The sun blazed over the dead field. Two huge armies faced each other across the wasteland. War banners snapped like whips in the harsh wind.
Dawnfall's army held the left. Humans and elves stood shoulder to shoulder in full armor. Every piece was flawless, forged by the best smiths in their realms. They formed a solid wall of steel and discipline.
The barbarians filled the right. Their gear was a mess of stolen pieces. Some wore clean silver plates taken from humans. Some had green leaf armor ripped from the elves. The toughest ones wore thick monster scales from the western beast region. A few wild fighters wore only heavy furs against the hellish northern cold.
Both sides carried the same weapons. Axes. Long spears. Dual swords. Bows drawn tight. Etched steel gauntlets for close kills.
Every man here had spilled blood before. Veterans all. They burned to charge. For glory. For hate. To avenge friends who died beside them.
General Mozark felt the same fire. His hand clamped hard on his sword hilt. His eyes locked on Warlord Arshka. Cut off the snake's head. End the battle fast. That was the only way that mattered.
Yet he did not dare strike first. Just as the Eastern Lord had warned back in the barracks, these were not the simple disorganized barbarians of the past. They were a unified legion now. Powered by one man who had effortlessly slaughtered four of the alliance's most powerful generals in a single night.
Mozark's wait ended fast. A vanguard of barbarian archers rushed onto the field.
Water Magic was the answer. No command needed. Hundreds of water cultivators stepped forward as one. They raised their palms to the sky. Mana poured out from them in thick waves until a huge clear dome formed over the entire army.
They picked water over earth for two hard reasons. An earth wall would block their view of the fight. Water kept everything in sight. And water killed the speed of any arrow. Like the sea swallowing a rock, steel that hit the dome lost all its killing power.
Wind cultivators worked inside the safe dome. They launched invisible cutting gales without fear. The combo was unbreakable. It had stopped everything from regular archers to the Dwarven Kingdom's massive siege engines. A legendary defense.
Yet something felt wrong about the barbarian archers. Their bows were pulled to the limit, yet no arrows lay upon the strings. Perhaps Fire Magic Users hid among them, ready to conjure arrows of living flame. But all knew such magic thrived only in close or mid-range fights. The natural winds of the battlefield would scatter and extinguish any flame long before it could strike true.
"What are they planning?" General Mozark murmured, his voice low and heavy with suspicion.
The terrifying reality soon took form. Upon empty bowstrings, otherworldly shapes crystallized into jagged harpoons meant for leviathans. Not mortal steel, but primordial Essence Crystals chipped into lethal purple projectiles.
"Their shape is not the only anomaly..."
As a cultivator in the middle stages of the Immortal Realm, General Mozark could read the invisible currents of mana. The turbulence in the air was immense. He sensed the scorching heat of fire magic, the chaotic rending of wind, and the deep, rhythmic pulse of earth. High above, the white clouds curdled into the dark underbelly of a gathering storm. It was the clear sign of many elemental forces being drawn together at once. Yet impossibly, these jagged purple arrows carried no aura of flame, gale, earth, or lightning.
Mozark's contemplation was cut short. The barbarian volleys flew. The crystalline harpoons soared into the sky, tracing a high, suspended arc before plunging toward the grand water barrier.
Whatever heresy this was, its true measure would soon be known.
The seconds stretched tight. Every heart in the alliance hammered like a war drum inside the chest. Sweat turned cold on their perfect armor as the end flew closer, one breath at a time.
The volley met the barrier.
No sound of impact. No show of clashing powers. Just a silent, eerie ripple. Like something unseen cutting into the water from below.
"No..."
General Mozark's voice was barely a whisper. His steady mask fell away.
Everything they knew had just been proven wrong. The liquid shield was their best defense, made to swallow momentum and stop attacks cold. But the harpoons didn't care. They tore through the barrier like it was nothing and kept coming at full speed, deadly and unstoppable.
Yet General Mozark's hand never loosened on his blade. He had intended to hold his mana in reserve for the barbarian warlord. That choice no longer existed. He sprang onto his horse, crouched, and hurled himself into the heavens. As he rose, the ancient words began.
"Wind Magic: Elemental Gale Spirits! Art of Speed!"
This was an elven secret of the highest order. Elves bowed before no divine beings. They poured their faith into the earth spirits instead. One embodied absolute strength. The other, unmatched swiftness. Learned men questioned their true existence. To the elves, such doubts meant nothing. Their conviction was absolute. And now the world would witness the result.
A heartbeat later Mozark materialized amid the rain of purple arrows. The winds themselves seemed to possess him. He became a living storm, his blade flashing as he cleaved through harpoon after crystalline shard.
Such density! It demanded every drop of his mortal power to reduce them to harmless fragments. The impact was savage. His sword shattered into countless shards of steel.
Still he pressed on. The spatial ring at his side answered his call. Fresh blades filled his grip, one after another. Relentless. But even as he waged his desperate war in the sky, a shift below drew his gaze. A new and terrible crisis was awakening on the ground.
Shadow Magic users burst from the alliance troops' own shadows, one after another. Early in the war these kills would have broken them. But the alliance had bled to learn. They knew the barbarians' shadow tricks from a hundred fights. Steel met steel the instant the assassins struck. A brutal clash of wills ripped across the frontline.
General Mozark trusted his men to hold. He turned his eyes to the barbarian warlord. A long fight here meant total death—especially if every enemy could turn those purple crystals into swords, spears, and axes.
He had to finish it now. Most of the crystalline harpoons lay shattered. Mozark fixed his target and vanished in a wind flash, streaking straight for the enemy ranks.
Warlord Arshka accepted. His body dissolved into crackling lightning and shot forward to meet the elven general.
Their blades crashed in the heart of the battlefield. Wind and lightning exploded in a cataclysmic shockwave—the true signal that the war had begun. When the dust settled, the barbarian horde roared and charged, eager to slaughter every last alliance soldier.