September 13th, 628

After her feet hit the ground, Umara remained rooted. She watched the other Desert Eagles around her move with practiced direction. They had all done this dance hundreds of times and this was just another mission on the books.

Kwon and Song shot through the groups of Royals and killed them with casual ease. Their blades moved through their angled paths with skill honed over decades, their muscles long ago sculpted by their combat styles. Their blades cut through Authority 8 and 9 Royals with little resistance, their enemies still stunned or recovering from the impact of the missiles.

Ponteck was nearby, bounding across the ground with wide strides and bringing his greatsword down on anything that moved. His enemies always tried to block what looked like an obvious strike, and they had little time to realize what happened when his sword bisected them from another angle.

Shadowbane and Tana moved in the shadows of the night, the battlefield often seeing monsters or Royals collapsing without warning, new wounds opening on their necks or chests, vital organs always sliced in two.

The King Blood of Anarchy let off a deep scream that made Umara cringe. Its Aura attempted to pervade hers, but she had long become immune to such.

Feiden was the first to move and attack it. His spear moved through space, his skill at warping across distance far more adept than it had been at the Kingdom's special forces and it could cut down just about anything underneath Authority 10 with a few swings. He was too fast to react to, the momentum behind his blade always carrying strength too great to defend.

Yet Umara watched the King Blood not just block his first few attacks, but rebuff them. Feiden frowned, the recoil from his spear making his palms feel like they were going to split.

Umara stared at their battle for a few more seconds before suddenly bringing up her hand and flicking her finger. A bolt of air shot from them, piercing through and blowing up the head of an Authority 8 monster attempting to interrupt their battle.

Feiden continued, trusting that nothing would be allowed near, not that there were many monsters that dared to insert themselves into a fight a King Blood of Anarchy was involved in. That thing would kill anything in its way, including its own kin. There were always monsters stupid enough though. Umara just wanted to make sure they didn't hamper Feiden.

She watched for a few more seconds before looking around at the surrounding Royals. Finally deciding to make her move, she brought up both her hands and clasped them together. Mana moved through her body, through her veins, the conduits across her skin glowing with elemental power.

She smiled as she felt the spell take form, her Aura processing and filtering through the raw data of the world around her.

"Let's try this one on for size."

She pulled her hands apart with her words, revealing dense layers of spell formations. No longer were they flat two dimensional arrays. Like what John handled in his more recent advancement formations, the latest spells in her arsenal were three dimensional and a magnitude more complex.

What should've been impossible for her to make before she was close to breaking the Great Barrier was pulled within reach by her Aura. Warlocks, demanding not just the information of their magic's behavior but also from the world around them, always had a complexity issue. It was always a balancing act between stuffing more data points into their spell and preventing it from collapsing when they got overwhelmed by the amount. In a way, a warlock's magical prowess was determined by how much information they could handle.

Umara knew a dozen different ways to compensate for the information overload. All warlocks were taught some of these various methods from the beginning of their path. However, her Aura outright solved this issue. In fact, it solved it so well that it instead became her limiter. Before, if she hadn't been careful, her own Aura would liquify her brain with the information it pushed through it.

But now she had a Crown, one that gave her a body specifically built for handling magic. After the bottleneck was released with Unholy Light's biomagical organs, her only limiter became her knowledge and the amount of mana she had in reserve.

And that was precisely what she had been working on improving for months.

The array of magic between her hands grew as she pulled them apart. The sphere of layered formations flashed after the first second of activation, Umara's body levitating into the air and beyond the reach of the monsters below. Then more layers were added on, space cracking around her, exposing fissures of darkness and prismatic flashes of scattered light.

A few more layers were added, and then the entire sphere flashed, turning into a ball of darkness, the fissures and flashes disappearing, the spell no longer disrupting the fabric of reality.

Umara heard Jaya's voice suddenly echo from her comm system.

"Holy shit babe! Don't kill all of us with the monsters!"

"You know, only my fiancé is supposed to be calling me babe."

Umara retorted with a smirk, Jaya humming while charging up an alchemical concoction specially prepared for the King Blood.

"Sure babe, and I'm supposed to only have eyes for men. But you're too hot for that, especially with those magic hands."

"Jeez, you're sounding like John when he talks to Feiden."

"Oh but I'm dead serious, honey. Come find me back at the hardpoint and find out."

Umara rolled her eyes as Jaya laughed, opening her hands all the way.

The ball of darkness dropped from them, plummeting towards the ground.

When it was a few meters above the surface, she snapped her fingers. The ball exploded, and everyone across the battlefield felt space solidify.

Then, hundreds of fissures opened up, all of them slicing through the monsters and Royals within several hundred feet of the impact point. Every fissure split apart and then collapsed on the central mass of each being it spawned on. None opened near anything human.

It only took a split second, space loosening up once completed. That's when everyone felt like they could move normally again.

And all the monsters exploded with blood and gore in reaction, Umara lowering herself to the ground.

Jaya whistled before launching her attack at the King Blood, Feiden backed away, a small canister flying toward the King Blood.

It sliced the canister with a blade, shattering it and making it explode with its contents. Its body was coated in a tarry substance, which Jaya ignited with a flick of her fingers, mimicking Umara.

The tar ignited, the King Blood screaming and resisting with palpable Aura and Vigor. Feiden continued to attack, joined by Kwon, Song, and Aki since they were freed from slaughtering other Royals.

Umara watched their battle after stepping foot back on the ground, Jaya skipping over and stopping next to her. Umara felt a hand wrap around her arm, about to pull away before realizing it was Tana, not Jaya.

Tana shot Jaya some side eye before Umara asked the question on her mind, seeing the sticky flames burn through the King Blood's defenses.

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"What the hell was in that concoction?"

"Just some liquid Fire Crystal mixed with some adhesive substances. It was roughly Authority 9, so even the King Blood has to burn all of its power just to resist it. That combined with our attacks and the initial missile strike should be enough to bring it down rather easily."

Umara nodded with some impression. Jaya didn't have anything nearly as powerful before Iron Legion, but now she could use Elemental Crystals in her alchemy, multiplying her power output. God knew John had an island's worth of Elemental Crystals to burn, so Jaya was always given an unlimited supply of alchemical materials.

When used like this? It tempted Umara to get into alchemy. Unfortunately she had her hands full with normal spellwork, let alone some of the enchanting work she did for John on the side. She couldn't afford to dabble in a completely new field at the moment, no matter how powerful or useful it looked.

"Now for my question."

Umara glanced at Jaya, who pointed at where Umara's spell had detonated.

"What the hell was that? And how many more of those could you cast?"

"I can't really tell you either of those things."

"Alright, well maybe not the first question. But the second. There's no way you could cast more than a couple of those."

Umara just stared at Jaya, whose brows raised.

"Five of those?"

"..."

"Ten?"

"..."

Umara remained silent, a slight smile tugging at her lips.

Jaya cringed.

"You're a monster."

"Not yet I'm not."

Umara smirked and looked back at the King Blood.

She watched it release its final death throes, attempting to take somebody with it, and failing miserably. Feiden was too fast, and Aki, Song, and Kwon had all survived the downfall of their respective Kingdoms, carrying the combat experience from those times. There was no way any of them could fall for last stand tricks. Not even against a King Blood.

A totally unfair fight, Umara thought, but that's the way it should be. As John had once said: If the battle was fair, you had failed before it even started.

The King Blood died, the flames continuing to burn for a few minutes longer. When they finally ran out of fuel, the King Blood's skin was either charred or melted.

Umara sighed.

"So much for Crown material."

"Eh, most of it can still be harvested. Their corpses are as difficult to ruin as they are hard to kill."

Jaya shrugged, a few moments of silence between them before explosions suddenly echoed in their ears.

They both looked up, seeing the helicopters lowering themselves with turrets releasing repeating spellfire at the few remaining monsters nearby.

All of them were killed off before long, the battlefield eerily silent. Umara felt like she could smell the blood and fire in the air despite the witch hat filtering it all for her.

The helicopters landed, Aki looking around at everyone before nodding.

"Mission complete. Let's get back so we can grab some chow."

……

…

I glanced at the screen in my vision and my vision only, nodding when I heard Aki's declaration of mission completion.

All went well. My fiancé had an especially impressive performance. I was proud of her progress.

Unfortunately I might be calling her back from the battlefield earlier than I intended to.

My eyes went back to the person in front of me, two Pale Horsemen standing on either side of the couch she sat on. She tried not to look nervous but I was sure that everything she had seen had her spooked. I could see it clear as day in her Aura, despite her commendable poker face.

I smiled, extending my hand and letting Erhan take the decree from it.

"Seems to me like the King is being impatient, Fourth Princess. Mind telling me the reason for that?"

"It's hardly impatient, Sir Cooper. Your deadline approaches and the King is simply informing you of the promise you made back then. Iron Legion would not exist without his grace. The least you can do is fulfill your end of the deal."

"And I intended to. But half a million Crystals takes time to accumulate."

"You've killed at least as much. Are you saying that Iron Legion has failed to do so? With its allegedly monumental battle record?"

I chuckled in response, letting the Fourth Princess sit there in silence for a bit while I puffed on my cigar.

She wasn't wrong. We had in fact killed well over a million Scourge since Iron Legion's foundation. But not every Crystal was recovered, and it took time to process that which was. I had a stockpile in a secret warehouse where I was piling up the Black Crystals, but so far there were only about 400 thousand.

The rest had gone to the Church for purification, returning to us to be used in manufacturing. I had expected more time to be allowed to accumulate, more time to build wealth so I could reinvest in Sawn Industries and Iron Legion. We were fighting a war, after all. I couldn't possibly send all of our wealth to the King for quick repayment.

But now he was forcing my hand. It seemed like the Third Claw wanted some leverage, an excuse to knock me down a peg and start a takeover of Iron Legion. I had no doubt that they were a part of this. I would be a fool to believe anything otherwise.

I scanned the Fourth Princess.

37 years old, 5 feet 6 inches, 132 pounds, heart rate sitting around 105 bpm, blood pressure a bit high, not unexpected considering she was in the heart of the Glass Desert.

Authority 9, a Warlock with the Water, Fire, and Earth elements, none of which were enlightened. Hasn't seen the Great Barrier, undeveloped Aura considering her Authority, and more than likely at the end of her talent.

She wasn't yet corrupted into a Nephilim, but her husband was. Based on what I could smell and see from her, she had recently done the dirty, around four hours ago based on the report from Sector 4 I received when she arrived. I could smell blood, so whoever she had done it with wasn't very gentle. It wasn't her husband either, because he was sitting in one of the eastern Strongholds.

Normally I'd feel sorry for the guy, but he was a Nephilim so he probably liked that shit. Fucking heathens.

She had a draconic Crown around Authority 10 in power. It made her eyes red, a standard indicator of a Fire Dragon Crown, and her body coursed with mana of a density higher than she would be able to handle otherwise.

Based on the natural saturation of her body and how well the mana moved, it seemed the draconic Crowns were of a lesser efficacy compared to the Unholy Light Crown that Umara received. Probably because the Unholy Light bloodline was bred and mutated to be a living mana weapon.

Felvia Alphon, the fourth daughter of the King, was known to be one of the King's lesser emissaries. She was sent when the task was beneath her older siblings. Then again, all she was doing was delivering to me what was basically a collections notice, a nastygram telling me to hurry and pay up. There was little need to delegate such a task to the First Prince.

It backed me into a corner rather well, too. Refusal to pay would give them an excuse to march over here and insert themselves. Failure to pay the full amount would be used as ammo to paint Iron Legion as incompetent. They'd probably try to call our publicly released battle records fraudulent.

I couldn't have either of these things happen right now, so I needed to gather up half a million Crystals and deliver them to the King's doorstep. They didn't need to be purified since such magical techniques couldn't, or shouldn't, possibly be in my hands, so there was some silver lining. Still, I had to find a hundred thousand more Crystals to stockpile, all within the new deadline set by the decree in Erhan's hands.

Which was in a month. Lucky me.

I smiled at the princess.

"Alright, Fourth Princess. You win. The King will have his Crystals by the stipulated deadline."

"And failure to-"

"I won't fail, Princess."

I interrupted her. Quite a rude thing to do but she didn't complain. She knew how to sit there and take it. Had probably been doing so all her life.

"I don't fail. After all, I'm not the rest of the Kingdom's military. I happen to be good at what I do."

"...Good. I will relay this promise to the King. Now, how will you transport the Crystals? We will need to organize such a logistical task."

"Hardly. The King will receive the Crystals. That's all you need to know."

"Please, Sir Cooper, let's not be foolish. You think you can just dump the Crystals in the middle of a field and expect us to retrieve them all? Part of your promise is making sure everything is received in a verifiable manner."

I rolled my eyes, standing from my seat.

"Oh don't worry, Princess. The Crystals will be delivered. When they are, the King himself will be able to count each one by hand if he so wishes. There will be no doubts about whether the Crystals were properly delivered."

I stuck my cigar in my mouth, glancing at the Pale Horsemen in charge of escorting the Princess.

"See her out, and make sure she gets back to her drop point. We wouldn't want any unsavory parties to prevent her return to the Royal Palace. That would make us look bad."

She frowned, and I felt the anxiety in her Aura. It made me smile as I walked out, the Pale Horsemen left behind with her in the room.

I was starting to enjoy subterfuge. It was quite amusing when my enemies tried and failed to bring me down with unobvious pawns.

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