CHAPTER 823: PINK MIST

More than one hundred thousand soldiers marched forward, each one charging with terrifying speed, their eyes filled with wild zeal and an unmistakable intent to kill. From any perspective, it was an overwhelming and deadly force. Fortunately for the Royal Guard of the Xaos Kingdom, these troops were not elite soldiers. They were hastily assembled units drawn from nearby fortresses and cities, none of them possessing strength beyond the level of a Champion.

Had these troops included elites, the Nightmare Knights would have had no choice but to retreat. In that scenario, they might have only managed to save a handful of the prisoners, leaving the rest to be recaptured or worse. After all, even a full squad of Legends would struggle against an organized army of a hundred thousand Guardians, especially if supported by Sages capable of flight.

Still, Mirena, Frank, Roman, Clasius, and Amara were not surprised. They had anticipated retaliation. The Ortun Dungeon was vast, and while they had executed the raid swiftly, it still took considerable time to reach and free all the prisoners held within its depths. That delay had allowed word of the attack to spread, giving the Zanis Family enough time to mobilize troops from the surrounding region.

However, what truly alarmed the Royal Guard was not the size of the enemy force—but the unhinged look in the soldiers’ eyes. Their movements were erratic, their expressions crazed. There was no fear, no hesitation, only a burning fanaticism. That intensity, combined with their numbers, raised an unsettling possibility.

They might be laced with the explosive blood compound.

If that were the case—if the Zanis Family had infused over a hundred thousand Champions with a volatile chemical agent—then even the Royal Guard would not be enough to survive a full detonation. After all, in one hundred thousand Champion was enough energy to severely wound the Legends.

Despite the danger, the five Nightmare Knights showed no fear.

They exchanged only a brief glance, a silent confirmation, and moved into a defensive formation around the freed prisoners. Their spatial rings glowed simultaneously, releasing dozens of small pink orbs into their hands. Without delay, they tossed the spheres into the air. As they burst, a faint mist spread through the battlefield—pink, light, and nearly weightless.

Within moments, the mist had covered the advancing enemy.

It reached Marion and the other liberated prisoners as well. Some coughed lightly, but otherwise, they felt no ill effects. But when the mist touched the approaching soldiers of the Zanis Family, its effect was immediate and brutal.

The soldiers began to tremble violently. Their steps faltered. A chorus of choking erupted through their ranks as they fell to their knees, vomiting thick gouts of black blood and waves of dark plasma. It was clear from the expression on their faces that they were in horrible pain.

It was a gruesome sight.

A heavy silence fell upon the liberated prisoners as they watched in horror. Even the seasoned Royal Guards bore grim expressions, but there was a meaningful light in their eyes.

"They’re evil people," Clasius said sharply toward the massive T-Rex.

The phrase was short, but it was all that needed to be said.

Fang, standing at the front of the formation, growled low as the words reached his ears. His eyes flared with wrath. The message was clear. With a deafening roar that cracked the air like thunder, he lunged forward, a living missile of destruction.

Each beat of his wings shattered the sound barrier. His claws tore through the enemy ranks, his tail sent bodies flying like rag dolls, and his jaws crunched through armor and bone alike. He was the embodiment of war. Champions fell by the hundreds beneath him.

But then something changed.

The vomiting and spasming among the enemy ceased. One by one, the soldiers regained their footing. Though their bodies still bore signs of strain, the manic zeal in their eyes burned brighter than ever. Without hesitation, they flung themselves at Fang, heedless of death, injury, or logic.

Despite their strength, their weapons and attacks were useless. Fang’s hide was tougher than the exoskeleton of a Vorometallicae, resistant even to Legendary-grade weapons. Not a single blade pierced his flesh.

Still, they came. Like waves crashing against a cliff, they hurled themselves at the winged T-Rex, not caring if they lived or died. Their minds were clearly no longer their own. The Zanis Family had altered the very will of these men to ensure they fought to the death.

The Royal Guards exchanged grave looks. The implications were terrifying.

If even a hastily assembled force like this could be fully indoctrinated, injected, and mind-bent at such a speed... then the Zanis Family’s mind-bending drugs had already spread across the entire continent. This was not just a localized threat—this was global conditioning. An entire world under chemical control.

That was crucial intelligence, but there was no time to process it further.

While Fang tore through the majority of the army, a portion of the enemy had broken off and targeted the fleeing prisoners. Without hesitation, Roman unleashed a hail of arrows, each one charged with piercing energy. Mirena conjured a whirlwind of electrified spears that vaporized the closest attackers. Frank sent out volleys of molten fire, exploding across the field with precision.

The bodies piled higher.

Blood flowed like rivers across the battlefield.

The ranks of the enemy thinned, with more than half of them lying dead, dismembered across the ground.

Several of the enemy soldiers, still alive and conscious, pulled out dark crystalline gems and crushed them in their hands. There was no light, no explosion—only silence. But a moment later, a chemical scent filled the air.

Not even a second later, the blood of the soldiers began to glow, triggering an ominous feeling in the hearts of the Royal Guards.

"Lord Fang, up!" Mirena screamed as realization dawned.

The Royal Guards leapt into motion.

Using all their strength and arcane might, they raised massive barriers around the prisoners. Arcane shields, wind walls, and kinetic domes appeared in layered succession.

As for Fang, he responded with instinct.

With a single powerful flap of his wings, he shot into the sky at supersonic speed.

However, the combined blast of blood from over one hundred thousand Champions was not something that could be easily outrun or dodged. It erupted upward and outward with terrifying speed, rising thousands of meters in every direction almost instantly.

But today, things were different.

Instead of the blood glowing brighter and brighter—reaching a zenith of radiance so powerful that it illuminated the sky like a second sun—it merely flickered. A weak, inconsistent light trembled across the blood-soaked battlefield. Even the brainwashed soldiers, stripped of most independent thought, paused in momentary confusion. They had expected divine fire and apocalyptic fury.

But it didn’t come.

And then, the explosions began.

"Boom. Boom. Boom. Boom. Boom. Boom. Boom."

One after another, small blasts erupted across the battlefield, brief and shallow. Instead of super-blasts of destruction that would have fused into a massive chain reaction, the explosions remained isolated. Scattered. Weak. No stronger than the fireballs cast by a low-tier Mortal Mage.

Cracks in the earth appeared as bodies exploded from within, but the terrain remained largely intact. There was no crater of devastation, no inferno swallowing the battlefield. The feared apocalypse simply... didn’t happen.

And yet, the blood of the living soldiers still detonated—just not with the destructive force it once carried. Even so, a Mortal-tier fireball exploding point-blank inside an open wound was more than enough to kill. Thousands of Champions dropped where they stood, perishing in small flashes.

The Royal Guards exchanged glances—and then smiled.

Wide, relieved, and triumphant smiles.

"Success!" Frank couldn’t help but shout, his voice ringing across the battlefield.

While their mission to liberate the prisoners of Ortun Dungeon was critical, it wasn’t the only objective. They had also come to field-test a new tool—an invention crafted by Overlord himself. The pink mist released earlier had been no simple smoke. It was a neutralizing agent, designed to destabilize the explosive compound that had been embedded into the bloodstreams of Zanis Family soldiers.

In laboratory conditions, the formula had shown promise. Controlled tests confirmed that it could suppress the chain-reaction effect and reduce blood-based detonation to minor, localized blasts. But a true test—one against real enemies, under real battlefield pressure—was required.

Fang and the Royal Guard were entrusted with that test.

Aside from the Depravitas and Overlord himself, they were the strongest assets in the Xaos Kingdom. And in the event that something went wrong, Fang’s durability and regenerative ability were unmatched, and he would’ve been able to survive the cataclysmic blast of a hundred thousand Champion-grade suicide bombs.

Thankfully, none of that was needed.

Everything had worked flawlessly.

Not only had they succeeded in liberating hundreds of prisoners, but they had confirmed the functionality of the neutralization agent. That meant the Xaos Kingdom had finally developed a way to counter the Zanis Family’s most terrifying tactic.

The age of calculated expansion could begin.