Chapter 841

Chapter 841

## The Colossus of the Sands

A sorcerer who had attained the pinnacle of silent incantation and internal recitation began his ritual in earnest. This was no mere muttering; his fingers danced through intricate hand seals to weave his craft. In perfect synchronization with his words, a magical construct of solid stone heaved itself from the earth, rising shoulders-first from the dirt.

Ragna observed the entire manifestation with a cold detachment before bringing Sunrise into motion. He delivered a carving strike, a diagonal arc sweeping from his upper left down toward his lower right. The steel traced a luminous crescent path, and the lithic titan caught in its wake was severed precisely along that trajectory. Heat erupted at the points of impact, fire roaring as it consumed the stone.

His blade, Sunrise, was an ancient relic of power. It was designed to dismantle magical entities as a matter of course. The broken remnants of the golem collapsed, becoming nothing more than gravel on the soil. This cycle had already played out several times. The spellcaster had birthed golem after golem; some took the form of massive brutes, while others attempted to slither like serpents to crush their foe. Naturally, these efforts were futile. Ragna’s basic strikes partitioned them all, bypassing the need to even find the golem cores.

There would be no reconstruction. Sunrise functioned as a harvester emerging from the dawn, enacting a miracle that banished the shadows and forced the darkness to retreat into the abyss. Darkness, once transformed into mere silhouette, can only persist by clinging to the periphery of the light. Ragna swung his sword through the empty air a few more times. The previous execution hadn’t met his internal standard; he felt the need for a few more practice repetitions.

“Is that all?” Ragna inquired. It felt as though the number of constructs was insufficient.

Kraiss had not sent Ragna beyond the city walls without a plan. He had specifically stationed him to defend the perimeter of the Border Guard. While the necromancer commanding the undead legions moved toward the densely populated Lockfried, the frantic mage currently facing Ragna had chosen the Border Guard as his prize. There was no complex logic behind it—no grand strategy or deep tactical forethought. These were mages, after all; they were rarely individuals gifted in the nuances of military maneuver. The reason this particular caster had arrived was remarkably mundane.

“High-quality ore.”

The man had achieved a mastery over earth and metal—or at least, that was the claim he broadcasted to the world. Much like the title “He Who Grasped a River,” he carried his own: the Overlord of Stone and Sand. It was a boastful name. He intended to harvest the minerals of this region to construct a fresh battalion. With such a force, he planned to eclipse his peers. His logic was simple: once the others were drained from clashing with the peerless talent of Esther, he would overwhelm the survivors with his rocky horde.

“They are all just scrounging for their own gain,” Esther had remarked, hitting the nail on the head. Using the intelligence gathered from her, Kraiss had completely overhauled his tactical projections. He identified those most likely to strike the city. He wasn’t merely letting the Mad Order run wild like lunatics; he was meticulous, planting observers between the settlements to monitor hostile transit. He had even coordinated with Jaxon to mobilize the Geor Dagger.

“This is bordering on a clinical obsession,” Abnaier noted. It was in that moment he realized why he could never surpass his large-eyed companion. The man was dogged. No—it had transitioned past persistence into a state of pure compulsion.

“What if they pivot to Cross Guard? If they strike there, they could bolster their ghost army significantly,” Kraiss had mused. He had effectively adopted the cities of Azpen into the territory he felt sworn to protect. As if he had spent a lifetime preparing for this crisis, he invested his entire being into the deployment of his forces.

Under the banner of the Border Guard’s standing military, there remained enough strength to challenge the mages. A contingent of Rem’s vanguard and ten elite swordsmen under Ragna’s command transitioned to Cross Guard. Simultaneously, the recovered Klemen marched out at the head of the veterans. The entire deployment formed a protective square with the Border Guard at the heart of the formation.

“The man is a total fanatic,” Abnaier whispered in awe.

Kraiss had even integrated Seiki into these maneuvers. Some of this hyper-fixation yielded results; some of it turned out to be nothing more than a pointless trek through the mud. Yet, no one contested his orders. The reasons were two-fold. First, the level of confidence the men had in Kraiss was absolute. Second—”If you cross him, Enkrid and the Order will be the ones to have a word with you.” To the soldiers who had witnessed the direct might of Rem and Audin, Kraiss appeared as a guardian spirit.

Watching Ragna’s duel from the flank, Kraiss, the refined diplomat of the salon, felt a wave of trepidation. Regardless of how well things were going, he was prone to worry. In contrast, standing right beside him was Anne—the expert alchemist and Ragna’s partner—who stood with arms crossed, completely unbothered. They were positioned against the fortifications. Since the sorcerer had manifested near the eastern wall rather than the main gates, the number of active troops in the immediate vicinity was low. Kraiss had forbidden those soldiers from engaging.

“Relax. This is all proceeding as planned,” he said, projecting the image of a flawless tactician. Some of the nearby officers drew strength from his calm demeanor. Kraiss made sure his face remained a mask of confidence so as not to infect the men with his own nerves. However, only his torso remained still.

“Stop tapping your foot. He’s got this,” Anne chided.

“It’s just a nervous habit,” Kraiss admitted. Anne’s faith in Ragna was unshakable. The warrior she knew wouldn’t fall to such mediocre sorcery. Despite this, even Anne had felt the pressure of Kraiss’s anxiety and had prepared her own contingencies. Still, having him fret right next to her was starting to grate.

“If you aren’t the one swinging the sword, then placing your trust in him is your job. You understand that, right?”

Through his time with Enkrid, Kraiss had learned to value such insights. He took Anne’s words to heart. “She’s right,” he thought. If you cannot take the field yourself, you must believe in those who do. He had played every card he held. Attempting to change the results after the dice have landed is the behavior of a cheat. “But what if that’s exactly the kind of cheating we need?” the thought lingered.

While Kraiss and Anne exchanged light barbs, Nurat watched the unfolding battle in contemplative silence. Nurat’s perception was far sharper than that of the other two. He understood exactly how lethal and refined a weapon Ragna had become.

“Is it truly wise to challenge a knight of that caliber directly?”

There was an old continental proverb: *A prepared mage kills a knight.* Nurat believed that saying needed an update. “It depends entirely on the knight you are hunting.” Within the halls of the Border Guard, Enkrid had established new benchmarks for martial prowess. If a knight was merely at the threshold level, perhaps the proverb held true.

“If they have moved past the threshold to the novice rank—no, even intermediate—”

Enkrid categorized knightly skill into four tiers: threshold, novice, intermediate, and advanced. These were broad strokes, as detailed criteria were difficult to pin down. Threshold was the subconscious manipulation of Will; novice was the application of techniques fueled by that Will. An intermediate practitioner had to master the acceleration and modulation of that Will—moving from subconscious use back to a state of heightened, conscious control.

Even at that stage, wouldn’t a knight have the instinct to bypass a mage’s setups? Results varied by personality and specialized traits, of course. Not every knight was cut from the same cloth. This was the gospel preached by Enkrid and the Order. Though he lacked the gift of prophecy, Nurat felt he could already see the grizzly end of the chanting mage in the distance.

“Esther’s assessment was correct.”

They were plagued by hubris. And the price of hubris was always steep. Even as the trio looked on, the sorcerer continued his frantic chanting. Perspiration soaked his brow and his eyes grew crimson, the capillaries bursting until the whites were lost to a bloody haze. Yet for every second he spent incanting, his creations were sliced into ribbons and discarded on the dirt.

It was a preposterous sight. Why? Because these golems lacked physical cores. He kept the engines that powered them tucked away in his own spell-world, piloting them from a safe mental distance. He had never shared this tactical secret with anyone. Yet, it was failing.

“Spell-slaying.”

In the distant past, a member of the dragonkin had once waged a war to eradicate all magic. What that creature demonstrated was the art of murdering spells—a strike that severed the very pulse of an enchantment. Was the man in front of them performing that same feat?

He was half right. Ragna had observed Enkrid’s movements and internalized them; by submitting to Esther’s grueling training, he had grasped the theory of spell-slaying. However, it wasn’t something achieved through sheer willpower or raw talent alone. One had to be able to perceive the literal geometry of a spell. It required a sensory gift different from Ragna’s natural combat instincts.

Nonetheless, he could mimic it. Ragna practiced his forms every dawn and dusk. By following Enkrid’s example, he had discovered the value of discipline. To some—especially a person like Rem—he might still seem lazy, but compared to his former self, Ragna was a man reborn. Half of his success was this newfound work ethic; the other half was the steel in his hand. The eastern reaper had become a fragment of power capable of suppressing and severing the threads of magic.

“Tempratio, Tempratio, hear my command!”

The mage, drenched in cold sweat, finalized his incantation. A blood vessel in his eye popped with a sickening sound, sending a crimson tear down his cheek, while blood began to pour from his nostrils. Offering half his mana to a planar entity hadn’t been enough; he had been forced to sacrifice a portion of his spell-world as a tithe. To a sorcerer, the spell-world is synonymous with the soul. He was essentially tearing off a piece of his spirit to feed the spell.

Ragna didn’t dwell on why the man was there. He wasn’t privy to the grand strategy Kraiss had mapped out. He didn’t care. He simply recognized that it was time to act. A subtle glow emanated from his blood-red eyes—a sign that his Will had saturated his entire physical form.

“The human consciousness is flawed. In the name of the Lord of Dreams, I decree this: you shall see only me and hear only my words.”

The sorcerer thrust out a hand. The magic he unleashed was a profound curse. He remained greedy until the very end. “If I could just bind a warrior like this to my service…” Thus, as his final gambit, he unleashed a spell of absolute allure.

Ragna set his feet and shifted his weight, raising his blade high. The point of his sword looked ready to pierce the heavens. He only needed to strike—but the blade froze. In that heartbeat, Ragna saw a vision: a woman of incomparable beauty in a gossamer dress, beckoning him forward.

In that same moment, he remembered a woman with freckles who had once jammed a vial into his mouth and forced him to swallow.

“Did you know Esther weaves charms into the captain’s gear every night?” that woman’s voice echoed. “I refuse to be second best.”

It was the voice of Anne—the woman he loved.

“Are you really going to turn your back on me?”

Anne was furious in the vision. Ragna had no desire to face her wrath. The hallucination shattered like glass. Beyond the ruins of the dream, there was no celestial beauty—only a withered, pathetic hag wrapped in a robe.

“…You broke through that?”

It was a spell the witch had cast at the cost of her own soul-world. It had failed. There were many factors at play. First, his recent encounter with the Salamander’s illusions had hardened his mind. Second, the mental fortitude of a knight functions on a different plane than that of a civilian. Third, Sunrise was an artifact that naturally repelled psychic intrusion. And fourth, he held someone in his heart.

In the future, Anne would claim his success in this moment was entirely due to her irresistible charm, and Ragna wouldn’t argue. Even though Esther knew the other three reasons were more significant, she chose to stay silent.

Ragna pulverized the remaining illusion and brought his sword down. Sunrise tore through the weaver of spells.

—

To know the foe while remaining unknown to them is the height of strategy. Kraiss, utilizing Esther’s knowledge, had dissected and studied his enemies, while they had made no such preparations. Indeed, the general consensus among the Astrail group was that Esther would hide behind the city walls. They expected a tedious siege. None of them imagined they would be ambushed on the road, isolated from their allies, or intercepted while trying to sneak into the city—only to be put to the sword.

“Penadex, this is the end of the line, isn’t it?”

The Child of the Star spoke the name aloud. The mage who had been a cornerstone of Astrail since the beginning stared at the witch who had cornered him. Had she not been cursed and bound in the form of a leopard, Esther would have long ago fallen under the control of Penadex. He possessed the power to do it. He was the mastermind who had manipulated a student into betraying their own mentor.

But even a sorcerer of his standing is not guaranteed to be a master of war. Penadex’s downfall was built on a foundation of ego and ignorance, but the catalyst was the man named Kraiss.

“A total stalemate,” Penadex realized. In a game of chess, there was no move left. He could see, off to the side, another powerful mage barely surviving a physical lashing.

“What? Speak up! I can’t hear you over the sound of an idiot who can’t even finish a sentence!”

A brute was currently dominating a mage of equal rank. It was a pathetic display. Was he truly going to go down like this? Chess is a game of logic and boundaries. If this were a game, it would be over—but mages are creatures who exist to break the laws of reality and tilt the board.