Odyssey of the Renegade Sovereign

The forest path narrowed as Astrael walked onward; every step was so exhausting. His lungs burned, his body still in the recovery phase due to the poison despite Baldoc's medicine. Clawdia padded silently beside him, fur bristling, her keen ears twitching at every sound.

Then—he froze.

The broken trees, as if not two, not 10, but thousands of beasts rampaged through it and beyond it. Greenhollow City was no longer the serene little city he had first seen. It was a slaughter.

Smoke is covering the whole city. Flames flickered at the outer walls, torches and monster fire both, casting the night in a hellish glow. Blood stained the walls with both humans and the beast. Streets where beasts had already broken through. The air was filled with screams, weapons ringing against beats. Adventurers and city guards stood shoulder to shoulder, blades clashing, and arrows raining from above. Yet the beasts came unending.

Astrael's chest tightened. "So many…"

His hand gripped his sword's hilt, but his arm trembled. His vision was blurry. His body screamed at him that he had nothing left to give.

"Not now…" he muttered, crouching low as a hulking boar-beast thundered past the road ahead, snapping the trunk of a tree with its tusks. Its bloody hide shimmered in the moonlight as it barreled straight toward the walls. More followed behind, a stampede of slaughter.

Vigilant, Astrael ducked back into the underbrush, hiding, every heartbeat pounding against his chest as he forced himself not to pounce in recklessly. He needed to conserve what little he had left… even if the sight of humans being ripped apart on the walls burned into his mind.

And even if he wants to battle, he can't.

At the city's southern gate, the world was in chaos.

"Hold the line!" Captain Harwen roared, his throat raw as he swung his halberd into a lunging beast, splitting its skull in a spray of blood. His armor was painted red, not only with the enemy's blood but his men's. Around him, guards clashed desperately, their formation broken, cries of agony cutting through the noise.

"Stand your ground!" he bellowed, catching the hound with the haft of his weapon before driving the haberd upward into its skull. The beast dropped dead, but another immediately took its place.

A claw sliced across his shoulder, and a searing pain flared. He staggered but diverted, taking the monster's leg clean off. "Hold, damn you! If I can bleed, so can they!"

Around him, the men responded with ragged shouts, emboldened by his defiance. A young guard screamed as he fell to his knees, a boar-creature bearing down on him. Harwe intercepts and thrusts his halberd, cutting the beast across the belly in a spray of blood. "Up! Get up and fight! We still stand!"

For a moment, it worked. The battered line of soldiers held, men pushing with their shields, archers loosing what arrows remained. Harwen felt his chest swell with pride, but-

"They keep coming! Gods, there are too many!" one young soldier screamed, loosing another arrow before a wolf-beast leapt on him, snapping bone with its jaws.

Harwen's eyes blazed. "Fall back to the second barricade! Archers, cover them!"

"Captain!" A scout with sweat streaming down his face rushed up, clutching his chest. "The western wall is breached, monsters are pouring in there too! We're being surrounded!"

Harwen slammed his halberd into the ground, snarling. "Damn it all! We can't hold both sides…" He looked at his men—bloodied, terrified, and less than before—and his chest clenched. "We'll buy time. Evacuate as many civilians as you can. MOVE!"

As if to mock his words, the ground trembled.

ROOOOOOAAR!!!

The soldiers' courage broke as a colossal beast emerged from beyond the wall. A horned ape, its body towering higher than the walls themselves, its eyes burning with savage hunger. Its roar shook the battlements, rattling weapons in trembling hands.

Harwen tightened his grip, sweat pouring down his brow. "Steady…" he whispered, though his heart sank.

The beast struck with his massive fist. Its massive fist crashed down, scattering men like broken dolls. Harwen rolled aside, his halberd swinging in desperation. The blade met flesh, cutting shallowly across its arm—but the creature barely noticed. With a backhanded swipe, it sent Harwen flying into the shattered barricade.

"Cap—tain!" voices cried out.

Harwen coughed blood, vision blurring, the world tilting around him. He tried to push up, his arms trembling violently, but his halberd slipped from his fingers. 'Is this where it ends…? After all this…?'

The ape raised its fist for the killing blow.

But when he thought this was the end, a radiant light emerged.

A brilliance flared, holy and searing, cascading across the battlefield. Beasts shrieked as if burned, recoiling from the radiance.

Harwen's dazed eyes widened. A figure walked calmly through the chaos, each step leaving faint ripples of golden light on the blood-soaked ground. Cloaked in shabby garments, yet unmistakably radiant—like the sun itself descended.

The ape's fist came crashing down—only for the figure to raise a single hand. The earth-shattering blow stopped inches from his palm, as if striking an invisible wall. The beast howled, straining, yet could not press forward.

The man's voice, calm yet resounding, rolled through the din like thunder:

"Enough."

And in that instant, hope, sharp and blinding, surged through the soldiers' despairing hearts.

---

The battlefield was chaos incarnate, screams tangled together in the night. Yet when the radiant figure stepped fully into the light, the madness bent around him as though the world itself recognised his presence.

The massive ape snarled, its muscles bulging as it tried to crush him. But the man, unarmed, cloaked in shabby robes, did not waver. With a flick of his wrist, a shining blade manifested in his grasp, its brilliance chasing away the shadows.

The sword. Pure white, like the dawn itself.

Gasps rippled through the battered line of soldiers.

"T-that's…" one stammered, his voice trembling.

"The Church…" another whispered, awe dawning in his soot-streaked eyes.

They did not know his name, only that this was no mere adventurer. A holy knight—no, a savior—had come.

The ape roared, hurling its full weight down, but the man leapt with speed defying mortal limits. His blade sang in a single arc, carving a luminous gash across the beast's chest. Blood sprayed, steaming against the divine light, and the creature reeled back with a pained bellow.

"Push forward!" Captain Harwen rasped, staggering to his feet, clutching his bleeding shoulder. He could barely stand, but his voice rose with renewed fire. "The reinforcement from the church has arrived. Fight!"

The soldiers roared, surging with desperate strength. They hacked, thrust, sliced, each strike no longer born of despair but of hope.

The ape swung again, its massive arm crushing earth and soldier alike, but the holy warrior was already upon it. His sword cleaved through the beast's knuckles, severing fingers in a spray of gore. The ape screamed, falling to one knee as its massive frame shuddered.

And then—he raised his blade high.

The sword blazed like the sun, its radiance washing across Greenhollow's battered walls, across the terrified faces of children, across the exhausted warriors barely clinging to life. For that instant, all fear vanished.

"Sacred Slash."

The blade descended.

The heavens seemed to split as the ape's body was torn from crown to belly, collapsing into a smoking heap that shook the ground. The shockwave blew back the tide of lesser beasts, scattering them into the treeline.

The battlefield came to a standstill. Then, slowly, soldiers began to cheer. First a handful—then dozens—until the roar of gratitude and triumph drowned out the night.

Captain Harwen dropped to one knee, his head bowed, voice hoarse. "A savior… sent by the gods themselves…"

The holy knight only stood there in silence, his shabby hood shadowing his face, the radiant sword dissolving back into nothingness. He neither basked in their worship nor spoke his name.

He simply turned, eyes toward the deeper forest, where other threats still lurked.

The night stretched into a hell without end. Screams tore through the air, and every heartbeat carried the weight of death. Yet wherever Baldoc moved, the tide shifted.

He was not a man—he was a storm.

A dire wolf, taller than a carriage, lunged to rip apart a shield wall. Baldoc's sword flashed, and the wolf's head fell cleanly, rolling into the dirt before the beast's body collapsed with a heavy thud.

A horned bear charged, its roar rattling the bones of weary soldiers. Baldoc met it head-on, his blade splitting its skull as if the creature were no more than rotten timber. The divine light of his strikes blinded the enemy, each swing carrying both judgment and salvation.

The soldiers, battered and bloodied, found their breath again as they followed him. Hope—an ember they thought long extinguished—flared to life.

"Hold the line!" Captain Harwen bellowed, clutching his shield, his wounds forgotten in the wake of Baldoc's radiance. "Push them back!"

And they did. With every beast cut down by the old man's hand, the soldiers rallied harder, their strikes truer, their fear breaking apart like shadows before dawn.

A colossal wyvern screeched above, swooping down with talons gleaming. Baldoc raised his sword, the blade shining brighter than the moon, and with a single swing, he cleaved through scale and bone alike. The wyvern's corpse crashed into the field, shaking the earth, its wings shattered like glass.

"Impossible…" a soldier whispered, staring wide-eyed. "He's slaying them like… like they're nothing."

Through the blood and smoke, Baldoc never faltered. He stepped into the thickest swarms, his sword an endless arc of light, his presence forcing the beasts to recoil even as he cut them down by the dozen.

Hours bled together. Blood soaked the soil. Corpses—human and beast alike—littered the battlefield. But slowly, painfully, the tide waned.

By dawn, silence blanketed the field. The once-unending wave of beasts was no more. Only scattered stragglers remained, quickly hunted down by Greenhollow's guards and adventurers.

The rising sun painted the battlefield in crimson-gold.

The soldiers stood amidst carnage, exhausted but alive, staring at the hooded figure whose shabby clothes were drenched in blood not his own. They whispered in hushed tones, reverent and fearful alike.

"He saved us…"

"No… he delivered us…"

"A holy knight… there's no doubt."

And Baldoc only lowered his blade, its radiance fading into nothingness once more. His expression unreadable beneath the hood, he stood still while the city caught its first breath of relief.