Chapter 90: The Twelve Were Only the First Layer—No One Gets Out

The twelve dark-gold shapes did not scatter after they cleared the ridge.

Crystal One led the formation. The other eleven Bloodcrystal Bats held two lines and pressed down along Black Banner’s retreat.

The mountain road was already in chaos. Two Rocketier volleys had shattered the command structure, and the first people trying to get out were no longer the shield troops in front. They were the surviving Lords and the fastest Troops in the rear.

They understood the situation perfectly.

Whether another rocket volley would come was no longer the most important question.

The important part was that Riftward still had something coming after them.

"Behind us!"

A Black Banner Lord looked back. Twelve winged silhouettes were dropping out of the clouds.

"Hold the ranged line!"

"Bring those bats down first!"

Garrick Thorne’s voice rose over the panic again.

He was still alive.

The second Overload had landed dozens of meters off his core guard line. The three layers of protection around him had been reduced to almost nothing, but there had still been enough left to drag him out of the blast.

Now he wanted only one thing: destroy those twelve flying units. If the aerial pursuit broke, the scattered remnants still had several mountain routes they could use to escape.

Black Banner’s surviving ranged Troops turned at once.

Arrows. Fire. Long-distance slashes from several high-Quality Heroes.

Everything rose toward the sky.

Crystal One moved first.

All twelve Bloodcrystal Bats climbed sharply. The first wave passed beneath them. The second came faster, and two sword arcs caught the flank.

A crack split the edge of one Bloodcrystal Bat’s left wing. Crystal fragments burst from another’s back.

On the Northwatch summit, the Lords watching the pursuit changed expression.

"They can hit them."

"Of course they can."

Mira did not move. Legendary did not mean invincible, and the Black Banner troops still alive were not trash. Most of them were precisely the higher-Quality lines that the first two Rocket volleys had failed to cover directly.

"Should we go?"

The Lord beside her already had a hand around his weapon. Mira glanced at the Private Channel that was still open.

Cassian had given Northwatch one instruction: do not pursue.

She looked away.

"No."

"Hold the pass."

"But those twelve—"

"They aren’t ours."

Mira raised her sword toward the mountain below.

"Don’t throw your lives away together with someone else’s Kill Points."

The Lord froze. Someone next to him understood first.

"...Ten times."

Mira did not smile.

"So hold."

——

The second wave of ranged fire was still chasing them through the air, but Cassian did not make the twelve Crystal Maidens keep forcing the flight.

Bloodcrystal Bat gave them Flight.

Their real offense was still the Crystal skill set they already possessed.

"Down."

The twelve winged forms broke to both sides instead of diving into Black Banner’s formation. They descended toward the stone slopes and broken cliffs flanking the retreat routes.

Before they reached the ground, Crystal began to flow.

Wings stretched and folded away. Human forms emerged.

The six Spirit-oriented Crystal Maidens landed first. On the other side, Crystal One brought the five Physique-oriented Maidens down lower.

Garrick’s expression finally froze.

"Those aren’t bats?"

No one answered him.

One Spirit-oriented Crystal Maiden raised her hand.

[Crystal Storm]

Sheets of pale-gold Crystal crashed down from above. The ranged line Black Banner had only just managed to reform was smashed apart on the spot.

On the other side, Crystal One and the five Physique-oriented Maidens had already hit the melee line.

Blades. Hammers. Heavy shields.

A Rare Troop slammed head-on into one Crystal shield and cracked it. The Maiden behind it skidded three steps.

She did not fall.

Only then did Garrick understand what he was actually looking at.

"Not bats?"

The twelve Legendary flying beasts had only been the surface.

What had really come after them were twelve Legendary Troops that could fly—and then switch back into full combat forms.

"Send the high-grade line!"

"Kill one first!"

The remaining Rare Heroes and ranged Troops focused fire together.

One Crystal shield shattered. A sword arc carved half a palm deep into the shoulder of a Physique-oriented Crystal Maiden, splitting the pale-gold Crystal along the wound.

Her stance sank.

She still did not go down.

The next volley was already coming when lightning folded overhead.

[Folded Sky Ward]

Arrows and spells bent aside together and detonated against the mountain wall.

Aurelia descended from higher in the sky.

Legendary. Level 20.

Black Banner had barely reacted when, on the other side, a Rare sword Hero looked down.

A hair-thin white line had appeared across the center of his breastplate.

Celia walked past him.

[Quiet Step]

[Severing Arc]

The Hero swayed and fell.

The rear of Black Banner went still for a beat.

Garrick finally understood.

The twenty Launchers that had pinned Northwatch down were not Riftward’s last card.

And the twelve Bloodcrystal Bats were not Legendary beasts that could do nothing but chase from the air.

"Scatter!"

This time he did not order anyone to keep pressing Northwatch.

"Anyone who can move, move!"

The remnants of Black Banner broke apart at once. Some ran for the main road. Some threw themselves onto the broken slopes. Several Scout lines dropped low along the forest edge.

The two Crystal Maidens who had just been wounded did not retreat. Their cracked Crystal wings folded away as they landed and changed back into human form.

Blades. Shields.

They kept chasing.

Garrick looked back, and his face tightened further.

Wounding them had not taken these Legendary Troops out of the fight.

By the time the retreat crossed beyond Northwatch’s boundary, Communication reconnected. The first Lords out were already calling for help.

If Cassian only wanted to win the battle, this was enough.

Garrick’s main force had been broken by the Rockets. Northwatch was safe. The survivors were running.

But Cassian was not counting the result as "driven off."

A high-Quality force that made it home could be used by Black Banner again. And the 10× Kill Points carried by those Lords and Troops would not somehow stay behind just because they had lost.

They had already delivered both to his front door.

Cassian had no interest in storing the rest of Black Banner’s fighting strength for them.

Garrick had just started to breathe again when a Warden Gate lit behind him.

[Veyra: Nothing at home.]

[Cassian Vale: Give me one cutoff line.]

[Veyra: Stormlance stays.]

[Veyra: Nine Praetorians. One hundred Legionnaires.]

[Veyra: I keep the other hundred Legionnaires and the Stormlance here.]

[Cassian Vale: Enough.]

The Gate opened.

Nine Eclipse Praetorians came through first. One hundred Legionnaires followed.

[Aegis Fold]

The shield line closed across the main road.

Garrick stopped dead.

Twenty Rocketiers.

Twelve Legendary Crystal Maidens.

Aurelia. Celia.

And now an entire Eclipse battle line that had never appeared on Northwatch’s front.

"How much is Riftward hiding?"

No one answered.

The remnants could only scatter again.

Scouts could hide their bodies. They could not hide the exits they had to use to leave these mountains.

Bloodcrystal Bats were already overhead.

——

Garrick chose the most broken scree slope in the end. Only one escort unit remained with him.

He did not dare approach the Eclipse line. He cut diagonally toward the side instead.

A Bloodcrystal Bat dropped behind him. His remaining guards turned at once.

"Go!"

They knew they could not outrun the pursuit. They only wanted to buy Garrick a few more seconds.

Crystal One folded her wings in midair and landed.

Her right arm became a heavy blade.

The first Rare Troop crashed into her head-on.

Boom!

Stone exploded beneath Crystal One’s feet. She gave only one step.

840 Physique finally came down on a high-Quality unit that had committed to a desperate frontal clash.

Her blade fell.

Shield and soldier split together.

The second guard had not even filled the gap when lightning came down from higher above.

Garrick jerked his head up.

Aurelia was not looking at the guards.

She was looking at him.

[Thunder Crown]

Lightning crushed the space around him. Garrick’s defensive light flared three times.

The first layer broke.

The second cracked.

The third had barely formed when Aurelia dropped through the lightning.

[Skyblade Descent]

A gold-white sword light punched straight through the center of the scree slope.

Boom!

When the light faded, only a charred corpse remained, pierced from the shoulder down.

[Garrick Thorne | Dead]

Cassian glanced at the public Lord record beneath it.

[Current Region: Duskmoor]

Duskmoor—the Rank 10 Region from the first Shattered Marches Ranking.

Its former Warden, Ronan Greaves, had also belonged to Black Banner.

He had died outside Forgotten Shrine in that earlier Rocket volley.

Cassian did not stop.

"Keep clearing."

Garrick was dead.

To most people, killing the commander would have been the perfect ending to the pursuit.

Cassian did not count it that way.

Garrick was one name.

The real result was making sure this invasion roster could never be used by Black Banner a second time.

——

For the next half hour, it was no longer a battle.

It was a hunt.

Once Garrick died, the remaining Black Banner force never formed a complete line again.

The main road ended at Eclipse shields. Scouts trying to slip through gullies and forest edges only had to look up to see Bloodcrystal Bats above them.

They could hide themselves.

They could not hide the exits.

Celia and Aurelia dealt only with the high-Quality units that still tried to break through by force.

The remaining names turned gray one after another.

At last, Crystal One returned from the farther ridge and landed in human form.

"Lord."

"No one else got out."

Cassian looked at the invasion roster. Every name was gray.

"Done."

The nine Praetorians and one hundred Legionnaires went straight back through the Gate. The Stormlance had never left Riftward.

——

More than an hour later, on Northwatch’s northern stone ridge, there were no Black Banner banners left anywhere below.

The Communication Seal still kept the outside world from seeing what had happened here.

Northwatch itself had seen everything.

The twelve Crystal Maidens returned one by one. Aurelia landed last. Celia came up the mountain road from the other side. The twenty Rocketiers were still recovering behind the side peak.

No one was pursuing anymore.

There was no one left to pursue.

Mira came down from the second defensive slope. She looked at Cassian, then behind him.

"You drove them all out?"

"No."

Mira paused.

"Then there are still some left?"

"No."

Cassian closed Garrick’s gray record.

"The ones who entered Northwatch this time."

"They’re gone."

The Northwatch Lords nearby fell silent. One of them looked down the mountain again, as if checking what exactly those words meant.

Mira did not ask twice. She sheathed her sword.

"Northwatch will remember."

"You said that already."

"That was for pulling us off the ridge alive."

Mira looked at him.

"This is for sending every one of them back."

Cassian did not correct her use of "back."

Going back dead still counted as going back.

Mira studied him for a moment.

"Garrick was already dead, and you chased them another half hour."

"His death alone wasn’t enough."

Cassian looked at the fully gray invasion roster.

"The rest were more useful alive to Black Banner than they are now."

"They delivered themselves."

"I wasn’t going to save them for Black Banner."

Mira was quiet for a beat. Only then did her gaze drop to the Kill Points notification that had jumped again.

"If Riftward still doesn’t make the top three today, I’m going to assume the Ranking is broken."

This time Cassian actually smiled.

"Let it refresh first."

He raised a hand.

The daily refresh countdown for the Second Regional Ranking was already near its end.

Cassian did not open the full battle report. He did not count how many Black Banner troops had died today.

Instead, he brought Garrick’s gray public record up one more time.

[Current Region: Duskmoor]

Ronan Greaves.

Garrick Thorne.

The same Region.

Cassian looked at it for two seconds, then closed it.

Ranking first.

The rest of the account wasn’t going anywhere.