Chương 212: The Shadow Massacre

The square of Seiron transformed in a matter of counted seconds from a stage prepared in advance for a false coronation into a true and bloody battlefield. Yet paradoxically, it was a battle entirely from one side. The return of Lord Marcus Williams was not merely the return of a seasoned military commander leading his army to victory, it was the embodiment of a brutal natural force that had long been absent from the western region, now returned to impose its terrifying equilibrium.

Marcus stood firm at the center of the square. His golden "Sun Lion" armor reflected the faint midday sunlight on one side and the towering blue flames surrounding his son Dex atop the tower on the other, bestowing upon him the appearance of a legendary war god descended to discipline mortal men.

His SS+ rank aura was so heavy and dense that the solid granite paving had begun to crack and grind beneath his feet from the mere fact of his standing there without taking a single step, and the air around him rippled and refracted optically as though floating above the surface of a boiling volcano.

The Shadow Organization's mercenaries, who had been raised to strip themselves of emotions, and who were known throughout the entire Empire for their absolute cold nerves and merciless cruelty, now found themselves, for the first time in their dark lives, trembling like autumn leaves in the path of a storm. Even those battle-hardened killers who had slaughtered dozens in cold blood felt the primal survival instinct screaming and thundering in their minds like alarm sirens: Flee! Hide! Death is here!

But Marcus granted them neither the luxury of flight nor even the luxury of thinking about a withdrawal plan.

"You have polluted my pure city with your putrid breath," said Marcus in a quiet, measured voice that nonetheless pierced the sound barriers and reached the deepest recess of every mercenary's eardrum in the square.

"And now, your punishment is to clean it with your corrupt blood." Marcus raised his great sword "Mountain Cleaver" with his right hand alone. The sword, which has a blade as wide as a tree trunk and a weight that shatters rock, appeared in his formidable grip like a light olive branch.

Liquid golden mana flowed from Marcus's heart, traversed his enhanced vein network, cascaded like a waterfall down his arm, and enveloped the sword's blade in a blazing, pure, and intensely concentrated glow, so intense that the soldiers in the front ranks were forced to cover their eyes with their arms to avoid immediate blindness.

Marcus adopted the classic attack posture taught to knights, but with a divine application: his left foot stepping slightly forward to anchor his balance in the ground, the broad muscles of his back tensing and contracting like the strings of a siege bow drawn to its maximum capacity. [Royal Sword Art: Horizon Cleaver] Marcus swung the sword horizontally in a single, fluid, deceptively simple motion.

This was not merely a sword stroke cutting through air, he launched from the blade a massive crescent wave composed entirely of densely compressed golden energy, compressed to a terrifying intensity. The wave launched at a speed exceeding sound, extending and widening to cover nearly the entire breadth of the square. No sound of metal meeting metal was heard, instead a sickening tearing sound rang out.

The golden wave cut through the air, split the ground creating a deep trench, and cleaved the front ranks of the mercenaries like a scythe harvesting ripe wheat. The multi-layered magical shields, the defensive barriers formed by the Organization's mages, and even the weapons and armor crafted from reinforced magical steel, all split into two equal halves in a fleeting flash, as though they were thin paper facing a blazing razor blade.

Twenty, thirty, fifty elite mercenaries, fell in a fraction of a second in complete silence. They did not scream because the wave was faster than the pain signals traveling through their nervous systems. The upper halves of their bodies slid off the lower halves with terrifying surgical precision, and fountains of blood erupted to stain the white marble a deep crimson.

Behind these torn ranks, the golden wave continued its course to collide with what remained of Sylvester's colossal statue, the upper half of the statue splitting from the base at an oblique angle and sliding slowly in a majestic collapse to shatter on the ground with an enormous boom: a symbol of the tyrant's completed fall. Amid this surreal destruction, Viper, the Organization's commander, rose from among the remaining rubble of the statue.

His appearance was wretched: his face, covered in leather wrappings, was now smeared with dust and black blood, his two red eyes burning with a mad mixture of rage at his trampled dignity and pure terror of extinction. As a rank S fighter, he had managed by his instinct to dodge the direct center of the blow by a miracle, but his pride as one of the lords of darkness had shattered completely.

"Marcus!" Viper screamed with hysteria, his voice emerging like the hissing of a massive dying serpent.

"Do you truly believe one spectacular single strike will end the Shadow Organization? We are like the legendary Hydra in the darkness, cut off one head and two grow in its place!" If you discover this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation. Viper seized his massive scythe, warped from the effect of the first blow, and began greedily pumping every last drop of remaining mana into it, draining even his Life Force.

The scythe blazed with a dark, toxic, nauseating green light, emitting the smell of rotting flesh.

"I will show you now the true power of the poison! The poison that brought down heroes and killed even dragons in ages past!" Viper launched forward, crossing the corpses of his men, accelerating at an unimaginable speed toward Marcus, leaving behind a trailing cloud of toxic green gas that dissolved the floor tiles.

He leaped into the air like a wounded black panther, directing the poison-dripping scythe blade directly at the unarmored section of Marcus's neck, intending to separate his head in a desperate and suicidal assault. Everyone in the square, and even Croft on the balcony, expected Marcus to evade this lethal strike, or at the very least deflect it with his wide sword blade. But Marcus did what no human being or demon would conceive of.

Marcus suddenly released the hilt of his sword, leaving it standing driven into the ground beside him. Then, with glacial coldness, he raised his completely bare left hand, entirely devoid of any defensive gauntlet. And with a speed of strike that the human eye could not match, he extended his hand upward, and seized the blade of the poison-saturated scythe charged with rank S mana, with his bare hand!

Viper stopped abruptly in midair, suspended from his weapon as though he had slammed into a wall of invisible steel. Every particle of his kinetic momentum dissolved in a single instant. His eyes widened behind the wrappings in a terrifying stupor, and his mind nearly ceased functioning.

"Impossible! This blade is coated with concentrated Dragon Cobra Poison! It is a liquid that dissolves flesh, bone, and corrupts mana within counted seconds!" Marcus looked with lethal calm at the sharp blade gripped in his left hand.

The green poison was bubbling and hissing, attempting to penetrate his skin and destroy his cells, but Marcus's golden aura was concentrating around his palm, forming a magical insulating layer of extreme density, harder than diamond, to such a degree that the droplets of lethal poison were evaporating before they could even touch his skin's pores.

"Poison?" Marcus said with profound contempt, and a gaze entirely devoid of any regard for Viper.

"In my youth, I fought creatures of the Disaster classification in the depths of the frozen northern borders, creatures whose lateral spitting alone was sufficient to dissolve mountains of solid granite. This diluted liquid you call 'poison' with such pride, in my estimation, it is only fit for killing household insects." Without further warning, Marcus squeezed with his bare fist around the wide metal blade.

A sharp grating sound was heard, the sound of metal groaning and weeping under immense and unbearable pressure. KRAAAAAAACK! The legendary scythe blade, the weapon that had cost the Shadow Organization a vast fortune and taken years to infuse with its poison, shattered into dozens of small metal fragments that scattered to the ground like worthless broken glass. Having lost his weapon and his point of leverage, Viper dropped to his knees before Marcus.

He looked at the hilt of his shattered weapon in his hand, then raised his trembling eyes toward the golden colossus standing before him like a tower of reckoning. For the first time in his decades-long bloody career as a cold professional killer, Viper grasped the literal and material meaning of the term "certain death."

"Who, who in hell are you?" Viper whispered in a terror that paralyzed his limbs. Marcus retrieved his sword from the ground slowly with his right hand and took one measured step forward. His immense shadow covered Viper's body entirely, swallowing him in the darkness before the end.

"We are the Williams family, Guardians of the West," Marcus answered in a deep voice whose echo rolled like warning thunder before a storm.

"And we, never forget our debts of blood."

"Wait, wait, please! We can negotiate! The Organization will pay you many times what Sylvester paid! We will forge a permanent peace treaty!" Viper attempted to plead and stumble with words, abandoning all pride.

"The door of negotiation closed entirely the moment your filthy feet trod the earth of my city and targeted my blood." Marcus raised his sword in a swift, unseen motion, and drove it directly into the center of Viper's chest, piercing the black armor, the flesh, and the bone. But he did not content himself with mere physical penetration. He pumped, through the sword's blade, a concentrated, violent, and unstable surge of SS+ rank golden mana directly inside the killer's body and his magical core.

"Inform your masters in the depths of hell," Marcus whispered in an icy tone, "that the Lion of Seiron has awoken from his sleep."

"AAAAAAAAAAAH!" Viper released a final, terrifying scream, that never completed. His enormous body exploded from the inside outward under the immense mana pressure that his vessel could not contain. His flesh and armor scattered and transformed in a fraction of a second into a dense cloud of red and black bloody mist, evaporating in the heat of the golden aura. Nothing remained of the terrifying commander, Viper, save a dark patch of ash on the shattered marble.

At the sight of their most powerful commander, the unconquerable beast, exploding like a weak water balloon, the remaining mercenaries lost what was left of their minds and their will to fight. They threw down their weapons collectively, turning to attempt flight and save their lives. But the furious masses who had reclaimed their courage, and the old Williams knights led by the aged Okon, who wiped tears of joy from his eyes, had encircled them completely like a wall of fury and retribution.

The vast square transformed from a stage of false coronation into an arena of just and terrible popular reckoning for the traitors. Cries rose everywhere, not the cries of fear and dread that Sylvester had planned, but thunderous cries of victory, cries of reclaimed dignity.

"Marcus! Lord Marcus! Dex! Dex the Heir!" Thousands chanted in one voice, their roaring voices intermingling with the sound of natural thunder that had begun to return to the gray sky, announcing to the entire world the return of the lost glory of the Williams family. Amid this triumphant chaos, Marcus stood quietly and shook the remnants of blood from his sword before returning it slowly to its scabbard.

He raised his golden head toward the partially collapsed balcony where his brother Sylvester stood trembling, then looked higher toward the clock tower where his son Dex still stood tall with his flames. Marcus smiled a slight, proud smile, and whispered in a voice carried by the wind toward the tower's peak:"The square has been cleansed, my son, the turn is yours now, to finish what you began."