CHAPTER 131: DEFEND THE CITY [END]

The silence following the shaman’s death didn’t last. It was swallowed by a sound far worse than the roar of monsters: the groan of twisting metal and splintering wood.

CRACK-BOOOOM.

The main gates of the outer wall gave way.

It wasn’t a clean break. The massive iron-wood doors were blasted inward, sending shrapnel the size of spears tearing through the defenders in the courtyard below.

"They’re in!" a soldier screamed, his voice cracking with despair. "The courtyard is lost!"

Oliver stood on the battlements, looking down into the hellscape. The breach was like a dam breaking. A torrent of black armor and green flesh poured through the gap.

He looked at the men around him. There were barely twenty left on this section of the wall. Their armor was shredded, their eyes hollow. They looked at him—not at the enemy, but at him. Waiting for an order. Waiting for a reason not to jump off the wall and end it.

Oliver felt the weight of the Captain’s soul pressing against his own. He grabbed Kaelen’s warhammer from the blood-slicked stones. It was heavy, the handle still warm from his dead friend’s grip.

"We don’t die here!" Oliver roared, his voice raw. "Fall back to the Inner Gate! Shield wall at the archway! Move!"

They didn’t argue. They ran.

Oliver took the rear. As he descended the stone stairs toward the courtyard, a pair of Wargs—massive, demon-eyed wolves—leaped up the steps, jaws snapping for his throat.

He didn’t slow down. He swung Kaelen’s hammer.

CRUNCH.

The head of the hammer smashed into the first wolf’s skull, collapsing it instantly. The momentum carried Oliver into a spin. He drew his sword with his left hand, slashing the second wolf across the eyes as it lunged.

"Move! Move!" he shouted, herding the survivors through the chaos.

The courtyard was a slaughterhouse. Soldiers were being pulled down by swarms of goblins. An armored troll was swinging a tree trunk, sweeping men away like broken toys.

Oliver saw a young standard-bearer—a girl no older than sixteen—get cornered by three orcs. She thrust her flagpole at them, terrified.

"No!" Oliver sprinted.

The Rune of Vigor flared on his back, visible only to him as a burning sensation. He moved faster than the heavy armor should have allowed.

He slammed into the first orc like a battering ram, sending it flying. The second turned, raising an axe, but Oliver brought the hammer down on its knee. The joint exploded. As the orc screamed, Oliver spun and decapitated the third with his sword.

Blood sprayed across his visor, blinding him for a second. He wiped it off with a gauntlet.

"Get to the gate!" he yelled at the girl.

She stared at him, trembling, clutching the flag. "Captain... my leg..."

Her leg was mangled, bone visible.

Oliver didn’t hesitate. He grabbed her by the back of her breastplate and hoisted her up, throwing her over his shoulder.

"Hold on," he gritted out.

He ran. Behind him, the tide of monsters crashed against the heels of the retreating defenders.

Hour 7: The Choke Point

The Inner Gate was a bottleneck—a narrow stone archway leading to the keep. It was the only thing standing between the horde and the civilians sheltering inside.

And it was where Oliver made his stand.

"SHIELDS!" he bellowed.

A wall of steel locked together. Twelve men. That was the line.

SLAM.

The enemy wave hit them. The impact was deafening. Shields buckled. Men grunted, boots sliding backward on the stone pavement.

"Push! Push them back!"

Oliver stood in the second row, thrusting his sword over the shoulders of the shield-bearers, stabbing into the mass of snarling faces on the other side.

Stab. Retract. Stab. Retract.

It was mechanical. Brutal.

An axe smashed through the shield of the man in front of him—a veteran named Garrick. The axe buried itself in Garrick’s collarbone. He gasped, blood bubbling from his mouth, but he didn’t drop the shield. He leaned his weight into it, pinning the enemy weapon, turning his dying body into an obstacle.

"Hold..." Garrick wheezed, looking back at Oliver. "Hold the line..."

He died standing up.

"Garrick!" a soldier screamed.

"Close the gap!" Oliver shouted, stepping forward. He kicked Garrick’s corpse forward, using it to shove the orcs back for a split second, and filled the hole in the line himself.

Now he was the front.

There was no strategy here. Just violence.

An orc snarled in his face, breath reeking of rot. Oliver headbutted it. The impact rang inside his helmet, dazing him, but the orc went down. He smashed the warhammer into the face of the next one.

[Time Remaining: 15 Minutes.]

The system voice echoed in his mind.

Fifteen minutes. It felt like an eternity.

His arms were lead. His lungs burned. Every inch of his body was bruised or cut. If not for the Rune of Vigor pumping supernatural stamina into his veins, he would have collapsed an hour ago.

The pile of bodies in front of the archway grew higher, forming a grisly rampart of flesh and iron.

Then, the horde stopped pressing.

The orcs stepped back, parting like a sea of black oil.

A heavy silence fell over the archway. The defenders panted, chests heaving, blood dripping from their armor.

"Why..." one soldier gasped. "Why did they stop?"

Thud. Thud. Thud.

Heavy, rhythmic footsteps echoed from the darkness beyond the torchlight.

A figure emerged.

It stood eight feet tall, clad in armor made from dragon bone. A cape of flayed human skin hung from its shoulders. In its hand, it dragged a massive greatsword that sparked against the stones.

An Orc Warlord.

Its skin was scarred and grey, its eyes burning with intelligent malice. It looked at the pile of dead orcs, then at Oliver.

It smiled.

"You," the Warlord rumbled, its voice deep and grinding. "You kill many. Good. My blade is thirsty."

[Boss Entity Detected: Gor’Zul the Butcher.] [Warning: Survival Probability 5%.]

Oliver stared at the monster. He tightened his grip on Kaelen’s hammer in his left hand and his sword in his right.

"Come and get it, you ugly bastard," Oliver spat.

The Warlord roared and charged.

It was fast—impossibly fast for its size.

Oliver barely raised the sword to block.

CLANG!

The impact sent a shockwave through his body. His sword shattered. Shards of steel flew into the air. Oliver was thrown backward, crashing into the stone wall of the archway.

"Captain!"

Oliver groaned, sliding down the wall. His right arm hung limp, numb from the shock.

The Warlord laughed, raising its greatsword for the killing blow.

"Weak."

It brought the blade down.

Oliver rolled. The greatsword smashed into the stone floor, burying itself deep in the rock.

Oliver didn’t try to stand. He lunged from his knees, swinging Kaelen’s hammer upward with his left hand.

CRACK.

He hit the Warlord in the ribs. Armor crunched. The beast grunted, staggering back a step, but it didn’t fall. It backhanded Oliver with a gauntleted fist.

Oliver flew across the archway, skidding to a halt near the body of the dead standard-bearer.

His vision blurred. A high-pitched ringing filled his ears.

He tried to get up. His legs wouldn’t work.

The Warlord wrenched its sword free from the stone and walked toward him slowly, savoring the moment.

"Human courage," the Warlord sneered, looming over him. "Fragile. Like glass."

Oliver looked up. He saw the blade rise. He saw the cold, dead sky above.

Is this it?

He looked at the dead girl beside him. Her hand was still clutching the flagpole. The flag of Aethelgard—a golden sun on blue—was stained with mud and blood.

Something inside Oliver snapped.

It wasn’t the system. It wasn’t the Rune. It was the memory of the man whose body he inhabited. A lifetime of duty. A lifetime of protecting these walls.

He grabbed the flag. Not the pole—the spear tip at the end of it.

"Not... yet..." Oliver wheezed.

The Warlord swung down.

Oliver didn’t block. He thrust.

With a roar that tore his throat raw, he drove the broken flagpole upward.

The Warlord’s sword bit into Oliver’s shoulder, cutting through the pauldron, biting into flesh. Agony, white-hot and blinding, exploded in his nerves.

But the spear tip struck true.

It pierced the gap in the Warlord’s armor, right under the chin, and drove up into the brain.

The Warlord froze. Its eyes went wide.

The greatsword stopped halfway through Oliver’s shoulder.

For a second, they stayed like that—locked together in a tableau of death.

Then, the light faded from the Warlord’s eyes. The massive body went limp, collapsing sideways with a thunderous crash.

Oliver fell back, gasping, blood pooling beneath him.

"Captain!"

The remaining soldiers rushed to him.

"He killed it... by the gods, he killed the Butcher!"

Oliver stared at the sky. The smoke was thinning.

And there, on the horizon... a line of gold.

Dawn.

[Time Remaining: 00:00.] [Objective Complete.]

A horn blew in the distance. Clear. Bright. Triumphant.

"Reinforcements!" a soldier cried, weeping. "Look! The King’s banner! They’re here!"

Cheers erupted around him. Men were hugging each other, crying, pointing at the rising sun and the glittering line of silver knights charging down the valley to sweep away the monster horde.

Oliver tried to smile.

But as the light touched the faces of his men, something happened.

They began to fade.

The soldier cheering turned to mist. The dead body of Garrick dissolved into light. The fortress walls, the blood, the monsters—everything began to break apart into fragments of blue data.

Oliver reached out a hand.

"Wait..."

He saw Kaelen’s ghost—standing nearby, holding his hammer, whole again. Kaelen smiled at him, saluted, and then dissolved into the wind.

The realization hit Oliver harder than any sword.

They were real.

This wasn’t just a simulation. It was a memory. A recording of a battle that happened centuries ago. These men had lived. They had died. And Oliver had just walked in their shoes for their final moments.

"Rest well," Oliver whispered, his vision fading to white. "You held the line."

[Trial Complete.] [Evaluation: S-Rank.] [Reward: Soul Imprint - Guardian’s Will.]

Location: The Spiraling Staircase (Reality)

"GAS—HUH!"

Oliver woke up with a violent gasp, his body convulsing as if he’d been electrocuted.

He was back on the cold stone steps of the Velanthris dungeon. The mist was quiet. The monsters were gone.

"Oliver!"

Amy was kneeling beside him, her hands glowing with healing magic, tears streaming down her face. Sophia was holding his other hand, looking terrified.

"He’s awake!" Sophia cried.

Oliver groaned, clutching his shoulder. The phantom pain of the greatsword was still there, burning like fire, even though his skin was unbroken.

He looked at his hands. They were his own again. Not the scarred, calloused hands of the Captain.

"Are you okay?" Amy asked, voice trembling. "You... you just collapsed. You stopped breathing for a minute."

Oliver sat up slowly, wiping cold sweat from his forehead. He looked at the two girls. They looked so young. So fragile compared to the hardened soldiers he had just fought beside.

He clenched his fist. The weight of the warhammer was gone, but the feeling of it—the weight of duty—lingered.

"I’m fine," Oliver said, his voice raspy. He stood up, legs shaking slightly.

He looked down into the abyss.

"We passed the first trial," he said quietly.

"Trial?" Amy asked. "We just... fell asleep."

"You did," Oliver muttered. "I didn’t."

He turned to them, his eyes dark, carrying a new kind of intensity.

"Let’s move. We have a long way to go."

As he walked down the stairs, he checked his status window.

[New Passive Skill Acquired: Guardian’s Will]

Effect: When protecting others, pain perception is reduced by 50%, and Strength/Endurance increase by 20% as health decreases.

Oliver touched his chest, where Kaelen’s locket would have been.

"I won’t waste it," he whispered to the darkness.

They descended further, leaving the echoes of the dead behind.