The four heroes—Jai, James, Zayn, and Minister Brokk—moved silently beneath the hostile light of Aetheleon's twilight moon. They were approaching the outer perimeter of Linston, the Dwarf Kingdom's town (Linston) which lay sickly and silent, smothered by the oppressive influence of the Obsidian Artifact. The air was thick with low-level Death Law energy, making breathing painful.
Their objective was clear: create absolute chaos at the palace and the Armory to draw attention away from King Winston, who would be silently curing the populace with the Silver Lyre.
Zayn, tasked with the primary distraction, moved into the main square. This was his final exam in sustained Tier 8 combat. He channelled his three stable elements—Ice, Earth, and Storm Magic—with the surgical precision learned from King Winston.
He slammed his staff against the stone ground. The air temperature dropped instantly. The stone slabs of the square erupted in razor-sharp Ice Spikes while simultaneous thunderheads began to swirl in a localized vortex above.
"Ice Barrage: Storm's Kiss!" Zayn roared, unleashing his integrated Tier 8 attack.
The combination was devastating. It was a highly dense, localized blizzard mixed with violent, wind-whipped shards of ice. Guards who rushed out were effectively paralyzed, their shields overwhelmed by the sheer elemental force. They weren't killed, but they were trapped.
Zayn danced at the center of the chaos, dodging counter-attacks, conserving energy to maintain the perpetual motion of the blizzard. The entire focus of Lenard's initial response shifted entirely to the main square.
While Zayn was the hammer, James and Minister Brokk were the highly focused scalpel. They slipped away from the square, using the distraction to approach the Linston Armory—Lenard's central command post.
The plan centered on Brokk, the Tier 5 veteran who had personal experience with the Lyre's cost, and James, the Tier 9 Space Master whose magic was the only guarantee of swift infiltration and extraction.
Brokk handed James the essential supplies. "Clement (James), your Space Magic is irreplaceable. You must open the way, and you must secure the intelligence before the madness sets in."
Brokk then prepared the Silver Lyre. He quickly affixed the glistening Glazed Dreamfruit—the artifact's food—to its crystalline body, preparing it for the massive energy release. He also consumed his Aura Nectar to create a faint psychic buffer against the psychic recoil.
"I go in now," James whispered.
Channelling his Tier 9 Space Magic, James focused the energy to create a nearly invisible dimensional tear just large enough to bypass the three layers of Tier 7 magical wards protecting the Armory. He slipped through, reappearing near the central command fountain.
Brokk followed instantly through the same rift, armed with the Lyre. He had mere seconds before Lenard's remaining forces recognized the infiltration point.
Brokk slammed the Silver Lyre onto the stone fountain. The Lyre instantly flared, consuming the Glazed Dream fruit with a blinding silver-white flash of sound and light energy.
The effect was absolute: the powerful "Silence" sonic wave radiated outward, instantly shattering the Obsidian Heart's psychic connection to every person within the Armory's complex.
Brokk felt the familiar, sharp psychic backlash—the sensation of his short-term memory and mental quickness being ripped away. The sacrifice was already taking its toll.
James, however, was focused. He didn't wait. He grabbed the now-cured Armory Commander who had just collapsed and grabbed the strategic documents secured to the commander's belt. He then focused his Space Magic on the two of them.
"Spatial Rift: Retreat!"
They vanished just as the Lyre's wave subsided. Brokk had cured the crucial command structure, and James had secured the data and extracted them both.
Outside the Armory, Jai sensed the receding psychic pulse of the Silver Lyre.
"Phase I complete," Jai muttered, drawing his Golden Sword. The weapon pulsed with a fierce, imperial light. "The command structure is free."
Now, the focus shifted to Phase II: the ultimate distraction and the climactic Tier break. The main square chaos was peaking, and Jai heard the heavy, furious footsteps of Lenard's main response force heading towards Zayn.
He saw the first squad of Shadow Ledger assassins, led by a ruthless Tier 8 Lieutenant, peel away from the main force, heading directly toward the palace entrance—where Jai was positioned. This Tier 8 enemy was exactly the pressure cooker he needed.
Jai gripped the hilt, his red eyes blazing. This was the moment for the Weaponizing the Emperor's Scorn—the excruciating, life-or-death gambit that would force the Imperial Energy within his sword to shatter his Tier 9 shell and propel him toward the Tier 9 Sword Law enlightenment.
"Come," Jai muttered, his voice cold with fatalistic determination. "Try to stop me. Prove my weakness."
The mission is fully engaged, and Jai is about to enter his most dangerous combat.
The chaos of the main square provided a flickering backdrop of ice and thunder as Jai drew his Golden Sword to face the incoming assault. The first wave—a dozen Tier 9 Shadow Ledger soldiers commanded by a stern Tier 8 Lieutenant—met the Minister's blade.
Jai, he is a tier 9 elemental master. The Swift Artifact on his wrist whirred, granting him supernatural speed, blurring his movements into golden streaks. He cut through the Tier 9 soldiers like paper, his Sword Law energy too refined and fierce for their conventional shields.
However, the commander—a seasoned Tier 8 Master of the dual elements of Fire and Water—was a different challenge entirely. This veteran had stability and experience that Jai, the accelerated genius, lacked.
Zayn arrived, his body steaming from the sustained drain of the Ice Drill. He plunged immediately into the fight, his Ice and Storm magic creating disruptive spheres around the commander, trying to slow the veteran's movements.
Jai knew raw power wasn't enough. He seized an instant of distraction and unleashed a specialized attack: "Light Strike!" A fierce, concentrated beam of golden light erupted from his sword. He then compressed the light, storing all its potential energy before striking the commander with a single, furious slash. The blow connected, gouging a line of scorched black armor across the commander's chest.
The commander, though damaged, roared in defiance. He countered instantly, channeling his superior fire element. "Burn Slay!" A katana forged of swirling, white-hot flame materialized in his grasp. The air instantly grew heavy with the smell of sulfur and burning flesh as the commander fought with brutal, relentless expertise.
The fight dragged into a grinding attrition. The Tier 8 Master was a wall of disciplined elemental fury. Jai and Zayn, drained from the preceding missions and the constant expenditure of high-Tier energy, were nearing exhaustion. Their movements slowed; their breathing grew ragged.
The commander pressed his advantage, channeling his Water element. "The Sliding Dragon!" A colossal serpent of pressurized, churning water erupted from the ground, surging directly at Jai.
Jai, moving on instinct and the last burst of the Swift Artifact's energy, dodged the main attack, but the edge of the water dragon's scale-like force caught his ribs. A sickening crack echoed through the square. Jai stumbled, collapsing to one knee, a stream of Golden blood erupting from his lips and staining the white armor. His Spirit Core was protesting violently.
As he struggled to rise, Jai's focus never wavered. He saw the commander, too, was winded, relying purely on brute will to maintain the fiery katana. It was time for the final, desperate gambit.
Jai looked at Zayn. Their eyes met—a silent, urgent command passed between the two friends. Zayn understood: now or never.
Jai quickly channeled the energy for his specialized technique. "Zayn! Listen! My ability, Fleeting Golden Dream, will momentarily pull his consciousness into a void. I've broken Tier 9 since our last use—it will hold him for three seconds! But activating it will render me unconscious! You must launch your full power—everything you have left—and pierce him in that window! One blow! Do you understand?"
Zayn, seeing the blood running down Jai's chin, gave a sharp, resolute nod.
The two friends fought for another moment, forcing the commander to commit to a defensive stance. Then, Jai roared, channeling his entire spiritual reserve into the Golden Sword.
"Fleeting Golden Dream (瞬金之夢)!"
A blinding, ethereal wave of golden energy erupted from Jai's sword, not outward like an attack, but inward, directly targeting the commander's Spirit Core and neurological channels. The Tier 8 commander's eyes instantly glazed over. His fiery katana dissipated as his consciousness was violently wrenched away, trapped within a terrifying golden void of illusion.
One... Two... Three seconds.
Jai's vision tunneled into blackness as the attack consumed his consciousness, and he collapsed, his body landing heavily on the cobblestones.
Zayn moved instantly. His face a mask of primal fury and desperation, he channeled every remaining fragment of his three elements—Ice for piercing power, Storm for acceleration, and Earth for stability.
"The Blizzard Spear!"
A spear of frozen, dense elemental energy, crackling with volatile lightning, ripped from his hand. It was a perfect, devastating combination strike aimed directly at the stationary target. The spear pierced through the commander's chest armor, shattering his Spirit Core and extinguishing the light in his eyes instantly. The commander slumped to the ground, dead before his body even settled.
Zayn stood panting over the corpse, blood and ice coating his hands, watching his friend, Jai, lying motionless.
A new figure emerged from the shadows. King Winston, cloaked and calm, appeared instantly beside the prince(Zayn) and jai(Minister).
"Well done, Prince and Minister. The distractions were perfect, and the intelligence is secured. We must leave now. Lenard knows something is wrong; the window is closing."
Winston quickly gathered the unconscious Jai and the exhausted James (who had reappeared near the square after the extraction). He supported Zayn, readying to use a high-Tier movement spell for their immediate escape.
But they were too late.
A massive surge of pure Tier 5 energy slammed into the square, accompanied by a booming voice heavy with rage and dark authority.
Lenard, the Tier 5 Master of the Obsidian Artifact and the one who masters dark, storm and lighting elements, stood before them, having abandoned his post to respond to the sudden silence in his command structure. He surveyed the dead commander, the neutralized guards, and the five weary figures before him: the unconscious Jai, the exhausted Zayn, the exhausted James, the veteran minister Brokk, and the cloaked King Winston.
Lenard spread his arms, a chilling, triumphant smile splitting his face. "You thought you could sneak into my domain, Your Majesty? The Shadow Ledger has been waiting. Now, you give me the future Emperor, the elemental master, and the disgraced King—all in one place!"