The situation wasn’t the best for Eversnow and their protectors. Liaranna kept hoping for backup.

Kanami could barely stand.

Leona, who had rushed to aid Hilda and Brunhild, was stopped by an orc with strength to match hers.

Hilda and Brunhild were still holding their ground, but their energy levels kept dwindling, and they wouldn't last long like that.

Miralyn had her hands full, and her guards were also in their own bouts against orcs of equal strength.

Karini and her shieldmaidens continued to hold their formation, protecting the civilians who were still rushing into the city and stopping the orcs from entering, but fatigue was starting to creep in.

Margiory was the only one secure, but she kept frying orcs with her green lightning from behind her guards' lines while rushing the last civilians through the city gates.

When the last of the non-combatants crossed the gates, Kayn and Koma shouted to warn them.

“Lady Liaranna! Sister Kana! Retreat! Let’s close the gates!”

But they knew if they did, the orcs would follow.

To Kayn and Koma’s dismay, the order came from Kanami herself, “Close the gates! We’ll hold them off!”

Seeing that the people outside had finished entering the city, the Shaman waved his staff.

“Yes, close the gates! And see your city burn from outside!”

The trebuchets groaned to life, their wooden arms groaning under the immense strain.

With a thunderous thwump, they launched giant metal spheres that streaked across the sky, their fiery tails shedding sparks that drifted down like burning snow.

“NO!”

Lazar shouted as he was about to rush to protect the city.

The air shimmered with the intense heat of the approaching wildfire. Lazar could smell the acrid smoke and the unnatural, chemical tang of the magical flames.

A scent that promised nothing but instant cremation for anyone caught in their path.

Yet, Lazar couldn't do anything.

The Fifth brother held him back, even without the orc in his path; there was too much wildfire for him to handle alone.

It wasn’t just Lazar panicking; every family head, squad leader, guild leader, guard, or soldier.

Every warrior outside the gates.

Their minds went to the children of their clans aiding with evacuation, the farmers and their families, the guards inside the city, and the children who could still be lost inside.

Their hearts froze, carrying the same sentiment.

What good would be a bunch of dead orcs if their city and its people were destroyed?

If their children died?

If their future was wiped away.

But just as the projectiles were about to pass over the city’s wall like meteors burning with wildfire…

“Crackle!”

“Dark Lightning - Lightning Chain!” Sokram’s voice roared, booming from the sky.

A crackling chain of lightning, a swirling vortex of deep violet and black, erupted from the sky.

It snaked between the wildfire meteors, each touch detonating them in a soundless bloom of fire and light, the shockwaves swallowed by the chain’s own thunder.

Each explosion was fully absorbed by the lightning chain, and the wildfire fused with the lightning.

The lightning hit the top of the wall, and Sokram appeared, wearing nothing but a pair of loose black cotton pants.

But the lightning didn’t dissipate.

Instead, it compressed itself into crackling snakes of dark lightning orbiting his body.

His body was covered with glowing runic inscriptions and markings in varying patterns that pulsed with a malevolent, chaotic light.

That chaotic shimmer made his skin seem to ripple as if fused with the energy empowering his body.

The marks seemed to writhe and flow, like rivers of liquid fire.

All he had in his hand was his katana and Void Glove, but more peculiar than everything else about his appearance were the Chaos Cores floating above him.

The same ones he extracted from the snakes in the Crows’ nest, one Exalted fixedly floating over his head and six Flawless orbiting the Exalted level core.

Sokram's snow-white hair glowed and fluttered.

His eyes were also glowing with a silvery blue light.

His gaze swept through the battle analytically as he made sure his family was fine.

And then he shouted to the orcs, “Who are you to attack the city that I, this great dragon, head of the Dracnakrid, live in?!”

Not waiting for an answer, Sokram threw twenty bottles of blood ink into the air and used Force to spread them equally among the city’s walls, and with a wave of his hand, the bottles broke and the blood ink formed five runic words that repeated over and over as it spread through the walls: Absorb, Defend, Protect, Lightning, and Shield.

Looking back at the Mage’s Tower, Sokram shouted, boosting his voice with energy, “Savannah! Hold just for a few minutes!”

His voice, though still boyish, thundered with a power that vibrated in their bones.

A primal sound, not just heard with ears but felt deep in their chests, shocking everyone in the city into stunned silence.

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But Savannah, who was in a deep trance on top of the tower with a stupefied Cecille standing guard beside her, didn’t hear it at all.

Still, she felt his intent through the mana and Chaos Energy that circulated between them.

Sokram knew she was struggling because even his Physical Energy Veins were burning with the amount and intensity of the energy running through them.

He knew he needed to be fast, but speed was his forte.

Looking back at the Orcs, he saw the Shaman waving his staff again and releasing many more of the same projectiles of wildfire, but Sokram didn’t move.

Unafraid, he just stared at the incoming attack.

Hilda and the others below screamed for him to move, but as if to prove a point, he sheathed his katana and crossed his arms.

Just as the projectiles were just a few meters away from the walls, three lightning chains formed in the sky above the city and shot toward the wildfire, coursing through each as they exploded in the air and fed the energy surrounding Sokram.

Sokram grinned, staring straight down at the Shaman.

The risk of losing his family pushed him to the edge, and he finally decided to stop holding back in this fight.

Justifications be damned, he would deal with Nhiria himself if it came to it.

Sokram raised his katana and pointed it at the orcs, “Puny orcs, you will regret this day as your souls wander in the eternal night of the Nether! Regret in your souls the day you tried to trample the city this mighty dragon loves! Dark Lightning - Storm Stride!”

He vanished from everyone’s sight.

Not even Kasine could follow his movements, her eyes catching only the fading blur where he had been.

The people froze, glancing around as their hair rose, the air around them thick with a tingling electric charge, and then…

Darkness and light flashed together as if they were never meant to cancel each other out.

As if they were the best of sisters walking hand in hand.

First, it was Hilda and Brunhild.

A snake of lightning flashed so intensely that it reduced the orcs surrounding them to drifting ash that swirled in the heated air.

Then Kanami and Liaranna, the Exalted orcs that they were facing, could only raise their weapons to defend themselves.

But the power that struck them shot them away like ragdolls.

Almost instantly, Kanami and Liaranna appeared beside Kayn and Koma, close to the gates.

But it wasn’t just them; the Orcs whom Kasine, Miralyn, Lazar, and Alain were facing were also sent flying tens of meters away.

Then, a gigantic chain of dark lightning flashed through the whole battlefield.

“Thunder!”

When the flash subsided, they finally managed to open their eyes.

The vision that greeted the orcs was gut-wrenching.

Their entire infantry lay in heaps of charred, severed limbs that crumbled into ash at the touch of the wind.

Nulk, the Shaman, watched everything unfold, but all happened too fast for him to react.

Suddenly, the sound of a blade cutting bone and flesh reached his ears. “Shring!”

Sokram had appeared right behind him.

When Nulk turned to face him, the head of his fourth brother, the archer, was still spinning through the air, trailing a faint red arc before hitting the ground with a sickening thud.

Sokram’s voice reached his ears full of mockery, “Master always told me, archers must be the first to die, haha.”

“YES! ONE LESS!”

Kasine cheered while the people of Eversnow on the battlefield stood awestruck.

One attack, a single spell, and in the blink of an eye, he turned the tide of the battle completely.

Before the Shaman could even react to Sokram’s presence, he had already used One Step, reappearing beside Miralyn.

Sokram took out another Flawless Chaos Core from his glove as if waiting for something, and in the next moment, one of the Cores floating above him cracked into pieces and turned to ash.

He quickly replaced it with the one in his hand.

‘I have only another six of these; I have to make them count!’

Sokram looked back at his mother, Miralyn.

And just by the battle-hungry look on her face, he knew that even if he asked, she wouldn’t fall back.

Instead, his gaze shifted back to Alain, and he ordered, “The orders of the Patriarch are absolute, and as the strongest on the battlefield right now, my word is your law! Take the Matriarch and the others back inside the city with you. Second Mother, Head Lazar, Nana Kasine, and I are enough to take care of the rest! Now go!”

Feeling the weight of the blood contract in his heart, Alain couldn’t refuse. This was the weight of Margiory recognizing Sokram as her successor.

“You heard the Patriarch! Move!”

Alain shouted to the other guards of the Androny family, but he didn’t feel insulted.

He knew Sokram had just trusted what he held more precious in his hands.

Then Sokram’s voice boomed again, this time directed toward the soldiers and guards of Eversnow.

“As the strongest head of a founding family in this battlefield, I order you, fall back! Withdraw into the city! Reinforcements are coming! Wait for them there!”

He didn’t know if there were reinforcements or not, but he needed to give them something to hold onto.

The soldiers of Eversnow began retreating, some hesitantly at first, but once they’d seen Alain following Sokram’s orders, they started rushing toward the gates.

But, just then, the Fifth of the Mud Brothers, after regaining his footing after being sent flying away by Sokram’s attack, shouted, “And you think we will just stand and let you flee? Get them!”

Sokram moved in a flash of dark lightning between the retreating soldiers and the advancing orcs.

His sword was sheathed, and the stance he assumed made Leona and Kasine's eyes widen.

Seeing his master's worried expression, Sokram shot her a cocky glance, “Don’t worry, I think I got it. Instead of lightning, I’ll use the wind…”

In the fraction of a second that Sokram used to gather the energy for his attack, he came to several crucial realizations.

First, if he continued to share his energy with Savannah, she would die. But sharing mana with her was also taking a toll on him, especially after the first core turned to dust.

The Chaos Cores floating above his head and the runic marks covering his whole body were a single spell, a spell with overwhelming power.

But that brought him to his second realization: It would be impossible to sustain this spell for too long, even with his Mind Lock lifted.

Continuously using attacks that carried energy four Levels of Existence above his own was also overwhelmingly taxing to his mind.

There was also the barrier protecting the city from the continuous attacks from the trebuchets that didn’t stop shooting; the toll on his mind was so heavy that he could barely concentrate enough to cast a spell or invoke a sword technique.

This was the reason he had been calling his spells and techniques aloud, as it helped him focus while his mind multitasked.

And those were the reasons he decided to rush a little more…

“Killing Blade Art – Swift Wind: Annihilation Slash, Wind Blade!”

His body spun around, but only halfway, so that only his sword completed the circle instead of a complete body spin.

The surge of energy was so intense that the air around the entire battlefield became completely still, the wind snuffed out, void and null.

Every snowflake and loose hair frozen mid-fall.

But only for an instant.

As his katana cut through the air, the mana and spirit essence in its blade erupted into a howling, highly pressurized arc of wind.

A dislocation of air was so intense, so sharp that nothing could have prepared the orcs for what came next.

Only Sokram knew what to expect, but not completely.

Because he fused all the energy absorbed from the trebuchets into this attack, too.

It was like a tidal wave that increased with every meter it travelled.

The first hundred advancing orcs had no time to register a sound or see the approaching blade of air.

They merely dissolved into a cloud of misty blood and shredded armor pieces, their bodies instantly turned into tiny pieces of sliced meat.

But the Exalted ones could feel it approaching and reacted to it by either jumping above it or ducking below the gigantic wind blade.

The Shaman raised a barrier, using his staff as a pillar to keep from being pushed back.

And in a horrifying instant, the pristine white snow was drowned beneath a crimson tide.

The cutting wind, a silent scythe of death, became a wave of dismembered limbs and torn bodies that splattered the snow in jagged streaks of red, steam curling upward where hot blood met ice.

The trebuchets, siege towers, and battering rams were utterly destroyed without even being properly used.

The soldiers who were retreating, Sokram’s family, the city guards, and the people who dared to watch the battle from the top of the walls, each one of them stood in awe once again.

Their eyes locked on him, their jaws agape with disbelief.

The young genius stood alone against the horde, cold wind snapping at his loose pants, a lone figure of devastating power who had single-handedly broken the enemy lines that had brought even their powerhouse to a standstill.

Nearly a thousand orcs died in that attack, with a few hundred more wounded and out of combat after losing arms, legs, or both.

“Norwinter has a new Mighty Killer! The Swift Wind of Annihilation! Killing Blade Sokram! The Dark Lightning Killer!”

Oliver’s voice came from the top of the walls.

The voice of Eversnow boomed and exploded.

A cheer that erupted into a rolling roar that shook loose snow from rooftops, praising their new rising hero.

“The Swift Wind! The Dark Lightning! The Killing Blade! - The Swift Wind! The Dark Lightning! The Killing Blade! - The Swift Wind! The Dark Lightning! The Killing Blade!“