Seravelle Continent, Solmara Territory.
The first six months after Ashen's disappearance could be said to have passed peacefully, if the unease of the Solmarians was to be ignored.
But the six months that succeeded it… they were the prologue to this region's despair, a despair that had been fully realised today in the form of a dozen million-strong Narkal horde.
The walls that had been the dwarves' most proud work in the time they spent here were the primary contributor that held the territory from the fate of complete devastation.
But it wasn't the only reason. The second reason was the regent everyone thought would have run away by now, facing these impossible odds: Alice Sinclair.
She had long since ascended to the fifth step during Ashen's absence. Embodying it did not require the man himself, only his image as a muse and her lust for him being reshaped into art.
But she learned the hard way that this was the exception, not the rule of the Lust path.
The realization came with her next epithet, and the skills it granted.
The saying that a Lust pathwalker was useless alone hadn't been born from nothing. Still, what unsettled her more was not the limitation, but the depravity that revealed itself, little by little, with every step she climbed.
Nonetheless, she was still the most vital component in this futile resistance against the monstrosities, and it was thanks to two things: her impeccable command over the army, and the countless automatons that had cores crafted from one of the most precious metals in the world, mithril itself.
Naturally, she would never dare to claim all credit belonged to her, not when she saw with the surveillance scattered across the battlefield how each man fought with no regard to their lives, all for the protection of the land they had come to call home.
Though Alice was willing to venture that if not for the impassioned speech that Lucia's tongue had woven before the battle, half of them would have run away by now.
A con woman of the highest order; that was her first thought.
But watching that fervor refuse to crack, even under such odds, left her with only one conclusion… just how terrifying a true manipulator could be.
Alice kept issuing orders across the army, patching gaps in the formation and rotating battalions to maintain their efficiency, all while directing her thousands of automatons to fill the cracks and stem the leaks that inevitably surfaced.
She was like a conductor on the grandest stage, every motion guiding a flawless symphony.
And it could only be flawless, because anything less would let everything crumble to dust.
In fact, if it were just regular Narkals, Alice was sure that she could eventually wrestle a victory, no matter how steep the price, but alas, when they gathered in this scale, Demons and Great Demons always lurked behind.
Her surveillance drones had already spotted them in the back of their army, leisurely watching the devastation their lesser kin brought upon the pitiful humans like an entertaining spectacle.
Them not being in a hurry to join the fray was a hidden blessing, but Alice could not muster any feelings of optimism, all due to the final figure that stood even behind them — a Catastrophe.
Alice recognized its rank because it was identical to the fire ifrit that assaulted the Ashbastion.
Shaking her head, she decided to just keep focusing on what she could influence, like the battle that was happening before her.
But while the Great Demons favored a slow encroachment to savor the despair of their foes, they were not stupid. They knew who their biggest threat was and kept sending their disposable troops her way in a bid to probe.
Alice stayed undeterred. She twirled a sleek pen on her fingers and started writing in the empty space, treating air like paper, and mana as her ink.
My destruction will not kill a soul unless for a soul, or for corruption in the land.
Her hand moved rapidly, letting luminous letters hang in front of her.
It is as if I had killed all mankind. And whenever my destruction saves one, it is as if it had saved all mankind.
With each syllable she wrote, the atmosphere trembled like it was responding to a dooming event.
I will certainly send destruction upon his people, and it shall remain among them a thousand years minus fifty.
Then the Flood's carnage shall seize them while they were wrongdoers.
When the last word was etched, the passage shone with great brightness, then… the sky went white.
It was like a miniature hydrogen bomb had detonated, but this spell made that weapon of mass destruction into a targeted tool that only touched upon her adversaries.
Whenever it passed through buildings, the wall, or her allies, it went past them, as if they existed on a different plane.
This was the accumulation of her path as a magician, as well as its ultimate expression.
All the Narkals that threatened her position evaporated, and more than half a million followed, easing the soldiers' burden for a brief moment.
Alice's hand did not stop, writing chants in the air while simultaneously issuing orders.
As to why she did not chant the normal way, it was simple. Chanting was the way for magicians to cast most of their powerful spells, since doing it silently would decrease the potency no matter what, but it took a major resource aside from mana and time: her capability to talk.
And whatever words got out of those plush lips, they were as valuable as Seravelle's most precious metal now.
Alice, as efficient as she was, had invented this pen that let her mana be used as ink to conduct the chants in writing rather than orally.
But despite everything she did, the monsters did not abate, nor did they retreat, and her remaining mana would not allow her to use another spell of that scale.
So she could only reveal another one of her hidden cards.
Nine fluffy tails sprouted out of her tailbone and spread from the sides of her kimono.
They vibrated with saturated mana that she had spent more than a year laboriously gathering. The quantity did not even reach 5% of what she had during the fragment, but it was always better than nothing.
At least this allowed her to continue to support the frontline for now.
The Great Demons, seeing this, changed their tactic, throwing Gorefiends her way in a bid to make her waste her mana on useless fodder, but Alice did not fall for it.
She let her pen hang in the air and brandished the spear by her side to finish off the weaker foes. Ashen's fighting techniques still served her until now.
On another stretch of the battlefield, Lucia was surprisingly being almost as much of an annoyance for the monsters as her commander.
The area she was responsible for was filled with shredded remains across its expanse, and whenever a group of Narkals ran toward it, they were abruptly reduced to the very same shreds.
Lucia stood in the middle of it, manipulating thin threads that kept sporting from her fingers and spreading them in all directions, little by little encroaching more space, just like a poisonous spider building its lair.
It seemed that it was not only Alice who had benefited from the Kingmaker's teaching. Even the "weak" con-woman was now making full use of her Fourth Step powers.
However, the most surprising performance of all belonged to another individual.
He stood at the very front of the battlefield, ahead of even his fellow shield-bearers.
Screaming at the top of his lungs, he swung his axe with a ruthlessness that bordered on the Narkals', taunting hundreds of the advancing monsters, dragging their attention to himself.
And when the order to rotate came… he did not move.
Rotation after rotation, his comrades came and went, but he remained akin to a permanent wall of flesh and steel that stood between the endless horde and the lands of Solmara. His hulking frame refused to fall, no matter how much punishment it endured.
Even as days passed, he held the line. Even when blood stained every inch of him… his resolve did not waver.
In his mind, retreat did not exist.
What lay behind him was what he had sworn to protect, and he would do so until his final breath.
…Why?
Because he was the Shield of Solmara.