After my consciousness was once again plunged into darkness by Zevstyle's warm touch, I suddenly found myself in a completely different reality.

I was no longer in that abstract, dark realm of my mind.

This place... it was real.

Or at least, it felt like a perfect copy of reality.

I could hear the crunch of snow under my feet and feel the sharp, freezing wind striking my face.

The cold air burned my lungs.

Looking around, I found myself in the middle of a vast, snow-covered plain.

Behind me stood a colossal army of tens of thousands of soldiers.

The rhythmic sound of their steps was like an earthquake shaking the very earth.

Mercenaries, loyal soldiers from the Duchy of Frosthelm bearing banners with the heads of wolves, and allied forces from different dynasties and regions whose coats of arms I had never seen before...

All of them had gathered behind me for a single purpose.

Beside me, shoulder to shoulder, stood Fredrinn.

But this was not the Fredrinn I knew.

His beard had grown slightly. He looked unkempt, but the overwhelming, dark aura radiating from his body was on a completely different level.

He had covered his right eye with a black eyepatch.

His body was clad in shimmering purple armor forged from his own pure mana.

His mana core... was at the cusp of the Eight-Star level.

Considering his age, he must have been one of the youngest to ever reach this rank.

On my other side stood a group of people I had never seen in real life.

The posture, the gaze, and the intense, oppressive mana radiating from each of them made it clear that they were to be the key figures in this war.

But among them, there was one more face I recognized.

Her long, whitish-blue hair, in harmony with the surrounding snow, waved gently in the wind.

With her ocean-blue eyes, she stared at the enemy army gathered on the plain before us with a cold determination.

Pinned to the side of her hair, an elegant butterfly shimmered.

But it was no mere accessory.

It was the legendary mystical beast Cecilia Frosthelm had contracted with: Cryomara, one of the Five Mystical Beasts that had protected the North since the dawn of existence.

Overall, the battle seemed to be in our favor.

Our opponent might have demigods in their ranks, but a few demigods could not contend with the power of a mystical beast that had ruled a realm for thousands of years, a beast as ancient as nature itself.

Even if they could, there was still us.

Fredrinn, myself, and those other powerful allies...

Everything seemed to be going well.

Except for one thing...

I couldn't control my body.

It was as if I were a stranger, a spectator in my own body. My body moved against my will, and my mouth spoke without my control.

I could see with my eyes, hear with my ears, and feel with my skin, but I couldn't intervene in anything.

Yes... I was still in a dream.

After a while, the wait ended and the battle began.

With roars that resembled thunder, the two armies clashed.

The surroundings instantly turned into a scene of utter apocalypse.

Colossal fireballs, ice lances, lightning bolts, and waves of dark energy flew through the air, colliding with each other and causing terrifying explosions.

The clang of swords against steel, the screech of shattering armor, the pained screams and enraged shouts of men... it was a deafening cacophony that enveloped everything.

Fredrinn led the charge on the front lines like a god of war.

He moved like a shadow in his dark armor, skillfully cutting down the fanatical members of the Obsidian Dawn cult and the horde of hideous monsters they summoned with his massive black sword.

Even alone, he was like an unstoppable machine of death.

On the other side, Cecilia had ascended into the sky, her hands clasped together.

In unison with the ice-blue aura of Cryomara swirling beneath her, she was casting a massive spell.

A gigantic mass of ice, almost thirty meters high, formed in the air and launched with terrifying speed toward the most crowded ranks of the opposing army.

That silver-haired bastard was not yet in sight.

Instead, a large, red-haired man standing at the forefront of the army stepped forward.

In his hand, he held a flaming sword whose hilt resembled a dragon's head.

He raised his sword and swung it to shatter Cecilia's ice mass.

A colossal slash of fire erupted from his blade, illuminating the air like a second sun as it surged toward the block of ice.

When fire and ice collided in the middle of the sky with a tremendous explosion, the shattered pieces of the ice mass still served their purpose.

Thousands of sharp ice fragments rained down upon the members of the Obsidian Dawn like a meteor shower, piercing their armor and tearing their bodies apart.

The battle raged on apocalyptically.

The members of the Obsidian Dawn had suffered countless losses and were just a step away from defeat.

But...

Just when we thought the tide of battle was turning in our favor, the sky tore open as if ripped by a giant hand.

From the rift, as if the gates of hell had opened, a torrent of flames resembling boiling lava poured down.

In an instant, a part of our army's flank was turned to ash, screaming beneath the scorching flames.

Cecilia did not allow this sudden attack to continue.

As her eyes glowed with an ice-blue light, she met the hellfire pouring onto the ground with an incredibly thick wall of ice, thousands of meters long and wide enough to cover the entire army.

This must have consumed an unbelievable amount of mana.

But considering the power of the Mystical Beast Cryomara, perhaps it was not so much for her.

From the rift in the sky, the person I had long been waiting for emerged first.

That silver-haired scoundrel...

He stood with his hands clasped behind his back, looking down at the battlefield below with a disdainful, godlike gaze.

On his head, he wore a simple crown of white gold, set with a single, brilliant diamond.

Two more figures emerged behind him.

One was a woman with short, dark blue hair and a pair of curved horns on her head. She was clearly a demon. She, too, wore a crown adorned with purple amethyst stones.

The other was a short, stocky dwarf, no more than 140 cm tall. On his back, he carried a massive, hammer-like scepter of his own size, its tip glowing with runes. He also wore a pale crown that looked as if it were made of brown earth.

But it didn't stop there.

One after another, a host of human-like beings with white, shimmering wings and clad in white robes emerged from the rift, their skin as pale as albinos.

Angels...

Some carried bows, some spears, and others shining swords.

Some of the angels looked different from the others; the number and size of their wings varied completely. Some were small, agile angels, about 60-70 cm tall, while others were colossal war angels standing 10 meters high.

But one among them stood out in particular.

An archangel of about 4 meters in height, with twenty-four massive, white wings beating in magnificent harmony in the sky, holding a glorious spear that reflected the light of the sun.

His face was inhumanly handsome and expressionless.

The real war... was just beginning.

But our army was weary and weakened from the first battle.

We didn't even have a true demigod.

Fredrinn and Cecilia possessed power on par with, or perhaps even greater than, demigods thanks to the external forces they wielded, but those powers had their limits.

Our opponent's demigods were still alive, and now, this new army of angels and those three nightmarish, crowned beings had been added to their ranks.

Even though I had no control over my body, I reacted as my true self within would have.

My fists clenched.

The hatred in my eyes blazed like a red flame.

"Sovereign Form!"

Cassian, the one controlling my body, did not hesitate for a second. He summoned that most powerful and dangerous form and joined the battle.

Hours later...

The scene was, in the truest sense of the word, a field of corpses.

The snow-covered plain was now stained red with blood and body parts.

Fredrinn...

His armor had melted, his body was unrecognizable. All the dark mana in his body had been burned away to the very last drop by the archangel's sacred mana, forcing him to face death in indescribable agony.

Cecilia Frosthelm...

Her eyes had been gouged out, the horns that symbolized her Mystical Beast had been broken off and stabbed into her own stomach. Her body had been stripped bare, lying lifelessly on the snow like a rag doll.

Rose, Eric, Hebi, Rod, and Kael...

Their bodies had been so torn apart by the enemy that they were mutilated beyond recognition.

Those tens of thousands of soldiers who had fought with hope under my command just hours ago... were now nothing but a pile of lifeless corpses.

And I... or rather, Cassian, who controlled my body... lay on the snow, ruined and covered in countless mortal wounds.

My unique regeneration ability was no longer working; all the mana in my body was depleted.

The time for Sovereign Form had long since passed.

It was a miracle I was even conscious.

On my head, the cursed Crown of Madness had appeared.

My eyes were redder than ever, glowing with pure insanity.

From my eyes, blood mixed with tears streamed down my cheeks.

His confident demeanor, his unshakable faith in his army and allies... had been utterly shattered.

He had lost everything.

Except for one thing...

Nivelle, hidden within my soul.

The silver-haired bastard approached me with slow steps.

He reached out his hand toward my chest and thrust it into my soul.

I felt his ice-cold touch.

And then... he forcefully tore Nivelle from my soul.

"Brother! Brother, let me go!" Nivelle struggled in his hand, screaming.

She tried to escape, but she couldn't. She was trapped between the silver-haired man's fingers.

"Stop!" shouted Cassian, the one controlling my body. "Stop, I beg you!"

But the man did not stop.

With a cold, godlike expression on his face, he spoke.

"I told you, Prince of Nothingness. You cannot change the fate of this world. Destiny has already been written."

As soon as he finished speaking, he squeezed Nivelle in his hand.

Nivelle burst like a ripe tomato.

Her warm blood and the remains of her small body splattered across my face and chest.

Cassian wanted to scream in shock.

But he couldn't.

His mouth opened and closed, again and again. But not a single sound came from his throat.

Bloody tears flowed like a torrent down his cheeks.

Before I could even comprehend what had happened, the silver-haired man drew his sword.

He plunged it into Cassian's mouth, which was agape with shock, and killed him in a single, savage motion.

Cassian's lifeless body was added to the pile of other corpses on that blood-soaked, filthy battlefield.

As I watched all of this... my brain had shut down.

I wanted to cry, but I couldn't.

I had no tears in this dimension. I had no physical body.

I clutched my head with my hands.

What was happening?

What was this thing I had just seen?

Was it the future? A prophecy? Or just a horrific nightmare planted in my mind by Zevstyle?

Why... why had we lost?

No... this was no nightmare.

Everything was too detailed, too vivid, too... real.

Was this the "something useful" Zevstyle had spoken of?

And how exactly was this supposed to be useful to me?

This was just despair! Pure, unadulterated despair!

Before my mind could make any sense of what had happened, it was pulled in another direction, to another moment, to another dream.

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