Had he been holding back last time? No—that night he'd raced to break through. Now he meant to slaughter them all. The sword intent screamed violence, every motion honed for killing. He rolled across the ground to disperse the impact, came up smearing stranger's gore across his face, and Throne was already there.
The katana's horizontal slash lifted the hairs on the old man's neck. Esgar's blood-reforged form whipped his long blade in frenzy. No time for technique. Hesitation meant death. Crimson sword glare ahead, serpentine blood-whip behind—Throne twisted midair between them.
Blade flick. Tail sweep. The whip severed. The lashing tail struck his katana's midpoint, hurling him back meters. When his eyes refocused, his pupils shrank. Last time, a Shura swordsman. Now? A butcher's engine. The Aspects of the Crucible: Tail still thrashed alive.
Throne slapped the ground, vaulting upward as six crescent Blood Incantations razored beneath his feet. Not like Erdtree prayers—these pulsed with grotesque vitality. The blood blades paused mid-miss, then reversed, converging from every angle.
He tore open his magic threshold. The backlash locked his spells, but even an apprentice knew this much. Thop's Barrier. That damnable shield again. The blood crescents didn't vanish on impact—just veered wild.
Throne somersaulted through the crimson storm and hurled the Dark Moon Greatsword.
"You first."
The old man leapt back. The greatsword cratered the earth where he'd stood, bisecting an Inaba clansman who'd moved to shield him.
Eyes narrowing, he sheathed his blade. Watched Throne descend. Drew violently. Blood Slash. Clang—
A scarlet afterimage hung in the air. Throne answered with iaijutsu of his own. Moonveil. Lunar light flashed and died.
Two draw-cuts collided. Sparks erupted. Momentum flung them apart. The old man calculated—once stabilized, Esgar would strike from blind spots. Then his eyes stretched wide. Throne stepped onto the Dark Moon Greatsword's hilt, levering it free like a seesaw.
He caught the spinning greatsword midair. Swung down, crossing Moonveil's beam. Two moonlights—one thick, one thin—scissored into an X. Not like magic's charging delay. This swordsmanship left no gap between intention and execution. Ding—thwack!
The old man parried the first beam. The second sheared through collarbone into ribcage. His severed hand still gripped the hilt as it spun skyward. Pain tsunamied his nerves. He cared only about flying backward—then saw the greatsword eclipse his vision. Thwack!!
The impact nailed him to a giant tree. Dying vision held just long enough to see the swordsman lunge forward, snatch the tumbling katana from the air. His katana.
"Not bad steel."
Throne gripped the crimson hilt. Felt the Blood Ritualist behind him. Heard boiling blood splash. Flames licked his coat's hem the instant it touched. Toes tapped earth. Body pivoted. Twin katanas whirled as one. Secret Sword: Vortex Cloud Crossing.
Azure and blood-red swordlight merged—twin tornadoes rising. They swept through burning blood, burying the Blood Ritualist whole. No pain. No fear. One instant, he stood. The next, divided into countless pieces. The swordlight flashed once more, then vanished.
The swordsman emerged from the blood mist. He turned. His eyes locked onto the old man perched in the tree. He shook his crimson-stained blade.
"Well?"
The old man didn't curse. Didn't struggle. He simply closed his eyes and bowed his head—final respect paid to a superior executioner. What a blade. What speed.
Mutilated corpses littered the ground. None had retreated. None had begged. Such will meant nothing in the end. Shattered armor and broken katanas gleamed dully in the fading light. Throne wiped his sword clean with a rag, studying the dark red steel. A fine weapon. Rivers of Blood hummed with hunger—a killing intent etched into its very marrow.
The Bloody Finger craved wounds. Throne obliged.
"Satisfied now?" Silence answered. The gaping holes in their throats suggested they were. Throne sheathed his katana, slung the greatsword across his back. His hands crossed over his chest.
He checked his damaged magic circuits, then turned south. First battle over. Just as predicted—the enemy had no unified command. No concern for their fallen. To the south, the war drums of steel and screams reached a crescendo.
From the mud below, man and insect writhed together. Blades flashed. Insect-thread incantations coiled around struggling figures. Moon-blade spears punched through flesh. Before the blood could hit the ground, Night Comets reduced the Kindred of Rot to chunky paste.
Dusk deepened. The mountaintop offered little footing. Combatants rolled downhill in grapples, their faces illuminated by sporadic lightning. Redmane Knights formed a triangle, their swords blazing like torches.
Scarlet Rot warriors clutched Fire Pots to their chests and tumbled down the slopes—human torches igniting the swarm. The defenders held, barely. The Kindred of Rot alone couldn't break them. Then—
A dragon's roar split the sky.
Wings tore through storm clouds. The first wave targeted the Redmane formation. Flame breath lit the night, turning knights into screaming pyres. Those who dodged fared worse. The second wave descended—talons snatched bodies midair, carrying them skyward. A shrill scream. Then wet impacts as they fell, bursting like overripe fruit.
Dragons ruled these skies. Their scales turned aside arrows and spells. Only ballistae or master sages could harm them. Fast, too—a single pass, then gone. Cowardly? Maybe. Effective? Undeniably.
This three-dimensional, air-ground coordinated offensive immediately escalated the conflict. The front lines buckled. Defenders fell back. Only the elites stood firm now.
Throne saw it then—a ring of white light. Bang!
The nameless Tarnished vaulted upward, hammer crashing down to slam the brown dragon into the earth. A black comet tore across the sky, striking a diving wyrm mid-flight. Blood rained down as the beast spiraled, crashing into the mud in a tangle of broken wings.
"The strong create fulcrums—but the enemy has their own champions."
No triumph warmed Throne's chest. No urge to rally his allies stirred him. The horde stretched endlessly before him—slaying a hundred would barely dent their numbers. With methodical precision, he donned his Carian Knight armor, the steel whispering as he fastened each plate. The cloak settled over his shoulders with a weight like a funeral shroud.
A sharp whistle split the air. He swung onto Torrent's back in one fluid motion.
The strong claimed their own battlefields. The spectral steed surged forward, cutting through wind and rain like a loosed arrow.
"Second act begins."
Hooves churned mud as they advanced. A knight's charge from north to south, a blade aimed straight for the enemy's heart. On the distant hilltop, mushroom-men shambled into view.
"Good. Keep coming. That red one's mine."
Throne's purpose burned clear—decapitate their leader, seize their standard, trample their camp beneath his heels. The battlefield before Sellia stretched mere miles from end to end.
Dragon shrieks and the stench of rot thickened the air. These frenzied Kindred of Rot fought without reserves, without restraint.
"There you are."
Throne's gaze locked onto a crimson fungus perched atop a boulder. The moment he spotted it, the creature turned—its mushroom-capped head tilting in grotesque curiosity.
Who dares court death so boldly?
Torrent's muscles coiled. No hesitation. No wasted motion. Throne charged, greatsword strapped across his back, twin katanas at his hips, spear gripped tight in hand. Armored in steel, mounted on spirit-steed, he came like the storm itself—horse leaping, blade rising.
A few hundred meters vanished beneath Torrent's strides, devoured in seconds. Raindrops became needles against Throne's face. The red figure before him split down the middle, revealing a writhing mass of mycelial tendrils—a sight to shatter sanity, to haunt dreams.
Then the horror reshaped itself. Flesh became weapon. A spear thirty meters long erupted from the creature's form, moving faster than any Rot King Throne had faced. Boss versus elite—the distinction flashed through his mind as Torrent pivoted hard. The colossal spear grazed past, close enough to taste the rot on its surface.
Raindrops shattered where the spear pierced them, soft water turning hard as forged iron. The weapon dissolved, then multiplied—countless spears stabbing through the downpour.
"Torrent, incoming!"
Like a tree exploding with branches, the air filled with whistling death.
Thrusts came from every angle, a cage of crimson spikes. Torrent danced between them—emergency stops, double jumps, high-speed drifts—hooves barely touching earth. Throne pressed flat against the steed's back, watching spearpoints scrape his armor, throwing sparks before embedding in the ground. An artificial forest of fungal weapons sprouted around them.
This grotesque metamorphosis—flesh to weapon, soft to hard—left Throne momentarily awed.
"What kind of fuckery is this? Where's the energy cost?"
No logic explained how a two-meter humanoid could expand a hundredfold. Torrent's pained whinny snapped him back. Even a spirit steed couldn't dodge forever.
But scarlet rot couldn't claim Torrent. Only physical wounds could slow them. The fight raged on.
Throne reached out and continuously took Fire Pots from Torrent's saddlebag. There was no need to aim at this red forest; he just tossed them behind him at random.
"Truly weak to fire!"
He was pleased to see these red 'branches' ignite, but then he couldn't smile anymore.
That red forest, which had been difficult to damage with blades and spears, became soft again, as if countless earthworms were wriggling their bodies. They connected to each other, forming a red dome that contracted rapidly toward the center. Rot Devour. In Throne's eyes, this was like a giant mouth suddenly tightening, intending to crush the prey into minced meat and then slowly digest it.
"Accelerate!"
Throne did not retreat, nor could he retreat. He squeezed the horse's flanks, raised his spear, and as one with the horse, charged toward one side. He saw that the dome, which had been incredibly agile just a moment ago, stopped and became as hard as steel. However, Torrent had accelerated to the limit, and the spear was already wreathed in pale, spiral airflow. Storm Assault!
Borrowing the horse's power, the force concentrated into a single line. Throne plunged into a certain spot and felt his web of his thumb go slightly numb; the spear almost slipped from his grasp. So hard. This thought surged into his mind, and then he heard a crisp 'crack' sound, and the autumn rain slapped against his face once more. He had broken out! Everything blocking his path was shattered.
The Spirit Steed continued to charge forward using the momentum, and Throne, looking at the dense array of wounds all over Torrent's body, felt both heartache and fury.
"Damn it, this monster is infinitely close to a demigod, and yet I have no intelligence on it."
Throne turned his head to look behind him.
The dome had already decomposed, turning into twelve massive red tentacles that were swaying in the night rain. Some dragons that had originally wanted to support it hurriedly dodged far away after seeing this chaotic scene. Whether killing Godrick or killing a Crucible Knight, Throne had an important prerequisite: 'prophecy'.
No matter how strong the enemy was, he always knew what moves they would use, what their fighting style leaned toward, and he could even accurately grasp the enemy's personality to find weaknesses. But he knew nothing about this thing.
The things in the Lake of Rot were already weak and pathetic by the time of the Tarnished. 'In the first round, I knew this thing was weak to fire, but how long would it take to burn it down using Fire Pots?' Throne was in a bit of a bind. He didn't know any fire-related skills either; if he had known, he would have learned a thing or two from the Redmane Knights.
He sensed his magic circuits, which were constantly recovering. The load was too great, and it would still take time, but using magic didn't necessarily have to rely on this, even if the power would be greatly reduced without the amplification. Throne pulled the reins, making Torrent turn around.
He took out the Lusat's glintstone Staff, and with a spear in one hand and a staff in the other, he transformed into a magic knight.
"Charge, Torrent!"
Neigh—
The Spirit Steed raised its front hooves and charged toward this giant octopus without any fear, while Throne raised his staff, leaving a trail of crystal-clear white ice mist behind him. I don't know fire, but I do know how to freeze!
He studied under Ranni, and Ranni studied under the Snow Witch; this was also a top-tier inheritance in The Lands Between. As Throne looked up, he saw giant whips, each five or six meters thick, smashing down. Bang! Bang! Bang! The Kings of Rot didn't understand any combat arts; they were completely smashing things based on instinct. It was a scene of flying gravel and torn rain curtains.
Torrent twisted left, then right, weaving through the storm of shattered rock. Blood streaked her skin where stone shards bit deep. She clenched her jaw—no scream, just the taste of iron and the certainty of enemies closing in from every shadow.
The Spirit Steed kept its attention fixed forward, while Throne—
Eight massive whips exploded like splitting bamboo, fracturing into a hundred arm-thick tendrils. They surged from behind, a living avalanche of snapping vines hungry for flesh.