The freezing wind howling through the massive, ancient redwood trees of The Treachery carried the unmistakable, suffocating stench of copper and void matter.
Rayn stood entirely still in the center of the devastated Eastern clearing, his white hair completely plastered to his forehead with the sticky, black blood of his enemies. At his boots rested the massive, profound iron container he had forged from the earth itself. It was filled to the absolute brim, holding exactly seventy gallons of freshly harvested human blood, swirling with dark, residual Gnosis.
With a casual flick of his wrist, Rayn tapped into the spatial storage of his black ring. The massive container violently vanished into the void, perfectly preserved for the Gambler's Heart.
He raised his communication artifact, his crimson eyes glowing with absolute, dictatorial authority.
"Peter. Victus. Freddy," Rayn's voice echoed through the artifact, cold and devoid of any human warmth. "Do not blindly charge into a concentrated ambush. We are violently dismantling an army, not participating in a suicide pact. Fight with absolute efficiency. Conserve your profound energy. If you are overwhelmed by sheer numbers, fall back immediately and call for backup. Is that entirely understood?"
"Understood perfectly, Lord Rayn," Peter's voice crackled back smoothly, layered with an eerie, unshakeable confidence. "But if you find yourself bleeding out in the mud, feel free to call me as well."
High above Rayn, completely concealed within the absolute darkness of the redwood canopy, Vespera did not utter a single word into her artifact.
She remained as still as a carved marble statue. Her glowing golden eyes were completely locked onto the heavily fortified central valley, watching the panicked, chaotic movements of the Supreme Leader's elite guards like a primordial apex predator observing a cornered, heavily armored rat.
Rayn looked up into the suffocating darkness of the canopy. He had successfully manipulated the hidden variables on this battlefield. The pawns were in place. The board was set. Now, it was time to completely remove the leash from his most catastrophic weapon.
"Vespera," Rayn transmitted his voice directly into her mind, bypassing the physical artifact entirely. "Come down. Stop observing. Fight with absolutely everything you have. But heed this strict command: do not touch the central camp yet. I want you to violently slaughter their outer defensive rings. I want the Supreme Leader to sit in his luxurious tent, sweating blood, as he agonizingly listens to his massive army being systematically butchered by five people."
Hearing Rayn's absolute permission, a breathtaking, demonic smile finally stretched across Vespera's flawless, porcelain face. The catastrophic bloodbath she had been craving since the destruction of Ashburg was finally sanctioned.
She silently stepped off the massive tree branch. Gravity seemed to completely ignore her existence as she floated down like a falling silver leaf, landing flawlessly beside Rayn without making a single sound.
"I will violently clear the East," Vespera whispered, her ancient, demonic spatial Gnosis already warping and fracturing the ambient air around her body.
"Peter, you hold the absolute North," Rayn commanded through the artifact, finalizing the battle lines. "Freddy and Victus, completely lock down the South. Do not let a single messenger escape. I will personally massacre the entire Western sector. Before the sun dares to rise over this cursed valley, every single bandit outside that central camp will violently lose their soul."
"Rayn," Vespera added, her golden eyes burning with a terrifying, unholy light. "I will collect the bodies. I will violently stack their corpses at your exact coordinates so you can extract your absolute tribute."
With the final, heaven-defying orders given, the Executioners violently scattered into the freezing night.
For the next five agonizing hours, the sprawling jungle of The Treachery was violently transformed into an absolute, apocalyptic meat grinder.
In the Southern sector, Victus and Freddy fought back-to-back, completely fueled by their bottomless hatred for the men who murdered Matthew. They were a catastrophic blender of kinetic force and fire magic. Freddy's heavy broadsword violently bifurcated charging men, completely ignoring the desperate clashing of their pathetic weapons. Victus, using sheer, brutal Tier 6 physical strength, crushed skulls and violently ripped armored limbs from sockets. By the time they stopped to catch their breath, they had violently butchered nearly 500 elite soldiers, leaving the southern mud entirely painted in blood and viscera.
In the North, Peter utilized his terrifying Merchant's Dao with the absolute efficiency of a cold-blooded accountant. He didn't even draw a blade. Golden coins, forged from hyper-condensed kinetic Gnosis, shot through the dense forest like absolute railgun slugs. They perfectly pierced the skulls of over 600 screaming bandits, violently detonating their brains before they could even cast a single defensive spell.
But the true, unadulterated cosmic horrors were unleashed in the East and West.
Vespera did not bother with elegant spatial cuts or invisible guillotines. Fully tapping into her ancient, demonic heritage, she floated entirely above the treeline. She inhaled the freezing night air, her chest glowing with terrifying silver light, and unleashed a catastrophic Spatial Dragon's Breath.
A massive, roaring wave of pure, heaven-defying silver fire violently swept through the Eastern forest. It completely ignored physical armor, burning directly through the spiritual meridians of the bandits. Over 1,000 screaming mercenaries were instantly incinerated into absolute ash, leaving behind nothing but perfectly intact, soul-dead corpses for Rayn to harvest.
In the West, Rayn was a ghost of pure, absolute violence. He did not use massive, flashy spells. He utilized the absolute pinnacle of kinetic swordsmanship. His Crimson Ice Sword violently tore through the enemy ranks in blurs of freezing red light. He aggressively severed major arteries, perfectly draining their hot blood into his iron bowls before their bodies even hit the mud.
By the time Rayn finally stopped to wipe the thick gore from his white hair, another 1,000 heavily armed men lay dead at his boots.
In exactly five hours, over 4,000 elite bandits had been violently erased from the earth. The massive, 10,000-man coalition was completely collapsing.
Rayn looked down at his spatial ring. His blood quota was completely fulfilled. But a cold, calculating thought crossed his hyper-intelligent mind.
We have flawlessly slaughtered their outer patrols and their hunting divisions, Rayn analyzed, his crimson eyes narrowing as he scanned the dark tree line. But Matthew was a veteran Phase 5 powerhouse. He possessed terrifying survival instincts. He wouldn't have been captured and butchered by these pathetic, low-tier motherfuckers. Which means... the Supreme Leader's personal Vanguard—the elite King's Battalion—is still completely untouched.
"Executioners," Rayn spoke into the artifact, his voice cutting through the static. "Accelerate the clearing. We need to completely isolate the Leader's elite team. They are the true threat holding the absolute center."
But for the next thirty minutes, the forest remained suffocatingly silent. Not a single snapping twig. Not a single footprint in the mud.
"Rayn," Victus reported, his heavy breathing echoing through the artifact. "The Southern sector is entirely empty. There is absolutely no one left to kill."
"North is completely clear," Peter echoed moments later.
Rayn slowly lowered his artifact. The outer army had entirely collapsed. The surviving forces had completely retreated behind the massive iron walls of the central camp, too terrified to step into the dark woods.
"Hold your absolute positions," Rayn ordered. "Give me exactly one minute to process our next formation."
Rayn stood completely alone in a massive, blood-soaked clearing in the West. He closed his eyes, dropping his sword to his side, pretending to meditate and recover his Gnosis. He left his back entirely exposed, projecting an aura of temporary vulnerability.
Suddenly, the ambient space directly behind Rayn's neck violently warped.
A figure seamlessly dropped its invisibility, materializing from the absolute void. A hand holding a profound, poisoned dagger violently thrust toward Rayn's cervical spine, aiming to completely sever his nervous system in a single, flawless strike.
But Rayn was already moving.
Before the dagger could even graze his skin, Rayn's left hand violently blurred backward with catastrophic kinetic speed. He bypassed the weapon entirely, aggressively clamping his blood-soaked fingers directly around the hidden assassin's physical throat.
With a terrifying surge of Tier 4 strength, Rayn violently hoisted the assassin entirely off the ground, turning around to face his attacker.
It was Peter.
Despite being violently choked, with Rayn's fingers crushing his windpipe, Peter flashed a highly impressed, arrogant smile.
"I honestly thought," the man rasped, chuckling darkly through the pain, "that you completely lacked the absolute sensory ability to find me, Rayn."
Rayn did not let go. He simply smiled back—a completely unhinged, demonic grin that made the ambient temperature in the clearing plummet to absolute zero.
"Did you honestly believe," Rayn whispered, his voice dripping with terrifying, condescending amusement, "that you could disguise yourself as a pathetic old man like Dawinton, and I wouldn't immediately figure out exactly who the fuck you are?"
The man's confident, arrogant smile violently shattered. His piercing green eyes widened in absolute, catastrophic shock. He desperately grabbed at Rayn's iron grip, his mind racing.
"You... you knew who I was?!" the man choked out. "The entire time?!"
"Of course I knew, you absolute amateur," Rayn sneered, violently slamming the man backward against the thick trunk of a redwood tree. The impact cratered the ancient bark. "The real Dawinton is entirely, undeniably dead. He died in that ice cave. My wife possesses an absolute, heaven-defying spatial sense. The exact microsecond I pulled your body out of that frozen cavern, she immediately felt that your soul signature did not match the decaying essence of a dying, fat politician. You felt completely different."
Rayn leaned in closer, his crimson eyes piercing directly into the man's soul, completely breaking down his psychological defenses.
"Furthermore, your absolute pride as a son completely betrayed you," Rayn continued, his analytical mind dissecting the man's lies like a surgeon. "When you told me the tragic, sob-story history of Ashburg, you completely refused to speak poorly of Dawinton's adopted older son. You praised him. You said he tried to save the town. No king, no matter how humble or broken, refuses to curse the subordinates who failed to protect him. Unless, of course... the person telling the story is the son."
The man rubbed his throat, his perfect disguise visibly wavering as his concentration broke. "When did I ever explicitly mention myself in that story?"
"You told me that Dawinton's elder son desperately tried to save him from the bandits," Rayn said coldly, completely dismantling the manipulation. "But the absolute truth is, you didn't come to save him at all. You were the one who killed him."
The man froze, his breath catching in his throat.
"You knew Dawinton was a sentimental, weak fool," Rayn deduced flawlessly. "You knew he was going to blindly hand the town's leadership over to Victus. And you knew Victus was a violent, short-tempered brute who would eventually betray the town and lead it to absolute ruin. So, you made the ultimate, ruthless calculation. You violently executed your own father, assumed his physical identity, and perfectly framed your little brother for the political instability to protect Ashburg's future."
Rayn slowly pointed a bloody finger directly at the center of the man's chest.
"You are an absolute sociopath, playing a game of profound chess with your own family's blood," Rayn whispered. "Hello, Mr. Magnus."
Magnus stood entirely frozen against the tree. The silence in the clearing was deafening.
Then, slowly, a genuine smile broke across his face. Magnus began to clap his hands, the slow, rhythmic sound echoing through the bloody trees.
"I am incredibly glad that a peerless genius like you was the one to finally figure me out," Magnus laughed. His voice entirely shifted, dropping the raspy, weak tone of Dawinton and adopting a smooth, incredibly arrogant, aristocratic baritone. "But I have one absolute, burning doubt, Rayn. How did you know I was specifically using a disguise Dao, and not just acting as a simple body double?"
"I knew you possessed the Actor's Dao," Rayn replied smoothly, crossing his arms. "In the Dawinton Palace, when Vespera locked you in that terrifying black cocoon to supposedly 'biologically reconstruct' you... she didn't cast a single physical spell on your body. She just created a terrifying, high-pressure light show to scare you."
Magnus's eyes widened as the realization hit him.
"You used your own shapeshifting power to violently change into 'Peter' because you were terrified of Vespera's magic," Rayn sneered. "You completely believed you had fooled us into thinking it was her spell. We played you perfectly, Magnus. You revealed your own hand."
Magnus smirked, violently shaking his head in absolute disbelief. He casually shifted the muscles in his face, effortlessly reverting back to the handsome, tanned, heavily muscled visage of Peter.
"I have been utterly outplayed," Magnus admitted, offering a deep, highly respectful bow to the Conqueror. "I am incredibly happy I chose the right person to follow, Rayn. I desperately needed an absolute monster—someone who thinks exactly like I do—to help me wipe out the surrounding towns and secure Ashburg's absolute dominance. You are exactly the Conqueror I was praying for."
Rayn let out a dark, booming laugh. It was a terrifying sound. He had finally found a subordinate who was just as ruthlessly pragmatic, manipulative, and cold-blooded as he was.
"I have one final question before we proceed," Rayn said, his crimson eyes flashing. "Why exactly did you use your healing Dao to completely restore Victus tonight instead of letting him die to The Magician?"
Magnus's green eyes instantly darkened with an absolute, terrifying killing intent.
"Because Victus is my pathetic, foolish little brother," Magnus hissed, his voice laced with venom. "I am going to give him exactly one final chance to change his arrogant ways under your supreme rule. But if he dares to betray Ashburg, or if he disobeys you... I want to be the one to violently butcher him with my own two hands."
Rayn nodded slowly, absolute approval radiating from his aura. He completely respected the twisted, sociopathic family dynamic.
"Fair enough, Magnus," Rayn decreed. "Maintain the Peter disguise for now. The troops still need to believe Dawinton was reconstructed. Now... let's go absolutely butcher this final Battalion."
Rayn brought the communication artifact directly to his lips, his voice carrying the catastrophic weight of an Emperor rendering judgment.
"Executioners," Rayn commanded, his voice echoing across the entire valley. "The outer perimeter is entirely dead. Converge immediately on the central region. The Supreme Leader and his elite King's Battalion are waiting for us. It is time to extinguish their absolute existence."