Chapter 152: Heroes of the Aethelgard

The blackened earth of the Aethelgard borderlands shattered as a thirty-foot behemoth of pure, writhing Chaos crashed into the dirt.

Before the beast could regenerate its severed limbs, a figure clad in gleaming, heavy plate armor slammed into its chest like a meteor.

It was Marcus Thorne.

He didn’t bother dodging the acidic blood spraying from the creature’s maw. He simply raised his massive broadsword, the blade igniting with a blinding, golden light, and drove it straight down through the monster’s skull.

The shockwave from the impact leveled the surrounding dead trees for a hundred yards.

Marcus ripped the blade free and exhaled, a localized aura of golden mana burning the remaining Chaos corruption right off his armor.

Three years ago, he had been wearing a tailored suit, sipping overpriced scotch at his high school reunion, and managing a multi-million dollar hedge fund.

Now, he was a Vanguard Champion of the Fourth Continent.

“Messy,” a soft voice chided from the ridge above.

Elena Ross floated down from the embankment, her feet barely touching the ruined soil. The liquid silver dress she had worn to the reunion had long since evolved into a majestic set of interwoven battle-robes, glowing with the same stolen, golden energy that fueled Marcus.

She raised a pale hand, and a wave of warm, soothing light washed over him, instantly knitting the minor micro-fractures in his armor and replenishing his stamina.

“It’s effective,” Marcus grinned, resting the heavy broadsword on his shoulder. He rolled his neck, savoring the absolute rush of divine power coursing through his veins. “The eastern front is breaking. Did Chris ping the network?”

“Chris is holding the northern breach,” Elena said, her eyes glowing faintly as she checked her internal system interface. “And Sarah just glassed a two-mile sector in the south. She burned out three of her mana nodes doing it, but the Royal Mage already dispatched the clerics to patch her up.”

Marcus scoffed, kicking the dissolving skull of the Chaos beast. “She always was a hysterical mess. Remember how she shrieked back in the throne room when the King told us we needed a sacrifice?”

Elena’s smile faltered for a fraction of a second, her gaze dropping to the golden light radiating from her own hands.

It had been exactly three years since the summoning. Three years since the royal mages of Aethelgard dragged their reunion across the dimensional void to serve as empty, biological batteries for a dying world.

The Kingdom’s mana was completely depleted by the encroaching Chaos, so they had pulled Earthlings vessels with zero native magic to be forcefully filled with Divine Power.

But the math had been wrong. Thirty souls were required to stabilize the bridge. Only twenty-nine arrived. To prevent the spell from tearing the castle apart, the King had demanded a sacrifice to be burned for ’soul mass.’

Marcus hadn’t hesitated. He had pointed directly at the quiet, isolated kid leaning against the back wall.

’He’s useless. A traitor’s son. He’s practically dead already.’

Elena had looked away, hiding her face in Marcus’s shoulder. Sarah had screamed that the boy was bad luck.

When the Royal Mage cast the Soul Flay, ripping Red’s life force from his flesh, that raw, golden soul mass had flooded directly into the surviving twenty-eight earthlings.

It was the very same golden light currently allowing Marcus to cleave monsters in half and Elena to raise the dying.

“It was necessary,” Elena murmured, her voice hardening as she looked back up at Marcus. “We are the heroes of this world. We’re saving Aethelgard. One life for twenty-eight, Marcus. He served his purpose.”

“Damn right he did. It was obviously the one good thing he did in his life. He should be grateful to us, instead,” Marcus laughed, turning his back on the dissolving corpse. “Come on. The King wants us back at the capital before the Radiant Monarch’s emissary arrives. Let’s go cash in.”

Hundreds of miles away, deep within the heart of Aethelgard’s capital, the King stood in the center of the massive cathedral hall.

Above him, colossal crimson silk banners hung from the vaulted stone ceiling, depicting a golden sun being violently devoured by a dragon.

The King leaned over a massive, crystalline war map spanning the center of the room. The Royal Mage stood across from him, using a wooden rod to push small, golden markers across the borders of the kingdom, representing Marcus, Elena, and the other Earthling batteries actively pushing back the Chaos.

“The Vanguard holds,” the Royal Mage rasped, his eyes fixed on Marcus’s marker. “The Earthlings are adapting well to the higher output. We may need to increase their divine injection rate next month if the Radiant Monarch demands more territory cleared.”

The King grunted, resting his armored gauntlets on the edge of the table. “Push them until they break. If they burn out, we simply cast the bridge spell again and harvest another batch of—”

Suddenly, a loud, atonal chime violently interrupted the King.

The crystalline war map suddenly glitched. The localized borders of Aethelgard and the Fourth Continent vanished entirely, forcefully overwritten by a macro-server global projection. The entire cathedral was bathed in a harsh, flashing red light as a massive system notification projected itself into the air between the King and the Royal Mage.

[ SYSTEM ALARM: REGIONAL LOCK SHATTERED ]

[ LOCATION: THE 17TH CONTINENT ]

[ TERRITORIAL SYNCHRONIZATION: 100% ]

[ NEW ENTITY DETECTED: SUPREME SOVEREIGN ]

The Royal Mage dropped his wooden rod, taking a stumbling step back. His eyes widened as the global map rendered the distant, isolated landmass pulsing with a blinding golden aura.

“The Seventeenth?” the Royal Mage whispered, disbelief lacing his voice. “That’s impossible. That hemisphere is a toxic dead zone. It’s a localized server for minor deities. No one has ever unified it.”

The King stared at the flashing red beacons indicating the birth of a new, global-tier empire. His eyes narrowed, analyzing the distance between their central continent and the newly unlocked landmass.

“A Supreme Sovereign,” the King muttered, his expression darkening with annoyance rather than fear.

He waved a dismissive hand through the holographic text, forcing the projection to collapse back into their local war map. “Some savage warlord managed to scrape together a kingdom out of the mud and mutated beasts. It changes nothing for Aethelgard.”

“Should we notify the Radiant Monarch?” the Royal Mage asked nervously.

“Do not bother the Top Five with the politics of the wastelands,” the King ordered coldly, turning his attention back to the golden markers representing the Earthling heroes. “The Seventeenth Continent is an ocean away, locked in its own misery. Whoever this new Sovereign is, he is utterly irrelevant to our war.”

The King placed a finger on Marcus’s glowing marker, completely unaware that the golden soul mass powering his greatest weapon was identical to the wrathful, corrupted signature currently plotting a ten-year siege engine across the global void.ṣ

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