The wave ended without any real hiccup.

A shared breath of relief escaped both Mize and Liam, the tension slipping off their shoulders like mist in the morning sun.

They glanced at each other briefly.

Currently, she was sitting over Liam's lap.

Mize tilted her chin upward, her head leaning slightly back.

With the height she had while sitting on his lap, it was easy for her to catch a glimpse of Liam’s jawline from below, his features calm as ever.

Liam noticed her gaze and looked down, smiling faintly.

He reached out and gently patted her head. “Your army alone scared that sea lord off.”

“You really are my lucky charm,” he chuckled, fingers brushing through her hair, “and here I was thinking I’d have to step in myself.”

Mize’s grin widened, soft and proud.

She bobbed her head under his hand, clearly enjoying the gesture. “Took me forever to create those monsters up in the dungeon. Feels good to finally see them shine.” Thᴇ link to the origɪn of this information rᴇsts ɪn Nove1Fire.net

“They’re doing more than that,” Liam replied with a smile of his own. “Dual-purpose troops? That’s a win in every direction.”

Mize smiled to this, their eyes lingered briefly in the air.

"It's tiring, no?"

"Yeah... " Mize smiled still, fingers clutched against the fabric over her thighs, "and it's the barely the first event, but I feel exhausted... Exhausted beyond anything else I have felt in life"

"It's okay" Liam reached out, cupping her cheeks, rubbing her head, and eventually hugging her waist from the back.

His chin placed over her right shoulder, "I am here... Don't worry"

"Mhmmm"

Soon enough.

Mize’s attention drifted for a moment, her gaze sliding to the side.

She tapped her chin lightly with a fingertip.

"But wait… " she dragged her voice.

"why can’t you summon tier 7s and above with your shadow summons?"

"You’re not out of resources, are you?”

Liam’s smile didn’t waver.

Instead, he kept stroking her hair and answered without missing a beat.

“There’s a reason you and I are still different,” he said quietly, “even though we both stand at the top as Awakeners.”

“Oh?” Mize narrowed her eyes, a playful warning glinting behind them. “Don’t tell me it’s some dumb joke again, I swear I’ll jab your ribs.”

Liam laughed. “No jokes this time.”

“Then spill it,” she leaned in, eyes expectant. “What's the deal?”

“Come on, think about it,” Liam teased.

Mize blinked.

Once.

Twice.

Thrice.

She even squinted like the answer might magically appear in her mind if she focused hard enough.

Spoiler: it didn’t.

Liam saw that blank little expression and sighed internally. Best not let her adorable walnut-sized brain burn itself out.

“Skill limitations,” he finally said.

“Skill… limitations?” she echoed, as if tasting the words.

Her brows furrowed, obviously trying to piece it together on her own. Liam didn’t wait.

“Yes, despite being a limit breaker, my skills are still inherently limited by the tier of this territory"

"Different from you, my advantage originated from sheer quantity to overwhelm high realm enemies. That is how I am able to claim the limit breaker title"

"However, this only applies when the strength of the enemy doesn't exceed the three great realms bracket that I explained before"

"The early stage, from tier 1 to 3"

"The middle stage, from 3 to 6, and the late stage, from 7 to 9"

"For example, we are currently in the middle stage great realm bracket. And as long as I have enough tier 4s, I can easily overwhelm tier 5 lords, and as long as I have enough tier 5s, I can do the same against tier 6 lords"

"But, no matter how many tier 6s I have, I can never overwhelm tier 7 lords. Since each bracket meant a qualitative leap in the level of life"

"My profession is a summoner. And my skills are locked to the tier of the territory itself,” he explained patiently.

“Specifically, my summoning ability is bound by the current territory tier. No matter what I do, I can’t go beyond tier 6 until the territory level rises.”

He gave a slight shrug. “You, on the other hand, you’ve got infinite options. You’re not bound to system skills like I am. You can create whatever you want, even exceeding the bounded limitations"

"I rely on numbers to fight across levels, but that only works during the first few realms such as from tier 1 to tier 6"

"Now, tier 7 starts popping up, even if I throw a hundred tier 6 shadow summons, it wouldn't make a difference"

Mize leaned back against his chest, processing the explanation. “So… your power’s not about personal strength, but more like rule-following.”

“Exactly,” Liam nodded. “And those rules are rigid.”

“Then why not ask me for help?” she offered, lips pouting slightly. “I bet I can crack that limitation wide open.”

“Don’t.” Liam’s hand reached up and pinched her nose.

“Mmph!” she yelped through her nose, wiggling indignantly as he smirked.

“The Warp Authority isn’t something even you should mess with,” he said, serious now.

“Sure, you can make objects, manifest skills, create troops at will… but the system’s core functions, especially anything tied to Warp permissions? Those are off-limits.”

His voice dropped a little lower. “Touching that kind of authority directly, no matter how strong or special you are, will cost you. Badly.”

Mize stared up at him, skeptical at first, but then her expression changed. She remembered something.

That one time she tried fiddling with the summoning feature through the stele…

The system hadn’t just denied her, it practically screamed at her. A stern warning.

Yeah. Now that she thought about it… Liam might be right.

Her lips pursed slightly, eyes shifting away as she muttered under her breath.

“…Guess I have been warned before.”

After mulling it over for a while, Mize began connecting the dots.

Every little thing she had tinkered with so far… none of it had directly touched the Warp’s system, its core features, or its authority.

Not once.

She’d danced around the edges, yes, but never stepped past the invisible line.

If she could, she would’ve altered the territory’s level, stretched the borders, maybe even tweaked the event ranking or the global chat.

Hell, why not just delete the leaderboard altogether?

But no, the system had warned her.

Don’t.

That was the one rule.

Her power operated outside the Warp’s structure. It wasn’t symbiotic. It wasn’t equal.

Mize relied on the Warp system, especially to link herself with Liam as partner lords. But the Warp? It didn’t rely on her at all.

If anything, the only part of her that had ever come close to interfering was her profession.

And even that had raised eyebrows.

More than once, the system had made it painfully clear that her profession wasn’t what it seemed.

“Divine Path” was just the skin.

What hid underneath… was something else. Something the Warp had never seen before.

The system hadn’t just overlooked her.

It had hidden her.

Right when her thoughts started to spiral again, a loud snap echoed in front of her face.

Mize blinked. Liam’s fingers were right there.

“thinking?” he asked.

“Y-yeah,” she nodded quickly, shaking off the fog in her head.

“In short, since your entire profession hinges on your core skill, summoning, you still have to play by Warp’s rules,” she said.

“But what if…” Mize tilted her head, a spark of mischief lighting in her eyes, “...what if I create an item that tweaks the system indirectly?”

Liam just shook his head.

“This isn’t the dungeon, Mimi. Don’t mess around. Too many unknowns, and most of them end with you dead.”

His voice was still gentle, but the meaning was carved sharp.

“Sure, you can change your dungeon’s features, rules, even the entire structure, because the dungeon core wasn’t made by the Warp. So obviously, no backlash.”

“But me?” He pointed toward himself lightly.

“My summoning skill is tied to territory tier. That’s Warp-bound. Warp-enforced. Anything that interferes with that comes with consequences.”

Mize slowly nodded, lips pressed into a thin line.

She didn’t argue, she understood.

Even she feared the Warp.

The system’s previous warnings had been crystal clear: if she tampered directly with core mechanics, the only outcome… would be death.

The only reason she didn't face any consequences before. Perhaps the system might have something to do with it.

'The system helped me?'

But how many times.

That wasn’t just flavor text.

That was a guarantee.

With that sobering thought shelved for now, the two returned their focus to the present

Waiting for the next horror that was bound to come.

Their army was regathering, formations reestablished in a long line.

Mize took the lead, creating several dozen massive artillery cannons for the Broken Blade Legion to use from afar.

The losses from the last wave made her think twice whether to send them into a battle of this scale.

In short, she decided to let them engage in a long-range artillery battle.

Each canon was the size of a house, and it can only be operated under the joint cooperation of twenty broken blade warrior.

Huge towering muzzles, angle selector, plated body that was designed to withstand any blast impact.

A machine of horror.

"Good enough" she exhaled, looking around the battlefield once more, and making sure everything was in order.

It didn’t take long.

The next wave came.

The same heavenly horn as if it was the end of the world blared into the sky.

The surrounding spies that were sent from those forces also readied themselves to escape in case anything... Bad... came out.

Then, the portal unfolded itself like an opened curtain over a white canvas.

Strangely, there were no signs of otherworldly lords this time.

But instead, three terrifying tier 8 monster true kings walked out of the clouds, each step roaring, the sky trembling, the air rioting.

Their cries split the sky.

Ear piercing.

People in the city had to close their ears hurriedly due to the pain. Luckily Harb was always on duty, sending out sentry guards to keep the situation at bay.

Mize didn’t hesitate.

Without a word, she sent her top combat power forward.

Seven true kings of her own, each one humanoid in appearance, crafted to her liking.

Beautiful, regal, powerful.

The 4 true king monsters she created before took the form of old men. Each wearing a strange black robe and the demeanour of an expert as they crossed the sky.

Long white hair cascading on the back, beard as long down to their stomach. The kind of appearances that made you think whether this was a hidden hermit or not.

Their purpose?

To serve her, the creator.

And then, collision.

The seven surged downward like divine meteors, slamming into the incoming monster true kings with unimaginable force.

The sky was torn apart under their movements alone, the air splitting apart, sending storm and hurricane like wind waves downward.

Boom!

Boom!

Boom!

The sheer devastation was staggering. Every clash shook the world.

Each swing, each movement, tore open the land below, flattening miles at a time, wiping out tens of thousands with a single aftershock.

The ground was nothing but ruin.

Meanwhile, one of Mize’s true kings broke formation and descended lower, standing tall over the battlefield.

His sole purpose was to shield the territory from stray energy blasts and tear through the horde flooding in from below.

But the numbers were absurd.

Over twenty million beasts, all surging forward like a tidal wave of death, crashing endlessly under Mize’s divine sense.

From her perspective, it was a sea of horror and chaos. Red, smoke, and filled with a sea of unintelligible scream.

"Filthy creature"

But she held back, she needed to recover her strength first.

The next few waves before the final one were nothing short of brutal.

Not in terms of casualties on their side, no, they still held the advantage, but in sheer, overwhelming scale of destruction.

Everywhere you looked, the territory in this area had been wrecked beyond recognition.

The ground was a jagged mess, craters upon craters, deep gashes torn through the soil, entire patches of land turned into shattered earth.

Massive impact sites dotted the plains like meteor scars.

And the stench…

Gods, the stench.

The reek of millions of mangled corpses hung thick in the air, heavy, putrid, and almost suffocating.

Bits of torn flesh, twisted limbs, unrecognizable organ chunks, and deformed monster bodies littered the battlefield like grotesque decorations.

There were even some of her broken blade warrior bodies that couldn't be retrieved. Mangled, half eaten... But their posture before deaths were either standing, or honourably kneeling towards her.

To this, she sighed at her own situation. Just how far... Can she tolerate?

It seemed to be a lot... She tolerated a lot compared to the days before. It was growth, but perhaps a tinge of hidden indifference.

"Without names, but they serve me to death"

"With faith they fought, and I will resurrect them later as a gift"

Death was never the end of your duty here.

As for the scene.

It was horror made real.

The kind of horror that whispered despair and screamed war. The kind that said: this is the Warp, and here, mercy doesn’t exist.

And all of this? Was just from a single event.

Naturally, battles of this magnitude didn’t stay hidden for long.

The surrounding powers were already watching. The bigger forces in the inner region? They were wide awake now.

Scouts had been deployed all around the outer edges of the area, lurking, observing, transmitting every detail in real time.

And the moment those reports came back?

Panic. Utter panic.

Even those top lords that were still competing, and even those lords that had forfeited.

The whole world's attention was located here at the moment.

The top brass in the major factions paled when they saw the images transmitted back.

The sight of such a war was unimaginable to them.

Even the global chat exploded as several lords that had forfeited their territory, and was living in Mize's territory, kept on updating the real time situations to the world.

Their expressions soured. Their fingers trembled. Their headaches got worse.

The sheer strength coming out of this territory, just the lords alone, was insane.

Multiple tier 8 true kings had shown up on their side. That alone was enough to shatter their confidence.

As for true lords?

Hundreds. Not dozens. Not eighty. Actual hundreds.

And worse still, the enemies weren’t exactly pushovers either. They were matching blow for blow.

The scale of the battle here had blown past anything recorded in the region’s history, hell, maybe even the surrounding regions too.

Even the Adventure guild's own representatives in the nearby city lost their composure once they caught wind of the situation.

Especially Esmeralda, who had just returned from an extended trip into the underground world dungeon.

One look at the battlefield snapshots sent back by one of their scouts was enough to freeze her blood.

Corpses piled like hills, black smoke choking the horizon, and roars that sounded like the end of the world. Real-time footage.

Unfiltered.

“What in the world…?” she whispered, a cold shiver running down her back.

Her knees almost buckled from the pressure of it all, but her butler moved quickly, steadying her shoulders.

“My lady, don’t be shaken,” he urged, voice calm, even if his heart wasn’t. “Stay strong.”

He kept a strong front, but inwardly? Even he, a man who had once stood on battlefields with thousands, felt his spine crawl.

This wasn’t war.

This was annihilation, a battle between divine forces.

Back in the city, the common folk didn’t know the details.

But they weren’t stupid. With all the whispering nobles and the eerie mood in the air, they knew something massive was unfolding outside their walls.

Especially the constant horrible roars, the trembling and tremors from time to time.

Children cried, people huddled up in their homes, and the church 'Hope messenger' went on to the streets.

"Record of arch of time!"

"Record of arch of time!"

"The saint kneeled before the mother, he extended his hand! To seek the knowledge of how the future looks"

"How the time will come!"

"The mother replied... Unimaginable horrors will come, beings of filth will emerge like the grand ocean! Seek refuge in her name! Seek refuge in her name!"

"So that your soul will be blessed for hope!"

They yelled.

Back on the field, the night had descended completely.

Smoke coiled into the sky like twisted ribbons.

Glowing lights flared across the battlefield, each one marking another burst of magic, another detonation, another strike.

And with those lights came sound.

The snarls and roars of countless beasts.

The low thunder of massive bodies crashing into one another.

And above it all, the heavy rumble of distant battles, kilometres high in the sky, where true lords and true kings fought like gods in a storm.

This was it.

The wave right before the final one.

And Liam’s forces? They were already moving.

His shadow summons poured into the horde like a tidal wave, slipping through cracks, gutting monsters in one sweep after another.

Behind them, the battle mages opened fire, dense clusters of fireballs rained down like a storm of comets, lighting up the night with burning arcs.

And from the back line, the artillery and bolter guns roared.

Boom!

Boom!

Boom!

The battlefield was swallowed in fire and death.

"it really is extremely tiring" Mize murmured to herself.