It finally stood up, at least ten times the height of Gale, maybe more once Ludwig’s eyes stopped trying to measure it like a sane person.

The Red King unfolded from its seated bulk with a slow inevitability, the kind of motion that made the battlefield feel smaller just by existing in it. Fat, massive, dense with stolen muscle and stolen life, it rose until it blotted out bodies behind it and turned the horizon into something you had to look around.

No theatrics. No victory roar. The time for performance had passed the moment it realized the feast was over. Now it was simply a living calamity finally deciding to work.

It raised a palm, too large to be a hand in the normal sense, more like a slab of flesh with fingers attached, and brought it down.

The strike didn’t land like a blow. It landed like a sentence. Undead skeletons shattered into white fragments. Red orcs that had risen under Kaiser’s banner were crushed back into pulp. A couple of Ludwig’s own frontliners, too eager, too close, too proud of their courage, were caught under the same descending weight and disappeared in a wet smear.

The shockwave that followed wasn’t air; it was impact turned into force, a ring of violence that pushed blood and dust outward and made ribs vibrate. Bone chips and grit sprayed like shrapnel. The ground itself buckled and trembled, and everything within range staggered or went down whether it wanted to or not.

The rumbling made the earth shudder so hard Ludwig felt it in his teeth. Warriors near the strike fell, rolling, scrambling for footing, blinking through the sudden haze of pulverized bone and red mist.

This was the real deal now.

Just as Ludwig was about to give the order to withdraw, just enough to regroup, to stop letting that palm harvest his line like crops, Gale shot past him like a thrown blade.

There was no warning beyond the rush of displaced air and the flash of Oathcarver’s shape. Gale moved with that same predatory economy he always had, only now it looked almost obscene against the scale of the Red King. He was an orc-shaped figure sprinting toward a mountain of flesh, and he didn’t slow down for common sense.

That wasn’t in the book for Gale. Size never mattered to him, to his blade, nor to his sword fighting style. To Gale, if it was a monster. It dies, if it had blood, it dies. If it was an enemy, it dies. It all dies, if you strike it hard enough.

Oathcarver was already out, still darkened with blood, and Gale flicked it once to clear the edge, one sharp snap that flung red droplets into the dirt, then planted a foot and launched.

He didn’t jump like a man. He jumped like a siege engine.

He landed on the shoulder of a confused red orc, using it the way a fighter used a stepping stone, then kicked off again before the creature could even process what had happened. The red orc stumbled, more startled than hurt, and Gale was already airborne a second time, angling straight for the Red King’s torso.

He hit the Red King around the stomach area, more like he struck it than landed, and his aura surged.

Blue, death-calm aura. Not flamboyant like the living. Not exhibitive like Ludwig’s Wrath. This was control made visible, a cold current that didn’t scream for attention because it didn’t need to. Gale pumped it into Oathcarver until the weapon’s edge hummed with that pale, brutal certainty, and then he swung.

The arc carved through the air and released a wave of baleful force, something that should have shattered battlements, split a fortress wall from top to foundation, and left the Red King with a crater where its gut used to be.

However, the moment that aura met the Red King’s body, it shattered like glass.

Not resisted. Not dispersed. Not absorbed.

Shattered.

Ludwig’s eyes widened despite himself. That shouldn’t happen. Aura didn’t break unless something was fundamentally wrong with the rules.

Gale’s expression tightened too, the surprise sharp enough to steal a heartbeat from him midair. It wasn’t fear. It was the sudden realization that the world had changed the terms without asking. For a fraction of a second, as gravity reclaimed him, Gale looked less like a weapon and more like a warrior doing the only dangerous thing a warrior could do, thinking.

While that thought still existed, the Red King moved.

It didn’t swing a weapon. It didn’t cast a spell. It didn’t even bother turning fully.

It simply flung the back of its left hand.

The motion was casual in the way gods were casual when they crushed ants.

Gale saw it coming. He understood instantly that dodging wasn’t happening in mid-drop, not with the air itself feeling heavy around that thing. He forced Oathcarver up, not edge-first but flat, bracing like a shield.

"Curses, this will hurt."

The backhand hit.

The impact was so clean it felt disrespectful. Oathcarver absorbed the first fraction of it, and even that fraction made the weapon scream in Gale’s hands. Then the rest of the force hit Gale and turned him into a projectile. He went flying, no tumble, no controlled retreat, just launched, a comet of armor and blood and blue aura dragged into a long arc that ended at the tree line with a violent crash. Branches snapped. Dirt exploded. Bodies near the landing point flinched away like they’d been struck by the wind of a disaster.

One swat.

And one swat made the strongest warrior under Ludwig feel like a fly.

Ludwig’s attention snagged on Gale’s slumped form in the distance so hard it almost became panic. For a second, the thought of losing Gale, here, now, to a law of reality Ludwig hadn’t anticipated, hit like ice.

Then Gale moved.

Call it spite. Call it anger. Call it the kind of stubbornness that kept kings alive long after they should have died.

Gale stood up.

One arm was misaligned, hanging wrong at the joint. One leg was twisted past what looked natural for any living thing, and his chest was a map of bruising already blooming dark under his green skin. Orcish blood ran from his nose and mouth in thick, ugly streaks. He spat once, and the spit was red.

Several goblins rushed him immediately, shoving something into his hands, potions, bandages, anything they had, their small bodies frantic and fast like mice trying to patch a wounded lion.

Ludwig turned back toward the Red King.

The thing stood there amid crushed bone and scattered bodies, unconcerned, already lifting its arm again as if the battlefield was merely a surface to wipe clean. If it could do that to Gale without effort, then it could grind this entire place into nothing. The safe lands, the mountain, the tree line, all of it would become debris under those hands.

"Ludwig! The law of this palace denies the ability to kill another king by anyone less worthy!"

The words hit Ludwig in the middle of his assessment like someone throwing a rock into his skull.

"English!"

"What?" Kaiser asked, confused.

"Speak words I can understand god damn it!"

"Only a King can kill a King!"

"Shit..."

It clicked into place in the worst way possible. Ludwig had known the phrase. He’d heard it. He’d even accepted it as an annoying rule. But he’d still assumed the others could at least assist, wound, cripple, slow, carve away protection. He’d assumed kingship was the right to finish the kill, not a divine lock that turned everyone else’s strength into foam.

A one-on-one.

Against that.

He drew a breath that felt too deep for his ribs, and with it came heat, Wrath crawling upward like a tide.

"Didn’t want to resort to this..."

He inhaled again, longer, and the thoughts came with it: violence, carnage, the simple relief of not having to choose finesse anymore. The Heart of Wrath didn’t whisper in this body. It shouted. It begged. It ordered.

"Kaiser... I’m going sicko mode... get everyone away. It’s gonna get real ugly, reeeeal fast..."

"I can already sense it. Everyone, mass retreat!" Kaiser howled.

The order wasn’t meant for his undead, those were expendable, and Kaiser knew it. Skeletons didn’t need morale.

Skeletons didn’t need self-preservation. They could still clog lanes, still chew up red orcs, still buy seconds. The living allies, though, the orcs and ogres and goblins and lizardmen who actually mattered, those had to move, or Ludwig would become a disaster with a friendly-fire problem.

Red energy began gathering around Ludwig, thickening the air near him. It wasn’t aura so much as intent given weight, the kind of pressure that made lungs want to breathe faster. His forehead felt like it was boiling from the inside, and then two large horns of pure crystalline erupted upward, jagged and bright like rubies pulled straight out of a wound.

Durandal answered too.

From his right hand, where the sword was held, a shockwave snapped outward, not an explosion, but a reshaping. The shard itself remained the same impossible core, but crystalline growth crawled along it, forming a heavier, more honest silhouette. The weapon stretched into a massive scimitar, broad and cruel, the size of a man, its presence making the world feel slightly offended. Durandal’s real form had come to see the world once more, different shape, same arrogance.

Ludwig took a third long breath, and the battlefield seemed to pause around that inhale, as if even the Red King noticed the shift.

"Let’s see now... how does it feel? For you who had hoped..."