Noel backhanded the beads of sweat seeping from his temples. The heat in the Valley of Death had begun to sting, radiating not only from the Ignis Magna Beacons but from the intensity of the energy detonating at the bottom of Mirror Canyon.

  House Sanjaya had finally descended. And as always, their method of operation was the definition of terrifying efficiency.

  Noel observed his uncles, aunts, and chosen cousins moving on the front lines, within the zone already abandoned by the regular troops. They did not wield noisy, dirty assault rifles. They utilized Arts—the combat disciplines of their bloodline.

  Down there, the scene appeared surreal. A barrage of small explosions popped in empty air, chasing one another at high speed.

  Boom! Crack! Zzap!

  These were not boring orange gunpowder blasts. They were miniature fireworks spanning a blinding spectrum of color. There were explosions of cobalt blue fire that froze the air. There were sparks of emerald green lightning crawling wildly like glowing tree roots. There were bursts of violet nebula that detonated, disintegrating whatever they touched into dust.

  Like a festive New Year's parade. Beautiful, artistic, and mesmerizing.

  Tens of thousands of regular soldiers lined up at the edge of the defense perimeter witnessed the spectacle with gaping mouths. Their eyes sparkled, reflecting the colorful explosions on their corneas. They whispered in awe, some even cheering stifledly every time a large golden explosion cleaved the air.

  "Look at that! So beautiful..."

  "That is the power of the Great Lords..."

  "The evil spirits are being burned!"

  Noel snorted softly at the naive admiration. Fools, he thought coldly. You have no idea what you are watching.

  They couldn't see it. Their ordinary human eyes were incapable of catching the visual frequency of the Shade Walkers—the Shadow Roamers.

  To those soldiers, the Sanjaya family looked as if they were dancing and setting off fireworks into empty air, exterminating imaginary "evil spirits."

  But Noel saw it. Through his trained eyes, aided by the special thermal goggles he wore, he witnessed the true horror.

  The valley was not empty. Thousands of Shade Walkers—hunched humanoid creatures with transparent skin that refracted light—were sprinting, leaping, and ambushing with long claws. They were the perfect invisible killers.

  Every beautiful exploding "firework" was actually a moment of fatal impact.

  That blue explosion occurred when Uncle Gerald punched a Shade Walker's chest, shattering it to pieces. That green flash was the moment his aunt slashed the necks of three creatures at once with her energy whip. That purple burst was a destruction spell melting the enemies' transparent flesh before they even touched the ground.

  There was no beauty there. There was only precision slaughter. The bodily fluids of those creatures splattered everywhere, but because they were invisible, the fluids vanished in the air before touching the ground, leaving a perfect illusion of cleanliness.

  "Mass hallucination," Noel analyzed, his eyes staring at the crowd of soldiers still in awe.

  They felt safe because they thought the enemy were abstract spirits that could be driven away with pretty lights. They were oblivious to the fact that if even one Shade Walker slipped past House Sanjaya's "picket line," the creature would decapitate ten soldiers before they realized they were dead.

  House Sanjaya's efficiency in purging these pests was so high that this war looked like a folk festival.

  Noel lowered his gaze back to the spear in his hand. "Enjoy the show while you can," he murmured to the thousands of oblivious spectators. "Because soon, the fireworks will run out... and the true darkness will not be this pretty."

  Amidst the fireworks party of death, Noel’s eyes locked onto one dominant figure.

  His father. Maronn Sanjaya.

  The man stood in the center of the battle vortex, yet he looked like someone waiting in line for a late bus.

  A Shade Walker—a two-meter-tall creature with razor claws—attempted an ambush from a blind spot behind Maronn. The creature leaped soundlessly, utilizing its invisibility to target the patriarch's neck.

  Noel didn't blink. He knew he didn't need to shout a warning.

  Without turning, without changing his stance, Maronn’s right hand moved casually backward.

  The movement was lazy, as if swatting a fly.

  BAM.

  The back of Maronn’s hand hit empty air.

  The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

  A disgusting wet cracking sound was heard.

  The optical illusion broke. The Shade Walker was thrown out of its stealth mode, its neck broken at a ninety-degree angle, then its body exploded into black fog before even touching the ground.

  Maronn didn't even look at his enemy's corpse.

  He instead sighed long.

  His broad shoulders slumped. The expression on his face wasn't anger, not fear, and clearly not satisfaction.

  It was an expression of acute boredom.

  Maronn Sanjaya looked profoundly disappointed. He looked at his own right hand, then looked at the scattered remains of the Shade Walker with a disdainful gaze.

  His lips moved, mumbling something Noel could read from the movement:

  "Weak. Too fragile."

  To Maronn, these creatures capable of tearing apart an elite platoon in the blink of an eye were merely crackers. One touch, shattered. No resistance. No sensation of bone fighting back when broken. No adrenaline.

  Noel shook his head in disbelief.

  Insane, he thought.

  What kind of standard does this old man use?

  Shade Walkers were a nightmare for every military unit on this continent. They were fast, invisible, and lethal. But to Maronn Sanjaya, they were merely boring pests.

  What kind of monster does he want to fight? Noel asked himself, horrified imagining the answer.

  Will his father only smile if what comes out of that hole is a Titan as tall as a building? Or an Ancient Demon whose skin is as thick as tank armor?

  Noel stared at his father’s back, now walking sluggishly looking for other prey, as if strolling in a boring park.

  The bloodlust that had momentarily flared in Maronn’s eyes now dimmed again, replaced by the frustration of a predator finding no worthy opponent.

  He's not looking for victory, Noel concluded coldly. He's looking for pain. He's looking for an enemy who can make him bleed.

  And on this battlefield, not one was yet worthy of scratching Maronn Sanjaya’s skin.

  "Huh..."

  Noel exhaled a long breath.

  Thick white steam spewed from his mouth and nose, clumping in the air for a moment before being torn apart by the mountain wind.

  The hot sensation that had momentarily slapped his face—radiation from magic battles and artillery—now vanished without a trace.

  The mountain air reclaimed custody of this place.

  Cold. Piercing. Quiet.

  Noel tightened his coat collar. This cold was different. It wasn't merely low temperature; it was the thermal void occurring when massive amounts of death energy had just been released and then suddenly vanished.

  He looked around the crater down there.

  The fireworks party was over.

  The colorful parade of energy explosions had died.

  The number of Shade Walkers in the valley was no longer statistically significant.

  From thousands of entities flooding like a deluge earlier, now only one or two remained, being lazily hunted by his cousins. They finished off the remnants of the enemy like bored cats playing with a dying mouse. No more urgency. No more danger.

  And along with the disappearance of that threat, the ancient mechanism at the lip of the abyss reacted.

  The Ignis Magna Beacons... shrank.

  The orange pillars of fire that had raged, licking the sky ten meters high, now dimmed drastically in unison.

  Their fire tongues dropped, shrank, and thinned until they were only the size of an ordinary campfire. Their previously fierce light now became dim and languid.

  "Responsive ritual," Noel analyzed internally.

  The Ignis Magna fire was designed not only as illumination but as a counter-measure. The fire lived and burned large when sensing a thick dark aura. When enemies were gone, when the dark aura thinned, the fire fasted. It returned to standby mode.

  The valley went dark again.

  Military spotlights returned as the main dominant light source, sweeping invisible carcasses beginning to evaporate into thin black smoke.

  The atmosphere became silent.

  Too silent.

  But to Noel, the shrinking of this fire wasn't a sign of victory.

  Quite the opposite; the shrinking fire made the shadows in the corners of the abyss grow longer and denser.

  It was a sign that the "preliminary round" was over.

  The stage had been cleared.

  And usually, after preliminaries were over... the main champion would only then be called into the arena.

  Even the "Dark Gate" itself had never truly opened wide.

  What happened tonight was merely a leak.

  However, a leak from hell is still a flood for the human world.

  Noel stood at the highest point of the platform, his sharp eyes recording the apocalypse panorama divided into two realms: Land and Air.

  Down there, on the ground surface, Anukh Ramj—the Corpses of Darkness—were continuously vomited from the belly of Mirror Canyon. They were like black sewage overflowing from a clogged drain. Millions of those deformed bodies crawled, piled on top of each other, and climbed the cliffs.

  But the Carta military had turned the battlefield into a factory assembly line.

  Artillery fire and tank barricades weren't designed to stop them, but to channel them. Like floodwater forced into flood canals, the horde of Anukh Ramj was herded into the 200 Gates scattered at the foot of the Iron Mountains.

  Noel saw those concrete mouths swallowing thousands of monsters every minute.

  Inside there, at the end of every gate labyrinth, execution teams were waiting.

  Giant chainsaws, industrial flamethrowers, and mechanical grinders worked endlessly.

  "Biological waste management system," Noel noted coldly. "Efficient. Brutal. Merciless."

  Then, Noel’s gaze shifted to the sky.

  If the land was a physical slaughterhouse, then the sky was a chessboard of gods.

  Shade Walkers—the Spirits of Darkness—who managed to escape gravity surged flying into the air like thick black smoke. They tried to spread, tried to fly toward human cities to find hosts.

  But they hit an invisible ceiling.

  Above the valley, across the entire Carta sky, their Grand Array had been activated.

  The Giant Thousand Constellation Chessboard.

  Noel saw lines of blue and gold light stretching across the night sky, connecting mountain peaks like artificial constellations. The lines formed an intricate grid pattern, caging the entire airspace of Mirror Canyon.

  Every time a Shade Walker hit that light line...

  Zzzzt!

  They didn't explode. They were erased.

  Those evil spirits hissed, burned by pure constellation energy, and crumbled into glowing ash falling slowly to earth.

  And for the remnants of spirits that managed to fall to the ground in half-destroyed condition, the Burner Agency was waiting.

  Special forces in silver fireproof suits moved among the rocks. Their weapons weren't rifles, but mana incinerators. They burned those ectoplasm remnants until no trace was left, ensuring not a single dark spore remained.

  The ground shook with the thudding steps of Anukh Ramj.

  The sky glowed with the death of Shade Walkers.

  Noel lowered his gaze, staring at the distant horizon behind the mountains, toward where the royal capital lay.

  There, millions of people might be sleeping soundly, or perhaps partying celebrating the festival, unaware that the wall separating them from extinction was being battered mercilessly here.

  Noel’s lips curled into a thin smile full of irony.

  "Tonight..." he whispered to the wind carrying the burnt smell of corpses and spirits.

  "...Carta must be very lively."