To counter the fierce firepower of the rebel forces led by Leoro and Schubert, Kolk’s army had already taken up a firm stance on the main road. At the same time, they rapidly dispatched a telegram to their superiors, reporting that rebels were still active in the area and that new supplies and reinforcements were on the way.
Two soldiers struggled under the weight of sandbags, stumbling and shuffling forward with difficulty.
Suddenly, one of them had a drastic change in his eyes—a murderous glint flashed. Without warning, he slammed his sandbag hard into the soldier beside him, then violently snatched the rifle from his grasp.
The disarmed soldier reacted quickly, realizing the danger in an instant. He immediately shouted to those around him:
“Get down!”
Startled by the sudden yell, everyone instinctively dropped to the ground.
No sooner had the shout faded than the gun-snatcher raised his weapon without hesitation and opened fire wildly on the soldiers beside and behind him.
Bullets rained down like a storm, and quite a few soldiers fell dead on the spot. But soon the gun ran out of ammunition. He glanced around frantically, trying to grab a second weapon.
The sudden chaos caught the soldiers off guard, but some quickly regained their composure.
The lieutenant, in particular, acted with great speed. He pulled a pistol from his chest, aimed steadily at the man who was trying to pry a rifle from a corpse beside him, and pulled the trigger without hesitation.
Bang!
This brave fighter under Vysta’s command was shot clean through the head. He didn’t even have time to react before he toppled backward and landed right next to a villager who was crouching behind a sandbag.
And that was exactly what he’d planned. Using the dead gang member’s body as cover, he reached for a box of grenades.
He quickly stuffed several grenades into his coat, then carefully pushed the corpse aside, rose slowly, arranged the sandbags casually, and dashed toward the military truck that was hauling the sandbags.
Inside the Kolk camp, everyone was still shaken. The commander’s gaze was fixed on the villager disguised as a soldier. But when he saw that “soldier” head toward the military truck, he felt a bit more at ease.
“Send another logistics man—make sure those defensive works get finished! And send five men to watch the rear! I don’t want to see any more enemies sneaking in!”
The commander bellowed, his voice echoing through the air.
After he shouted, four or five people squeezed out from the crowd behind him, grumbling as they too ran toward the military truck.
Once he confirmed that everything seemed fine for the moment, the commander put aside his worries and focused entirely on the frontline battle.
Because of the earlier commotion, everyone was still on edge, and both their accuracy and rate of fire had dropped significantly.
“Snap out of it, all of you! If we win this fight, Lord Kolk will reward us handsomely!”
The commander looked around the despondent camp and shouted to boost morale.
Hearing about rewards, the nearby soldiers perked up a little.
The morale, which had been on the verge of collapsing, was suddenly lifted again, and the decline in their performance began to stabilize.
But just then, another surprise struck!
The villager disguised as a soldier pulled the stolen grenades from his coat.
Following the instructions Vysta had given him before they set out—how to use the grenades—he fumbled his way through the process.
After pressing down the central pin, he hurled the grenade with all his might.
“Get down! Grenade!”
Someone screamed in terror, their voice filled with fear.
The successive disruptions threw Kolk’s army into utter chaos.
The relentless grenade tossing only added fuel to the fire, making the situation even more critical.
Because of the chaos, the soldiers crouched behind the sandbag wall had nearly stopped firing altogether.
Schubert and Lance noticed this shift immediately. A slightly stocky villager ran out from Lance’s group, pulled out a long, slender musical instrument from his coat, took a deep breath, and began to play.
The deep, stirring melody drowned out the gunfire, echoing across the battlefield and reaching every ear.
Schubert understood Lance’s signal. They all put down their guns and drew the knives tucked at their waists instead.
Of course, due to a shortage of blades, many villagers were wielding kitchen knives from home. Some didn’t even have a knife—they grabbed hammers. But that didn’t matter much; as long as it could be used to fight, it was a good weapon.
“Follow me… Charge!”
Schubert raised his arm and shouted, his voice booming across the sky.
The Kolk soldiers were first drawn by the horn sound from behind. As they watched in slight surprise, Schubert’s troops surged across the ruins, a dark tide of people flooding toward them.
Schubert, in particular, was the fastest and most ferocious—his body surging with a flow of “energy,” he charged like an enraged lion.
Lance wasn’t idle either. He directed his villagers, following the horn’s commands, to charge straight at the soldiers before them.
The commander was also caught off guard by this sudden assault. Facing the crowds pouring in from both sides, he felt a wave of helplessness and immediately ordered his men to open fire.
But a hundred meters could be crossed in just seconds. Schubert, at the front, had already leaped over the sandbag wall. With a slight swing of his kitchen knife, he took down the soldier preparing to spray bullets at them.
Then Schubert moved on to other armed soldiers, while the villagers behind him swarmed in like wolves. They killed the resisting soldiers, captured those who tried to flee, and even shouted the famous slogan left by the “Chosen One”:
“The blue sky is dead; the yellow sky shall rise!”
Leoro, Osaiku, and Vysta were all stunned. They hadn’t expected the villagers under Lance and Schubert to fight so fearlessly.
In an instant, most of Kolk’s army was cornered, and the commander himself fell into Lance’s hands.
“Surrender, or die!”
Schubert hoisted the commander up with one hand and roared.
Kolk’s forces fell silent. Some lowered their weapons amid the curses of others, crouching with their hands on their heads toward the corner Lance pointed to. Some, unafraid of death and even spouting defiance, had their heads lopped off by Schubert without mercy, blood splattering everywhere. And a few, unable to accept their defeat, pressed their guns to their own heads and shot themselves in despair.
Lance and Vysta ordered an immediate cleanup of the battlefield. All prisoners were herded to the side of the overturned train, their limbs bound with broken cables to prevent escape.
Five minutes later, the battlefield was mostly cleared. All usable firearms and ammunition were now in the rebels’ hands.
One worker jumped onto the military truck, checked it over, and announced that it could still run. Vysta quickly came up with an idea: they loaded onto the truck all the radio equipment and food they couldn’t carry on foot.
Looking at the fallen gang members, Vysta felt a deep pang of grief.
He pulled off the insignia from the chest of each fallen comrade, then ordered someone to find a spot with soft soil. Borrowing a shovel from a villager, he buried them with his own hands in a simple ceremony.
After a silent moment of mourning lasting more than ten seconds, they took a detour and headed for the gang’s headquarters.
They all knew that time waited for no one, and the battles ahead would only grow fiercer.
Two thousand rebels soon charged like tigers down the mountain toward various locations, all under Renith’s watchful eye. Although Kolk’s army outnumbered them, the vast gap in strength meant that the flames of war were almost entirely extinguished under the rebels’ fierce assault.
Though the surrounding magical energy seemed endless in the short term, given the rate at which Renith was draining it, it would soon run dry.
Kolk smiled smugly. In his view, once the magic was depleted, Renith would fall.
Sure, this mage before him was truly powerful, and this battle had been full of twists and turns—but in the end, victory would still be his. His reputation would remain intact, and he would still stand among the peak combatants of the “Chosen Ones.”
While Kolk was lost in his reverie, Renith knew that purely defending would only make her lose ground and fall behind. So she broke free from the tentacles, and the glowing barrier around her vanished in an instant.
“Roooar… Finally coming out? Not to surrender, but walking toward me?”
Kolk said contemptuously, spreading his arms and legs slightly, assuming a fighting stance.
“I acknowledge your strength—after all, no one in this world has made me look so pathetic. But too bad, the victor is me!”
Confident and full of himself, Kolk planned to use Breaker’s Strike again. In his mind, without that shield, Renith would easily be smashed into a bloody pulp by that punch.
“Codex, page 270—Sloth Magic: Soul Lullaby.”
Phylove’s voice, trembling slightly, sounded from behind Kolk.
Kolk was stunned. Someone had managed to appear behind him without a sound!
Just as he turned his head, the surroundings went completely dark—no moonlight, no streets, no Renith—only the gentle lullaby echoing through the dim air.
Listening to the melody, Kolk felt exhausted. His eyelids grew heavy.
Then, the dark space rippled slightly, revealing two trees with a hammock suspended between them. Groggily, he climbed into it, swaying gently back and forth in the breeze…
Something felt off, but he just didn’t want to think about it. He didn’t want to do anything at all.
Outside the dream, Renith forced herself to stay upright.
Even though the Greed Tentacles were absorbing magical energy from the air, casting Sloth Magic had drained her reserves completely again. The second depletion in a row left her chest tight and suffocating, barely able to breathe.
And with the use of Sloth Magic, she too felt a wave of lethargy washing over her. An overwhelming drowsiness kept creeping in. But the voice in her head kept reminding her that this was still a battlefield—falling asleep meant death.
However, the slothful magic and her physical exhaustion left Renith utterly unwilling to move. So she had Phylove—who had long since distanced herself and was fighting back disgust—draw a magic circle on the ground.
More than ten minutes later, Renith finally overcame the drowsiness induced by the Sloth Magic and struggled to her feet.
By then, the circle was complete. Kolk was still trapped in his own dream, completely unaware of the outside world.
Renith reached out and gave Kolk a gentle push. He tumbled into the circle.
A green glow flowed across the ground, and Renith’s Codex burst forth with dazzling light once more.
“Codex, page 767—Wind Magic: Azure Gale Execution.”
