Chapter 129: FEDNAN

When the advance flag of the adventurers fell for the third time, the line collapsed backward like a receding tide, and the hunters on the cliff finally moved.

No chant, no light—only a faint gray ripple spread from Shagte’s staff tip, instantly covering the entire eastern exit of the gorge.

“Silence Barrier: Shadow Elegy”—all dragon-tongue magic, distress signals, and even battle cries’ inspirational effects were violently stifled in their throats.

Almost at the same second the barrier unfolded, Korylan vanished from the cliff edge.

She became a shadow darker than night, flowing down along the fissures of the rock face. Her target was the only faintly undulating darkness within the silence barrier—the hiding place of Lianna.

The shadow below seemed to sense danger, contracting and twisting violently, trying to merge with the shadow of a nearby Dragon Worshipper. But it was too late.

Korylan’s appearance had no form—only three intersecting black lines flashed through the air and vanished.

The unnatural shadow froze abruptly, then “seeped” out thick streams of black blood, reeking of dragon vein energy, like a ruptured water bag.

The shadow rapidly faded and dissolved, revealing a slender body with precisely severed spine, carotid artery, and magical circuits. Lianna never had time to show surprise—her dagger had barely slid halfway out of her sleeve.

The fangs within the shadow were plucked out in deeper darkness.

Balhem sensed the anomaly the instant Lianna’s life force vanished. He roared—though his voice couldn’t carry ten meters—ripping an adventurer apart, armor and all, his bloodshot eyes snapping toward the cliff.

“Rats! Come out!!!”

In response came a muffled roar that tore through the air.

Gru Ironshield chose the shortest path, leaping directly from the cliff nearly a hundred meters high.

As he fell, runes of earth-yellow light blazed across his muscles and heavy plate armor, turning him into a falling meteor.

“Wrath of the Mountains: Starfall”

He crashed down twenty meters before Balhem, the impact shattering the surrounding rocks radially and hurling them upward, snapping bones and shattering limbs of five or six nearby Dragon Worshipers.

From the dust, Gru slowly straightened, his rune warhammer “Pillar of the World” slanted toward the ground—the hammerhead hadn’t touched yet, but the earth already trembled faintly.

“Legendary warrior?” Gru spat a mouthful of grit-laced saliva. “Come on. Let me see if your axe is harder than iron slag from a mine.”

Balhem’s reply was a charge that split the air. His true weapons—two single-edged, twisted red axes—finally dropped into his hands, their blades steaming with hot blood-mist.

Pure violent collision began. Each axe-hammer clash erupted visible shockwaves, causing nearby fighters to bleed from nose and ears.

Gru’s tactics were plain: endure, counter, meet fury with brute force.

His defense stood as solid as mountains; Balhem’s assault erupted like a volcano. For now, neither could break the other—but this was exactly what Fednan wanted.

While Gru held Balhem, Fednan moved.

He had remained on the cliff all along, but his longbow “Silent Confession” was now drawn full as a full moon. The string vibrated soundlessly; the arrow vanished the moment it left.

First arrow: pierced the forehead of a high-rank Dragon Tongue mage attempting to break the silence barrier with a magic scroll, severing his final incantation.

Second arrow: pierced the palm of another mage raising a dragon-crystal staff to summon a dragon-soul phantom. The magic-dispelling rune on the arrow triggered backlash, exploding the mage’s upper body into a purple-black arcane fireball.

Third and fourth arrows left the string almost simultaneously, driving into the backs of two Golden Radiance Temple priests. The arrows carried not lethal damage, but potent Shadow-Binding spells.

The Dragon Worshipers’ command and magical core were precisely paralyzed within ten seconds.

Shagte only now truly entered the battlefield.

He did not use flashy elemental magic; instead, he slammed his staff into the ground and chanted brief, archaic syllables in Orcish.

“Decree: Earth’s Forgetting”

Around him, the ground instantly turned to gray-white quicksand, its area spreading rapidly. This was no ordinary quicksand—it absorbed magic and accelerated time’s passage for anyone who stepped within, causing rapid withering of life.

The Dragon Worshipers panicked: their movements slowed, wrinkles crept across their skin, and their protective spells faded and vanished the moment they touched the quicksand field.

The tide of battle reversed completely within five minutes.

Deprived of command, cut off from magical support, their strongest assassin dead, their legendary warrior pinned down, the ground beneath them devouring life and magic, and corpses rising around them—the Dragon Worshipers’ morale shattered.

The surviving adventurers, though confused, acted on instinct, unleashing their final strength and forming an unspoken coordination with the sudden “reinforcements.”

Balhem’s assault, lacking reinforcements and already disoriented, began to falter. Gru’s defense remained as solid as a mountain. Finally, after one full-force clash, Balhem was stunned, his arms numb, his center wide open.

Gru’s warhammer swept aside the axes and delivered a blunt, unadorned shield strike straight to Balhem’s chest—the muffled crack of breaking bones was faintly audible even within the silence barrier.

Balhem flew backward, spewing blood, and before he hit the ground, three black daggers—like venomous snakes hunting prey—slammed into his heart, throat, and back of the skull from three different shadow angles.

The battle ended completely within one standard hour.

Over three hundred Dragon Worshipers were annihilated, not one survived. Among the adventurers, over half were dead or wounded; survivors were mostly mentally shattered or lying unconscious from grievous injuries.

Fednan’s team swiftly and silently collected the core loot: Balhem’s axes, Lianna’s Shadow Cloak, several high-grade dragon crystals.

They exchanged no words with the surviving adventurers, left no trace that could identify them.

Before dawn fully broke, the four had withdrawn through a pre-scouted secret tunnel, leaving the Melt-Throat Gorge as if they had never been there.

When Gisk’s scouts cautiously approached, they saw only a silent slaughterhouse, and air thick with an unyielding stench of blood and the faint lingering aura of legendary magic.

…………

“R-Report, Marshal! Something huge has happened!” The messenger stumbled into the tent, mud and grass clinging to his armor, voice hoarse with panic.

“The Melt-Throat Gorge… all the Dragon Worshipers are dead! Bodies everywhere—blood’s so thick it’ll stick to your boots! Lord Ye Kemu has already sealed both ends of the gorge and ordered me to report at once!”

The air inside the tent froze.

“—What?!” Gisk leapt from his iron chair, his heavy frame knocking over the map scroll on the table. His eyes shrank to needles, then blazed with terrifying fury.

“What dogs dare defile my battlefield?! And they killed guests personally ‘invited’ by the Duke—”

He snatched the heavy black-stone teacup beside him and hurled it to the ground! The shattering crash echoed like thunder, shards and scalding tea spraying everywhere—some fragments grazing the messenger’s face.

“Find!” Gisk’s voice scraped like iron wind from the abyss, each word hammered into the floor: “Dig three feet down! I want to know which damn fools dared play tricks under my nose!”

His chest heaved as if truly enraged by this sudden turn—he scanned every face in the tent, including the expressionless “ally representatives.”

“Order Ye Kemu,” he gritted, each word ground from his teeth: “No body is to be moved. Not a single trace is to be disturbed!”

“Send every ‘Soul Sniffer’ and ‘Blood Trace Reconstructor’ there! I want them to dig the killers’ shadows out of the blood-mud within three days—”

He slammed his fist onto the thick ironwood desk, making the daggers on it bounce half an inch: “Then I’ll pull their intestines out myself and hang them to dry on my battle flagpole!”

The tent fell deathly silent. Only the crackling of embers in the brazier broke the quiet, illuminating Gisk’s grotesque, “furious” profile—and

Fednan’s slightly lowered eyelids, Gru’s white-knuckled grip on his warhammer, Shagte’s unmoving staff, and Korylan’s lips—barely curved, cold and almost imperceptible.

They watched this thunderous rage in silence, as if observing a play with a script already written.

And the marshal on stage was performing “loyalty” and “rage” with flawless intensity.

…………

On the Btag Basin battlefield, smoke and the stench of sulfur had not yet fully faded, but the air’s tone had shifted—from the thunderous crashes of metal to the rhythmic thuds of wood, the hum of saws, and the chants of haulers.

By order of the Legion’s Supreme Command, this newly seized land was rapidly transforming from a battlefield into a vast, efficient inland fleet shipyard.

The riverbanks were systematically cleared, widened, and reinforced. The twisted dens and ruins of the demons were leveled, replaced by neat rows of wooden slipways extending into the water.

Hundreds of ogre soldiers, temporarily shedding their heavy armor for durable leather aprons, worked with astonishing efficiency under foremen’s orders, performing earthworks and basic construction.

Their discipline was evident in the engineering: logging teams precisely felled specific tree species upstream; transport teams moved like worker ants, dragging massive logs back to base.

But the true soul and direction of it all came from the dozens of lizardfolk artisans on the riverbank ridge.

“Shalut, your crew must speed up. These ogres won’t hold here long—we spent fifty days just clearing the demons.”

“Irolg, you’re always complaining. Do you think I don’t know time is short? If you can’t supervise construction, just watch from the side.”