The Warlord's Carnal System

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The next few chapters will be written in third-person POV to better accommodate multiple character perspectives. Let me know if you prefer this change or if you enjoyed the earlier first-person POV more.

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'The Emperor... He is dead...?'

'No. No way.'

Rune's mind raced through the implications.

He knew the current Emperor would die... but it would take place far in the future. At least ten to fifteen years from now. He didn't know the cause of death, nor who would succeed him. By the time the Emperor died in his past life, Rune had already reached a position where the lives of mundane people and their rulers hardly mattered to him anymore.

He'd been in an all-out drawn war with Netherworld beings on the front lines.

Not just him, most of the awakened at Master tier and above had already been involved in a throat-deep war with that new threat to humanity.

'Wait... if the Emperor is dead... then...'

Just as he suspected.

If the Emperor was dead and word spread beyond the castle walls... or rather, beyond the enclave's walls, it wouldn't be long before civil war erupted among the princes.

Succession crises. Power vacuums. They would follow the poor Emperor's death like vultures to a corpse.

Power-hungry wolves and the masterminds lurking in shadows would come into the light, throwing the entire Imperium into chaos.

And instability was the last thing the empire needed when there were everlasting skirmishes with the neighboring Dominion.

Suddenly, the image of the deadly mage surfaced in Rune's mind.

Bella.

If she caught wind of this...

The Ravencourt Imperium was doomed.

The only one who could stop her, the only reason Bella hadn't yet set foot on this land, was the Sword King.

But that old dog was only loyal to the throne itself.

If there was no one sitting on it, there was nothing for him to protect. No one to order him to fight Bella.

Rune swallowed hard.

He looked at the woman before him, her face even paler than his own, if that was possible.

He placed his hands on her shoulders firmly, grounding her.

"Ilya... breathe," he whispered.

She was too panicked by whatever sight she'd witnessed in the enclave. All her natural instincts were smothered in dread. Her flight response had overtaken her body, but she didn't know where to run.

Rune was surprised she'd had enough sanity left to send Selka to Cass. He suspected Selka wouldn't have volunteered to leave Ilya alone under normal circumstances.

Watching the poor woman before him take ragged breaths, Rune thought about whether this entire thing was even true.

'What if she's under some spell? Someone's divine gift?'

After all, it wasn't entirely impossible for lower variants of Voidmirror to trap an intermediate-tier awakened like Ilya.

But Rune shook that thought away.

'Even if it worked on Ilya, it wouldn't have worked on Selka.'

He went with the safest, yet hardest to believe, option.

He chose to assume the worst possibility was true.

But the situation didn't give him enough time to ponder further.

His hand gripped the hilt of Ilya's sword, the one held by a belt around her slender waist. He drew the blade in one powerful motion over his head.

Clinggg... screech...

Fire embers fell from above, scattering around Ilya like dying stars as her gasp was drowned out by the sound of steel meeting steel.

Rune effortlessly adjusted the space his right hand occupied on Ilya's sword hilt and brought his second hand up to grip it, reinforcing it with more strength.

Then, with surgical precision, he twisted the blade against the shadow's dagger and dragged it along the length of a crescent arc.

The shadow, understanding that this eighteen-year-old's trick could potentially disarm him, expertly went along with the sky-blue sword's crescent descent.

The shadow flew with the blade's momentum, arcing over Ilya gracefully before landing on the ground. His leather boots skidded on the gravel without making a sound.

Rune was impressed by the shadow's quick judgment.

And he realized immediately: he was dealing with the royal unit's covert division.

The Shadow Division.

'This will be a long night.'

He sighed internally.

Ilya was still in shock from whatever she'd seen in the enclave, but she immediately made a fist and pushed her arms forward toward the new enemy, taking the stance of a trained fighter.

Rune twirled the sword in his hand, getting the feel of the sky-blue blade.

It was at least an A-minus-tier artifact.

'Not bad.'

"Stay back, Ilya," he said, stepping forward and positioning himself between the threat and Cass's closest aide.

"But..." Ilya started, doubting whether he alone could face a member of the Shafow Division.

But the opponent didn't allow her to finish.

He bent low on all fours, imitating an insect more than a tetrapod. He crawled along the ground, his black attire and black mask making him one with the black gravel in the blanket of night.

Ilya almost lost sight of him.

But Rune didn't.

The next instant, Ilya's blade in Rune's hand rose in a vertical arc from below and met the shadow's dagger mid-strike.

The shadow was momentarily in a semi-erect position, but not for long.

Rune's rugged boot landed on his shoulder with a sickening crack, indicating the shadow's collarbone had shattered.

But the shadow didn't even seem fazed. With his other functioning arm, he drove the dagger toward Rune's eye.

Rune jerked aside from the blade's path. It missed his cheek by a hair's breadth.

Rune caught the shadow's wrist.

The assassin immediately twisted the dagger in his hand, the blade now between his fingers, pointed toward Rune's temporal region.

But then...

Crack.

Rune's hold on the wrist pressed tight and twisted at a right angle, breaking the shadow's wrist and disfiguring the connected hand.

The dagger fell with a clink.

The shadow's eyes widened in shock. He clearly hadn't expected an eighteen-year-old to possess such expertise in short-span combat techniques.

But before he could recover and formulate his next move, Rune pulled the shadow by his broken wrist and danced around his pulled form in two nimble steps. The third step of his dance-like footwork landed on the shadow's rising waist.

Crackkk...

The waist bent backward against its natural motion. The vertebrae clearly disfigured inside.

"Ghhkk..." The shadow vomited saliva into his mask.

Rune, with the shadow's hand still in his grip, pulled it backward, pressing his leg against the shadow's broken waist.

"AAAAHHHH..."

The shadow screamed, half of it muffled by the mask, but still loud enough to echo in the silent night.

The next instant, the shadow's arm broke backward with another sickening crack at the shoulder joint.

He scratched desperately at the ground with his other functional arm... toward Ilya.

Ilya was already awestruck, staring into the terror-stricken assassin's eyes.

His legs shot up instinctively, trying to shake off his predator.

But that was a grave mistake to make before a former Warlord.

Rune gripped the fluttering leg and pulled the shadow upward, making him airborne, and slammed him against the wall just behind himself.

The shadow's face scraped against gravel and rose mid-air before colliding with the cold stone wall.

A sickening grr and thud echoed.

Splash.

The stone was painted crimson as the shadow hit the wall like a squashed mosquito.

Rune released the leg and watched the shadow's body drag off the wall before crumpling to the ground in a heap.

He turned to the stunned Ilya. His golden eyes glinted crimson as he looked beyond her, into the shadows of the night.

"We've got company."

His words didn't suggest running. No... if anything, Ilya saw a smile forming on the face of a tamed hound that had finally rediscovered the true essence of its purpose.

Hunting.

She stood frozen as Rune took steps toward her... and walked past without breaking stride.

She turned, her eyes refusing to leave his unhurried gait.

Just then, as leaves rustled around her, the sound of Rune's footsteps vanished entirely.

He became a crimson blur, leaving only crackling traces of crimson aura as proof of his takeoff.

What followed was Ilya watching a massacre unfold.

An unleashed blood-hungry hound painting the walls of the royal capital with the blood of their pursuers.

Only carnage delivered with the cold professionalism of someone who'd done this a thousand times before.

And would do it a thousand times more.