Chapter : 1137

But as he stood there, bleeding, broken, and utterly defeated, a strange, fierce pride welled up within him. He had faced an apocalypse. He had held his ground. He had taken one of their gods down, even if only for a moment. He had not died on his knees.

He let the greatsword fall from his numb fingers, the clang of steel on stone a final, lonely sound. He straightened his back, pulling his battered body into the proud, unyielding posture of a Lord of House Ferrum. He looked across the blasted square at the three Kings of Ruin, at the watching, smiling Sir Raghav, and at the corrupted fortress that bore his family’s name.

He did not beg. He did not plead. He simply met their collective gaze with a look of cold, hard, and unforgiving contempt. He was the Lion of Ironwood. And he would die as he had lived: unbowed.

He closed his eyes and waited for the end. The final, terrible, and now strangely welcome silence. But the killing blow didn't come. Instead, he felt a subtle shift in the air, a new pressure.

He opened his eyes. The Silent Judge was gone. The Weeping Executioner, its form still ghostly and new, was also gone.

Only one remained.

The Crimson General stood alone before him, its black sword held in a low guard. Its crimson armor seemed to glow with a new, more focused intensity. The legion was gone. The other kings were gone. It was just him, and the battered, broken lion.

Kyle’s mind, even in its exhausted state, understood immediately. This was not an act of mercy. It was an act of profound, calculated, and absolute honor from one warrior to another. The General was dismissing its armies and its allies. It was granting him a final, one-on-one duel. A warrior’s death.

A single, harsh, bloody laugh escaped Kyle’s lips. He bent down and picked up his greatsword, his hands shaking with exhaustion. He had no power left. No spirit. He was just a man, holding a piece of steel. But a fire, the final, defiant ember of his will, ignited in his soul.

He would give this magnificent, monstrous enemy the fight it deserved. He raised his sword, settling into the familiar, ancestral stance of his house. Across the ruin, the Crimson General mirrored the movement, its own form a perfect, demonic reflection of his own. The two warriors, one of life and one of death, faced each other in the silent heart of the apocalypse, ready for the final dance.

The silence in the cratered square was a living thing, a heavy shroud that had swallowed all the sounds of war. It was a silence of respect, a vacuum created for the final, terrible conversation between two warriors. On one side stood the Crimson General, a monument of demonic power and martial perfection, its crimson armor glowing with a steady, internal fire. On the other stood Lord Kyle Ferrum, a broken statue of a man, held together by nothing more than a lifetime of stubborn pride.

He had no power left. The wellspring of his Iron Blood, the source of his King-Level might, was a dry, cracked riverbed. His spirit, Ferros, was gone. All he had was a body screaming in agony, muscles shredded and bones aching, and the familiar, heavy weight of the greatsword in his hands. It was enough. It had to be.

The Crimson General raised its black longsword, the gesture not a threat, but a formal salute. It was an acknowledgment. You are a worthy opponent. Let us end this with honor.

Kyle could not find the strength to return the gesture. He simply tightened his grip on the hilt, the worn leather a final, comforting reality. He settled his feet, shifting his weight into an ancestral dueling stance that his body remembered even if his mind was a haze of pain.

The duel began without a sound.

The General did not charge. It flowed. It moved with an impossible, liquid grace that belied its heavy plate armor. Its first strike was not a devastating blow, but a simple, probing thrust aimed at Kyle’s shoulder. It was a question asked in the language of steel.

Kyle’s body answered. Decades of relentless, torturous training took over where conscious thought failed. He parried, his own blade meeting the General’s with a sharp, clear ring that echoed in the dead city. The impact sent a bolt of pure agony up his arm, but his guard held.

Chapter : 1138

The General's assault became a blur, a storm of perfectly executed attacks. Each strike was a masterclass in swordsmanship—feints, parries, ripostes, and lunges that flowed together into a single, seamless symphony of death. It was not the wild flailing of a monster; it was the cold, calculated art of a grandmaster.

Kyle was a rock in a hurricane. He did not advance. He could not. Every ounce of his being was focused on one, simple task: survival. He blocked, he dodged, he bled. A shallow cut opened on his cheek. Another scored a deep groove in his pauldron. His movements grew slower, heavier. The iron will was still there, but the flesh was failing.

He was a dying star, burning through the last of his fuel in a final, defiant blaze. The General, in contrast, was a machine. It felt no fatigue. It made no mistakes. It was relentlessly, patiently, and expertly dismantling him piece by piece.

With a final, brutal clash, the Crimson General locked their blades together. In a display of raw, inhuman strength, it twisted its wrist, and Kyle’s greatsword was ripped from his numb fingers, sent spinning through the air before embedding itself in the rubble a dozen feet away.

The General’s black blade came to rest, its needle-sharp tip resting gently against the cold steel of Kyle’s gorget. The question had been asked, and the answer had been given. The duel was over.

Kyle stood, disarmed and defeated, his breath coming in ragged, bloody gasps. He looked into the two burning crimson points of light within the General's demonic helmet and saw no malice, no triumph. He saw only the final, cold, and impersonal finality of a warrior's end.

The tip of the black longsword pressed harder against his throat, a final, cold promise. This was the end. He had fought, he had endured, and he had lost. In that moment of absolute defeat, with the specter of his own death a mere inch from his flesh, Lord Kyle Ferrum did not feel despair. He felt a strange, razor-sharp clarity.

He was a Ferrum. His power was not just in the grand, sweeping gestures of a King. It was in his blood. In his bones. It was an instinct, a fundamental connection to the metal of the earth. His spirit was gone, his power spent, but the connection… the last, faint, dying echo of it had to remain.

He had no strength to fight the General’s body, but its armor… its armor was metal.

It was a suicidal, insane, and utterly desperate gambit. As the Crimson General began to apply the final, killing pressure, Kyle dropped to one knee, not in surrender, but in a final, desperate prayer to the power that had defined his life. He slammed his bare gauntlet against the cratered cobblestones.

He didn't roar. He didn't manifest a fortress of iron. He focused the last, flickering ember of his life force, the final, guttering dregs of his soul, into a single, silent, and impossibly precise command. He did not target the entire suit of armor. He targeted a single, insignificant rivet. A tiny, half-inch piece of steel that connected the crimson plate of the General’s right greave to the joint at its knee.

Break.

The rivet, a piece of master-forged infernal steel, resisted for a fraction of a second. Then, under the focused, suicidal pressure of a dying King’s will, it popped. A single, pathetic tink sound that was utterly lost in the silence.

But it was enough.

As the General put its weight forward for the final thrust, its right knee, its anchor, its point of leverage, suddenly and unexpectedly buckled. The perfect, unbreakable stance of the warrior-king was compromised for a single, fatal instant. Its body lurched, and the killing blow that had been aimed at Kyle’s throat slid harmlessly past his ear, scoring a deep, screeching gash in his helmet.

The opening was a heartbeat long. A lifetime.

Kyle exploded upwards. He ignored the fire in his lungs and the lightning in his limbs. He lunged past the stumbling General, his hand closing around the hilt of his own greatsword, still embedded in the rubble. He ripped it free and spun, his entire body a single, coiled spring of last-ditch, venomous purpose.

The Crimson General was already recovering, its form impossibly fast. It was turning, its black sword coming around to intercept him. But it was too late.