On a certain planet within the Mid Sector 100...

Rattle

The entire planet burned beneath the flames of war. The skies trembled endlessly beneath the roar of artillery and exploding fleets, while the earth itself had long since cracked apart from the pressure of countless battles. Its original inhabitants were all gone, either evacuated in time before the conflict escalated beyond salvation, or slaughtered alongside their collapsing cities and shattered homes... nothing remained of civilian life anymore.

Only soldiers remained.

An immeasurable number of soldiers.

A few years earlier, the war between the Multiple Centennial Cradle Empire and the Seven Thrones Empire had reached a terrifying peak. Entire galaxies had been dragged into the conflict, countless planets destroyed or conquered, until eventually the endless frontlines were reduced to two decisive worlds.

Two planets upon which the fate of the war itself would be determined.

One of those planets had already fallen completely into the hands of Peon and his special forces. Their assault had been merciless, swift, and absolute, wiping away every trace of enemy ground presence until the world became nothing more than another banner planted beneath the authority of the Multiple Centennial Cradle Empire.

But the second planet...

The second was different.

The Seven Thrones Empire had thrown themselves at it with madness bordering on desperation. They sought to reclaim something far more valuable than territory.

Their dignity.

Their prestige.

The shattered remnants of the fear they once inspired throughout the sector.

Yet before they could complete their conquest, something strange happened.

A soul shard of Lord Human appeared.

Merely a fragment of soul carrying his will.

And with calm authority, it issued a single order.

Evacuate the planet.

What shocked everyone even more was what followed afterward.

The soldiers of the Seven Thrones Empire obeyed.

They truly obeyed.

Entire fleets withdrew. Armies retreated. Officers abandoned their hard-earned positions without resistance, as though the mere presence of Lord Human’s soul fragment carried a pressure too overwhelming to oppose.

That event became one of the greatest humiliations the Seven Thrones Empire had suffered since the war began.

And Emperor Maylam, Guardian of the Major Wind Law and ruler of the Seven Thrones Empire, did not accept that humiliation quietly.

On that very same day, he issued a series of furious commands across every battlefield under his authority.

Every retreating force from that planet was recalled.

Every army engaged in side conflicts across lesser worlds was withdrawn.

Entire fleets were redirected.

And all of them were sent toward a single destination.

Arkathion.

The colossal war that had consumed the Mid Sector for years had nearly ended with the overwhelming victory of the Multiple Centennial Cradle Empire. The moment enemy armies withdrew from countless battlefronts, those planets collapsed into the empire’s hands almost effortlessly. Some worlds surrendered immediately, others fell within days, and many more were simply abandoned by defenders too terrified to continue resisting.

The empire did not stop there.

Like an unstoppable tide, they advanced deeper and deeper into the territory of the Seven Thrones Empire, swallowing planet after planet without facing meaningful resistance.

In truth, only two major strongholds remained.

The imperial capital itself, where the mysterious ruler of the Seven Thrones Empire still hid without revealing himself to the public even now...

And here.

Planet Arkathion.

The greatest battlefield the sector had witnessed in generations.

Disturbance Disturbance

The atmosphere twisted violently.

Shockwaves continuously rolled across the heavens as massive clashes erupted in every direction.

Caesar stood atop a platform neither particularly high nor low, silently observing the battlefield spread before him.

An endless war.

A ground battle between combat emperors like himself.

Millions of them.

The horizon was completely buried beneath armies. Explosions erupted without pause, flames devoured entire battalions, and streams of energy crossed the battlefield like storms of destruction. The deafening sound of weapons, screams, collapsing fortresses, and erupting laws fused into one continuous roar capable of shaking the soul itself.

Far above them, enormous warships floated across the skies while bombarding one another relentlessly. Cannons large enough to flatten cities fired repeatedly, ripping apart shields and tearing through armored hulls as burning debris rained downward onto the battlefield below.

World Cataclysms and Nexus States fought with terrifying brutality.

Every clash between them distorted the surrounding air and shattered portions of the sky itself. Some moved like divine disasters sweeping across the battlefield, while others unleashed laws capable of erasing entire armies with a single attack.

Nobody wanted to retreat.

Nobody dared retreat.

Meanwhile, the mysterious Royal Soul Masters serving under the Multiple Centennial Cradle Empire occasionally emerged from hiding like silent specters. They would suddenly appear near a vulnerable enemy powerhouse, strike with horrifying precision, harvest lives in moments, then withdraw once more into silence to preserve their precious soul units.

Their existence alone forced countless enemies to remain tense every second of the battle.

The Seven Thrones Empire still possessed horrifying reserves of strength.

Although their armies and fleets had suffered catastrophic losses across the broader war, forcing them to condense the conflict into a single decisive battlefield, their higher-level combatants had not diminished nearly as much.

Their Nexus States and World Cataclysms still existed in terrifying numbers.

Hundreds of them tore through the heavens like living natural disasters.

Dozens of Nexus States wielding seven Minor Wind Laws descended upon the battlefield today without the slightest intention of restraint.

The skies themselves seemed to howl alongside them.

Their speed was monstrous.

Their attacks shredded battlefields apart.

Their weapons carried enough force to devastate entire fortresses with ease.

Again and again, they slammed against the advancing forces of the Multiple Centennial Cradle Empire, exhausting the empire’s own Nexus States and World Cataclysms through sheer pressure and relentless assaults.

And yet...

Even that was not enough to force the empire backward completely.

Not while Royal Soul Masters still stood behind them.

Not while monsters like Peon continued tearing through the battlefield.

And amidst all of this chaos...

Caesar stood there impossible to ignore.

His golden armor lined with black patterns reflected the surrounding flames like molten sunlight, while the black cloak hanging behind him billowed heavily beneath the violent winds of war. Upon that cloak rested the golden symbol of fire, burning brilliantly amidst the darkness surrounding him.

His eyes remained half-open.

Bored.

Almost tired.

As though this war capable of terrifying countless people meant little to him.

The dark aura radiating from his body was thick and oppressive, so heavy that soldiers from both sides instinctively avoided approaching too closely. Even allies unconsciously left space around him, as though standing near him for too long would suffocate them.

Everything about him made him appear perfectly suited for this battlefield.

A commander.

Yet at the same time...

A commander who looked as though he had absolutely no desire to remain here.

"..." Caesar slowly lifted his head.

From afar, he could see Peon beginning to massacre the right flank.

Entire formations collapsed before him.

Explosions erupted endlessly wherever he advanced.

But Caesar showed no excitement.

No satisfaction.

No urgency.

He merely continued standing there silently, staring toward that distant battlefield with rigid, unreadable expressions.

Then...

He slowly closed his eyes.

But instead of darkness...

Something else awaited him.

The battlefield still lingered within his mind.

He could still see everything unfolding before him...

But no longer through ordinary sight.

The world he perceived now had transformed into something utterly different, something stripped of color, warmth, and life itself.

A moving image of black and white.

The battlefield had become a sea of darkness ruled entirely by shadow, while every living being within it appeared as moving white threads drifting across that endless black world.

Countless threads.

Millions of them.

Some large and blazing brightly.

Others dim and fragile, flickering weakly as they struggled to survive amidst the chaos.

Within the chest of every thread burned a flame.

And inside every head shone a lamp of light.

The flame pulsed rhythmically, sometimes roaring violently during moments of fury or desperation, sometimes shrinking during fear, exhaustion, or approaching death. The lamp above, meanwhile, radiated with varying intensity, illuminating the darkness around each individual like a tiny beacon struggling against an infinite abyss.

Caesar watched silently.

Every movement.

Every clash.

Every scream.

He saw them all differently now.

When blades collided, threads trembled violently.

When bodies suffered injuries, portions of the threads frayed apart or snapped entirely.

Some lost arms.

Some lost half their form.

Some dimmed so rapidly that their flames began collapsing inward.

And yet...

The most horrifying moment always came afterward.

The instant a chest flame extinguished...

Or the lamp within the head faded away...

Everything else disappeared with it.

The thread dissolved completely.

No body.

No remains.

No identity.

Nothing.

Only black smoke.

Endless black smoke rising upward from the dead.

The smoke drifted slowly into the skies, gathering together until it formed monstrous clouds darker than the surrounding darkness itself.

And within those clouds...

Faces.

Tens of thousands of twisted, screaming faces.

Faces frozen in terror.

Faces distorted in agony.

Faces endlessly opening their mouths in silent cries that somehow still echoed throughout Caesar’s mind.

The battlefield was producing too many of them.

Far too many.

Every second, more flames died.

Every second, more smoke rose.

More faces joined the clouds.

The result was horrifying.

The battlefield itself had become buried beneath an endless black fog, a suffocating mist of death thick enough to obscure nearly everything. It spread across the world slowly and heavily, pressing against the surviving threads from every direction.

The fog affected them.

It weakened them.

The closer death approached, the more the fog wrapped itself around them like invisible hands.

Threads dimmed faster within it.

Flames weakened.

Lamps flickered unstably.

It was as though the battlefield itself had become a living grave trying to drag everyone into its depths.

And before that terrifying sight...

Before that endless sea of death and despair...

A smile finally appeared on Caesar’s face.

Then...

He began doing something that no one around him noticed.

Not his soldiers.

Not the commanders.

Not even the enemies watching him cautiously from afar.

To everyone else, Caesar merely stood there silently atop the platform, his expression unchanged, his eyes closed as though detached from the war entirely.

But he saw it clearly.

A strand of black cloud slowly seeped outward from beneath his leg.

It moved quietly beneath the platform like flowing smoke before descending toward the battlefield itself.

No aura erupted.

No terrifying pressure spread.

No one noticed a thing.

The cloud simply continued forward silently, weaving through the battlefield beneath countless feet, slipping between corpses and shattered earth until it finally reached the hottest point of combat.

There...

Where Raiden and Martin fought side by side within the front lines.

The battlefield around them was absolute chaos.

Explosions continuously erupted nearby while marshals and generals of the ground army fought desperately to halt the advance of the Multiple Centennial Cradle Empire.

Orders were being shouted constantly.

Formations shifted.

Attacks collided.

Blood filled the air.

And beneath all of it...

The black cloud arrived.

Then Caesar thought quietly within his mind:

<The Last Breath>

Hoooooo~

The cloud suddenly rose upward from beneath the soldiers’ feet.

Like a warm summer breeze brushing gently against skin.

For the briefest moment, some soldiers even appeared confused, as though they had merely felt a passing wind amidst the chaos of battle.

Then--

Bam

Bam Bam Bam

The marshals and generals of the ground army collapsed instantly.

No resistance.

No additional heartbeat.

Those issuing commands from the rear suddenly fell lifeless.

Those leading assaults with roaring momentum collapsed mid-charge.

Those defending against enemy attacks froze before crumpling dead onto the blood-soaked earth.

One after another.

Dozens.

All at once.

The scene was so sudden and unnatural that the battlefield itself momentarily descended into confusion.

"What is happening?!"

"Be careful!!"

"Enemy attack!!"

Raiden and the other commanders of the Cradle Empire army immediately retreated several steps in alarm, their eyes widening with disbelief as they scanned the surroundings frantically.

They had never witnessed anything like this before.

What happened was... Just death.

Instantaneous death.

And according to everything they knew...

Their side possessed neither a person nor an artifact capable of producing such a terrifying phenomenon.

But then Raiden noticed something.

The dead were not random.

Not a single ordinary soldier had fallen.

Not one accidental target existed among them.

Every victim had been carefully selected.

Marshals.

Generals.

Commanders.

Key figures maintaining the battlefield itself.

The realization sent chills down his spine.

"..?" Raiden’s pupils contracted slightly before he immediately turned toward Marshal Caesar.

The Flame of Death was terrifying, yes...

But it was not supposed to create something like this.

And yet, among everyone present, Caesar was still the most likely person to understand what had just happened.

Because he was the--

"Marshal!!"

Raiden suddenly shouted in horror the instant his gaze landed upon Caesar’s appearance.