"How... the bullets were...!!"
Both exiles watched Rover freeze the bullets mid-flight, then swat them aside barehanded. Their eyes nearly popped from their skulls. Whatever courage remained drained out of them like water from a cracked flask.
They'd tangled with tough marks before. Never anything like this.
Across from them, Danjin's killing intent sharpened to a razor's edge. Even without his intervention, she was confident she could have dodged those rounds with minor injuries at worst. But she hadn't expected the enemy to be packing Tacetite weapons.
Tacetite armaments were designed to counter Tacet Discords. The Originite: Type II swords she and Rover carried were Tacetite weapons too, the most common and versatile type, though also the hardest to master. Firearms were a different beast entirely.
A gun gave lethal force to anyone who held it. In Jinzhou, only city defense Patrollers like Chixia and soldiers of the Midnight Rangers were authorized to carry them.
No exile should have been able to get their hands on one.
When Danjin identified the make of the pistol, her blood ran cold.
"This is standard-issue for Jinzhou Patrollers. And Patrollers rarely leave the city walls. You... killed a Patroller!"
"W-We didn't have a choice!"
"It's his fault for catching us smuggling."
With Danjin's bloodlust bearing down on them, the two crumbled instantly, confessing everything. They'd been smuggling critical supplies inside Jinzhou's walls until a Patroller discovered their operation. The three of them had feigned surrender, then struck the moment the Patroller let his guard down, murdered him, seized his sidearm, and fled into exile.
"!!!"
The killing intent that erupted from both Rover and Danjin could have frozen a soul solid.
The two exiles trembled, shaking where they knelt, and looked up.
A pair of blazing golden eyes and a pair of blood-dark crimson ones stared back. The kind of eyes that looked one heartbeat away from incinerating them where they sat.
"Scum. Unforgivable!"
Danjin's fury hit like a physical force. Emotion this intense sent her Forte spiraling out of control, pushing dangerously close to overclocking.
The scent of blood thickening around her wasn't lost on Rover. He recalled Danjin's lore: her Forte carried a nasty side effect. Emotional overload, a descent into bloodlust, rational thought fracturing under the weight of her own power.
He moved without hesitation, pressing his hand over her eyes.
"Breathe, Danjin. Deep breaths. Let it go."
"Rover..."
"Dismiss the Scarlet Blades. Stop channeling your Forte. You've still got a sword on your hip, remember? Weren't you going to test the one we repaired?"
"...Okay."
His voice, steady and warm. The heat of his palm through the glove. And then something sweet pressed between her lips: Loong Whiskers Crisp. Piece by piece, the scarlet blades dissolved, and Danjin's breathing slowed. The storm behind her eyes quieted.
Rover drew the second sword from her waist for her.
He wrapped his larger hand around hers, helping her grip the hilt, and together they leveled the blade at the two exiles.
Then something crossed his mind, and a grin curled across his face. "Girls shouldn't talk like that. Besides, 'scum' isn't going to scare anyone. It's got zero intimidation value."
No villain in the world was going to flinch at being called "scum." The word had all the menace of a wet napkin.
"Then what should I say?"
"Heh. Easy. Repeat after me."
They loomed over the exiles, who had collapsed where they sat, pinned to the ground by sheer pressure. Rover and Danjin raised the sword together, and he spoke, slow and deliberate, words that carved terror into their bones.
Rover: "Souls bound, dreams shattered, storms rage across the sky!"
Danjin: "Souls bound, dreams shattered, storms rage across the sky!"
The exiles: "!!!!"
When that demon lord's infamous line echoed across Solaris-3 for the first time, the tidal wave of murderous intent nearly ripped the exiles' souls from their bodies. But the cold flash of the sword reached their necks first.
Danjin's mouth hung open in a perfect O. That single line had sent a thrill racing through every nerve in her body. Her eyes lit up with childlike delight. I'm saying that every single time from now on. She turned to Rover, expectation written plain across her face.
The meaning was obvious. There's more, right? That can't be all of it!
"Of course there's more, but these two ran out of heads before I ran out of lines." He shrugged. "You need a bigger audience for the full version."
"No problem! We'll find more exile camps! That Midnight Rangers soldier gave us coordinates, so let's use this chance to cut out every last tumor outside Jinzhou's walls."
Danjin hoisted her sword, brimming with purpose.
Every time the frontline erupted into war, these exiles crawled out of whatever holes they'd been hiding in, hoping to scavenge from the chaos. To the Midnight Rangers, they were no different from Tacet Discords.
Rover agreed on the spot. Soldiers were bleeding and dying on the frontlines. No way he'd let these parasites drag them down. Time to clean house.
"We've got the coordinates, but hoofing it would take forever. So, Danjin... come here." He spread his arms.
"Huh?"
Her eyes went wide. The Rover before her stood with arms open, expression utterly serious. She stared, unsure how to respond, wrestling with herself for a handful of heartbeats.
Then her face went scarlet. Eyes squeezed shut, she threw her arms around him, right in front of a certain butterfly whose wings trembled at the sight. A second later, the ground fell away.
"Is this... the Flight module?!"
When her eyes opened again, the world had shrunk beneath her. Fields and forests reduced to patchwork, the horizon curving at the edges.
"Flying beats walking. You read the map and point the way. We'll blitz every camp in the area!"
"Yes!!"
Her face flushed with excitement. Flight! She'd failed the Flight certification test multiple times herself, and here Rover had it all along.
This was incredible. Their kill efficiency had multiplied overnight.
What followed was nothing short of a catastrophe for every exile operating outside Jinzhou's walls. They'd been planning to exploit the Midnight Rangers' battle against the Tacet Discord Tide, maybe grab some military-grade loot while no one was looking. Before a single plan could be set in motion, two gods of death dropped from the sky.
A vivid, visceral demonstration of justice from above.
In half a day, nearly ten exile camps and over a hundred fighters were torn through without mercy.
And at last, Danjin heard the poem in full.
Rover had adapted it for Solaris-3, tailored to Danjin's style, and this poem would haunt every exile for a long, long time to come.
In the final camp, Danjin moved through the carnage like a blood-soaked angel, her blade passing judgment on every soul it found. Rivers of guilty blood pooled at her feet, and she walked through them, murmuring the words like a prayer.
"Souls bound, dreams shattered, storms rage across the sky,
On Solaris-3's altar, three realms stand.
The gate of life and death swings wide,
A killing tide, to cleanse the world of man!"
The exiles who heard it had one collective reaction:
They were scared to death. Literally.
Meanwhile, Rover checked his Pangu Terminal with a satisfied nod.
Being this close to the frontlines, Tacet Discords had been spawning at a significantly higher rate. Along the way, he'd cut down several times more Tacet Discords than Danjin had exiles.
So it wasn't only the exiles who'd received justice from above today. The Tacet Discords near Jinzhou got a generous helping of it too.
His Data Dock level was climbing fast.
Almost there. A little more and I can absorb Overlord Class Echoes.
He pulled his sword free from the Whisperin Core of an Elite Class Stoneguard. The creature dissolved into a fading resonance, then flowed into his Terminal as a new Echo.
A glance at his weapon told the rest of the story. After cutting through so many, the Originite: Type II's edge had started to roll.
No matter.
I've got ten more swords. Plenty of killing left to do.
The Tacet Discords: (PLEASE STAY AWAY FROM US!!)
On a related note...
Because the circumstances surrounding him and the female Rover were so unusual, their Frequencies were perfectly identical. Since Pangu Terminals were bound to a Resonator's Frequency, the two of them effectively shared the same phone number and ID.
Which meant their Data Docks ran on the same account.
Wherever she was, the female Rover watched her own Terminal's Data Dock level skyrocket, the Echo count climbing in real time. She sucked in a sharp breath.
He's gone absolutely feral out there.
"Seeing all that is making my fingers itch. Would it kill a halfway decent enemy to show up over here so I can get some practice in?"
She didn't know it yet, but at that very moment, a certain Fractsidus Overseer, and future title-holder of Jinzhou's greatest tailor, was already on the way.