Chapter 115: Sent to Scout, Returned With the Quartermaster

Days of relentless grinding had done more for Kael’s companions than for himself. He had crept up to Level 48, while several members of his roster had already pushed past Level 50.

The gap didn’t trouble him. What mattered was how cleanly he could bring all that raw strength to bear at once.

Thunder Roc’s Thunderfall was an S-rank area-of-effect skill, devastating even without assistance. Kael made sure it had plenty.

Moments before the strike, he had triggered Berserker’s Fury, doubling the damage output of the giant bird’s next three attacks.

A writhing torrent of golden lightning tore across the sky. Forked bolts hammered the quartermaster’s column, turning the road into a stuttering sequence of brilliant, blinding flashes while a deep, rolling thunder shook the surrounding hills.

The first wave landed before the enemy could even raise their shields. Health bars plummeted along the entire line, and several guards barely had enough time to realize they were under attack before the current consumed them.

"Ambush!"

The quartermaster’s composure fractured for half a heartbeat. Then his voice cut sharply through the rolling thunder.

"Dismount! Form up, now!"

More than a dozen heavily armored guards vaulted out of their saddles, drew polished steel, and scrambled into a textbook defensive wedge.

The quartermaster followed suit, wrenching a heavy longsword from its scabbard with a metallic rasp.He might have been an administrative officer, but that didn’t make him helpless.

At Level 62, he was no pushover, and every single one of his guards stood comfortably above Level 50. Under normal circumstances, that formation could have given a seasoned mercenary band serious trouble.

Unfortunately for them, they had run into Kael.

He swept a hand through the air, and the rest of his roster answered as one.

The Void Colossus struck first. The massive purple aberration dropped from the sky like a falling mountain, sixty feet of jagged carapace slamming into the roadway with an impact that shuddered through the earth beneath the formation.

Dust and gravel erupted in a violent shockwave. Then its massive jaws split wide.

Hollowscream.

A warped, psychological shriek rolled across the battlefield, seeming to physically twist the air. Skill-light died on drawn weapons mid-swing.

The complex combat abilities the guards had been priming were abruptly stripped away, and the psychic backlash broke their ragged line before they could even attempt a counter-attack.

The Wraithlord surged through the settling smoke right behind it.

Phantom Charge.

A full troop of spectral cavalry materialized in a rush of pale, ghost-light, armored riders pouring out of nothingness to plow directly into the enemy’s flanks.

Guards were hurled violently from their positions. Whatever cohesion remained after the Colossus’s cry vanished entirely beneath spectral hooves.

The higher a companion’s bloodline climbed, the sharper its instincts became. Days of relentless, bloody coordination had fused the group into something closer to a single apex predator than six separate fighters.

Nobody needed explicit orders. Each combatant covered the gaps left by the others, striking relentlessly wherever the enemy was weakest, giving the formation zero breathing room to recover.

The Wraithlord broke the line; the Emissary and Lyra finished the job.

Hollowleap. The Emissary vanished into thin air, reappearing instantly beside a guard already staggering at half-health.

The scythe rose in one fluid, terrifying motion, falling in a dark, sweeping arc across the man’s chest. His remaining health vanished in a heartbeat, and Soulreap drew his life-force cleanly into the waiting blade.

At that exact second, Lyra raised her bow. Starlight gathered along the reinforced string, flaring brilliantly until the entire weapon glowed through the swirling dust.

"Meteor Volley."

A dozen luminous arrows rained down like falling stars, their glowing trails slicing through the haze before tearing into the survivors, stripping the remaining health from everyone still standing on two feet.

Silence. Charge. Execution. Volley. The entire sequence took barely sixty seconds.

The guards never found an opening to counterattack.

Every attempt to regroup was preemptively cut off, and every defensive posture left them hopelessly exposed to the next wave.

It was an execution, not a battle. Within a minute, every guard surrounding the quartermaster lay motionless in the dirt.

The quartermaster himself still stood, but his health bar was rapidly draining under the unyielding pressure, the vast disparity in power proving impossible to bridge.

Kael kept the pressure on for a few minutes longer, until the man’s vitals dwindled down to a razor-thin sliver.

That was all he needed. *Warden’s Mandate* dropped like an iron gate, binding the officer on the spot.

Kael climbed back onto Thunder Roc, took to the skies, and carried his high-value captive back toward the Silverflow River. On the far bank, Northvale’s encampment awaited.

He walked straight into the main command tent, dragging the bound quartermaster behind him like an errant mule.

Every conversation died instantly. Officers turned toward the entrance, staring in stunned silence at the high-ranking enemy official standing beside the Third Princess’s newly appointed guard captain.

For a long moment, nobody seemed capable of processing what they were seeing.

"This is..."

"Your enemy’s quartermaster," Kael said, his tone as casual as if he were discussing the weather. "Feel free to ask him anything about their supply routes. He tends to have the most accurate answers."

"What?"

A collective ripple of sheer disbelief swept around the war table.The quartermaster was no ordinary prisoner of war.

His position sat directly at the nerve center of the enemy’s logistical operations, making him one of the single most valuable intelligence assets on the entire front.

Capturing him during a patrol would have been a crowning achievement. Bringing him back alive, bound, and smuggled across a heavily contested river without triggering a full-scale military engagement? That was pure impossibility.

Several senior officers stepped closer, their eyes darting to the prisoner’s uniform and rank insignia.

There was no forgery here, no mistaken identity, no clever illusion. It was the actual quartermaster of the opposing army, standing helpless inside Northvale’s own command tent.

They had sent Kael across the river on a suicide errand, expecting him to sneak back with a copied map at best. Instead, he had bagged the architect of their entire supply chain.

"Well," Kael said, turning his gaze toward General Vane. "Does that count?"

"Count?" General Vane’s voice rang out, firm and unequivocal. "It shatters every expectation in this tent."

The general’s earlier suspicion was entirely gone, replaced by a raw, unfeigned appreciation. Around the table, the atmosphere shifted in tandem.

The quiet contempt that had marked every face when Kael first walked into the tent dissolved, replaced by a sudden, heavy respect and the jarring realization that they had fundamentally misjudged him.

Barely three hours had passed since Kael had accepted a throwaway errand designed to ruin him. In that span, he had located a specific, well-guarded target deep inside a sprawling enemy encampment, shattered his elite escort, taken him alive, and slipped back through hostile territory undetected.

By any rational military standard, it should have been a suicide mission.

He had accomplished it anyway. His personal level might have looked modest beside the veteran commanders flanking the table, but his actual combat efficacy vastly outstripped anything they had assumed possible.

Whatever rumors had preceded the Third Princess’s new captain through the tent flap, they hadn’t even scratched the surface.

Why Elara had staked her reputation on him suddenly made complete sense.

Kael let the heavy silence settle over the room for a beat, then shifted his gaze to the adjutant who had engineered the mission in the first place.

The thin-faced officer still stood off to one side, but his smug condescension had entirely evaporated.

His expression was locked in a tight grimace, and a glistening sheen of sweat was beginning to bead across his forehead.A slow, predatory smile curved Kael’s mouth.

"Mission accomplished."

He let the words hang in the air.

"I believe we had a separate arrangement for this particular outcome."

The adjutant’s composure finally cracked. Panic flared in his eyes as the weight of the moment landed squarely on his shoulders, his gaze darting frantically around the tent for an exit strategy that wouldn’t utterly destroy his standing.

If I actually follow through on that public humiliation, my career in this camp is finished.

A dozen desperate excuses raced through his mind, but before he could string a coherent defense together, his professional survival instincts overrode his common sense. He stiffened, puffing out his chest with forced indignation.

"This is the command tent. A critical military post. You seriously expect a passing wager made in jest to hold any weight here?"

Kael’s smile vanished instantly.

"Knew you’d try to squirm out of it."

His voice dropped flat, devoid of any warmth. He crossed the distance between them with unhurried, terrifying speed.

Before the adjutant could even register the movement, Kael’s open hand whipped across his face in one clean, deliberate, thunderous strike.

Crack.

The sharp report echoed off the canvas walls, instantly silencing the last murmurs in the room.

Kael lowered his hand, looking down at the stumbling officer with cold disdain.

"Spineless little coward."