Reincarnated Lord: I can upgrade everything! - Chapter 447

Chapter 447: Blood King [6]
From proud cavaliers to elite footmen, all were crushed—utterly slaughtered without a shred of mercy. And now, the cities were next.

In the span of a single, harrowing month since the war began on the island kingdom of Everard, city after city had fallen. Each one reduced to ash and bone, swallowed by ruin, until only one remained—Cyclox, the golden city.

Its mighty walls shimmered with a luster that caught the eye even under the gloomiest skies, a radiant sheen not of illusion but of actual gold—a declaration of wealth and pride.

Yet now, those same gilded ramparts stood trembling before doom. For outside, beneath the banners of Ashbourne, marched an army like no other—an army forged from conquest, madness, and vengeance. They came not alone but with millions of broken souls, slaves ready for vengeance, their minds shattered and reforged into unwavering instruments of war.

The Ashbourne elite had torn through Everard’s finest armies, through freemen and slaves alike, leaving only corpses in their wake. Their fury knew no distinction, their blades no restraint.

The cause of this unrelenting storm? The abduction of an Ashbourne noble. The slaughter of his household. For that insult, Ashbourne answered not with diplomacy, but with fire.

Realizing too late the price of pride, King Solvane of Everard had extended a desperate hand for peace. But Ashbourne did not come for words. He narrowly escaped with his life—his pride, his crown, and much of his kingdom, already in ruin.

Now, high upon the gleaming ramparts of Cyclox, the last haven of Everard, stood hundreds of golden-armoured slave-soldiers. Once broken, now blindly loyal to their Everardian masters. Their spirits had been bent like iron in the forge, taught that servitude was survival. They would raise blades for the very hands that had shackled them, rather than taste the uncertain winds of freedom.

Behind the golden walls, in the shadow of looming banners, formations of golden-armoured men stood in eerie precision—three thousand per column, four columns in total. The last of Everard’s standing host. Twelve thousand defenders at best, outnumbered, outmatched, and surrounded.

No help had come. No ravens returned. No allies marched. The world had not yet heard the silent death rattle of a dying kingdom. Everard was perishing in the dark.

Upon the highest parapet stood King Solvane, flanked by his noble generals. His once-regal bearing eroded by stress and sleepless nights, his balding scalp gleamed under the pale sun. Yet his eyes—sharp, bloodshot—remained fixed upon the enemy before them.

There they stood: the Ashbourne host.

To the left—Stormdrakes, lightning-fast troops like the raging tide of the sea.

To the right—Gray Knights, grim beastmen whose blades drank deeply on every battlefield.

And between them all, casting a long, dreadful shadow, stood the giant white wolf, Sirius. Upon its massive head stood a man like a vision out of prophecy. Snow-white hair danced in the cold breeze, and his burnished dark-gray armor shimmered like a stormcloud catching the light. His pale skin caught the sun, and his eyes—those eyes—blazed like molten gold, the fury of a sun weeping blood.

He was the fire that razed ten cities. He was the silence that followed the screams. He was the vengeance of a nation wounded. And Everard had named him:

The Blood King.

Solvane’s fingers clenched the cold stone of the battlement, his knuckles bone-white, his body trembling as he roared across the gulf of no-man’s land. “You’re a madman! An emotionless bastard from the depths of hell! The blood on your hands could flood the Kryos Sea, you bloody, cursed bastard!”

At the base of Sirius, Nero’s brows furrowed. His hand gripped the handle of his sheathed longsword, knuckles taut with tension.

Above them all, standing tall upon his beast, Asher exhaled slowly. A plume of white mist escaped his lips as the snow continued to fall from a sunlit sky—bright yet cold.

He reached behind him, fingers wrapping around the hilt of his great Leviathan longsword.

“Blood King?” he murmured, the title heavy on his tongue.

“Madman?”

Is that what they called him now?

For avenging a young girl, barely of age, who had her innocence stolen?

For punishing those who had torn her family apart—slaughtered her father, mocked his dying breath, and bathed in the blood of the helpless?

Was he the madman, when they were the ones who razed Ashbourne lands, killed over six hundred innocents, and stole over two million people from their various homes? Chained them. Stripped them of name, of dignity, of soul?

His vision blurred—not from rage, but from memory. A silver glow lingered in his mind. Sapphira. Her silver lashes. A part of her hair like moonlight. Her silence, carved by cruelty.

Even she had been harmed by this wretched world.

His peace.

As his sword cleared the scabbard, the sun kissed its edge and set it ablaze with light.

He raised it high and roared, his voice thundering across the battlefield like judgment:

“The shackled of Cyclox—I offer you your birthright! Freedom against your oppressors!”

The nobles behind the walls scoffed and cursed. “Madman!” they jeered, faces twisted in smug contempt. They had locked away the slaves they mistrusted, sealed the dungeons tight so that what happened in the fallen cities would not repeat here.

But Asher was not done.

He leveled his blade at the walls and spoke again, each word a blow struck to the illusion of control.

“I offer you that which your fathers bled to preserve against the Abyss: Freedom! Those without shackles—those who still wear crowns of cruelty—will be the first to fall!”

And like a tempest loosed from the heavens, his soldiers roared—Stormdrakes, Gray Knights, and countless others, their voices crashing like waves upon the golden walls of Cyclox.

And high above them, the Blood King stood—unmoving, unyielding, and burning with the wrath of the forsaken.

From the golden heights of Cyclox, the order was given—and the sky answered.

With a deep thrum of tension and release, the catapults atop the city walls hurled dozens of massive boulders into the air, each one cutting through the sunlight with deadly intent. They arced high, like meteors about to fall.

But they never did.

Mid-flight, the boulders froze—suspended as if caught by invisible strings. They hovered, weightless, their momentum swallowed by an unseen force. Soldiers atop the wall gawked, mouths agape, as the impossible unfolded.

Then came the arrows.

From behind the walls, twelve thousand archers loosed a tide of black fletching, a vast swarm that darkened the sky like a swarm of locusts.