Seeing Morzan here shocked Ethan to the core. Until now, he had only suspected what this vision truly was, fragments stitched together from intuition and half-remembered clues. But the moment Morzan appeared on the battlefield, the truth settled heavily in his chest. This was it. The great war of the Divine Realm, not a metaphor, not a legend, but history unfolding in blood and ruin before his eyes.

Morzan did not arrive alone. A group followed close behind him, fighters who were clearly far stronger than the average resistance soldier yet still a step below the terrifying lone powerhouses Ethan had seen earlier. There were several hundred of them, a respectable force, though still laughably small compared to the endless dark purple-black army stretching across the battlefield.

Yet they moved with terrifying cohesion, like a blade forged for a single purpose. Wherever they struck, enemy lines collapsed. Morzan led from the front, a blunt force of destruction, while just behind him an unremarkable man unleashed talismans at an absurd pace, ordinary yellow scrolls flicked out one after another. Each talisman landed with lethal precision, and every black-armored soldier it touched disintegrated into dust.

Morzan himself wielded no visible weapon, no radiant spells or divine artifacts. He fought with his fists alone, charging headlong into the enemy like a madman, smashing through armor and bodies with sheer physical force. Watching him, Ethan could not help but frown. He remembered Morzan’s fury back when Ethan’s avatar had gone rogue, how Morzan had insisted, almost stubbornly, that he was meant to be a mage. And yet here he was, fighting like a pure warrior, every motion brutal and direct.

Ethan waited for the enemy’s response, expecting a counter-force to crash into Morzan’s group and halt their advance. It never came. Instead, Morzan’s team swept across the battlefield with frightening efficiency, reinforcing collapsing fronts, rescuing embattled squads, and steadily turning the tide. The resistance fighters, who had been retreating nonstop, finally rallied behind them. What began as a desperate withdrawal transformed into a powerful breakout as they punched through enemy lines and fled at full speed.

Under Morzan’s leadership, everything moved quickly. They tore open a massive gap in the black-armored formation, and for the first time since the battle began, escape seemed possible. Even Morzan’s expression relaxed slightly, the tension easing from his brow as the resistance fighters surged ahead.

Then the formation shifted. Morzan and his hundred-plus fighters fell back, taking up the rear to block pursuit while the main force fled in a single direction. They fought while retreating, deliberately slowing themselves to buy time. To anyone on the ground, it would have looked routine, almost easy, like a textbook maneuver executed flawlessly under pressure.

But Ethan, watching from above, saw what none of them could. The black-armored army continued attacking, but something was wrong. Behind the front lines, units were subtly repositioning, flowing like water around rocks. Morzan’s group did not notice. Step by step, they were being guided, nudged away from their intended escape route without realizing it.

By the time Morzan’s group attempted to speed up their retreat, the resistance fighters were long gone. That was when panic finally surfaced. The talisman-user’s face drained of color as he shouted urgently at Morzan. Whatever confidence Morzan had moments before shattered, replaced by raw alarm that spread instantly through the remaining fighters.

Ethan could hear the clash of steel and the screams of the dying, but their voices did not reach him. He watched as they crossed into a gray, desolate wasteland, as if an invisible wall separated this place from the battlefield behind them. The world there looked dead, drained of color and vitality.

They regrouped quickly, deciding to fight their way back out. That was when the black-armored troops suddenly parted, opening a path for something far worse.

Ethan’s earlier fear proved correct. A new force emerged, roughly equal in number to Morzan’s remaining fighters. The moment they saw them, despair flickered across Morzan’s side, but Morzan clenched his teeth and gave the order to charge.

This time, he did not lead from the front. Instead, he pulled out a radiant staff, its surface glowing with a soft, jade-colored light. The glow spread outward, coating everyone nearby in a thin, translucent film. Their auras surged, doubling in strength almost instantly. At the same time, Morzan’s own aura plummeted, the cost of the technique obvious even to Ethan.

The two forces collided head-on. At first, Morzan’s side dominated, tearing through the enemy with overwhelming power. But with every step forward, their momentum slowed, like an arrow losing speed mid-flight. The enemy matched them in individual strength and outnumbered them just enough to matter. Even with the buff, Morzan’s group was gradually swallowed by the tide.

Their advance ground to a halt. Then they stopped entirely. Surrounded on all sides, they fought desperately, but the enemy showed no fear of death. Casualties began to mount on Morzan’s side, and the jade film protecting them flickered and dimmed.

Morzan activated the buff again, then slapped the gourd at his waist. A spray of liquid burst forth, each drop unerringly finding its target. Alcohol. Everyone drank, and their auras surged once more, faces flushing as if seized by bloodlust, their strength multiplying unnaturally.

The battle raged on, but the enemy kept coming, endless and relentless, as though every one they killed simply became two more. They could not hold forever.

Morzan used the buff again and again, but it was like drinking seawater. Each use only hastened his collapse. Soon he was so weak that someone had to support him just to keep him standing. The talisman-user ran out of scrolls and began drawing symbols directly in the air, his fingers tracing glowing lines that shot forward as deadly but weaker talismans. He kept shouting at Morzan, his voice frantic.

At last, Morzan’s expression changed. He exhaled slowly, as if coming to terms with an unavoidable truth, and gave a final order. Two-thirds of his people were already dead. The survivors’ faces darkened, but no one argued. They turned and retreated, not forward, but back the way they had come, toward the gray wasteland. It was the only direction without enemies.

The enemy pressed harder as they fled. When they reached the edge of the gray, nothing lay ahead of them but featureless emptiness, while death closed in from behind. Everyone slowed, hesitation gripping them. Morzan shook off the person supporting him and stepped forward alone.

The moment he entered the gray, his body convulsed. Gray spots bloomed across his skin, spreading rapidly as his face twisted in agony. Still, he did not stop. He turned back once and nodded firmly, his resolve unmistakable.

Ethan noticed something unsettling. Morzan was not walking, yet he was moving, as if standing on an invisible conveyor belt pulling him deeper into the wasteland. The others hesitated only briefly. With the enemy at their backs, staying meant certain death. The talisman-user went next, followed by the rest, all gritting their teeth as they stepped into the gray and were carried along by the same unseen force. 𝕗𝕣𝐞𝐞𝘄𝐞𝚋𝚗𝗼𝘃𝗲𝗹.𝚌𝕠𝚖

The black-armored pursuers stopped at the edge. A few failed to halt in time and stumbled forward. The result was immediate and horrifying. Their hair rotted away first, then their skin peeled off layer by layer, followed by flesh, until only gray skeletons remained, organs briefly visible before they too decayed into powder. Moments later, nothing remained but scattered ash, each pile frozen in the posture of someone desperately trying to escape.

Only then did Ethan fully understand. The gray wasteland was not merely an energy field but decay itself, a Law made manifest. Nothing else could reduce powerful fighters to ash so quickly, crushing bone and scattering dust as if they had never existed.

He also understood the agony Morzan and his people were enduring, and just how strong they truly were. Their combat power had been roughly equal to the enemy’s, but their resistance to decay was on an entirely different level. Even the weakest among them bore only a few gray spots.

They had been driven into a dead end, trapped by design. They could not go back unless the enemy retreated, and the enemy had no reason to do so. Herding them here had been the plan from the beginning. The gray wasteland stretched tens of thousands of miles, and while there might have been other exits, Ethan realized with a sinking feeling that Morzan’s group had already considered that possibility. They had chosen not to move.

Instead, they allowed the pulling force to carry them deeper. One by one, they sat cross-legged, bodies faintly glowing as they fought the decay with everything they had. Ethan did not fully understand the rules of this place, but he sensed the truth. Once you entered the gray, leaving was impossible. Resisting the pull only hastened the end.

Time passed, though how much Ethan could not tell. The talisman-user began working on something intricate and precise. As more people succumbed to decay, their bodies rotted away, but their souls did not disperse. Instead, they flowed calmly into the array tokens the talisman-user was crafting, as if this had been planned long in advance.

Morzan watched it all, grief etched deeply into his face, yet he did not stop it. More time passed. Black spots spread across his body, and fewer than half of his people remained.

Finally, the talisman-user completed his work. He pressed his fingers together in a seal, and a milky-white light spread outward, pushing back the gray decay. The remaining thirty or forty survivors gathered within the protected area, hope flickering faintly in their exhausted eyes. Several more tokens were thrown out, and a light gate opened. Teleportation.

Then, unexpectedly, they began to argue.

Morzan was furious, his anger explosive, and suddenly they attacked him. Ethan initially thought they were fighting over who would get to leave, and outrage flared in his chest on Morzan’s behalf. But they subdued him quickly. From the movement of their lips, Ethan could see Morzan cursing them viciously, yet they only grinned in response.

One by one, they pulled out objects and shoved them into Morzan’s arms. The talisman-user produced a book and pressed it against him as well. Morzan’s eyes went unfocused, tears glistening as realization finally dawned.

And then, in a moment Ethan could scarcely believe, they threw Morzan into the light gate.