"Who... who the hell is this guy?!"
On the Norfall Barrens battlefield, the Midnight Rangers soldier Rover had saved could only gape at the spectacle unfolding before him.
A dark-haired, golden-eyed man was riding an Elite Class Lightcrusher Echo straight through the Tacet Discord Tide, slaughtering everything in his path like a god of war made flesh.
And he'd brought dozens of Echoes fighting alongside him.
One man, single-handedly dominating the entire battlefield.
"ROAAAARRRR!!!"
"Echo, resonate with me!!"
From the tiger's back, Rover hurled his ultimate toward the densest cluster of Tacet Discords. The Temporal Mandate detonated on impact, vaporizing every creature within a radius of dozens of meters in a single pulse.
He drew another Originite: Type II, carving arcs of light through the air like a certain black-clad swordsman fond of dual-wielding. With the Lightcrusher's mobility beneath him, he became a killing machine on rails.
Everywhere he passed, Tacet Discords died instantly.
Nothing remained but fading golden afterimages.
Perfect. Time to grind the Data Dock up to Overlord Class!
Encountering this many Tacet Discords in the wild at once was rare. His eyes lit up as he tossed out his Pangu Terminal, absorbing the fresh remnant signatures and converting them into Echoes.
Then...
"Manifest. Join the fight."
"ROAAAARRRR!!!" x5
Creatures that had been enemies seconds ago passed through Rover's hands and emerged as allied combat assets, folding seamlessly into his Echo legion to tear into the remaining Tacet Discords.
The enemy's loss was his gain. His fighting strength grew with every kill.
"You... you can do that?!"
The Midnight Rangers soldier's brain had stopped working. This young man... no, this hero... is he from Rinascita? The nation of Echoes? How else could anyone command this many?!
More footsteps thundered from behind.
Not Tacet Discords this time. Friendlies.
"Midnight Rangers, follow the Azure Dragon's guidance! Attack!"
"Sir!!" x N
At their head strode a man with long hair the color of moss-green steel, a cyan dragon lance in one hand and a cyan greatsword in the other. Two weapons that should have demanded both hands each, wielded single-handedly as if they weighed nothing.
His Forte surged. A coiling azure dragon materialized around him, piercing through several Tacet Discords and annihilating them in an instant.
Behind him, wave after wave of well-equipped Midnight Rangers poured onto the field.
"Reinforcements! It's reinforcements!!"
The wounded soldier's face broke into relief, then snapped back to urgency. He shouted at his comrades, "Don't hit the wrong targets! Some of those are the hero's Echoes!"
"???" x N
The Rangers paused, then took in the state of the battlefield. Every one of them swore internally.
Holy... that many Echoes? Did Rinascita send aid?
Is that guy riding a Lightcrusher?!!
That's... insane. He might be even more brutal than the General...
Wait, do they even need us here?
This... this can't be right, can it?
Word of the breached position had reached the Midnight Rangers, and General Jiyan had led the reinforcement charge personally. But now they were discovering their presence might be entirely optional.
Someone had nearly finished the job already.
"Hahahaha! Now that's more like it! Over there, more of them!"
"ROAAAARRRR!!"
The Lightcrusher roared in answer, thrilled. Today's battle had been the time of its life. The quiet days before had been pleasant enough, but charging into war at its master's side? This was living.
One Resonator and one Echo had seized total control of this stretch of the battlefield.
The surrounding Echoes sounded off in chorus.
Exactly as the wounded soldier had guessed, Rover had bent this entire theater of war to his will.
But...
"Stop gawking. Assist him. All forces, attack!"
Jiyan snapped back to command and barked orders, then led the charge himself, dragon lance and greatsword carving into the remaining Tacet Discords.
The Rangers surged forward. An elite fighting force composed entirely of Resonators, every last one a battle-hardened veteran. Their coordination was seamless, their execution precise.
Victory, already inevitable, locked into certainty.
Rover caught the soldiers in his peripheral vision and raised an eyebrow.
In the game, squads of Midnight Rangers NPCs could pin down Tacet Discords in the wild, occasionally dropping bonus materials into his inventory as he passed by. Seeing the real thing was something else entirely.
The game undersold them. Badly.
These were the genuine article. Elite soldiers, one in a hundred.
As for General Jiyan at their head... he was the only other person on this field cutting through Tacet Discords with the same unstoppable momentum as Rover himself.
Then crisis struck.
"Careful! All units, defensive positions!!"
Three shrieks split the air, vulture-harsh and piercing. A ring of purple light bloomed across the sky, and countless feathers burning with violet flame rained down like arrows. No, like meteors.
A massive silhouette claimed the skies.
Three heads. A colossal avian Tacet Discord whose dark-purple wings seemed to blot out the sky itself, wreathed in perpetual violet fire. Its tail lashed behind it like a thorned whip.
And on its back, where no one could see, the purple-black plumage formed the shape of a devil's face.
"SHRIEEEEK!!!" x3
Three cries like a demon's wail, and in the next heartbeat, searing flame poured from all three beaks, scorching the battlefield from one end to the other. A fighter jet dropping napalm.
Purple fire turned the ground into a furnace.
Rangers fell wounded across the field. That it was only wounds and not deaths was remarkable in itself.
On Rover's side, every Common Class Echo was annihilated instantly. Among the Elite Class, only the Lightcrusher survived unscathed. The Rocksteady Guardian, Violet-Feathered Heron, Glacio Dreadmane, and the rest were in critical condition.
But losing Echoes was a temporary setback at worst.
Their Frequencies were stored in his Pangu Terminal. Given time to regenerate, they'd manifest again. In a way, the Terminal functioned like a certain noseless wizard's Horcrux, or perhaps a dark lord's phylactery, keeping each Echo's essence safely preserved.
Watching the three-headed purple bird obliterate most of his newly recruited Echoes didn't bother Rover in the slightest. If anything, the opposite. His luck today was unreal.
Jiyan spotted him standing still and called out in warning.
"Watch yourself! That's an Overlord Class Tacet Discord, the Impermanence Heron!"
"Oh, I know." A grin spread across his face. "An Overlord Class is exactly what I've been looking for."
He glanced at his Data Dock. The sustained combat and steady Echo absorption had pushed it to the threshold he needed. The timing of this Overlord Class arrival couldn't have been more perfect.
Ask and you shall receive. Don't mind if I do!
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Note: Extra chapter!
Keep the powerstones coming and you shall receive more
Remember if we reach top 20 then 5 extra chap! We are pretty close!~