War is Hell.

Kaden didn't know where he had heard those words before, but no statement could have been truer as he stared at the scene unfolding in front of him.

The sky cracked and flashed with fire, white flames bursting across the heavens and coloring the battlefield with an otherworldly pallor.

The battlefield itself was a vast stretch of yellow sand, but now it might as well have been called blood-sand with the sheer amount of blood spilling into it every second.

A cornucopia of Steelbeasts, their steeled flesh aflame, clashed with soldiers who seemed like monsters themselves as they tore into each other before his eyes.

The soldiers screamed with zeal, cleaving, chopping, slashing down the beasts before them, their voices drowned beneath the chaos as the sky lit with every imaginable ability, painting the landscape into a nightmare of light and ruin.

The ground was piling higher and higher with mangled corpses — torn organs, split-open stomachs, rivers of blood streaming freely across the soil.

It was impossible to take a single step without crushing an eyeball underfoot or tangling a boot in a trail of intestines.

It was madness.

And for now, neither side had the upper hand.

The air grew thick with the stench of iron and smoke, but more than that, with the suffocating reek of raw, unfettered murderous intent that seemed to choke the world itself.

Kaden was forced to stop and take it all in. The shockwaves from every impact rattled his skin and made his clothes flutter like a leaf battered by a storm wind.

No one had noticed him yet. Not him, not Daela at his side.

They used the brief reprieve to scan the battlefield, gauging, calculating where to strike first, how to tilt this slaughter into their favor.

Above, clashes tore through the sky, each strike shaking space itself until it cracked apart. White fire burned so hot the very air seemed ready to detonate, yet beside it was a black-haired man with a wide grin, his presence alone folding space like paper, keeping the flames at bay without even drawing a weapon.

Kaden finally understood the power his father held. And that was without unsheathing a blade. Once he did…

Kaden wasn't eager to find out.

"Where?" Daela's voice barely reached him through the chorus of screams and shouts all around.

The Steelbeasts were starting to notice them. A pack charged with explosive speed, feet blazing, claws extended, mouths full of knife-like teeth.

Daela raised her hands and her twin swords materialized, gleaming with cold promise. She stood ready as the beasts came on.

Kaden smiled, his blood-red eyes narrowing on a particular side of the battlefield, his blood boiling with excitement.

"I have an old friend to meet," he said, Reditha humming in his hand.

The crimson projection of Reditha streamed out behind him, her phantom form wrapping slender hands around his neck.

Daela's eyes widened in sudden awe, but before she could speak, Kaden murmured:

"Sister, I've got your back, no matter where I am."

Then he bolted forward.

Reditha flashed, and every Steelbeast near him toppled headless, bodies collapsing like strings cut from puppets.

His form blurred into streaks of red light as he zigzagged through the swarm, Reditha reaping each beast in a single stroke.

Bodies piled higher. Blood fountained in arcs all around him.

In an instant he reached the center of the battlefield and paused.

Growls closed in from every side, beasts lunging with jaws wide, soldiers shouting at him to run.

Kaden said nothing.

He only shifted into stance, eyes cold, one hand resting on Reditha's hilt.

The blade glowed crimson, then black light bled over it, merging the two into a single color — a dark, vicious red as he poured his dual Intents and Soulbrand into the weapon.

When the beasts were an inch from his throat, he exhaled. The world dropped into silence. His eyes turned serene, his focus absolute. Nothing existed but the monsters in front of him.

Then he inhaled.

Reditha slashed in a wide arc, and fountains of blood burst free from every beast.

"Crimson Echo."

The blood suspended in the air shivered, then carved its own arcs, echoing his strike and finishing the beasts instantly. Bodies collapsed in heaps around him.

He didn't hesitate. He dashed toward the side where human soldiers were being butchered like cattle.

Two Grandmasters stood there, flames pouring from their monstrous bodies — one blue, one a furious angry red.

Kaden knew one instantly. The Grandmaster who had murdered him during his rescue attempt.

The other, he did not know, but it hardly mattered. A cruel smile curled his lips as he appeared before them in a breath.

Grandmaster Laye held the still-beating heart of a soldier in his steeled fist, flames licking around it as he crushed it without flinching, his burning eyes falling on Kaden.

Beside him, Grandmaster Morre roared like a beast, his whole body burning in red flame, his gaze locking onto Kaden as well.

They saw his confident eyes and faint dimpled smirk, and their fury ignited.

"I know you don't remember me," Kaden said, voice calm. "But you soon will."

He clicked his fingers, careful not to trigger the blood of the human soldiers.

The battlefield froze for a heartbeat.

Then came the detonations.

Blood on the sand, blood in the beasts, blood in Laye and Morre themselves — all of it exploded like fire through gasoline. Corpses shredded. Flesh and armor were flung into the sky in cascades.

A shockwave ripped through the battlefield, and a dense crimson fog spread across the land.

Kaden moved through it like a phantom, Reditha slashing the two Grandmasters, drawing growls of rage and pain from their throats.

He pressed on, intent on killing two Grandmasters as nothing more than a freshly ascended Master.

At the same time, Daela faced another General — the pink-flamed Steelbeast Jeni.

She wasted no words. She struck directly.

Her kick shattered the ground as she appeared before the Steelbeast, her twin swords weaving a storm of strikes, the air hissing like strangled serpents under the weight of her blows.

The clash erupted into chaos.

And the world drowned deeper into madness.

…

Meris looked curiously at the two green-haired women near her, at her left, Lari lay on her chest, to her right, wearing an expression carved from iron.

Noticing Meris's stare, the younger of the two shifted her gaze and frowned.

"What are you looking at?" Inara scowled, displeased at Meris's scrutiny. She was not being regarded as a person but as something exotic, an odd beast beneath a glass dome.

That irritated her.

Medusa was used to the way humans gawked. Their faces were not common. After all, they did not wear tails like true snakemen, nor were they scaled all over. They looked too much like human, and that made them uncanny.

Their hair was a luxuriant green, not the calm green of forest leaves but the poisonous hue of a condensed fog. Scales glinted only in patches along their skin, reflective and emerald, eyes slit like serpents, and their clothes were carved from the furs of animals.

They were dangerously beautiful.

Inara, in particular, held a magnetism like Kaden's, attractive yet unsettling, a beauty that felt like a trap.

When Inara fixed her attention on Meris, Meris felt as if multiple eyes watched her at once. The small green scaled snake coiled about Inara's neck flicked its tongue, issuing a silent warning.

Meris only smiled, unbothered.

She did not answer right away. Instead she looked out past them and saw, far in the distance, a settlement where snakemen ran and shouted and readied themselves for the war to come.

The four of them lay hidden beneath a thick brush of green forest grass, chests pressed low to the earth, their forms concealed.

"So, ladies, how do we do this?" Meris asked, her voice mischievous and bright with appetite for what was coming.

Medusa spared her a glance, then turned her attention forward again. "My daughter has already poisoned them. Many will not fight properly."

"But there are two at Epithet Realm, two at Grandmaster, and many at Master."

"I will take the two Epithet Realm," Medusa said, her eyes burning like coils of miasma.

A scent of poison seemed to thicken the air.

She looked to her daughter. "You wanted Bety so badly, didn't you? Go. She is at Grandmaster rank."

Then she turned to Meris. "Could you help my daughter with that task?"

Meris cocked her head. "I am only intermediate rank, and you ask me to kill a Grandmaster with another intermediate?" Her tone complained, but her mouth spread into a wide grin.

Medusa smiled thinly. "I believe the Heiress of those blessed by the elements will not find much difficulty in killing a simple whore."

Meris chuckled. "Are you challenging me?"

She then turned to Lari. "You take the other Grandmaster."

Lari inclined her head with nothing on her face but seriousness. "I will kill it quickly and return to your side, my lady."

Meris waved a hand dismissively, telling her not to worry.

Inara leaned closer to Meris. "I am Inara Serpentine, Heiress of Monsters. Nice to meet you." She grinned, eyes flashing with monstrous light. "Let's fucking kill that slut in the worst way possible!"

Meris smiled, but the smile was cold and carved from ice, devoid of warmth.

"I am Meris Elamin, lover of Kaden Warborn, Heiress of the Elamin household. Nice to meet you, and…"

They mirrored each other's expression instinctively.

Cold. Murderous. Monstrous. Pitiless.

What a terrifying tableau: one the womb of monsters, the other the embodiment of winter's stillness, together poised at the mouth of blood.

"No mercy."

"No fucking mercy."

—End of Chapter 254—

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