No! I don't want to be a Super Necromancer!

Damien had no more words left for grief.

His voice was gone, buried beneath the weight of too many screams, too many names carved into his soul. He couldn't mourn them all.

He couldn't even remember all their faces now. Only the way they fell. The way they screamed. The way they looked to him, not for salvation, but for vengeance.

So he gave them what they asked for.

He raised the dead.

And they responded to his furious call.

For every beast that fell, another soldier clawed its way into existence. For every body broken beneath claws or flame or fang, something came back, twisted by rot, animated by death, and bound to Damien's will. They weren't elegant. They weren't clean. But they were relentless.

And they were his.

His undead stretched outward in all directions, hundreds of meters thick, an ocean of bone and smoke and hate. The air around him buzzed with mana decay.

The ground itself cracked under the weight of a thousand undead, each one fused with his powerful death energy. He had reached his maximum long ago.

[Maximum number of undead summons reached]

The system's notification was clear. Unyielding. Final.

But Damien had learned long ago that life, especially his life, was rarely as rigid as the system claimed.

Though the ceiling was marked at one thousand, he could feel it, an inefficiency in the mana distribution, a faint slackness in the web of control stretched across his mind. With careful calibration and ruthless focus, he pushed past the artificial limit, tightening every thread until it trembled like wire under tension.

One thousand two hundred fifty.

That was the true edge. Beyond it, the system pushed back with strength he could not yet overcome.

And still… it was enough.

The tide of the dead surged across the southern district like a storm of black fangs and glowing eyes.

Rotting wyverns dove from the skies, intercepting flying beasts mid-charge and dragging them down into the ruins.

Skeletal tigers barreled into the flanks of monstrous mobs, breaking formations with claw and bone.

Fractured revenants, missing limbs, eyes, jaws threw themselves into tunnels and narrow breaches, locking jaws with burrowers and acid-crawlers just long enough for Damien to arrive and finish the job.

They didn't flinch. And they never stopped.

His undead had become the vanguard, brutal, tireless, and absolute.

Their presence carved breathing room into chaos, a shifting wall of death that held the worst of the enemy at bay. Behind that wall, the surviving students and professors of Pearl Institute and War God College regrouped, reorganized, and struck with precision.

All except Damien.

He had left the safety of the undead vanguard long ago, following a radiant golden path in his mind's eye that led him to endless slaughter.

Endless and unwavering, the golden path stretched out as far as his eyes could see.

[Sovereign Stride]

Damien unleashed his highly aggressive movement technique to best pursue the endless gold.

Every footstep was perfectly placed. Every pivot landed with perfect balance. Time bent to his rhythm. Space shifted for his strikes.

And at the center of that movement was his blade.

The shortsword he had claimed at the Imperial Serpent Auction House. Forged from a forgotten alloy, bound with Damien's Time and Death energy. The first time he had drawn it, it whispered his name like it had always been waiting.

The blade's temporal edge slowed the reflexes of the beasts just long enough for death to catch up. Its necrotic hunger feasted on the last breath of everything it touched, funneling energy, clarity, and control back into him.

And the more he killed, the calmer he grew.

Then, without warning, his allies arrived.

A sonic boom cracked through the air as three white mechas from War God College dropped from the smoke-filled sky, their propulsion systems blasting debris in all directions. They landed hard, sending fractured brick and charred bone flying in waves.

Each of them bore the Shieldborn insignia, a veteran cadet unit. Their armor was scorched, their plating patched with emergency alloys, but they moved with unwavering discipline. No hesitation. No fear.

"Bloodbane!" came a shout over the comms. "Three Class-S signatures inbound!"

"I see them," Damien replied, already turning.

And then they came into view.

The first was a burning oxbeast, a lumbering mountain of molten flesh and volcanic bone. Its entire frame was layered in cracked magma plates, heat warping the air around it in shimmering waves. With every snort, it expelled gouts of fire that melted the asphalt beneath its hooves. Its eyes were pits of glowing embers, and when it charged, it moved like an avalanche with a mind.

The second was a centipede-titan, at least thirty meters long, with segmented armor that shimmered with iridescent chitin. Each segment bristled with dagger-like protrusions, and its hundred legs tore through concrete like knives through parchment. Its mandibles clacked in rhythm as it tunneled and surged, leaving ruptured craters in its wake.

The third was a mantid reaper, tall and skeletal, its limbs unnaturally long. Its twin scythe arms gleamed wet with blood, their serrated edges vibrating at a frequency that shredded energy shields on contact. Its movements were silent but fast, darting through shadow like a whisper of death.

And they attacked together.

The oxbeast charged first, snorting fire that ignited the street. The centipede circled left and vanished underground, and the mantid reaper vaulted up the ruins with uncanny speed, vanishing into the upper wreckage of a collapsed tower.

Damien surged forward on the golden path, his undead swarming at his sides in disciplined chaos. The molten oxbeast roared and swung a flaming horn the size of a car at him. He didn't meet it head-on, he ducked beneath the swing in a blur of gold light, his shortsword gleaming with coiled mana as he stabbed upward into the beast's back knee.

The blade bypassed the armor entirely, slipping through folded space and severing the joint.

The oxbeast staggered, roaring in fury. That's when three skeletal lions pounced, gnashing jaws and claws ripping open its exposed underbelly.

Above, a Shieldborn mecha ignited its jump thrusters, soared skyward, then dove like a falling star. Twin plasma lances deployed in midair and struck with surgical precision. The mecha drove both blades down through the oxbeast's skull, searing through bone and brain in one brutal impact.

The ox twitched. Then fell still.

To the left, the centipede-titan burst from beneath the pavement with a banshee screech, throwing up slabs of concrete and flame. One of the mechas barely dodged the initial eruption, shifting into reverse boost to avoid being impaled by its snapping mandibles.

Damien was already moving.

He blurred forward, his sword glowing with dense spatial energy. He slashed down in a single arc, gold light trailing behind him as he cut across six of the beast's armor segments. Purple ichor burst out, hissing as it hit the ground. The centipede screeched again, coils writhing wildly.

But it didn't die.

Not until thirty revenants burst from the ruins, half-human, half-beast monstrosities bound by necrotic threads, and threw themselves onto the titan's body. They stabbed into its exposed underbelly, ripping into weak points with bone-forged claws. It tried to thrash them off, but for every one it crushed, two more climbed aboard.

The beast collapsed in a shuddering heap.

Above, the mantid reaper descended.

It had waited. Studied. Chosen its prey.

The mantid reaper emerged from the shadows like a silent wraith, its long, serrated arm-blades drawn back, poised to strike the third mecha from behind. The pilot turned just a second too late, his shield core depleted, his energy weapons still cycling down from the last exchange. There was no time to evade. No room for defense.

But Damien had already moved.

Golden light flared, and he vanished from the street.

In the next instant, he reappeared above the mantid, suspended in midair for a single, breathless moment. His blade arced downward in a clean, vertical stroke, space warping along the edge of the slash. Time seemed to fracture briefly, slowing the world as the strike landed.

The mantid's head split open in a smooth line, ichor spilling as its body convulsed. The creature dropped in a heap, its scythe-arms twitching once, then falling still as the glow faded from its many eyes.

A heavy silence settled over the street, thick with smoke and blood.

Damien touched down beside the mechas, his blade streaked with black ichor, his breathing steady despite the chaos around him. There was no need for words. No need for orders. They all understood.

The next wave was already approaching.

Damien lifted his sword again, eyes locked forward. The golden path shimmered faintly in his mind, steady as ever, leading him onward to the deaths of his countless enemies.

No one tried to count how many he had killed. No one could.

Not when every movement felled three enemies. Not when his sword carved through bone as if it wasn't there. Not when the ground cracked beneath his footfalls, and the air warped with each swing.

He didn't command legions, he was the legion.

From the beginning, he had moved with clarity, his steps guided by the radiant path only he could see. The sovereign thread of slaughter that led him forward, always forward.

The wall had held because he stood upon it.

And as long as he remained…

It would not fall.