By the time Li De arrived at the battlefield, the confrontation had nearly ended. The ground was soaked in blood.
Faced with overwhelming power disparity, every human soldier had become a corpse beneath the beastmen’s blades.
Only one thing remained visible on the field, the crimson cloak fluttering in the air.
Li De stood atop a tall building on a nearby street. At a glance, he could feel the grief and desolation.
No one else remained.
The entire city seemed to belong now only to that one figure draped in crimson, she might be the last human left in Risel City.
All remaining city guards and civilians had either been slain by beastmen or had fled.
Andabella, Li De silently watched her from the distant shadows as she floated in the air, surrounded by thousands of wyverns. His expression was hard to read.
Though in constant danger, the girl wielding her longsword endured, relying on the power of the legendary cloak and her exceptional swordsmanship.
Unafraid of death.
Li De could even see her tightly pressed lips and still-proud expression. In those silver eyes, the emotion called fear had long since disappeared.
The pitch-black night sky was illuminated by the blazing fires within Risel City and the brilliant moonlight overhead.
The wyverns above were half-drenched in crimson flame, half-bathed in silver moonlight. Dense and overwhelming, they resembled swarms of dragonflies over a summer pond at dusk, blotting out the sky.
On the ground, twisted and grotesque shadows stretched like lurking Soul Eater Demons hiding in the darkness.
And yet, at the very center of the wyvern swarm, that streak of crimson was blindingly vivid, as if every wyvern in the sky revolved around that one crimson point like a whirlpool in the deep sea.
Moreover, from that swirling vortex in the sky, several wyvern corpses with wingspans reaching ten blades fell, crashing down like stones onto rooftops below. Each impact struck with a deep thudthud, kicking up clouds of dust into the night air.
Li De stood silently in a room atop a tall building, watching this scene without making a move.
Yet his gaze never left that streak of crimson.
Was she about to reach her limit?
Andabella’s once pale-silver hair had darkened considerably, and the overwhelming weakness in her body made it nearly impossible to hold onto her longsword.
Zzzzt~
With another swing, her blade flared with crimson light. A wyvern diving toward her from above had its right wing severed instantly.
The fluttering Blood Cloak swept past the wounded limb, swallowing the freshly spilled blood in an instant.
The cloak grew even more vivid in color. This legendary item, having feasted on blood all night, had only grown more powerful, but that same power was now more than Andabella could endure.
Each use of a legendary item required immense energy. The stronger the cloak became, the more it drained her.
And without reaching the Transcendent level, she couldn’t withstand that power drain. All she could do was continuously sacrifice her life force.
Until this moment, she had finally exhausted every last drop of her lifespan.
She could no longer control the increasingly powerful legendary cloak.
Thud~
From behind, a wyvern seized the moment when Andabella hadn’t yet withdrawn her blade. With a sudden strike of its massive claw, she coughed up a mouthful of blood. A deep, gaping wound split open in her abdomen.
Whoosh~
Like a severed kite, that seemingly minor surprise attack utterly shattered the girl, who had already been teetering on the edge of collapse.
Though her will remained unbroken, her failing body could no longer support her in battle.
Boom~
Just as she was about to hit the ground, the Blood Cloak behind her flared and caught her fall, slowing her rapid descent. She landed softly, avoiding a more fatal impact.
She had survived, but the fight was over.
Though Andabella’s eyes still shone brightly, they no longer held hope.
After the humans fled Risel City, the beastman army didn’t pursue. Instead, they held their ground at the gates.
And this strange decision meant the remaining beastman forces had all gathered here.
Wolf riders, wyverns, beastman warriors, and even the unstoppable Behemoth were present.
Every beastman’s eyes turned to the figure lying on the ground, her cloak still blazing red.
“Human, your courage has earned my respect. The great Behemoth shall kill you personally.”
The voice spoke in Ancient Beastman Tongue, a language so old it rivaled the speech of the ancient giants. Like the giants’ language, it communicated directly through mental transmission. One didn’t need to understand the words to comprehend the meaning.
Lying on the ground, Andabella slowly opened her eyes. In her silver pupils, the towering mountain-like figure of the Behemoth was reflected.
She lifted her chin slightly, and the pride in her eyes remained unshaken.
“Behemoth, you may take Risel City, but House Risel will not fall.
The glory of the Risel Empire shall be eternal.
Death does not frighten me.”
Her voice was faint and fragile, yet the pride it carried never wavered.
"The only thing I regret… is that the precious books I painstakingly collected in my study might vanish from this world without a trace."
What surprised the surrounding beastmen was that this human woman, whom they all respected, was actually speaking in Ancient Beastman Tongue.
"You… you can speak Ancient Beastman Tongue?" Behemoth’s guttural voice sounded like muffled thunder crashing down from the heavens.
"Ancient Beastman Tongue? Ancient Giant Language, High Elven Speech, Old Human Speech, Ancient Goblin Language, and Ancient Draconic, I know them all."
An eerie silence briefly fell over the scene.
"To be slain by the great Behemoth… is an honor, learned human."
Though surprised by this human, Behemoth still raised his razor-sharp claw.
Beastmen had no need for prisoners.
Andabella gazed at the scene before her, her eyes slightly widened as she looked deeply at the world one last time.
Was this the end? She truly felt reluctant… but the people of House Risel would never regret perishing alongside their city.
She lifted her chin slightly, awaiting that moment’s arrival.
Whoosh~
The two-blade-long massive claw gleamed with an edge sharp enough to tear through steel.
The air itself seemed to scream as space was ripped apart.
In Andabella’s silver eyes, there was only that cold flash of light. Her heart was still, silently awaiting death.
And just as Behemoth’s claw was about to tear her apart.
Boom~
A colossal force crashed in. Behemoth’s ten-blade-tall monstrous body was suddenly hurled away, slamming into a nearby three-story building with a deafening crash, bringing the entire structure down and throwing up clouds of dust.
With Behemoth’s fall, an indescribably powerful aura swept across the sky.
The surrounding wyverns, as if faced with an irresistible apex predator, flailed in panic, beating their wings madly to flee this place of death. Their panicked screeches made the whole sky feel like it had plunged into an abyss.
Roar~!
Following the roar, a terrifying creature with a wingspan of twenty blades appeared before all the beastmen.
Andabella, who had already prepared herself for death, turned her dazed gaze slightly, and in the next moment, she witnessed a scene she would never forget for the rest of her life.
A skeletal dragon composed entirely of white bones, with soulfire flickering blue in its hollow skull, appeared before her eyes.
What shocked her even more was the figure standing atop that terrifying bone dragon: a man in a black mage’s robe, remarkably handsome.
A name escaped her lips instinctively.
“Lord Ezreal?!”
Then, she heard the man utter words that left the entire battlefield in stunned silence.
“Wretched beastmen,
This cloak, cough, cough, this lady, now belongs to me!
Who approves? Who opposes?”
His voice was overbearing and commanding, as if the tens of thousands of beastman soldiers surrounding him didn’t even exist. The heroic dominance radiating from the figure riding the dragon was dazzling.
Andabella was completely frozen.
Just as she’d fallen into the abyss, wrapped in despair, with no hope remaining, suddenly, a young and handsome hero had appeared atop a mighty dragon.
No words could describe what she felt in her heart at that moment.
The behemoth, who had been knocked down, suddenly pressed both hands to the ground and sprang to his feet, his gorilla-like face twisted in inexpressible fury.
“Damn undead bone dragon!!! Kill them both!!!”