I Can Copy And Evolve Talents

Chapter 1388  The Morning After

The sun crept over the ridge of the mountain and touched the battlefield like it was afraid of what it would find.

It found plenty.

The plains below Ryugan's gate were a graveyard. Bodies in red and obsidian armor lay scattered across hundreds of meters, some frozen stiff from Sael's frigid arrows, some were charred from Annette's flamest, others torn apart by brutal strength. The Empire's banners, once proud crimson cloth that soldiers carried with religious devotion, were trampled into the mud and blood and frost.

The gate itself stood. Damaged, scarred, sections of the wall to its left crumbling where the javelins had bitten deep, but standing. The runic patterns that ran through the metal and blue gem still pulsed with faint light, though dimmer than before, as if the structure itself was exhausted.

Captain Danma leaned against his ballista on the right-wing tower and stared at the carnage below with bloodshot eyes. He hadn't slept. None of the tower soldiers had. The old man's grey hair was matted with sweat and dust, and there was dried blood on his hands from loading bolts through the night until his palms cracked.

Beside him, a younger soldier was counting.

"...four hundred and twelve, Captain. That's what we've confirmed so far. Could be more buried under the rubble from the east wall section."

Four hundred and twelve Ryuganese soldiers were dead..

Danma closed his eyes and breathed.

Four hundred and twelve families that would hear news today that would break them. Wives, mothers, children, friends. He knew some of those men personally. He had trained some of them.

But when he opened his eyes and looked past the bodies of his own, he saw the field beyond.

Thousands… Thousands of Empire soldiers lay there, and none of them were ever getting up again. The famed Seventh Legion, the Nightblood, the Empire's sword of conquest that had razed cities and toppled kingdoms, had been bled and gutted on the doorstep of a nation they considered a speck of dirt.

Danma's jaw tightened. His bloodshot eyes burned, and his cracked hands trembled as they gripped the ballista rail.

'Four hundred and twelve. That's the price. And by every star in the sky, it was worth paying.'

He would mourn them. Every last one. But he would mourn them as men who stood when the Empire came, and the Empire broke first.

Far below the tower, on the plains where the worst of the fighting had taken place, morning revealed what the night had hidden.

Northern stood at the edge of the battlefield with his hands in his pockets, watching.

There was no urgency in his posture. He stood ust a young man with white hair standing in the cold morning air, observing the aftermath of a war he had orchestrated from start to finish.

One of his clones was helping soldiers carry wounded back toward the gate. Another was near the east wall, speaking quietly with a group of Ryuganese officers about the structural damage. A third was somewhere inside the mountain, already in the Grand Archive, reading.

But this one, the one standing here, was simply looking.

The bodies of Empire soldiers stretched to the treeline. Marred in all forms and manner, many lay in pieces too small to identify, which was Raven's particular signature. And at the center of the field, where the worst of the thrall army had been, the ground was soaked in so much blood, leaving dark red patches that steamed faintly in the morning cold.

'We actually did it.'

The thought arrived simply, without fanfare. He had expected to win. He had planned to win. Every piece had been placed, every contingency accounted for, and still, standing here with the proof of it laid out before him, there was a part of Northern that felt something he hadn't felt in a long time.

'Huh. So this is what satisfaction feels like.'

He let it sit for a moment and allowed himself have it.

Then his gaze drifted to a section of the field where Ryuganese soldiers had fallen, and the feeling lost some of its warmth.

Four hundred was a number. Four hundred soldiers with faces and names was something else entirely.

'That's the cost. Remember it.'

He would make sure not to forget them.

A familiar sound pulled his attention.

Sael descended on the Nightmare Wyvern, and the creature's landing was less graceful than usual. It stumbled slightly on touchdown, its shadowy form flickering at the edges. The beast was as drained as its rider.

Sael himself looked like he had been dragged through a war. Which, to be fair, was exactly what had happened. His clothes were torn, his quiver was empty, and his face carried the particular pallor of someone who had pushed their essence to absolute zero and then kept firing anyway.

He dismounted with the careful slowness of someone whose legs might not cooperate and walked toward Northern. When he reached him, he simply stood beside him and looked at the field.

Neither of them spoke for a while.

"Lord Northern," Sael said finally, and his voice was hoarse from shouting. "I believe I need to sleep for approximately three days."

Northern glanced at him. "Only three?"

"I'm trying to be modest."

Northern let out a short laugh, and it carried across the quiet morning air.

'He's grown.'

It was a thought he kept to himself, but it was true. The Sael who had trembled at shadows in the cave was not the Sael who had spent an entire night raining arrows on an army, who had challenged his own limits when his essence ran dry, who had kept fighting because he decided he would.

"You did well, Sael."

Sael blinked. He looked at Northern with mild surprise, as if praise was something he hadn't been prepared to receive.

"I... thank you, Lord Northern." He cleared his throat. "Although I'd appreciate if you didn't mention the part where I almost fell off the Wyvern. Twice."

Northern looked at him with pretense shock.

"Oh? You did? How did I miss that?"

Sael breathed with relief.

"Forget I ever said anything…"