Blood... and fire!
Blood and fire were everywhere, and of course, the teeming sea of insects could not be absent.
Doren swung the refined steel longsword in his hands with all his might, cleaving an approaching light-seeking bug in two.
The once-sharp blade was now coated in the disgusting secretions of all manner of insects, its edge marred by a host of nicks and chips.
Under normal circumstances, Doren would have been devastated, but right now he didn't even have time to glance at the blade!
The army, swallowed by the sea of insects, was like a lone boat battering through towering waves — at any moment, it could be capsized and destroyed!
Comrades fell one by one around him — humans and beastkin alike — but Doren had no heart to worry about them. Those behind simply trampled over the corpses of those who had fallen before.
They all shared a single conviction: they had to destroy that evil Brood Mother!
This was a war for survival! There was no room for retreat or flight. Both the beastkin and the humans had assembled the most cold-blooded execution squads, and any deserter would be cut down without hesitation, their relatives in the camps driven out as well.
"Am I... going to die here?"
Doren gasped for breath, his body feeling as though lead weights had been tied to it, drained of every last ounce of strength.
Yet, just as he was about to be completely exhausted and swallowed by the tide of insects, the scene before him suddenly opened up.
A golden radiance cleaved through the dense mass of bugs, revealing the purple, evil hive at the center of the swamp.
Faint hymns drifted in from all around: "Under the light of the
At that moment, Doren's eyes lit up.
He saw the wizard who had killed Jimmy! The man appeared gravely wounded and was fleeing into the distance.
A surge of power he couldn't explain — fueled by the fire of vengeance — pulled Doren back to his feet, and he locked onto his quarry.
Clearly, the wizard had sustained devastating injuries in the earlier bombardment. His black cloak was tattered, riddled with scorch marks from lightning.
The man no longer had the strength to open a teleportation portal, and could only stumble along some path deeper into the swamp.
Doren pursued him relentlessly. The wizard, desperate to escape, had already deviated from the direction of the insect hive.
"Stand still, you damned bastard!"
Doren hurled his longsword with all his strength.
Whoosh! The carefully forged blade traced a brilliant arc and plunged straight through the wizard's thigh.
"Ugh..."
The fleeing wizard staggered and crashed into the fetid swamp.
"I've got you!" Doren rushed forward in triumph. He saw the man lying face-down, blood still pouring from the wound in his thigh, seemingly having lost consciousness.
"For Jimmy..."
Doren groped for the sword he had thrown, intending to drag the man over and see the wizard's true face.
But then, a burst of green liquid erupted from a scroll clutched in the unconscious wizard's hand.
Acid Splash Scroll!
Doren jerked his head aside on pure reflex, narrowly avoiding instant death — but his entire right shoulder was left a bloody mess.
"Damn it!" The searing pain drove him to slam his fist into the man's face without hesitation.
The black veil slid away, revealing the wizard's true face — aged features, a deathly pale complexion from massive blood loss, and the ashen gray of eyes approaching death.
For some reason, even though Doren had experienced his share of killing during the Dark Years, he now felt a great fire blaze to life in his heart.
"Why... why did you help the insects fight against humanity?!"
Doren snarled, grabbing the man by his collar.
"Cough, cough..." A wizard's constitution was naturally weaker than a warrior's, and this prisoner was severely wounded, stripped of any ability to cast spells, coughing blood from his mouth.
A man in such a state could be killed easily even by a child.
A confused haze had clouded the wizard's face, but upon hearing Doren's accusation, a strange smile spread across his features. That twisted grin, paired with his pale face and the vivid blood, churned Doren's stomach.
"What are you smiling about?" Doren seethed with fury. "Do you know how many people you killed? Jimmy had younger brothers and sisters still depending on him. People back at the camp were waiting for them to come home... Why? Why would you turn against your own kind?"
"My own kind? Heh heh heh..."
The old wizard's smile widened further: "Were they ever my kind? When I was still a high-ranking wizard, everyone fawned over me, sang my praises, begged for an audience with me. But the moment the
"They seized everything I had right before my eyes. They even murdered little Banke, and... and..."
A flash of grief crossed the wizard's face. "From that day on, I never considered them human again..."
"Do you know? The moment the Shadow Mage Council found me, I agreed to join them. To regain the power I needed for revenge, I was willing to sell my soul to demons!"
"Heh heh... Those savages — in the end, I made sure every last one of them suffered the most agonizing death imaginable, so they would regret ever being born!"
"Now — kill me!"
The old wizard closed his eyes, while Doren's face went slack.
Before his eyes, this dying wizard's visage eerily overlapped with that of Hoffman the wizard, who had once lived in a grand house outside the town with a beautiful family.
The old man's denunciation of the savages flooded Doren's mind with memories of everything he had done!
Those scenes amid the firelight surged vividly before him once more, as though he were living through them all over again.
"Oh... I... I..."
The veins on the back of Doren's hand bulged, his face contorted in what appeared to be a fierce internal struggle.
"Or maybe... we're both at fault. Curse this wretched world!"
Doren thought of Lina, still waiting for him to return, clenched his teeth, and picked up his longsword.
"Come, then. Cut off my head and claim your prize!" The wizard sneered, closing his eyes.
"Hah!"
With every last ounce of his strength, Doren brought the sword down — but it plunged in as though piercing cotton, without the slightest sensation of cutting flesh or drawing blood.
Doren's eyes flew open in shock. He saw his refined steel longsword hovering in midair, an enormous pressure bearing down on him from all directions.
"My apologies, young one. I sympathize with your plight, but after all, alignment has its boundaries..."
A pleasant voice spoke, and then Doren's world plunged into endless darkness...
……
"The Gods... have begun to recover."
Leilin's avatar watched the colossal beehive in the distance collapse, a peculiar smile crossing his face.
"As for you, failure... I shall mercifully give you one more chance..."
A thread of dark crimson light enveloped the old wizard on the ground, drawing a scream of agony from him as some manner of grotesque transformation began to take hold of his body.
"My master... the great Lord of Primordial Sin, you are the sole source of all evil in the universe, the supreme sovereign who shall bring an end to everything!"
The old wizard — or rather, the creature that had grown from within him — prostrated himself before Leilin, all traces of his former injuries completely gone.
"Go... go elsewhere."
Leilin waved his hand. A dark crimson portal opened, the creature bowed to him once more, and was promptly transported away.
"A failed prototype of a Servant of Primordial Sin..."
Leilin shook his head and turned his gaze to the void nearby.
There, several divine avatars of the orc gods, draped in golden radiance, were already waiting.
"What's this? You look rather disappointed seeing only one avatar, don't you,
Leilin regarded the orcish chief deity with a half-smile as the divine encirclement materialized around him, yet his expression betrayed not the slightest hint of alarm.
"The Gods are recovering quickly, then. They've already established Eternal Light Sources in their divine realms and can channel divine spells to their clerics in the Material Plane?"
Leilin understood perfectly well that without the aid of the Gods and their clerics, the combined forces of the Silver Moon Alliance and the beastkin would never have been able to destroy the Brood Mother's Hive.
"The Nightmare Giant Serpent... the sinner who devours the sun..."
The condemnation of the Gods descended like a conflagration intense enough to incinerate the void.
"Our battle... has only just begun..."
Unfortunately, before divine punishment could arrive, Leilin's avatar simply dissolved on its own, drawing a roar of fury from the assembled Gods.
"And how goes it?"
Leilin stood before the Mother of the Earth's Core as images from the Material Plane flickered into view.
It was clear that several survivor camps had received massive support and were now mobilizing to destroy nearby Brood Mother hives.
Throughout this process, the Gods and their clerics had played a vital role.
"The Gods' counterattack... has begun," the Mother of the Earth's Core said with a faint sigh.
"Entirely expected. But the timing..." Leilin stroked his chin. "It just happens to coincide with when we're preparing to rendezvous with the
"What are you implying?" The Mother of the Earth's Core fixed her gaze upon the Lord of Primordial Sin.
"We have a traitor among us."
Leilin's expression turned grave. If
"The Power of Primordial Sin in the Gods' world has given me this insight. If we don't take it seriously, it will certainly lead to far worse consequences..."
Leilin looked at the Mother of the Earth's Core with a sincere expression. "Therefore, I wish to convene the