I stood surrounded by a sea of armor and blades. Five thousand knights encircled us, their formation perfect and unbroken. The captain's voice still hung in the air, demanding our surrender.
I allowed myself a slight smile.
"Jaipa," I said quietly, "it's time."
My companion looked at me with those four green moon eyes, confusion evident in his gaze. "Time for what?"
I didn't answer immediately. Instead, I reached for the pendant hanging at my neck—the storage artifact I'd purchased earlier. With a touch of Tai energy, I activated its mechanism. A bundle appeared in my palm: delicate-looking flowers with petals of midnight blue, veined with crimson.
"Rudra... what are those?" Jaipa's voice carried a note of apprehension.
The knights hesitated, confused by this strange development. Their captain barked an order to advance, but something in my demeanor made the front line pause.
"First, eat this." I withdrew two small yellow pills from a hidden pocket and handed one to Jaipa. "Swallow it now. I don't have time to explain everything."
To his credit, Jaipa didn't hesitate for a second. We both consumed the pills as the knights began closing in, their confused faces hardening back into determination.
I turned to Jaipa, my voice eerily calm amid the chaos. "Try to survive for a while."
The knights advanced quickly, their swords raised as they moved like one enormous organism of steel and fury.
"Stand behind me," I instructed Jaipa and positioned myself at the center of the approaching army's path.
With Tai energy flowing through my fingertips, I activated my Square technique. The knights' first wave charged forward, and I moved with lethal precision. My blade sang through the air, finding gaps in armor, severing tendons and arteries with surgical exactitude. Three knights fell before the fourth could even raise his weapon.
But from the beginning, I wasn't fighting to win. I was just buying time.
With one hand still wielding my blade, I used the other to arrange the Blood Wraith Flowers in a specific pattern on the ground. As knights closed in from all sides, my three orbiting beads expanded their protective radius, buying me precious seconds.
I struck a knight's blade aside and plunged my own deep into his chest. As he fell, I withdrew a small ember stone from my inner pocket a rare item that could produce instant fire.
"Cover your face," I commanded Jaipa, though I knew the antidote would protect us both.
With a flick of my wrist, I ignited the flowers.
The effect was immediate and terrifying.
The Blood Wraith Flowers erupted in ghostly crimson flames, releasing a thick purple mist that billowed outward at unnatural speed. Jaipa and I stood still for a second, then I continued fighting, my movements crisp and economical, conserving energy while the mist expanded in all directions.
The knights nearest to me began to falter first. Their steps became unsteady. Weapons fell from nerveless fingers. Some clawed at their throats, gasping for air that no longer nourished them.
"What sorcery is this?" their commander screamed, his voice already sounding weak.
I didn't answer. I found no reason to answer there was no need for explanations to the dead or dying
Within minutes, the purple mist had enveloped the entire battlefield. Knights collapsed by the dozens, then hundreds, falling like wheat before a scythe, their bodies twitching briefly before going still. Looking at the falling bodies, the commander of their army ordered them to retreat, but before they could, the mist had covered the whole area.
I stood in the center of it all, untouched by death's embrace thanks to the antidote coursing through my veins. The bitter pill had been worth it.
"Wisdom in this world is often indistinguishable from ruthlessness."
As the last knights fell, the battlefield grew silent except for the soft rustle of armor as bodies settled into death's final embrace. Five thousand warriors reduced to corpses in minutes, without even the dignity of dying by the blade.
I looked at Jaipa, whose expression had shifted from shock to a grim understanding.
"This is the nature of survival," I said, my voice carrying across the silent field. "Surviving by any means is the true meaning of survival."
Then, something unexpected happened. Before our eyes, the burned remnants of the Blood Wraith Flowers began to stir. New shoots emerged from the charred earth, growing in an instant as if they had been there from the beginning.
The new blooms were pure white, their petals translucent like the finest silk. As they unfurled, they began to draw the purple mist back toward them, absorbing the deadly toxins they had released.
"The cycle of death and rebirth," Jaipa murmured, fascinated despite himself.
I nodded slightly, amazed by the view.
Within minutes, the air cleared completely. Where once hung a deadly miasma now floated only the sweet fragrance of the white blooms the second stage of the Blood Wraith Flowers' lifecycle.
I surveyed the fallen knights five thousand bodies that would feed the well. A grim harvest.
"Begin gathering the bodies," I said to Jaipa while turning to him. I sank down against a nearby rock. The sustained combat had taken its toll, and fatigue was seeping into my bones.
Jaipa approached, his green eyes studying me with wariness. "Those flowers... I've never seen anything like them. How did you get them?"
I smiled thinly. "You assumed I did. The truth is more complex."
"What do you mean?"
I gestured for him to sit. There was time now—time to explain, with five thousand bodies to drag to the well and no immediate threats.
"These are Blood Wraith Flowers," I began, plucking one of the white blooms and twirling it between my fingers. "Native to the highest mountains of the Veil Realm. Legend claims they grew first in the pools of blood left by ancient gods after their wars."
Jaipa frowned. "But how do you know all of this?"
"Ah, did you forget I got it from that old man by the market?"
"WHAT?" Jaipa suddenly interrupted me in a loud voice before I could even finish my words and continued, "I remember that... but that old man definitely said these flowers were just normal. So how the hell did you come to know those flowers could do something like this?"
"My bond is definitely a dumb one."
"What did you just call me, YOU DISLOYAL BASTARD!" He glared at me, but something had changed in him—he seemed to have moved a little further from the guilt of killing.
"You are a key. Do you even remember that?"
"Yes... I do! What is it? Just tell me."
"My second dumb key holds an ability of information. Anything I touch, I can get information about it... but my dumb-ass key can't remember that."
Jaipa raised his hand and hit my back really hard.
"Ouch, ouch... why hit me?" I looked at him, expecting a logical answer.
"Just felt like hitting you," he simply said.
"BASTARD can't even talk properly and goes around calling others dumb," he muttered that in front of my face and made a weird expression—like a camel eating a lemon.
"And what about the antidote?" His voice was high, like he was ordering me.
I sighed and reached into my pocket, removing a jade box. "This wasn't an antidote at all," I said in a flat voice.
Jaipa's four eyes widened with shock. "What? But then what—"
"What I gave you was crushed petals from the flowers' third stage—the germination phase." I opened the box again to show the remaining powder. "Blood Wraith Flowers don't just have two forms—the deadly red bloom and the cleansing white bloom. There is a last stage, a hidden stage where the flower forms seeds."
"And eating the seeds protects us against its own poison?"
"The seeds contain the same toxin but in such minimal quantities that it creates immunity without harm—a characteristic I discovered after burning my brain and coughing blood."
"Did you plan this from the beginning?" Jaipa's voice was filled with fear and something I didn't understand.
I thought this kid Rudra was acting mindlessly out of desperate instinct for survival, Jaipa thought, but as always, I was the one who couldn't grasp him even after living this long. I fell victim to his actions. How much further ahead was he looking? From the moment we got back to the city after the incidents at Rakta, he knew that the monster blood wasn't the answer all along. All of his reckless provocations to the king, killing the princess, cutting her head off, walking in the castle holding her head, gathering the knights—he must have known all of this all along !
What a fearsome kid indeed ! If I were to stand between his survival i shall fear him all the things jaipa was thinking was right on the spot rudra had known all the that had happened before they could happen, rudra was that type of kid always looking ahead of Himself because of that he was able to survive until now, and the fear jaipa had towards rudra was just a thing of many
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I surveyed the fallen knights dispassionately and gestured around us. "Now help me move these bodies..." Let's get out of here..as fast as we can "
As we began the grim task of dragging armored bodies to the well, I reflected on my actions with a clear mind. I had not gained any new power from this encounter, nor had I grown stronger physically, but I had demonstrated something far more valuable than strength.
"Rudra," Jaipa said softly as he dragged another knight toward the well "Did we do the right thing, killing thousands of lives just for two? Was it worth it?"
I looked at him and then down at the body which was i dragging
"Do you know the difference between a massacre and a necessary sacrifice?"
Jaipa nodded his head, not intending to answer i turned to him and said
"The difference between a massacre and a necessary sacrifice is merely a perspective And above all, history always favors the perspective of survivors
"In this world," I said quietly, looking at Jaipa, "there are no good humans or evil humans there are no moral humans or immoral humans. There are only the prepared and the perished and the so-called righteous path is merely a road most traveled, wide with the footprints of mediocrity. When you stand at the crossroads of life and death, morality becomes a map for lands you no longer want to travel. When you understand that morality is ultimately self-interest disguised as principle, you can finally negotiate honestly with both yourself and others."
Saying that i turned and continued what I was doing
--Somewhere in the kingdom --
A delicate man with dark black hair and eyes as red as blood was resting on the large corpse of a monster soaked in blood. The monster resembled a red-skinned troll or giant humanoid creature with a heavily muscular build. Its head lay far from its body.
"Wow!"
"Kids these days are quite fascinating they say things that even most adults can't comprehend"
"It's going to get interesting indeed ! "