Chapter : 1131

But it wasn't enough. They were drowning. The tide of bone was endless. For every one he destroyed, the red light in its eyes would simply fade, and its bones would clatter to the ground, only to be trod upon by the next soldier in the relentless, silent advance.

As the battle raged, a new, more terrifying development occurred. The legion, which had been pressing in from all sides, suddenly and with perfect discipline, parted. A wide, clear avenue was created, leading from the gate directly to the beleaguered circle of living men.

Down this avenue, ten new figures began to walk.

They were different.

Their armor was not the corroded iron of the grunts. It was a suit of polished, night-black steel, etched with intricate, screaming runes that seemed to writhe and shift in the dim light. They were larger than the other skeletons, their frames more robust, their posture radiating an aura of command. And the malevolent red light in their eye sockets burned with a brighter, more focused intensity. It was not the cold, instinctual hunger of the legionnaires; it was the light of a sharp, tactical, and utterly cruel cunning.

These were not soldiers. These were officers.

They carried no shields. Each one wielded a massive, two-handed greatsword, the blades weeping a black, viscous ichor that sizzled where it dripped onto the stone. As they advanced, the aura of despair that saturated the square intensified tenfold. It was no longer a passive pressure; it was an active, suffocating assault. Kyle felt the will of his men begin to waver, their courage being actively devoured by the sheer, palpable hopelessness that rolled off these new abominations in waves.

These were the Dread Commanders, ten Crown-Level Curse Knights. Each one was a powerhouse in its own right, a being capable of slaughtering a hundred men. And ten of them were now advancing on their tiny, failing island of life.

The ten commanders came to a halt just outside the range of the battle. In a single, chillingly synchronized movement, they raised their cursed blades in a silent salute, not to Kyle, but to their master, Raghav, who still watched from the gate. They were his lieutenants, his elite guard, and they had just been given their orders.

The true battle was about to begin.

The arrival of the ten Dread Commanders was a fundamental shift in the nature of the battle. It was the difference between holding back a flood and being targeted by ten precision-guided missiles. Lord Kyle Ferrum, his greatsword dripping with the black ichor of shattered skeletons, felt a cold knot of genuine dread tighten in his stomach. His men were already at their breaking point, their stamina and morale being ground away by the endless, attritional warfare against the legion. They had no hope of withstanding a direct assault from ten Crown-Level entities.

“Boris, pull the line in! Tighten the circle! Focus all fire on the big ones!” Kyle roared, his voice strained. He knew it was a futile order, a soldier’s automatic response to an unwinnable situation, but he had to try.

The Dread Commanders did not charge. They advanced with the same, terrifyingly calm and disciplined pace as the legion had. They moved in two formations of five, flanking the circle of desperate soldiers, their movements a perfect, chilling mirror of each other. They were not a mob; they were a coordinated, tactical unit.

As they reached the edge of the chaotic melee, they raised their massive, ichor-dripping greatswords. They did not engage in the clumsy, grinding fight of the lesser skeletons. They attacked with a horrifying, elegant grace.

One of the commanders on the left flank swung its blade in a wide, horizontal arc. It did not strike any of Kyle’s men. Instead, a wave of pure, black, negative energy erupted from the blade, a crescent of tangible despair that washed over the defensive line. Three of Kyle’s soldiers screamed and collapsed, not from a physical wound, but as if their very souls had been scooped out. Their bodies were unharmed, but the light in their eyes was gone. They were empty husks, their will to live utterly and completely annihilated.

On the right flank, another commander slammed the tip of its sword into the cobblestones. The runes on its armor flared, and the ground beneath the soldiers erupted. Not with iron spikes like Kyle’s, but with grasping, skeletal hands made of shadow and bone, which shot up to seize the legs of his men, pulling them down into the screaming horde of skeletons.

Chapter : 1132

This wasn't a battle. It was a systematic, tactical execution. The Dread Commanders were not just powerful warriors; they were strategists, using their cursed abilities to dismantle Kyle’s formation piece by piece. They were herding them, breaking them, preparing them for the final slaughter.

Kyle knew he had to act. He could not defend against ten such enemies at once. He had to break their formation, to create chaos, to take one of them down and disrupt their perfect synergy.

With a roar that was more lion than man, he burst from the defensive circle. He ignored the legionnaires, who clawed at him with their bony fingers, their attacks shattering harmlessly against his King-Level spiritual aura. He had chosen his target: the commander on the right flank, the one who had just pulled two of his men to their deaths.

He moved with a speed that belied his heavy armor, closing the twenty-yard distance in a handful of thunderous strides. His greatsword was no longer just a piece of steel; it was an extension of his will, glowing with the raw, contained power of his Iron Blood.

The Dread Commander, its red eyes flaring with what might have been surprise, raised its own blade to meet his charge.

The impact was a cataclysm. A deafening, soul-shaking boom echoed through the square as Kyle’s divinely empowered steel met the commander’s cursed blade. A shockwave erupted from the point of impact, blasting skeletons and debris away in a fifty-foot radius.

The Dread Commander was not driven back a single step; it was annihilated. The moment Kyle’s glowing greatsword met the cursed blade, the unholy weapon, incapable of containing the sheer, condensed power of a King-Level master, shattered into a thousand shards of black, screaming metal. The shockwave of pure force continued unimpeded, striking the Dread Commander square in the chest. Its nigh-indestructible black armor buckled and imploded, and the skeletal warrior was hurled backwards like a broken doll, crashing through the ranks of its lesser brethren before collapsing into a motionless heap of shattered bone and ruined steel, the malevolent red light in its eyes permanently extinguished.

Lord Kyle did not take a single step back. His stance was granite, his expression a mask of cold fury.

He had met a Crown-Level entity head-on, and the exchange had been laughably one-sided. The chilling realization was not his, but belonged to the nine remaining commanders. They had just witnessed the vast, unbridgeable chasm between their own power and that of a true King.

His gambit had not failed; it had succeeded too well. He had not proven his own weakness, but a terrifying strength that a single Crown-Level entity could not hope to challenge. The other nine commanders, who had paused in shock, now began to advance on him. Their movements were slow, deliberate, and stripped of all previous arrogance. They were a pack of wolves that had just watched a lion effortlessly break the back of their alpha, and they now understood, with cold, calculated certainty, that their only chance for survival was to attack as one.

From the gate, Sir Raghav watched with that same, serene, pitying smile. He raised his voice, not shouting, but letting it carry across the square with an unnatural clarity.

“It is a magnificent display, Lord Kyle. Truly. The Lion of Ironwood lives up to his name. But your strength is a candle in a hurricane. You are fighting the soldiers. You have not yet met the true royalty of the Unholy Palace.”

As he spoke the words, a new, even more profound and absolute cold descended on the square, a cold that made the Dread Commanders’ aura feel like a pleasant spring day. The very air began to crystallize into patterns of black frost. The battle, the screams, the clang of steel—it all seemed to fade, muffled by a new and terrible silence.

The mission was over. The execution was about to begin.

Raghav’s words were not a boast; they were a prophecy, and its fulfillment was instantaneous. The very fabric of reality behind the skeletal legion seemed to tear. Three swirling vortexes of pure, absolute darkness materialized, each one a spinning gateway of living shadow and screaming, silent souls. They were not portals to another place, but wounds in the world, through which a power of a fundamentally different and more terrifying order was about to emerge.