Chapter : 1139

With a final, guttural roar that was more beast than man, Kyle drove his greatsword forward. He didn't aim for the thick chest plate or the impenetrable helmet. He aimed for the single point of vulnerability his gambit had created: the now-exposed joint where the gorget met the pauldron, a gap that had been opened for a fraction of a second by the General’s stumble.

There was no grand explosion. There was only a soft, wet, grinding sound as three feet of blessed Ferrum steel plunged through the gap, severing spectral sinew and shattering the unholy vertebrae within.

The Crimson General froze.

The two crimson lights in its helmet flickered, as if in surprise. They stared at Kyle for a long, silent moment, and then, slowly, they dimmed and went out. The colossal, armored figure did not collapse. It simply… stopped. An empty suit of armor, its master banished from the mortal plane.

The silence returned, deeper and more profound than before. Victory. He had won. He had faced three gods of ruin and had unmade two of them.

Then, the cost came due.

The strength that had held him together dissolved into nothing. The greatsword slipped from his fingers and clattered to the stone. A wave of absolute, system-shattering agony washed over him, and his world dissolved into a universe of pure, white-hot pain. He collapsed onto the rubble, his body broken, his spirit an empty void. He lay there, drowning in his own blood, the victor in a battle that had utterly and completely destroyed him.

Victory was a taste of ash and blood in Lord Kyle Ferrum’s mouth. The square was a blasted ruin, a testament to the apocalyptic power that had been unleashed. The unholy legion was a carpet of shattered bone, and two of the three Kings of Ruin were now just a bad memory, unmade by a fury forged in iron and will. But the cost had been catastrophic. His men were broken, their minds shattered by the psychic assault. His own spirit, Ferros, was gone, its energy utterly spent in the final, defiant gambit that had saved his life. He was a king without a crown, a warrior without an army, running on the last, flickering embers of his own life force.

He stood on legs that felt like brittle glass, his greatsword a leaden weight in his numb hands. Across the cratered expanse, the last king, the Crimson General, stood as a silent, terrible observer. The duel it had offered was a mockery, a final courtesy from an executioner who knew the sentence had already been passed. Kyle had no more power to give, no more tricks up his sleeve. He was a hollowed-out vessel, waiting for the final blow.

In the strange, suspended silence between heartbeats, as his body screamed in protest and his mind began to fray at the edges, his life didn't flash before his eyes. It unspooled, a long, slow, and often painful scroll of memory.

He had never been the chosen one.

In the storied halls of the Ironwood branch of House Ferrum, Kyle had been the dull stone amongst glittering gems. His elder brother was a prodigy with the blade, his movements a dance of innate genius. His younger sister possessed a rare and startling charisma, her laughter a melody that could charm the birds from the trees. And Kyle… Kyle was just Kyle. Solid. Dependable. And utterly, completely, unremarkable.

He remembered the long, grueling hours in the training yard, his father’s disappointed sighs a constant, cutting counterpoint to the clang of his clumsy sword strikes. He wasn't weak, but he lacked the spark, the intuitive grace that marked a true Ferrum warrior. His instructors praised his diligence, a backhanded compliment that only highlighted his lack of natural talent. He was the son who would manage the estates, who would handle the ledgers, who would be a respectable but forgotten pillar while his siblings soared.

He was a child who was constantly overlooked, not out of malice, but out of a simple, pragmatic assessment of his worth. The main family would visit, and the Arch Duke would praise his brother’s form, the Duchess would smile at his sister’s wit, and they would offer Kyle a polite, dismissive pat on the head. He was an afterthought in his own home, a footnote in his own family’s story.

Chapter : 1140

He never thought he would be a leader. He never even dreamed of it. His ambition was a simple, humble thing: to be useful. To be a shield, even a small one, for the great house that bore his name. The name ‘Ferrum’ was a weight he felt in his bones, a legacy of lions and kings that he felt he was unworthy to carry.

So he worked.

While his brother slept, Kyle was in the yard, practicing the same basic stance a thousand times until his muscles screamed and his soul wept with boredom. While his sister held court, he was in the library, devouring dusty tomes on military history and metallurgy, forcing knowledge into his mind through sheer, stubborn repetition. He wasn't born a lion; he was trying to build one, piece by painstaking piece, from the simple, unremarkable clay of his own being.

The change was not a sudden awakening. It was a slow, glacial shift, a reputation earned not through a single, glorious act, but through a decade of unyielding reliability. A border skirmish where his "unimaginative" defensive formation held while a more brilliant strategy failed. A political negotiation where his simple, honest words carried more weight than a week of clever rhetoric. He became the rock. The one you called when things were well and truly broken.

He remembered the day his father, a man who had not offered him a word of genuine praise in twenty years, had simply placed a hand on his shoulder after he had successfully defended an outpost against overwhelming odds. The old man had said nothing. He had just nodded, a single, sharp gesture of profound, grudging, and absolute respect. In that moment, Kyle had felt more like a king than any man who had ever worn a crown.

That was the man who now stood in the ruins of Ashworth. The man who had clawed his way from obscurity to become the head of his branch, the primary cadet lord, the right hand of the Arch Duke himself. Every ounce of his power, every flicker of his King-Level aura, had been earned through a lifetime of struggle, paid for in sweat, blood, and a solitude that few could comprehend.

This battle wasn't just a mission. It was the final, brutal validation of his entire existence. He had faced an apocalypse and held his ground. He had looked into the abyss, and he had made it blink.

A new sound cut through his reverie, drawing his gaze upward. A figure had appeared on the battlements of the corrupted fortress. A short, stout man whose presence felt like a cancer on the world, a blasphemy against the very light of the day.

It was Viscount Rubel.

And the power that rolled off him in suffocating, oily waves was not that of a mere traitor. It was the power of a king. A dark, twisted, and unholy king whose very existence was a scream of defiance against the natural order. Kyle felt the last embers of his strength turn to ice in his veins. The true master of this hell had finally taken the stage.

Viscount Rubel stood on the parapet, a grotesque monarch surveying his kingdom of ruin. He did not descend with the charge of a warrior, but with the slithering, boneless inevitability of a disease. A vortex of living shadow coalesced around him, lowering him to the ground as if he were a god descending from a foul heaven. He landed without a sound, his feet not quite touching the corrupted cobblestones.

The Crimson General, the last of the three kings, turned its helmeted head towards its new master. Without a word, it bowed, a gesture of absolute fealty, before dissolving into a swirl of crimson smoke and vanishing from the battlefield. The duel was over. The execution was about to begin.

Rubel’s gaze fell upon his cousin, and a slow, triumphant, and utterly contemptuous smile spread across his face. It was the smile of a man who had played a long, patient game and had just witnessed the final, beautiful checkmate.

“Brother Kyle,” he said, his voice a silky, poisonous thing that was a mockery of their shared blood. “You have made quite a mess of my city. And my soldiers. It seems the Lion of Ironwood is not merely a title. A shame. A true shame that such strength was wasted in service to a thief.”

Kyle pushed himself upright, his body screaming in protest. “Rubel,” he spat, the name tasting like bile. “Traitor. You have damned yourself. You have damned this entire city.”