As Kaelum paced in tight circles like a caged predator, his thoughts mashed into pulp by the sheer absurdity of what he was witnessing, he finally snapped:
"This makes no damn sense!"
His voice cracked out, raw, stripped of its usual swagger. Shock, outrage, anxiety—everything crashed together inside him with a nakedness bordering on obscene. Normally, he was the one making other people react like that.
Beside him, Shadrex stood frozen, eyes locked somewhere between the writhing roots below and the torn horizon. For the first time in years, the seer didn’t dare peer into the future.
"This guy... he’s really an Oracle Knight like us?"
The words slipped out weakly, stripped of confidence. A confession—rare, almost sacrilegious.
His gaze flickered, as if a thought too dangerous to exist had just taken shape.
"At this point... maybe we should check if there is a Rank 18 or An Oracle Baron. On our side."
Shadrex crushed the idea the instant it formed. Even he couldn’t stomach something that absurd—a Rank 18 hiding among them? A joke. A mental escape hatch. Nothing more.
Meanwhile, Weiss stood perfectly still, her eyes hollow, frozen by the realization that her "gift" had backfired into a total disaster. Her plan was supposed to be airtight.
She had branded every soldier on the battlefield, ally and enemy alike—everyone except Jake’s loyal troops. At any moment, she could’ve seized control of both armies and forced them to tear each other apart.If Jake hadn’t been there, she would’ve just let the two sides butcher themselves to extinction.And if Jake had been the target, she could’ve isolated him instantly by stripping him of all human support.
A surgical strike. Brutal. Unstoppable.
Except Jake had wiped out the enemy army in a blink, erasing half her strategy without even realizing it.
And facing the soldiers who remained—the ones fighting for Jake—she had no idea what move was even possible anymore. Her web of influence had nothing left to cling to.
Her entire strategy depended on a predictable battlefield, on stable forces she could manipulate.
But in just a few minutes, everything had imploded.
Rebellion. Calyx’s betrayal.Anthace’s monstrous intrusion. And now, millions of warriors erupting from the white buds spreading across the land—most of them radiating a power close to that of a Saint.
In other words... close to theirs.
Weiss let out a bitter, strangled chuckle—a yellow-tinged laugh born of shock, discomfort, and utter disillusion. Everything she’d prepared had just been swept aside like a sandcastle crushed by a tidal wave.
Kaelum, meanwhile, finally responded to Shadrex’s earlier suggestion.
"What?!"
He nearly blew up, his voice cracking between fear and fury.
"That’s impossible! If someone like that existed, we’d know! And where’s our counterpart on the Lustra Plains?! Where the hell is the Game’s balance?!"
His entire worldview was collapsing.
He’d always thought he was solid—hell, maybe even superior.And now Shadrex wanted him to consider that another Player, hiding among them since the start, might be stronger than all of them, and had somehow never shown their face?
No.Even he refused to accept something that stupid.
And the worst part? The reason this terrified Kaelum so much?
Shadrex, who was smarter than him by miles, would never have suggested something that nonsensical under normal circumstances.If the Bipolar Seer—the guy who dropped verses and metaphors even in the middle of battle—was resorting to this kind of mental gymnastics to reassure himself...
Then there was only one explanation:
Even Shadrex was cracking.
And that was more terrifying than anything else.
Shadrex, of course, had no answer. Slowly regaining composure, he slid into a cold, surgical mode of analysis.
"If something impossible happens... it means we misjudged our axioms."
And that realization opened the door to something even worse.
Jake wasn’t a Rank 18. It was worse than that.
He was a Rank 17 capable of crushing a hypothetical Rank 18.
If they wanted even a sliver of a chance, they’d have to figure out Jake’s limits, revise their plan—or admit that the only realistic goal left was simply... survival.
Before Shadrex could go further, the psychic nightmare Weiss had detected at the central battlefield slammed into their minds—a torrent of raw data and terror forcing itself into their senses.
The ground in the capital cracked open— — everywhere, violently, without warning.
White roots from Anthace burst out like living pillars, growing, blooming, splitting open in an uncontrollable expansion.
For a heartbeat, this sparked hope among the survivors—especially the civilians who had never questioned their guardian tree.
That hope lasted all of five seconds.
The monsters surged out in exponential waves, using the new fissures as tunnels to overwhelm the remaining defenses.
Then, from the flowering buds, majestic silhouettes emerged—soldiers clad in pristine white plate armor, radiating the power of Saints, or at least nearing that threshold.
Except their Lumyst wasn’t radiant. It wasn’t warm. It wasn’t holy.
It was black. Corrosive. Destroying everything it touched.
The Light Warriors of the Lustra Plains, who’d felt a fleeting spark of hope, instantly blanched. Their breath hitched. Their hearts dropped straight into their guts.
One of them, a powerful grizzled Radiant Lord respected throughout the capital, froze as his eyes went wide. He recognized one of the figures emerging from a bud.
"Rengen?... Rengen?!"
His voice cracked apart.A shock so pure it felt like being struck by lightning.