From the dark basement exit, a group of freed adult prisoners aggressively marched out onto the steps. They had already stripped the black steel armor and weapons off the dead elite vanguard soldiers, fitting the plate over their lean frames.
"We are the youngest working generation left in these labor blocks," their leader shouted, gripping a heavy halberd. "Our ages range from one hundred to five hundred years old! The remaining thousands of elderly and children are systematically retreating to your safe subterranean bunker right now—once they are secured, they will reinforce our rear flanks!"
Gideon raised his massive silver blade high into the morning air, letting out a thunderous, beast-like roar. "LET'S GO!!! LET'S KILL THEM!!! ROARRRRR!"
To mask their tactical movement, Kairo instantly spawned five basic mud decoys. The fake clones began sprinting wildly across the lower roofs, loudly acting as though they were actively chasing and skirmishing with Gideon's platoon to throw off the palace surveillance grid. Systematically, Kairo's mapping interface guided the rebel army through the optimal alleys, completely avoiding heavy defensive artillery.
As they neared the secondary palace checkpoint, a massive brigade of regular royal forces loomed ahead.
"Hey, don't launch a direct attack yet," Gideon commanded, his hand dropping to signal his knights. "First, let's circle entirely around their flanks."
The platoon fluidly shifted, melting into the surrounding shadows to execute the trap.
TING.
[SYSTEM NOTIFICATION: NEW UTILITY UNLOCKED]
Due to successful coordination of structural rebel forces, you have been granted: High-Tier Telepathy. Range: Macro-city perimeter. Target: Selective units.
Inside the bunker, Kairo's eyes lit up. "Sweet. This makes the tactical grid incredibly easy to manipulate."
Focusing his mind through the new telepathic frequency, Kairo bypassed the static airwaves, projecting his voice directly into the minds of every regular royal soldier stationed at the upcoming checkpoint:
"Whoever among you is fundamentally against the parasitic King... sit down right now. I am going to personally make sure his entire lineage is ripped apart today. This is your only chance to survive the purge."
At the checkpoint, several corrupt, low-tier soldiers burst into arrogant, mocking laughter. "Wait, what the hell was that? Where is this joke coming from? Did you guys hear that voice in your head?"
But amidst the laughter, dozens of seasoned, battle-weary soldiers quietly looked at each other. Without a word, they lowering their spears and sat flat on the cobblestones. Moments later, their immediate allied officers and generals did the exact same thing, completely abandoning their combat stances.
The corrupt soldiers who remained standing whipped around, their faces turning red with absolute rage as they stared down at their sitting comrades. They turned to their commanding General. "Sir! Look at these cowards! Let's kill these sitting traitors right now!"
The sitting General slowly looked up, his eyes cold as ice. "Yeah... you're entirely right. Traitors deserve absolute death."
FLASH.
With a swift, blinding horizontal motion, the sitting General swung his blade from the ground. The heads of the corrupt soldiers were cleanly ripped from their shoulders before they could even register the swing, their bodies collapsing into the dirt.
The General stood up, wiping the blade coldly. "The ones who were the true betrayers of this land... were none other than you. Because of your compliance, our children died."
On cue, Kairo's mud clone signaled from the alleyway, fluidly guiding Gideon's elite knights and the heavily armored prisoners straight into the checkpoint. The two factions seamlessly merged into a singular, devastating rebel vanguard. Clad in the stolen armor of the empire's fallen elites, they braced their shields, ready to launch an unmitigated, apocalyptic war against the King and his broken, parasitic government
A crushing, suffocating stillness fell over the capital checkpoint. Far across the fractured rooftops, perched atop a shattered marble spire, a dark silhouette watched the advancing rebel vanguard.
Kairo's mud clone, Leonhart, and General Gideon all froze simultaneously, their spatial tracking channels violently spiking as their eyes locked onto the distant shadow.
"So... you truly think you've won just because you slaughtered a few thousand expendable civilians?"
The voice didn't travel through the air. It materialized from directly behind their necks.
Everyone whipped around on raw, panicked instinct, weapons drawn, checking their blind spots. The dark figure was suddenly standing right there in the center of their perimeter, entirely bypassing their sensory grids.
"Yeah, I willingly allowed you to kill them," the figure whispered, his voice smooth, deep, and dripping with absolute malice. "Because that is exactly what I wanted you to do. To be completely honest, I was getting entirely tired of the overpopulation in this sector anyway."
Without a millisecond of hesitation, Kairo's advanced mud clone slammed its palms together, erupting a mass of high-density mud magic from the cobblestones. The clay violently surged upward, locking the dark figure into a reinforced, suffocating earthen prison.
"Hmm... interesting utility magic I see," the figure muttered calmly from within the crushing sediment.
Kairo's clone stepped forward, aggressively ripping away the dark, tattered hood concealing the figure's face.
Gideon's jaw dropped, his silver broadsword violently trembling in his grip. "No way... It can't be. He is the King of this land... but how the hell did he turn so young?!"
CRACK.
With a display of pure, unadulterated brute strength, the man flexed his torso, instantly shattering the reinforced mud prison into absolute dust.
As the debris cleared, the sheer, overwhelming masculinity of his form paralyzed the surrounding soldiers. The frail, 900-year-old monarch was completely gone. In his place stood a man in his absolute biological prime. His physical frame was towering and intensely muscular, his broad chest lightly covered in dark hair, sloping down to wide, powerful shoulders. His sharp, angular jawline and thick neck represented absolute dominance, his face looking entirely majestic and flawlessly handsome. A radiant, golden divine aura pulsed visibly across his entire body, highlighting a shredded, hyper-defined midsection with an impossibly low level of body fat.
The King ran a hand through his dark hair, a mocking, flawless smile cutting across his face. "So... did my prime self just completely break your pathetic little egos, huh?"
Kairo's clone narrowed its eyes, his analytical mind scanning the terrifying energy readings. "Wait a second... did you already know I was going to systematically execute your daughter? If you already knew about all of my macro-movements... why did you let it happen?"
The King threw his head back, laughing like a complete maniac. "Yeah! I knew every single detail! I allowed her to die because she was a necessary sacrifice for my new God! He is the one who granted me this flawless, eternal youth! You idiots are nothing but microscopic ants trying to defy a cosmic entity. My God specifically commanded me to harvest these children. And oh, by the way, Kairo..."
The King leaned forward, his golden aura flaring with absolute derision.
"I saw one of your clever little mud clones rescuing those kids from the Grand Drama Hall. I watched you guiding those weak, pathetic refugees through the tunnels. But while you were feeling smug, I used my advanced high-tier Illusion Magic on one of your primary clone nodes. You blindly believe you successfully rescued them and sent them outside the capital—but my new powers have planted an absolute, unbreakable psychological suggestion into their minds. Right now, every single one of those thousands of civilians firmly believes that taking a single step outside these capital walls means immediate, inevitable death. They won't run. They are trapped in my grid."
Gideon violently fell to his knees, his hands clutching his head as his mind broke. "Wait... what? How... how could you do this to your own biological daughter?!"
"Oh, here comes the most beautiful, crazy part of her execution plan!" the King shrieked, his laughter echoing off the palace walls. "Leonhart... you were the one who cut her throat, but that was entirely her own plan. She never betrayed you or Kairo at all! Yeah, Seraphina and my other useless children willingly threw themselves directly into your path. Their pathetic subordinates? Nothing but pre-selected traitors I needed purged from my administration. But you, Kairo... your supreme, arrogant strategic mind made you the perfect weapon to kill her for me!"
Kairo's clone suddenly burst into a sharp, cold laugh. "Why didn't she just tell me directly then? Why the hell was she acting like a power-hungry tyrant who was actively betraying me? Don't make me laugh, you psycho—"
"Because," the King interrupted, his eyes flashing with a sickening delight. "She didn't want her newborn child to die."
The courtyard fell into a horrific, absolute silence.
Kairo's clone froze. "Wait... what?"
Gideon looked up from the dirt, his face completely pale. "Wait... I thought... I thought our unborn child died inside her during the initial raid?!"
"I demanded that she sacrifice her newborn infant directly to my God to seal our lineage's pact," the King sneered, casually brushing a speck of dust off his bare, shredded chest. "But she stubbornly refused. She offered her own life and her own execution as a substitute catalyst instead."
Gideon's eyes widened as the devastating puzzle pieces finally slammed together. He fell completely back onto his knees, tears streaming down his face. "That's why... that's exactly why she forced me to marry a second wife last month... because she already knew she wouldn't be allowed to stay with me..."
Kairo's clone slowly let out a cold, calculating smile. "Yeah... I actually knew she was innocent. I killed her precisely because she carried the exact same tracking curse as your other royal siblings."
Leonhart whipped his head around, his golden eyes blazing with a mixture of shock and betrayal. "What?! You knew about the child and her innocence, Kairo?! Why the hell didn't you tell me about it before I swung the blade?!"
"Because if she died while that tracking curse was still actively bound to her lineage, the newborn child she willingly chose to die for would have been auto-targeted by the King's system anyway!" Kairo snaps back, his voice dropping into an icy, realistic register. "Her sacrifice would have been an absolute waste. And let's get the metrics straight, Leonhart—she isn't some helpless 15-year-old girl. She was a 50-year-old high-tier political operator. Her husband Gideon here is over 100 years old! In the grand architecture of this world's system, you and I are nothing but newborn kids fighting a war against a 800-year-old cosmic parasite!"
The King chuckled softly, flexing his immense, masculine arms as his golden aura pulsed with a blinding, majestic light. "Well... age is nothing but a metric number, isn't it? Look at my face, boy. I am completely obliterating your beautiful, prime aesthetic even at the age of 800. Realistically speaking, isn't this form quite magnificent?"
Gideon's facial muscles violently twitched. The sorrow in his eyes instantly evaporated, replaced by a dark, apocalyptic rage that completely turned his aura from silver to a blood-red crimson.
He slowly stood up, gripping his massive silver broadsword with a force that made his iron gauntlets creak.
"I am going to kill you," Gideon whispered, his voice vibrating with a terrifying, unhinged resonance. "I am going to personally rip your majestic head completely off your shoulders. Even if I end up destroying my entire biological body in the process... you are dying today, you arrogant, self-obsessed, pathetic excuse for a King."