It was a complete and utter mess.
Setting aside the rampaging beasts and the now disorganized Grimblades, there was a huge cloud of green over the entire battlefield.
Sylas didn’t need to think much to know what it was.
Poison.
The bouncer, or Ragnar as he would likely have to call him now, had always been a poison master as well. Sylas had learned that after their very first interaction, and it was part of the reason it had taken so long for the Basilisk King to benefit from the mammoth corpse.
Now, it seemed that he had given it everything he had. The Ravenclaws had likely taken some sort of immunity elixir, while everyone else was using a combination of Aether skin and more general anti-poison elixirs.
The added variable of the rushing beasts and the wildly fluctuating portal was not helping. That was because, from time to time, something would either be swallowed up by the portal and sent to the other side, or large objects or even people would come flying in.
Sylas stood high in a tree in the far-off distance, at least 500 meters from the first line of battle, and yet…
SHUUUU! PENG!
His claw grabbed at the air, catching a street sign before it could slice his head in two.
It was complete and utter chaos.
‘That is…’
Sylas had only just felt like he got a full handle on what was happening when the sandstorm appeared. It came from the other side and churned up into a spiraling cyclone that pierced toward the skies.
Soon, the battlefield was filled with several of these Aether-fueled cyclones.
Down below, Lucius’ expression was as dark as could be. He had yet to even see Ragnar’s face in all this time, and breaching the city walls seemed to be an impossible task.
The timer was running out, and soon they wouldn’t be able to guarantee that the Sylphs wouldn’t be involved any longer.
Even with such an advantage, things had ended up like this, while Sylas was absolutely nowhere to be seen no matter how many times he tried to contact him.
Now, the casualties were starting to pile up, and the battlefield was only becoming more chaotic.
The poison fog was the biggest problem. Ragnar obviously had an antidote, but they didn’t have an alchemy specialist capable of deducing a formula as complex as this one in just three days. And even if they did, they wouldn’t be able to mass-produce in time.
Their experts had no choice but to move in and out of the fog, and those that were too careless ended up dying within.
Between this and the fact the Ravenclaws were just trying to stall for time, the battle had been endlessly frustrating.
They couldn’t even use one of their biggest strengths—engineered weapons—because Archibald had been far more focused on city defenses instead of attacks like this one.
The more Lucius observed the battle, the more he felt that all of this was a failure on his part.
He had built a good foundation for his city, but he wasn’t nearly as flexible as he needed to be. He got tunnel vision too often, and unless he was able to pivot on a dime instead of having to take a step back every time he ran into a roadblock, he would never be able to catch up to his cousin, let alone deal with Sylas.
He was just having these thoughts when a soaring figure cut right through the air.
BANG!
The gates to Ragnar’s city practically flew from their hinges. The crossbows didn’t even have the time to react. No one could have ever expected a sudden aerial assault in a land mostly fought on the ground until now.
No one noticed Sylas flying through the air until it was far too late.
Now, he stood in the midst of the carnage, violet winds, Aether, and sand flying around him wildly as though he was the reason for the chaos.
His back stood straight and tall, his bearing relaxed. Black scales rippled across his body, and his tail only swayed a single time before he seemed to have recovered from the shock of crashing to the ground with such speed.
Then his fist began to fly.
The path behind the gates had been completely cleared by the sudden and abruptly violent opening. However, that didn’t mean that the Ravenclaws were slow to react.
He sent out one punch after another, fists of green filling the air.
It was like a continuous, rapid firing of techniques, unabashed and violent in their simple means.
One fist. One death.
Most of the Ravenclaw’s infantry weren’t Level 20 geniuses like Sunniva. Most of them struggled even to make it to Level 15. Ragnar wasn’t a very good leader to begin with, or else he would have never sided with the Sylphs.
And now they were losing their lives due to his incompetence.
It wasn’t more than a few seconds before Sylas’ appearance caused an uproar, not just from the Grimblades, but namely the Ravenclaws.
Ragnar came running out from his cottage, his eyes bloodshot and his purple spear in his hands.
He looked like he had just stepped out of the basement of a club rather than like a man who was ready for battle. However, Sylas noticed something immediately.
‘He has new tattoos.’
It was an odd observation to make until one considered the fact they were in the middle of an apocalypse. Tattoo machines wouldn’t even work without electricity. So unless Ragnar went out of his way to get someone to use a more ancient, primitive method on him…
‘Indeed. Something is off about those tattoos. No wonder he doesn’t wear armor.’
Sylas deduced everything in what felt like a brief flash. Ragnar could have never guessed that his opponent would see through him because of such a trivial matter. Who could even remember the tattoos of a person they had only seen once before?
“Support me! Do not engage with him directly.”
Ragnar dashed forward.
