ranks. Corbin, bound and disarmed near the gatehouse wall, stared at his commander in stunned silence. Then the mercenaries slowly lowered their weapons, one after another, swords and axes striking the cobblestones. The sound echoed through the suddenly silent passage.
Ethan gave Luna a slight nod. She immediately understood. Raising one hand, Luna signaled Valen and Teresa to hold their positions. Across the gatehouse pass, weapons slowly lowered as the harsh ringing of steel finally died away.
The battle had stopped.
---
Atop the high ridge overlooking the mountain pass, Count Greyson Thorn stood rigid against the biting morning wind, accompanied by Randal Vane and Kyle.
Through the drifting fog, Thorn couldn’t make out what was happening at the fortress entrance. Yet his aura sense told him enough.
The violent fluctuations of battle had vanished.
The clash of countless auras had fallen strangely quiet.
And Peter’s crimson presence—the overwhelming aura that had been tearing through the battlefield—had faded instead of growing stronger.
Thorn’s expression tightened, a cold, prickling sweat breaking out across his forehead as his hands began to tremble against his hilt.
"My Lord... why did the fighting stop?" Randal Vane muttered, his voice shaking as he stared toward the quiet passage.
Thorn didn’t answer. Suddenly, a suffocating sense of dread washed over him, setting his instincts screaming as the hair on his arms stood on end.
NO... No... No, this can’t happen! The Lady is watching! She must be watching this! I can’t let her plan fail!
Far beyond the mountain pass, perched above the morning fog, the crimson-eyed woman looked down upon the scene unfolding dozens of miles away. Her pristine, dark robes fluttered gently in the high-altitude breeze. The moment her gaze settled on Count Thorn, his mind crashed into pure, unadulterated terror.
Greyson gasped, clutching his head with both hands as his fingernails dug deep into his scalp. "I can fix it! I can still win! The Lady will not abandon me if I win!" he muttered. His eyes rolled back as blood vessels snapped in his sclera, his composure dissolving into absolute hysterical denial while violent, dark whispers surged back into his skull: Don’t fail... don’t fail... kill them all... tear them to pieces!
His hand disappeared beneath his robes and emerged holding a small wooden box. Randal’s expression changed the moment he saw it.
"My Lord... what’s that?"
Thorn snapped the box open and swallowed the crimson pill before either Randal or Kyle could stop him.
"My Lord!"
The reaction was immediate. A violent surge of energy exploded from Thorn’s body, sending the surrounding fog spiraling outward. His veins bulged across his neck and arms as his muscles swelled violently beneath his robes, tearing the expensive fabric apart around his shoulders and chest. His eyes became bloodshot, his expression twisting into something barely recognizable as human.
His aura climbed.
Higher.
Higher still.
Until it reached the Peak Knight Lord realm.
Randal and Kyle backed away, paralyzed with fear. "My L-Lord—" Randal managed to utter.
Before he could finish, Thorn moved with blinding speed, his black-veined hands clamping around the heads of both Randal and Kyle. Dread flashed across their eyes for a fraction of a second.
Thorn crushed both their skulls in a sickening burst of bone and iron, dropping their lifeless bodies into the dirt without a second glance.
"Bastards!" Thorn spat, his voice reduced to a distorted, monstrous growl as his glowing eyes turned toward the fortress gates below.
Then he moved.
Thorn launched himself from the ridge like a crimson meteor.
His path down the mountainside cut straight through the remnants of his own retreating army. Dozens of soldiers, men who had survived the boulders and the arrows, who had spent the entire night bleeding for him, scattered in blind panic as the crimson blur tore through their ranks.
He didn’t distinguish friend from enemy. He didn’t slow to recognize the crests on their armor or the faces beneath their helmets. Every body in his path was simply an obstacle, and he removed obstacles the only way he still understood.
A cluster of men trying to clear the path collapsed in a single sweep of his arm, thrown aside with enough force to shatter bone before they hit the ground. Another dozen, caught too slow to scatter, were trampled and crushed beneath the sheer, mindless momentum of his charge.
By the time he reached the bottom of the ridge, the snow behind him was littered with his own dead—soldiers who had marched under his banner, now nothing more than wreckage in his wake.
Down in the passage, Ethan’s head snapped upward. His instincts screamed a warning before his eyes could even locate the source.
"Luna! Sir Peter! Look out!"
---
Ethan barely raised the Eternal Sovereign Blade in time.
BANG!
Ethan’s eyes snapped toward Luna.
Thorn’s trajectory was aimed directly at her.
There was no time to warn her.
Ethan threw himself sideways, slamming his shoulder into Luna and knocking her out of the impact zone as he raised the Eternal Sovereign Blade into a desperate cross-block.
Thorn’s blood-red fist slammed into the flat of the sword. The sheer kinetic force shattered Ethan’s stance, driving the steel straight into his chest. Two ribs snapped with a sickening crack as the air was violently purged from his lungs, hurling him backward through the wooden barrier.
"Ethan!" Luna shouted.
"Thorn, you madman!"
Peter moved before anyone else could react. Despite the pain still tearing through his body, he summoned his crimson aura and swung his broadsword toward Thorn’s waist.
CLANG!
Thorn caught the blade with his bare, steel-like palm.
Peter’s eyes widened.
The Count’s strength had reached a level that bordered on monstrous.
Refusing to yield, Peter wrenched his blade free and drove forward with a second strike, aiming low for Thorn’s exposed knee—a killing blow against anyone else. Thorn simply stepped through it, letting the edge scrape harmlessly off his thigh, and answered with a palm strike that caught Peter square in the chest before he could recover his guard.
BANG!
Peter’s armor caved inward. He spewed a mouthful of blood and was blasted off his feet, skidding across the dirt until he crashed near his disarmed lieutenants.
Luna appeared beside Thorn in a flash of frost, her spear thrusting toward his throat. Thorn twisted aside at the last instant, allowing the spearhead to bury itself in his shoulder instead. Frost spread rapidly from the wound, crawling up his arm in jagged, branching patterns—for a single heartbeat, it looked as though the strike had actually cost him something.
Then he seized the shaft with his free hand and snapped the reinforced weapon with sheer strength, the frost shattering off his skin like brittle glass.
Luna gritted her teeth against her bruised lips. Abandoning the broken shaft without hesitation, she drew her side-blade just as Thorn lunged. She brought her forearm up, manifesting a heavy shield of frost aura to take the blow.
The ice shield shattered on contact. The kinetic force drove straight through her chest guard, throwing her off her feet. She skidded back, catching her balance on one knee as blood trickled from the corner of her mouth.
In under ten seconds, Count Thorn had battered all three of them into the dust through sheer, unbridled physical violence.
Ethan dragged himself up out of the debris. Every breath felt like hot iron sliding into his chest, but his gaze remained cold and calculating as he studied the monster across the threshold. Whatever dark method Thorn had used to force his power to this level, it had pushed him far beyond a normal Knight Lord. In their broken condition, single combat was suicide.
Across the ruined passage, Peter spat out a mouthful of blood and forced himself upright, one hand clutching his crushed breastplate. His eyes found Ethan through the drifting dust.
The young man was battered and bleeding, yet he still stood with the Eternal Sovereign Blade firmly in his grasp.
Peter’s gaze lingered on him for a moment before shifting toward Thorn.
After all these years...
They had finally found him.
And now, before Peter’s eyes, someone was trying to kill him.
Whatever cure Thorn had promised him, whatever price he’d told himself was worth enduring all of this—none of it mattered now. Not against this.
Something hardened in the veteran’s expression. He tightened his grip around his broadsword and stepped forward.
Whatever happened next, he would not allow anyone to lay a hand on the King’s successor.
"I’m with you," Peter said.
Ethan glanced toward him.
Peter raised his battered broadsword, his crimson aura slowly gathering around its edge.
"Let’s finish this."
Luna discarded the broken remains of her spear and raised her frost-covered side-blade.
"On your mark."
The three of them stood together across the ruined threshold, wounded and exhausted, but united for the first time.
Across from them, Thorn lowered his body into a predatory stance. His blood-red aura erupted once more.
Then he charged.