Reincarnated Lord: I can upgrade everything!

"Ah, you came."

The voice was not from the man astride the three-headed dragon, Malrath, Abyssal general without rival, but from the massive wall of gray smoke roiling behind him.

It was a woman's voice, smooth yet serrated, filled with confidence long since decayed into mad arrogance and self-exaltation.

"You had the mind to bring millions to their deaths. As always, the chivalry of knights proves itself foolish."

"So you expect us to wait then? To allow you to march into our realms, to unmake all that remains of the Creator's hand, and destroy the soil where we still exist?!" Athanatos's roar cut the air like a war horn, his gaze burning sharp as steel.

"Malrath. Take care of this pests."

The dragon beneath the general thundered a roar that split the dunes. At once the smoke belched forth an unending tide, orc warbands with crude cleavers, ogres lumbering like siege towers, goblins swarming in screeching packs, trolls stomping the ash to powder, and behind them giants, forty and fifty feet tall, each step collapsing dunes and shaking the volcanic wasteland. The horizon vanished beneath their flood.

"She wasn't merely taunting us," Zenas muttered, donning his helmet with a sigh that hummed like thunder. "She has realized her corruption fails here. She's stalling, buying time while her army arrives in full."

Lightning coursed across his frame and down Shura's white pelt. The beast's claws dug into molten stone, curved talons glowing as they discharged sparks that danced across the battlefield before cracking into the earth. By Zenas's side rode Ariel, Atticus, Torah, and Zorah, each astride their own beasts, banners snapping behind them, several hundred Ashbourne Swordsmen ready at their flanks.

"Asher Ashbourne."

From the forefront of the mortal host, Athanatos turned away from the ocean of abyssal spawn and faced him. His voice was steady, cutting through the chaos. "Do not act recklessly. Leave Saelix to me and my brothers."

Asher squinted as Athanatos's crimson skin detached from his body like molten wax peeling from iron, stretching, swelling, and rising into a faceless colossus nearly fifty feet tall. Athanatos himself stood upon its back like a general mounted upon a war-titan. With a single stride, the being, his talent given form, alive and terrible, bolted into the air and crashed down before the abyss army, crushing thirty goblins beneath its heel.

Its vast hand swept once, and dozens more were flung screaming into molten dunes, bones shattering on impact.

A black tar-like substance surged across Aniketos's body, hardening into armour that bristled with spikes, a horned helm crowning his brow.

Each step carried him forward with hypersonic speed, the earth fracturing beneath his charge, shards of magma flung aside like shrapnel.

He did not swing a blade, he collided. The impact was apocalyptic, a comet strike that turned nearly two hundred abyss soldiers into a mist of blood and bone paste.

Ilios summoned his own armour in blazing light. Like his brothers, he bore a cuirass, a Greek-styled war-skirt, greaves upon his shins, and vambraces of golden fire. From his back, wings of living flame unfurled, igniting the sky as he soared high, arcing midair before plummeting into the horde. His descent was a sunfall; flames exploded outward, thick as liquid fire, sweeping orcs and trolls into instant ash, their screams cut short in a single breath.

Kryos rose slowly above the battlefield, spear poised. With a sweep, a thousand knights of sculpted ice surged forth, their charge crystalline and merciless. They carved through the abyssal wave with mechanical precision, their blades humming frost, their efficiency terrifying.

Kryos's gaze drifted across the chaos, toward Asher, seated astride Sirius, the great beast's mane rippling as the ground quaked. Behind him the Ashbourne Swordsmen remained motionless. Even Zenas did not speak, as if the entire army held its breath to see what choice Asher would make.

The mortal host thundered forward. Heavy infantry advanced in lockstep, shields like a wall, the tremor of their march shaking the earth.

A hundred thousand bows, elven, human, fairy, rose as one. The sky darkened under the weight of their arrows. Strings loosed, and a storm of death blotted out the heavens before descending.

The first line of the abyss was shredded, tens of thousands falling in the span of heartbeats.

Then came the trebuchets, hundreds of burning boulders tearing into the sky, leaving trails of smoke like falling stars. They crashed down in thunderous detonations, ripping apart what remained of the abyssal vanguard. The ground itself seemed to scream beneath the onslaught.

And still Asher sat astride Sirius, unmoving, his golden eyes fixed on the horizon while the other lords barked orders and the great host surged into slaughter. The Ashbourne Swordsmen, every blade at rest, mirrored their lord's silence.

After several volleys of arrows and the slaughter of nearly three hundred thousand abyss soldiers, the tide showed no end. From the smoke and molten dunes came millions more, screeching goblins, roaring orcs, their eyes fevered with bloodlust as they charged headlong into the waiting shield wall, stretching for kilometers across the volcanic plain.

At the center of the line stood Alec. His breath was steady, his grip sure, spear poised between the narrow gap of overlapping shields. He could see them coming, filthy teeth gnashing, blades rattling, the madness of the abyss surging closer with every heartbeat.

Before his position, the dwarven heavy infantry braced first contact. Their tower shields locked like stone, their formation rising into an unbreakable ceiling. Spears thrust upward in disciplined rhythm, skewering the first wave of shrieking goblins. But the dwarves were drowning in the tide, the sheer weight of numbers pressed in like a nightmare made flesh.

The collision was cataclysmic.

"Kill!" Alec's roar tore through the chaos, a war cry carried on desperation and fire.

The battlefield became madness incarnate. Steel tore through flesh. Screams mingled with the deep-throated roars of beast and man alike. Alec thrust, pulled, thrust again, each strike claiming a foe, each breath choked by the stench of iron and blood. His men fell in heaps, crushed or torn apart, but for every soldier who perished, another stepped forward, shield raised, spear leveled.

"Lord Alec!"

The shout rose above the shrieking din, piercing through the red haze. Alec, ankle-deep in blood that streamed like a river beneath his boots, turned his head.

"Look up!"

He listened but that warning came too late.

A hammer the size of a boulder came crashing down, wielded by a titan forty-five feet tall. The impact split the line apart, collapsing a hundred-meter span of men and shield into ruin. Hundreds were obliterated in an instant, bodies broken as though they were twigs beneath the colossus's strike.

On both flanks, more titans surged in, their massive strides shattering formations, each swing of their colossal weapons flinging entire squads into mangled death. Soldiers who had held bravely moments before were swept away like insects under a storm.

One titan fixed its gaze on Alec, its cruel yellow eyes narrowing as it spotted him retreating from the broken ground. Its hammer rose again, casting a shadow large enough to swallow him whole.

But before the strike could fall, two arrows, thick as siege bolts, screamed through the air. They punched through the titan's skull with bone-splintering force, each shaft burying deep into its eyes. The beast bellowed, staggering backward, its weapon crashing harmlessly into the churned earth.

Alec blinked through blood and ash, his chest heaving. He turned and his gaze widened.

There they were.

The Jotunns of House Ashbourne, striding forward with the power of mountains in motion, had entered the battlefield. Their colossal frames rose above the chaos, each step shaking the very ground as they moved to meet the titans in kind.

And almost a mile away, towering above her kin like a queen of giants, stood the Jotunn Queen herself, bow still drawn, her massive frame radiant with raw majesty. She was the one who had slain the titan.

"Lord Apollyon advances." Zenas suddenly said, his gaze fixed on the tide of death knights as their black blades carved through the abyss soldiers, advancing like a wall of steel and shadow. To the left, the mortal and spirit emperors of Cyrenia rode at the head of their host, a tide of cavalry thundering forward, bows raised, arrows already gleaming in the gloom as they plunged into the sea of enemies.

"Won't you show them what you've become?" he asked softly, almost reverently, as though the battlefield itself held its breath.

"I was waiting." Asher's eyes opened, and in that instant the white pelts of Sirius and the Ashbourne Swordsmen flushed crimson, their fur igniting with the hue of blood and glory, as though they wore the immortal hide of Athanatos itself!

"The immortal hide of Athanatos…" Ariel narrowed her eyes, awe and recognition flickering in her tone. With this talent, none of their mounts could be slain, no blade nor fang could stop their charge.

Sirius lifted his head and unleashed a thunderous howl, a cry that rolled across the battlefield like a storm breaking. In perfect unison, the Ashbourne lowered their blades and spurred forward, crimson fangs of war ripping into the abyssal tide.