The surface capital had descended into total, unyielding chaos. The royal knights completely abandoned their military protocols. Instead of maintaining order, they began butchering the local lower-district civilians to clear the streets, even turning their blades on young children who were desperately attempting to scavenge the dropped gear of fallen soldiers.
A group of aristocratic kids, their eyes wide with manic hunger, tried to cast high-tier flame spells directly at Kairo's mud clones. But the constructs were merely hollow puppets controlled by a master tactician—the spells passed through the clay loops without affecting their core trajectory.
At one point, three clones were completely cornered near the lower market square. Kairo, channeling a massive surge of raw earth magic through the link, violently ruptured the cobblestones, liquefying the ground to bury fifty charging zealots deep within a swamp of suffocating mud. It was a pure, unmitigated slaughterhouse.
Up on the high palace balcony, the old King stood behind the marble balustrade, watching the rising smoke and the rivers of blood flowing through his streets. Instead of rage, a deep, raspy, echoing laugh tore out of his chest.
"Look at those absolute idiot commoners," the King chuckled, his wrinkled skin suddenly giving a soft, golden hum. "They honestly believe they are acquiring independent power. They don't even understand the core architecture of the blood contract."
With every civilian that perished in the madness below, a stream of refined crimson essence drifted invisibly up into the palace rafters. The King, who had been a withered, decrepit man of nearly nine hundred years old, was slowly and visibly changing. His white hair darkened into a rich slate gray; the deep wrinkles on his face smoothed out, and his hunched posture expanded into a broad, muscular frame.
Beside him, the Queen of Lust was staring at her own reflection in a massive, ornate silver mirror. Her weeping from earlier had completely vanished, replaced by an ecstatic, vapid grin as her sagging skin tightened into flawless, youthful porcelain. "No way... Look at me, dearest. I've become entirely young again. Don't I look absolutely hot?"
The King turned away from the balcony, a youthful, dangerous glint in his newly rejuvenated eyes as he strode toward her, wrapping his arm around her waist. He planted a rough, arrogant kiss on her lips. "Yeah, honey. You sure do. Let the peasants burn themselves to ash; they are nothing but fuel for our eternal lineage."
Down in the shifting tunnels, the distance between the moving bunker room and the royal palace foundations had shrunk to less than a mile.
Kairo's voice, raspy and completely strained from the internal pain, echoed through the clone running alongside Leonhart. "Leonhart... listen to me. The primary adult labor prisons are located just ahead of your current vector. We need to systematically break the locks and free them right now."
Leonhart parried a stray boulder that fell from the ceiling, his breathing steady despite his high-speed sprint. "Why the prison sector now?"
"Because every single prison guard and executioner has abandoned their posts," Kairo's clone explained, its mud face cracking slightly under the strain. "They're all actively chasing my surface decoys to claim the King's bounty. The security grid is completely empty. If we free the adult prisoners now, we can arm them with the discarded royal weapons and completely crush their rear flanks."
BOOM!
A massive explosion from a surface artillery strike ruptured the ceiling above them. A split second later, a charred, smoking mass of flesh and ruined leather armor plummeted through the fissure, slamming directly into the stone path right in front of Leonhart with a wet, sickening thud—looking exactly like a grotesque piece of oversized bird droppings on the trail.
Leonhart didn't even break his stride. He hopped cleanly over the smoking corpse, exhaling a long, sharp breath as the hot wind blew his golden hair back.
He let out a grim, slightly wild laugh, looking over at the silent mud clone pacing him step-for-step. "Yeah... you were absolutely right back at the station, Kairo. This entire adventure... it sure is incredibly weird."
The stone clock interface in the corner of the vision grid flickered to 4:20 AM.
Leonhart violently skidded to a halt as he burst through the final subterranean exit, his boots hitting the cobblestones of the upper city perimeter. He braced himself for the roaring sounds of civil war, but instead, the atmosphere hit him like a physical wall of absolute, suffocating silence.
The wind howled through empty market stalls. Lanterns flickered on deserted street corners.
"Wait a minute..." Leonhart whispered, his golden eyes scanning the eerie, dark architecture. "It's only been exactly twenty minutes since the theater trap triggered. How is this entire sector already this silent? Kairo..." He turned his head sharply toward the mud clone pacing beside him. "What the hell happened? Care to explain to me where every single civilian went?"
The mud clone's face contorted, a sharp hitch running through its clay frame as Kairo's central mind calculated the shifting variables. "Uhh... damn it. The crowd density didn't split up. They didn't scatter through the city—the macro-desire pulled them all back. They are all concentrated inside the Grand Drama Hall right now. Leonhart, follow my lead as fast as humanly possible. Be incredibly quick before my remaining deployed clones get pinned against the structural walls and liquidated. If the high-tier forces find your true coordinates, they will kill you instantly. Let me change your facial parameters real quick to mask your signature."
Leonhart shook his head, his teeth clenching as he launched himself into a full, aggressive sprint. "No. Don't touch the layout. This face was crafted by a true one god. Even if I have to fall in this sector, I will be martyed looking like a true warrior. For now, let's just head straight down the pipeline and secure the prisoners!"
The mud clone sprinted parallel to him, its voice dropping into a harsh, tight tone. "If you say so. But remember the tactical shift: there are no real prisoners left in the cells. The entire prison populace was released by the chaos, and right now, those exact criminals are actively attacking my clones to get the blessing. Let's hurry the hell up."
As Leonhart tore through the residential streets, the sheer speed of the collapse finally became a visible reality.
He looked to the left and right, his jaw tightening. The gutters were overflowing, turning the stone pathways into actual rivers of dark, thick blood. The bodies of young children crushed in the initial panics, elderly men who couldn't keep up with the stampedes, and weak, malnourished citizens lay scattered across the doorsteps like discarded refuse.
Leonhart forced his gaze straight ahead, violently slamming his emotional matrix shut to maintain absolute combat discipline. Uhhh... human desire literally kills people, he thought, his breathing rhythmic and cold. And there isn't a single thing we can do to fix their internal corruption. I need to be entirely careful here. I can't let my heart dictate my blade right now. Remove all distractions. Stay disciplined.
They crossed the high stone bridge, the optic view below showing dozens of lifeless bodies washing silently down the lake's current. Yet, from the deep center of the city, a monstrous, echoing wall of white noise—screams, breaking wood, and clashing steel—was steadily rising.
"Ok, Leonhart," the Kairo clone ordered, pointing toward a sheer vertical brick wall. "Shortcut time."
A maniacal, dangerous smile broke across Leonhart's face. "I love shortcuts."
With a powerful explosion of lower-body strength, he vaulted onto a wooden cart, launched himself upward, and grabbed the edge of a residential roof. He began executing high-speed parkour flips and clean, athletic vaults across the tightly packed rooftops, his crimson silk robes snapping in the wind.
Suddenly, a blood-stained hand shot out from a roof window, violently grabbing Leonhart's leg. A crazed, hollow-eyed citizen screeched, "Finally... I catch a piece of the power—!"
FLASH.
Without even pausing his forward momentum, Leonhart drew his blade in a blinding, horizontal arc, cleanly splitting the man's skull down the center line. "Uhh... all you managed to get was absolute death for your sins," Leonhart muttered coldly as the body slid off the shingles. "I know you will suffer in hell."
The massive dome of the Grand Drama Hall finally loomed in the distance, surrounded by a swirling vortex of dust and chaotic motion.
The Kairo clone running beside him flickered wildly. "Ok, Leonhart. I just lost seven advanced units purely to evacuate the perimeter lines of this specific corridor. Right now, there are high-density clusters of hostiles guarding the outer gates of the Grand Hall. Sprint up."
Leonhart nodded, his golden eyes locking onto the structure with absolute combat fervor. "Ok, my cute little strategist Prince, here I come!"
The mud clone reached out, slamming its clay palm directly against Leonhart's chest. The construct violently dissolved, transferring its remaining, highly concentrated emerald mana reserves straight into Leonhart's physical core.
BOOM.
The sudden surge of external mana supercharged Leonhart's muscle fibers. His travel velocity exploded, his boots tearing chunks out of the rooftops as he accelerated to a terrifying, hyper-precise speed of 90 kilometers per hour. The wind roared in his ears, blurring the surrounding buildings into streaks of gray and brown.
For ten straight minutes, he maintained the breakneck pace, completely bypassing the street-level skirmishes until he finally skidded to a heavy, dust-kicking halt on the high stone overlook directly facing the Grand Drama Hall.
The scene below froze the air in his lungs.
Thousands upon thousands of citizens were violently rushing the main marble archways of the Drama Hall like a swarm of starving locusts.
Children were being systematically crushed into the stone steps beneath the heavy boots of the rushing crowds.
Elderly people, unable to draw oxygen in the dense pack, suffocated where they stood, their bodies held upright purely by the pressure of the surrounding flesh.
Parents actively threw their own family members to the ground, using them as literal stepping stones to reach the stage where the remaining handsome clones stood.
The populace had lost all human cognitive function. They didn't even register that the people around them were dying. A few frenzied citizens managed to scratch the skin of a mud clone, screaming in manic delusion that they had successfully become immortal lords.
But their success only bred absolute, demonic jealousy in the eyes of the rest.
Right before Leonhart's eyes, the entire crowd turned into a self-consuming slaughterhouse. People began pulling iron daggers and driving them straight into the necks of their neighbors; chairs from the outer courts were brought down violently to smash open heads, and individuals were literally biting and clawing each other's throats out for the mere chance to touch a single drop of the alleged divine blood.
The marble courtyard was a mountain of fresh corpses, their cold fingers still tightly clutching the knives they had used to murder their own people. The Land of Desire had officially torn its
"Uhh... these guys are still lingering in the secondary sector," the Kairo mud clone muttered, its clay eyes tracking a heavily armed platoon of royal guards near the eastern archway. "I calculated that they would have completely cleared the arena perimeter by now to chase the northern decoys."
Without missing a tactical beat, the clone's body shuddered violently. From its mud flanks, two... then three brand-new advanced clones cleanly fractured off, their features instantly sharpening into the same handsome, high-tier illusion grid.
Suddenly, the new constructs aggressively launched themselves forward, vaulting over the piles of corpses and sprinting straight across the courtyard. They moved with absolute, professional parkour agility, deliberately acting as though they hadn't noticed the remaining audience at all. They ran at top speed in the exact opposite direction, leaving a bright trail of emerald mana sparks behind them.
"Target sighted! The Child of Prophecy is breaking for the outer walls!" a royal captain screamed, his eyes bloodshot with mad desire.
In an instant, the remaining guards and frenzied nobles abandoned the eastern gates, screaming like rabid beasts as they tore after the new decoys.
The primary mud clone stood silently behind a marble pillar, its internal clock counting down the variables. After exactly ten minutes of absolute, motionless waiting, the surrounding courtyard completely emptied out.
"The entry perimeter is structurally clear now," Kairo's clone stated, its voice echoing cleanly through the link. "Let's move, Leonhart. We need to pull the remaining uninfected civilian elements out of this sector before the main palace units collapse the zone."
Guided step-for-step by the advanced constructs, Leonhart sprinted through the dark, winding corridors beneath the Drama Hall's lower stadium layout. They rapidly approached the massive subterranean basement—the exact location of the fatal fire pit where the royal guards used to throw political dissidents and failed slaves to be consumed by the magma channels.
Reaching the edge of the dark basement drop-off, Leonhart looked down at the massive, spiraling iron staircase. Completely burning with adrenaline, he didn't even slow down. "Stairs take too long!" he roared, launching his body completely over the stone railing to skip the entire staircase structure in a single, high-risk vertical jump.
SWIPE.
Before his boots could hit the stone floor at a terminal velocity that would have shattered his knee joints, a Kairo mud clone instantly manifested from the wall, extending a dense clay arm and firmly grabbing Leonhart by the ankle mid-air, absorbing his downward kinetic momentum before lowering him safely to the ground.
The clone let out a dry, automated chuckle. "Take it incredibly easy, big boy. Breaking your ankles right now isn't part of the macro blueprint."
Leonhart quickly adjusted his luxurious crimson robes, hitting the ground in a low crouch. "Nah, I won't slow down. We're completely out of time." He rushed toward the massive, enchanted iron bulkhead blocking the lower prison block, drawing his broadsword. "Kairo! Now!"
The advanced mud clone slammed both palms flat against the stone floorboards. High-tier emerald mana erupted from his fingertips, racing through the foundational bedrock like liquid fire. The earth beneath the prison walls violently buckled and shook, using precise seismic force to cleanly snap the heavy iron deadbolts and shatter the enchanted security seals into dust.
CRASH.
The massive iron doors violently swung inward, slamming against the stone walls.
Leonhart stepped into the massive, echoing subterranean cavern, and his jaw instantly dropped in absolute, paralyzed shock.
The prison block wasn't a standard row of cells. It was a massive, subterranean amphitheater carved deep into the earth. Sitting in the damp darkness, their chains rattling as the dust cleared, were thousands upon thousands of captive people—malnourished workers, political prisoners, and civilian families who had refused to submit to the King's parasitic desire contract.
Leonhart stared at the endless sea of hollow faces, his golden eyes wide as he looked back at the single mud clone beside him. "No way... Kairo, there are way too many people down here. There are literally thousands of citizens packed into this single sector! How the hell am I supposed to rescue and coordinate an entire army of this size by myself?!"