Reincarnated Lord: I can upgrade everything!

"They'll kill us. They'll kill us all!" a soldier screamed, his voice cracking with despair as his weapon slipped from his trembling hands and clattered to the ground. Before he could turn to flee, Alec surged forward and slammed his hand into the man's face, knocking him unconscious with a single brutal strike.

"Humanity is behind us! Fall, and everything you know, everything you love will perish. There is no surrendering to such vile things. I would rather die fighting!"

Asher bellowed, his voice carrying across the battlefield like a golden ripple. The cry tore through the choking haze, shattering the wave of fear Saelix had unleashed.

Malrath turned, his helm gleaming faintly in the dim light. Beneath it, crimson eyes glowed with a malicious hunger, locking on Asher as if marking him for death.

Even as grief weighed heavy from Athanatos's fall, Asher did not falter. The years in this merciless world had hardened him into steel. His heart, once vulnerable, had grown calloused,.layered with scars carved by fear, hate, bloodshed, and endless terror.

Kryos raised his spear high, his voice a thunderous command. Frost erupted at his call, and two towering giants of ice materialized, their hulking frames glistening like crystals.

Above them, a flat disc of compact snow appeared, bristling with jagged spikes, stretching more than thirty meters wide.

With a single downward sweep of his spear, the frozen weapon of war came crashing down.

The ground split beneath its force as it smashed into Malrath's ranks, obliterating thousands of Saelix's corrupted soldiers. Shards of ice tore outward in a deadly storm, slicing through flesh and bone, ripping apart those who had not been crushed beneath the colossal weight.

But Malrath was not so easily subdued. The glacier shattered. He burst forth from the wreckage of ice three meters thick, his monstrous dragon spreading its weathered wings. With a powerful beat, the three-headed beast ascended, carrying its master skyward.

Ilios stepped forward, his body igniting with a divine blaze. He drew in a great breath, and an inferno roared out of him, vaporizing hundreds in an instant.

"I will burn you into nothing!" he thundered. Flames coiled around his form, spiraling upward into the storm-blackened sky until they twisted into a tornado of fire.

With wings wreathed in blazing fury, he launched himself toward Malrath, each beat of his wings hammering the air with divine wrath.

Aniketos barreled forward like a living avalanche, his armored frame cleaving through orcs, Jotunns, titans, and every other corrupted beast that dared block his path. They broke before him as though they were brittle dolls, scattered in pieces across the blood-soaked earth.

Behind him, Apollyon and the Death Knights still pressed onward with grim resolve, a wall of steel and death cutting deep into the abyss ranks.

Kryos surged alongside Aniketos, his two colossal ice giants striding through the chaos like cold gods of war.

Their every step shattered the earth, their every swing sent Jotunns sprawling. Unlike their flesh-and-bone foes, these ice behemoths knew no pain.

Blades that cut deep into their frozen bodies did little, they healed in moments, jagged wounds refreezing as if nothing had touched them. They were eternal engines of slaughter, Jotunn-slaying machines grinding the enemy into ruin.

"We need to reach Saelix, or this battle is lost! Her numbers will drown us all!" Zenas shouted, his voice carrying even through the screams and thunderous clashes of war.

Asher's gaze lifted into the swirling black smoke that choked the horizon. Something immense was hidden there.

His right eye ignited with a blinding glow, lightning crawling over his body like serpents of white fire.

The clouds above rumbled in answer, and the first icy drops of rain fell, hissing as they struck the heated, broken earth.

"Protect him!" Zorah bellowed, snapping back to his father's side. The Iron Saints and Ashbournes tightened their formation, their mounts charging in a loose circle around Asher, blades and claws cleaving down anything that dared near.

"The limits of your mana are almost boundless," Zenas cried, his own body engulfed in lightning as he rose into the storm-filled sky. "Stop constraining your power, unleash it all!"

The heavens darkened further, thunder swelling until it was like the roll of war drums beating across creation. Lightning gathered above in a vortex of light and fury, and under Zenas's command, it fell.

The world split with its arrival. The bolt struck Asher like a hammer of the divine, flinging even the Iron Saints and Ashbournes away.

Asher roared, catching the storm and forcing it forward. His skin burned from within, veins glowing white-hot with lightning until it seemed his body might rupture.

Agony consumed him, pain greater than anything he had ever known. But in that torment, visions pierced through: Sapphira, his beloved wife. Atreides and Merlin, his sons. Kelvin, Mary, faces of those who trusted him, those who called Ashbourne their home. His people. His kingdom.

RUMBLE!

The sky itself split open with a howl of purple thunder. Bolts rained down in torrents, each the size of a ballista's spear.

The blast hurled Zenas miles away, carving smoking craters into the magma-hardened ground. And at the center of it all, Asher stood, engulfed in divine lightning, his roar challenging the storm itself.

The blast burst forth. Millions of corrupted soldiers were erased in an instant, some reduced to bone, others to black dust, their screams cut short before they left their throats. The storm spread like a sweeping tide, carving through the abyss horde until it slammed into the black clouds themselves.

The veil was torn open. And beyond it, revealed at last, loomed the citadel, an ancient fortress, its black walls rising like a mountain of stone and shadow. The lightning struck it, ripping apart towers and battlements, shattering stone that had endured for millennia. A whole section of wall crumbled between one merlon and the next, raining down in a storm of debris.

Gritting his teeth, Asher bent low and seized Ithamar. His eyes burned with lightning as he straightened, cloak whipping in the storm winds. He began to march, slow and heavy toward the breach he had carved.

Behind him, the armies of the races roared. Their voices joined as one, rolling like thunder across the plain. Weapons raised high, they charged through the corpse-littered battlefield, rushing toward the citadel's broken wall.