CHAPTER 372: ROYAL AND HOLT RUMBLE

I took a long breath and deactivated Node 3.

The surge of power that had been flooding my body began to recede, like a tide rolling back from the shore. My muscles loosened, the buzzing in my veins quieted, and the sharp weight of Essence consumption began to ease.

I lowered my arm, letting the repulsion-coated gauntlet vanish back into vapor. The silver glow faded.

The wind settled. The battlefield... didn’t.

I turned slowly, my boots crunching against the broken stone just beneath the castle wall.

What greeted me was a scene of a frozen picture.

Hundreds of Holt soldiers, scattered across the field, bloodied and exhausted, stood paralyzed. Many of them had witnessed the last moments of David’s life. Now they were looking at me like I wasn’t human. Like I was some myth that had stepped out of the skies to slaughter a legend.

Some dropped their weapons. Some held onto them with trembling hands.

Behind them, a growing number of Empire soldiers were charging in through the ruined outer gates and broken defense lines. Reinforcements. More kept coming, flowing like a river through every breach in the wall.

But they too had stopped.

Dozens of Empire soldiers, some I recognized, some not stood motionless, staring up at me. Their gazes flickered between David’s corpse in the crater and my shirtless appearance.

Then I spotted him.

Daniel Strongmen. My old instructor at the Academy. His jaw was clenched, eyes wide, helmet tucked under one arm like it always had been during the fighting exercises.

He was here... and he was looking at me the same way everyone else was.

I raised my chin slightly and spoke.

"I think we are not on vacation," I said calmly, but infused my words with a thread of Essence. They rippled through the air, expanding across the battlefield like a subtle command, so quiet it almost felt like a thought, yet loud enough that every soldier felt it in their bones. "If you’re with the Empire.....don’t just stand there. Finish them."

There was silence.

For one breath.

Two.

Then a roar of steel and spirit erupted as the Empire soldiers let out a unified scream and surged forward. No orders needed. No second thoughts. They charged with renewed purpose, crashing into the weakened Holt forces like a tidal wave.

The fight outside the castle wall resumed with brutal intensity.

I didn’t wait to see the result.

My wings flared open with a rush of wind, silver streaks sparking off them as I launched upward. I flew straight past the shattered walls and into the castle’s main palace. Screams and warcries echoed below, more skirmishes, more chaos.

But my focus wasn’t on the ground anymore.

Above me, the sky was a battlefield.

I shot upward and expanded my perception. Dozens of high-level combatants lit up in my awareness with trails of Essence, explosions of law collisions, spirals of force meeting flame, crystal, and illusion. The Grandmasters were fighting.

They were everywhere. Clashing among clouds, darting between explosions, lighting up the sky like angry gods.

But my gaze narrowed to one point.

In one corner of the sky, two fighters were locked in a fierce battle. One of them was Cilian Rayleigh, the commander of Elite Unit 01. He was tall and calm, and his movements were sharp and controlled. As a master of Ice and Cold, he used his hands to shape the air around him. Spikes of ice spun in circles, ready to strike at his command. Everywhere he moved, frost followed. The sky around him was filled with mist and shimmering light

And his opponent...

Was a Feran.

A towering humanoid tiger, fur striped gold and white with streaks of deep black. He was easily over seven feet tall, shoulders wide like a bear’s, yet he moved with graceful menace. He wore a deep navy-blue suit, crisp and oddly formal, tailored to his bestial physique, complete with a tie that fluttered in the wind.

He was elegant. But the violence he unleashed was anything but.

Every swipe of his clawed hands sent out massive waves of destructive air pressure, shattering Cilian’s ice and splitting clouds. His roar alone sent a vibration across the entire upper airspace. Pure, bestial power fused with the precision of law-bound techniques.

"A Feran from a Tiger tribe..." I muttered.

That wasn’t a regular Feran.

That was someone dangerous. Someone old. Someone who’d probably fought in wars before I was even born.

And Cilian, sharp and talented as he was, was being forced onto the defensive.

My eyes locked onto the tiger’s movements.

I hovered in place, hanging in the air between the battles above and below. Grandmasters clashed in the sky, Masters fought on the ground but I remained still, my wings spread wide but unmoving. The winds around me calmed, and the noise of the battlefield faded into a low, distant hum. I let my perception stretch outward, scanning the skies carefully, watching everything unfold.

Then I saw him, another Feran locked in high-speed combat in the northern direction, this one fighting directly against the Empire’s general himself. The clash of their laws sent out ripples of pressure strong enough to distort the air.

But it wasn’t the general who caught my attention.

It was the Feran.

Silver wings.

Sharp eyes.

That proud, hawk-like profile.

I recognized him instantly.

A Feran from the Whitefeather Roc tribe.

Ana’s brother.

His features mirrored hers. The resemblance wasn’t subtle.

My mood darkened in an instant.

That old feeling, tight and bitter, rose up in my chest again.

Ana.

The betrayal. The collar. The lies. I’d buried all that under focus and violence, but now, seeing him, it surged back a little. She had mentioned a brother. And I found him.

I pushed the anger down and forced myself to keep moving.

Beneath the clouds, spread wide across the upper battlefield, the other Grandmasters were locked in their own deadly duels.

Edgar and Arkas floated high in the northeast part of the sky, locked in a fierce battle. Sparks of lightning flared around Arkas with every swing of his Trident, splitting the air apart.

Along with him, Edgar moved through the shadows, his obsidian robes flowing like smoke. Darkness and shadow twisted around him, bending the light nearby. Every clash between them sent bursts of light and black mist through the air.

Other Grandmasters, Imperial and hostile alike, formed their own circles of devastation across the sky.

But one presence was missing.

I swept my perception across the sky again, narrowing it to focus on details.

Where was he?

Where was Dante?

That old man wasn’t the type to sit back.

But I couldn’t find him.