The Extra's Rise-Chapter 300: Third Mission (7)

I've always believed in being carefully ambiguous when delivering bad news. Not so vague that people think everything's fine, but not so clear that they panic. It's a delicate balance—like telling someone to check their safety equipment without mentioning you've spotted a bomb.

So when I mentioned "high-ranking" Savage Communion members in the vicinity to those academy kids, I kept my tone neutral. Professional. The kind of voice you use when discussing slightly concerning weather patterns rather than the potential arrival of genocidal maniacs.

These weren't just any academy students, either. Mythos Academy's finest—a fact they wore like invisible badges, visible to anyone with enough perception to see past their youth. Arthur Nightingale—almost Integration-rank, with a Gift that made necromancers twice his age look incompetent. The Saintess, Rachel, whose healing abilities could bring someone back from the brink of death with a touch. Rose, with her reality-bending Paradox manipulation. Even Clana, perpetually half-asleep but capable of layering spells in ways that defied conventional understanding.

Talented, yes. But still children playing at being soldiers.

The Western Continent had been my responsibility for a long time now. Second only to Valen Ashbluff himself in raw power, I had earned every scar, every rank, every whispered legend.

I brought the academy students with me on patrol—not standard procedure by any measure. Grand Marshals don't do patrols. We coordinate them, plan them, review reports from them. We don't personally trudge through borderlands unless we're expecting something that requires our direct attention.

But I needed them with me today. Not for their protection—that would be absurd—but because their presence would force me to make the right choice when the moment came.

The hovertruck wheezed asthmatically as we traveled, its systems protesting every bump and dip in the uneven terrain. Frontier equipment was always like this: functional but complaining, like a soldier who does their job perfectly while grumbling the entire time.

I pulled Arthur aside when we reached the ridgeline. Of the four, he showed the most promise in necromancy—my own specialty. Not that he was purely a necromancer; his talents were more diverse than that. But he understood the fundamentals in a way that suggested intuition rather than mere study.

"Walk with me, Arthur," I said, keeping my voice neutral.

He followed without question. Good. Not all brilliance comes with obedience.

"You've studied necromancy," I stated. Not a question. I'd read his file, watched him practice.

"Some," he nodded. "It's one of my focuses, yes. But I'm not purely a necromancer."

"That's fine," I told him. "I'm not either." I paused, considering how to explain. "You know what necromancy really is?"

"Raising the dead," he offered, giving the textbook answer.

I couldn't help but snort at that. So many years of teaching, and they still started with the most simplistic understanding. "No. It's control. Understanding. It's the discipline of keeping things from falling apart when they already should have. Necromancy is balance, Arthur. Not just bones and corpses. It's memory, legacy, structure in decay. And you? You have potential."

He blinked, surprise flickering across his face. "Is that why you brought me?"

"Part of it," I admitted. "The other part is that I have a very bad feeling."

His expression told me he understood the weight of that statement. Good. The boy wasn't an idiot.

"Bad feeling as in…?" he prompted.

"As in we're being watched. And I want someone with me who can raise a wall of corpses and make it polite."

I allowed myself a small smile—barely there, but genuine. The boy had earned that much honesty, at least.

The truth was, I hadn't slept properly since seeing that marking in their report. Three diagonal slashes with a horizontal line—the Axe King's personal trail marker. I knew exactly what it meant. The Axe King himself was moving along our frontier.

I immediately contacted Valen Ashbluff. The King of the Western Continent. The only being on this continent who could face the Axe King with certainty of victory. The message I received in return was polite, diplomatic, and utterly useless. Valen was halfway across the world on some crucial diplomatic mission. He would return "as soon as circumstances permitted."

Circumstances. As if the Axe King's presence along our frontier was a minor scheduling inconvenience rather than an existential threat.

I brought these students with me for a reason. Not because they could help against what was coming—they couldn't. But because their presence would ensure I made the right choice when the moment came. I would do whatever was necessary to ensure they survived. To ensure the future they represented would have a chance.

I felt it before I saw anything—a ripple in the ambient mana, like a stone dropped into a still pond. Then the temperature plummeted, the air itself seeming to recoil from what was approaching. Even the ground beneath our feet trembled slightly.

"Get back to the truck," I told Arthur, my voice calm despite everything. "Take the others and go. Now."

To his credit, he didn't waste time asking questions. He saw something in my face that told him everything he needed to know.

"Marshal—" he began.

"That's an order, Captain," I said firmly. "Go."

He hesitated for just a moment, then nodded and turned, running back toward where the others waited.

I turned to face the approaching presence, drawing on my Gift. Deepdark swirled around me, responding to my call—not just from recent deaths but from the accumulated weight of all the battles this land had witnessed. The Western frontier was saturated with death; it was my perfect battlefield.

The air split open about fifty meters away—not a portal in the conventional sense, but a tear in reality itself. Through it stepped a figure that could only be the Axe King.

He was massive, nearly two metres tall, his skin covered in ritual scars that glowed with internal power. His armor was crafted from the bones of powerful creatures and metals that shouldn't exist in nature. And his axe—the weapon that gave him his title—was a monstrous thing of black metal that seemed to devour light.

"Marshal Meilyn Potan," he said, his voice surprisingly cultured despite the tusks that protruded from his lower jaw. "The Second Pillar of the Western Continent. I've looked forward to meeting you."

"Axe King," I replied evenly. "You're trespassing on Western territory."

He laughed, the sound like stones grinding together. "Am I? The borders between our domains have always been... fluid. Especially when Valen Ashbluff is absent."

So he knew. Of course he knew. The Axe King's intelligence network was legendary.

"Valen's absence is temporary," I said. "Mine isn't."

"Brave words," he acknowledged, hefting his enormous axe. "But we both know the truth. Without Valen, you cannot stop what's coming."

"Perhaps not," I agreed. "But I can delay it."

I felt the hovertruck activate behind me, its engines whining as it lifted off. Good. The students were leaving. They would report what happened here. They would prepare the frontier for what was coming.

The Axe King noticed too. His eyes—eerily intelligent for an orc—flicked toward the retreating vehicle, then back to me.

"Sending away your reinforcements? Unwise."

"They're not my reinforcements," I said. "They're my purpose."

Understanding dawned in his eyes. "Ah. You mean to sacrifice yourself. Honorable, but futile."

"We'll see."

I gathered my power, channeling it through Eternal Cycle. Deepdark swirled around me in visible currents, the air itself darkening as I drew on decades of mastery. This would be my final act—a culmination of everything I had learned, everything I had become.

The Axe King raised his weapon, miasma coalescing around it.

"Your sacrifice will be remembered, Marshal," he said, almost respectfully. "But it will not save them."

"It doesn't need to save them," I replied. "It just needs to give them time."

He leaped forward with impossible speed for something so large, his axe describing a perfect arc toward my head.

I met it with everything I had, pushing my Gift to its absolute limit. Death energy erupted from me in a catastrophic wave, the perfect counter to his strike.

The resulting collision was blinding, deafening—a cataclysm of opposed forces meeting in perfect destruction.

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And in that final moment, as the Axe King's weapon fell and my life force surged to meet it, I smiled. Not the ghost of a smile, not a hint of one—but a true, genuine expression of peace.

I had found my courage. Not in the absence of fear, but in its acknowledgment and transcendence.

These students, these children playing at being soldiers—they were the future. A future worth dying for.

The blade fell, and the world went white.