The human legion was already in full retreat, and their flanks were at their weakest. Kaido's Beast Legion smashed into them first, followed immediately by Chaos cavalry and war chariots bursting into their lines. In an instant, the battlefield turned into utter chaos.
Worse still, when Kaido led his beasts into the charge, he deliberately targeted and slaughtered the frontline junior officers, crippling the command structure of that section of the battlefield.
With order gone and leadership shattered, the human army fell into complete disarray.
Already battered by Chaos' endless corruption, their morale collapsed on the spot. By the time the Chaos cavalry stormed in, these soldiers had lost all sense of formation—fighting only on sheer instinct and personal valor, making their final desperate struggles before death.
Fortunately, the Chaos miasma's potency had diminished in this sector, sparing this detachment from being annihilated outright in the confusion.
In the skies above, the violet thunder-dragon—who had originally been charging straight at Belakor—was forced to veer sharply away. With a burst of violet lightning splitting the heavens, it folded space and reappeared above the chaotic breach.
"Hold the line! Do not let the enemy break through any further!"
The dragon's arrival gave the human troops a rallying point. Their hearts steadied, they hastily reformed their ranks and barely repelled the first charge of the Chaos cavalry, stabilizing the flank—for now.
Yet even so, without reinforcements from other legions, the line could not endure more than a quarter of an hour.
The Chaos cavalry had struck with full momentum, while the humans had been battered mid-retreat. That quarter-hour would be bought only with blood and lives.
But the violet thunder-dragon could not remain here to guard the line. With a thunderous roar, it transformed into a bolt of violet lightning and shot skyward.
"Despicable outsider! You will never take Ursun's essence of power!"
Roya glanced toward the far north, where Kaido's Beast Legion was driving forward at breakneck speed. He longed to give chase and stop the traitor, but it was impossible.
The thunder-dragon's psychic energy had locked tightly onto him. No matter how he moved, that violet lightning would pursue him relentlessly.
"This is a misunderstanding—at least hear me out!"
Extending his spiritual sense toward the far north, Roya barely pierced through the planet's violent polar magnetism. There, he sensed a power filled with primal savagery and brute force.
"That must be the so-called essence of the Bear God's power! So Kaido's betrayal—using me to disrupt the battlefield—was all for that?"
"By Kaido's pace, it will take at least a quarter-hour to reach it. I must resolve this misunderstanding with the thunder-dragon before then—and stop him!"
Roya pieced the situation together in his mind.
But the violet thunder-dragon, locked in the thick of battle and consumed with guarding Ursun's essence, could not see the full picture.
With the human defenses crumbling and reinforcements still far away, she poured all her fury onto Roya alone.
Violet lightning tore the heavens apart, severing the space where Roya stood from the material plane, enclosing him in a temporary, isolated dimension.
Within, psychic thunder raged without end, bent on pulverizing everything sealed inside.
The force of this strike was no less than a full-powered blow from the King of Silence himself.
Roya, striving to resolve the misunderstanding, was forced into a defensive stance. Layer upon layer of spiritual shields ensured he would not be broken, but it was a frustrating position nonetheless.
Especially since the thunder-dragon gave him no chance to speak, unleashing wave after wave of wild assault. Lightning poured down like a never-ending waterfall, heedless of cost.
At last, Roya could endure no longer. With a sudden expansion and contraction of his spirit, he repelled the dragon's latest barrage, shattering the pocket-space in the process.
Stepping forward back into the material world, he called out loudly:
"Will you not stop, and let me explain myself?"
But the thunder-dragon only circled him, whipping up dense rings of violet lightning that closed in from all sides like ten thousand charging soldiers.
At the same time, she coldly scoffed:
"Did you think that ridiculous hood you wore before could hide you from me?"
"Your voice, your form, even the aura you tried to conceal—I remember them clearly! You despicable, deceitful daemon of Tzeentch. I once mistook you for a human hero, one who had discovered signs of Chaos' movements and came to warn us."
"But it was all nothing more than another scheme of Tzeentch's lies!"
The thunder-dragon had finally spoken—but her words left Roya completely bewildered.
The first meeting? Impossible.
Then, realization struck. He recalled the time when a cloud of violet mist had mimicked his face. In that instant, he understood: when it came to Tzeentch's endless arsenal of psychic illusions, appearances and auras meant nothing.
The Lord of Change could impersonate anyone in this world—even more flawlessly than the original—beyond all mortal ability to discern.
Roya gave a bitter smile.
"What if I said we have never met before? That everything you saw and heard was nothing but Tzeentch's plot? Would you believe me?"
As he spoke, Roya channeled his spirit to the utmost—not to defend, but to counter.
He dropped his psychic shields, opening every pore of his body into tens of thousands of conduits, letting the dragon's violet lightning pour freely into him.
His spirit, driven to its limits, split into countless strands, intercepting every filament of lightning that entered his body.
Disassemble. Transform.
In scarcely an instant, every bolt of lightning had been absorbed and converted into surging, primal life-force.
"Blessing of Life!"
The conjoined power of both their essences burst forth, reshaping the sky itself.
Vital energy fused with the moisture in the air, condensing into a sacred rain of life that poured down upon the battlefield below.
The fat droplets fell like drumbeats, striking precisely upon the very stretch of Chaos miasma that had left even Zhaoming helpless.
The mists hissed and fell like dust before rain, breaking apart and dissolving into pure energy.
By the time they reached the ground, not a trace of Chaos corruption remained. Instead, the land blossomed with springs of life itself.
And as the rain poured ever harder, the newborn Chaos troops locked in battle below were purified once more.
The grotesque growths upon their bodies softened and sloughed away, while clarity returned at last to their eyes.
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