Chapter 128: Wild Assassination (3)

The vice commander felt overwhelmed with emotions, watching the situation take a sharp turn for the better.

“I would have never expected there would come a day when we would work with a Great Terror to hold back another Great Terror,” the vice commander turned to the person of great authority beside him and said, his voice heavy with a mixture of emotions. Disbelief being the most prominent one.

He descended from Blackwell, one of the oldest noble families in the Three Kingdoms, a lineage that prided itself on valor and wisdom.

This very family had played a vital role in the founding of the Alliance of the Three and the establishment of the Three Kingdoms, contributing through military might, knowledge, and diplomacy.

Basically, their bloodline was steeped in history, their names etched into the lengthy chronicles of how the three kingdoms came to be.

On top of his impressive ancestry, the vice commander was also a learned man, a Lorekeeper of Veloria, a title given to only those with wisdom as deep as the ocean.

Lorekeepers were scholars, historians, and philosophers who dedicated their lives to the study of nations, wars, the rise and fall of civilizations, and many other subjects.

They were walking archives of profound knowledge with sharp minds, capable of recalling the events of centuries past as though they had witnessed them firsthand.

Because of his upbringing and training, he knew exactly how the Three Kingdoms came to be, and the grim cost that came with their creation.

Long ago, when the Ratallians had first come in power, they sought to expand their dominion beyond their subterranean cities.

Their greed was boundless, and their lust for conquest knew no end.

The surface-dwelling Velorians were far too weak to resist the invasion of such a mighty force if they didn’t unite under one banner to fight for the same goal. To resist the invasion!

Thus, the Alliance of the Three was born.

Together, they managed to resist the Ratallian expansion for a time, but resistance came at a dreadful price.

The Ratallians were known for being savages.

They answered every act of defiance with acts of cruelty so vile and dreadful there were no words to define them.

They burned every village and city that fell into their hands. They poisoned the land itself, leaving it barren and dead, so nothing would grow their again.

Those who dared oppose them were slaughtered without pity; their bodies were mutilated, their skins flayed and turned into lampshades, grisly warnings displayed in their every march to instill terror in the hearts of their enemies.

Even the bravest warriors of the Alliance trembled before such horror.

Their morale shattered like glass, and the fire that once burned in their hearts began to wane.

They met one defeat after another at the he hands of the savage Ratallians.

Their armies dwindled, their hopes bled dry.

Eventually, they ran out of the will to fight.

However, it didn’t mean there will to survive was extinguished.

It was still their, burning brighter than ever.

Since they couldn’t hold back the Ratallians, they chose another path.

They sought to circumvent the disaster entirely. Instead of dying on the Ratallians’ blades or becoming their slaves and emergency food ration, they decided to abandon their ancestral lands and migrate elsewhere, to a place even the Ratallians wouldn’t come looking.

Their search for salvation led them last the Misty Swamp Region to the lush, fertile lands ruled by the Hundred Tribes.

Those lands were paradise itself.

Mountains rich with ore, rivers that gleamed like silver, fertile soil, and skies untouched by the soot of war. Forests full of game, plains overflowing with life.

They had everything.

It was a world that seemed too good to be true. And to the Alliance of the Three, it was exactly what they needed to rebuild their strength and secure their future.

But there was a problem. A force calling itself Hundred had already been established there for hundreds of years.

To the desperate refugees of the Three Kingdoms, the solution was simple, even if it was cruel. If the Hundred stood in their way, then the Hundred had to be removed.

The Hundred were a closed-off people, bound by no single ruler or creed. They fought among themselves far more than they fought outsiders. Unity was a concept foreign to them. So, when the united armies of the Alliance came marching across their lands—disciplined, organized, and wielding tactics the Hundred had never seen before—they were caught off guard, like deer frozen in torchlight.

The slaughter that ensured was one-sided.

Tribe after tribe fell to the relentless advance of the invaders.

Some tribes fled into the wilderness, disappearing into the fog and marshes.

Others were enslaved, their bloodlines broken and their names erased from history. By the time the war ended, the Hundred were no more.

To solidify their claim, the Alliance built a colossal barrier to separate themselves from what they considered threat.

That’s why the Great Wall came into being.

It stood as both a symbol and a boundary.

On one side of it lay the the lands of the Three. On the other were the remnants of the Hundred and the ever-looming threat of the Ratallians.

The wall was meant to keep danger out, but from the perspective of the victims of the Three, it stood as a monument to genocide, a silent witness to the rivers of blood that had paved the way for the Alliance’s survival.

From the perspective of the Alliance, they had done what was necessary. They had fought for survival, not conquest. To them, the bloodshed was justified—an inevitable cost of protecting their kind. But to the Hundred, it was an unforgivable crime, a wound that could never heal.

That’s what made seeing the Mad Cheitain fight alongside them was all the more shocking.

The Mad Chieftain, descendant of the Hundred, aiding the descendants of those who had destroyed his people? The irony was enough to shake even the most hardened of men.

“I never expected it either,” the commander said.

In the Misty Swamp Region, there were only three kinds of danger.

The Exiled, the Rogues, and the Remnants.

The Exiled were criminals, banished from the civilized world for their sins.

The Rogues were wanderers and deserters, those who had fled judgment for their crimes or failures. The Remnants, they made up the majority. They were the descendants of the Hundred, those who had escaped the Alliance’s purge generations ago.

The Commander never expected any help to come from there, especially not for someone who belonged to that very bloodline the Three had once sought to extinguish.

What they didn’t know was that real Mad Chieftain was dead.

The one fighting now. The one terrifying the Necromancer and turning the tide of war in their favou was not him at all. It was Ray, wearing the Mad Chieftain’s form like a mask, fooling both friend and foe alike!

The commander sighed deeply. “The workings of fate are unpredictable. In the darkest of times, even the most impossible things may come to pass, bringing about miracles we could never foresee nor forget.”

“I will definitely not forget this sight,” the vice commander said with a laugh.

The wind howled across the Great Wall, carrying the scent of ash and blood, and the two men stood in silence, gazing into the chaos below, a chaos that was rapidly being wrapped up by the swings of that same hammer that used to terrify them in the past.

********

The Necromancer’s eyes grew cold and sharp as he watched his perfect plan fall apart piece by piece, and his expression twisted with irritation when his trusted subordinate died without putting as much as a scratch on his sworn enemy!

“Damn him! Damn him to hell!” He couldn’t help but curse Ray. Everything had started to go awry when he appeared. If not for his intervention, the great wall would have been his sooner or later!

“Where is your army?” Turning toward the creature beside him, he questioned, his voice low and deep.

Since his own side had taken heavy losses, he intended to rely on the Serpent Tribe to turn the tide of battle in his favor.

The Flying Serpent remained silent, its massive body coiled loosely beside him.

Its silence struck him as off, very odd.

“Why are you not saying anything?” he asked, voice low and edged with icy suspicion.

Under the stern stare, the Flying serpent’s wings drooped, eyes avoiding his.

“Speak now before I make you regret keeping mum!”

“It’s gone!” the Flying Serpent finally broke the silence. Its thundering voice was heavy with shame.

“How?” the Necromancer frowned and asked.

“How else?” the Flying Serpent replied, “I found out about the Mad Chieftain’s betrayal because I was his first target. Unlike you, there was no one to warn me. When the Tragodyles ambushed us out of the blue, my forces were like deer caught in the headlights. Only I managed to escape alive.”

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