Even with the blade lodged in his body…Laurence raised his arm.
His sword tore through the air with a metallic scream.
And wounded the Emperor.
It was not a deep cut.But it was enough to wrench a gasp of surprise from him—and draw a drop of imperial blood.
The Emperor's face twisted between fury and disbelief.
"I will take your son," he spat.
Laurence, on his knees as life bled out of him, looked up with pure contempt.
"When you set foot in the Duchy…you will learn what hell truly is.And then… the end of your empire will begin."
Laurence Douglas died on his feet.
Like a warrior.Like a monster of the shadows.Like the last wall standing against the Empire.
Laurence Douglas's body had not yet fully struck the ground when something… broke within the Duchy's army.
An unnatural silence fell across the battlefield.Heavy.Suffocating.As though the entire world had been suspended within a single heartbeat.
And then…
hell opened.
The Douglas knights—heirs to a tradition older than the Kingdom itself—raised their swords as one.
Mana erupted from them.
Black flames, crimson lightning, filaments of raw energy… each man channeled his grief as fuel, as though their lord's death had unlocked something forbidden within their blood.
A roar split the air.
"FOR THE DUKE!!!"
It was not a human cry.It was an ancestral howl, born of grief and fury, from hundreds of warriors bound by an eternal oath.
The imperial line shuddered.
The Douglases did not charge.They launched themselves forward, propelled by bursts of mana exploding beneath their feet like miniature craters.
There was no formation.No strategy.Only pure ferocity, amplified by magic.
One Douglas slammed into an imperial shield, and the mere impact of his imbued blade shattered the steel, hurling the soldier ten meters backward, bones crushed by the vibration of mana.
Another took a spear through his abdomen—and still advanced, wrapping his arm in a blazing red aura as he snapped the shaft, lunged at the spearman, and beheaded him in a single stroke.
Their faces were drenched in tears, blood, and light.It was as if each man burned from within, consumed by a power they were never meant to wield—yet once unleashed, could no longer restrain.
"Berserker" was not enough.This was something else.
Something darker.Older.More terrible.
A whisper rippled through the imperial ranks:
"No… they're not human…They're… they're mana demons!"
The Empire's mages reacted at once.
"Flame wall!""Firestorm!""Air compression!"
Columns of fire, shockwaves of pressure, and spheres of energy detonated over the Douglases.
But they—
walked through the magic.
Covered in burns, flesh split open by wounds that would have killed any other man, they kept advancing, their blades blazing with a vibrant, unnatural light.
One Douglas, engulfed in conjured flames, leapt among three imperial sorcerers, drove his sword into the first man's chest, and unleashed a burst of area mana that disintegrated the other two.
The imperial generals went pale.
"Pull back the center. Now!""We can't contain them—not like this…""What kind of cursed magic does that Duchy wield?!"
But it was not magic.
It was absolute loyalty.It was boundless grief.It was the echo of their lord's final, silent command:
Do not let my death be in vain.
The Douglases turned every meter of the field into a bloodbath, driven by a fury that allowed them to ignore mortal wounds, fight with exposed bone, and strike with enough force to shatter spells.
Every scream, every burst of light, every clash of steel carried a single purpose:
Avenge their lord.Avenge the last fallen Douglas.Avenge the man who never knelt before the Empire.
And in that moment…
Even the gods would have stepped back.