Her voice sounded very devoted as Aurelia took a slow step toward him, captivated by the physical presence of the man who had bled for her.

’Sigh... this won’t end well for me, will it?’

Caius looked down at his new dark-steel gauntlets, flexing his fingers.

He felt the power of his new gear settling into his bones.

The tutorial, if he could call it that was officially over as the rusted penal scrap had been discarded in the mud where it belonged.

’All I need to do is to survive some more... and get back home to piss those guys off some more.’ Caius thought.

He was properly equipped to handle the nightmare of the Carrion Front.

"Let’s go," Caius said smoothly, stepping toward her with the dark-steel plates shifting silently. "We have a second wave to catch."

...

The freezing, sulfur-choked wind of the Carrion Front violently whipped across the elevated sandbag-lined ridge of the outer palisade.

It was a harsh unforgiving gale that carried the sickening scent of flash-boiled blood and pulverized obsidian but for the third time since he had been violently dumped into this apocalyptic meat grinder, Caius did not feel the biting chill of the eastern wastes.

He stood at the edge of the fortified wall with his heavy dark-steel boots planted firmly into the reinforced stone and mud.

The master-crafted dark-steel armor hugged his newly evolved physique flawlessly as the deep black metal absorbed the dim ambient light of the bruised sky, creating a terrifying visual void around his broad chest and shoulders.

And currently, he was enjoying the best seat in the house...

Miles away, directly across the endless pulverized expanse of the smoking wasteland, the bruised ash-gray horizon was violently flashing.

FLASH!

A blinding eye-watering white light aggressively tore through the roiling black clouds of the deep wilds.

Two full seconds passed in silence.

KRA-OOOOOOOOOM!

The deafening concussive thunderclap violently rolled over the miles of empty mud, striking the palisade like a physical wave.

The sheer force of the distant boom rattled the heavy dark-steel plates on Caius’s chest and vibrated the loose dirt out of the sandbags stacked around his boots.

Suspended high in the stratosphere, hovering entirely untouched by the filth and despair of the mortal world, was the Saint of the Storm God.

To the naked eyes of the surviving penal troops cowering in the trenches below, the demigod was nothing more than a tiny glowing silver speck in the distant sky. But Caius’s Void-enhanced perception zoomed in, cutting through the smog and distance with focus.

He watched the arrogant demigod go to work...

The Saint was not fighting a battle after all. He was simply performing a divine extermination.

The true, main body of the Gore-Tide was attempting to gather its horrific, unimaginable mass in the deep corrupted wilds beyond the tree line.

Tens of thousands of highly mutated Blight-Fiends, massive, multi-ton Siege-beasts, and towering Abyssal horrors were aggressively swarming, drawn by the ruptured Leyline.

But the Storm Saint refused to let them organize.

VZZZT-BAM!

Another massive cinematic hurricane of pure lightning violently dropped from the demigod’s outstretched fingers.

The torrential rain of jagged electricity aggressively slammed into the distant earth.

Even from miles away, Caius could see the massive, blooming clouds of superheated red mist and white ash violently expanding upward into the atmosphere as hundreds of monsters were instantaneously flash-boiled into nothingness.

’So this is the true power of a Saint, huh?’ Silas thought, though he was well aware that a true saint was supposed to be able to take out a Gore-Tide completely. ’He’s probably a newly ascended one...’

Caius stood perfectly still, his gauntleted hands resting casually on the top sandbag of the palisade.

He didn’t draw his newly forged dark-steel broadsword.

What did he want to do? Go fight?

He casually watched with his crimson eyes narrowing as he broke down the sheer, terrifying geometry of the Saint’s magic.

He was a survivor who had memorized the wiki pages of this rigged reality and right now, the most optimal efficient play was to stand back, keep his own mana reserves completely full, and let the arrogant NPC do all the heavy lifting...

’Look at the radius on that spread,’ Caius thought, watching another massive web of blue lightning violently arc through the distant tree line. ’He’s using raw Divine Authority with no hand seals to stabilize the output and no elemental compression to optimize the kill-zone. He’s just brute-forcing the atmospheric mana to compensate for his lack of finesse.’

Caius smirked under the high dark-steel collar of his breastplate.

If he had cast that exact same [Tier-6 Storm God’s Heavenly Judgment] using his Grimoire of Emulation, he would have condensed the lightning into a whip to completely bypass the monsters’ obsidian plating without wasting a single volt on the empty mud.

But the Saint was arrogant.

The Saint wanted to put on a show for the people watching from the command tents.

’I mean he can spam his ultimate,’ Caius reasoned. ’Every single bolt of lightning he drops out there is one less monster I have to personally cleave in half when the main wave finally breaches our lines. We reap the benefits at the end of the day as long as he doesn’t kill all of them...’

Caius wasn’t entirely alone in his observation.

Pressed intimately flush against his right side was Aurelia Solis.

The terrifying Villainess had entirely discarded the concept of personal space.

She was standing on the freezing palisade, but she wasn’t looking at the apocalyptic lightning storm currently glassing the eastern wastes.

She didn’t care about the Gore-Tide... She didn’t care about the Storm Saint...

Her two slender, pale arms were wrapped incredibly tightly around Caius’s thick dark-steel-plated bicep.

She was clinging to his arm like it was the only solid object in a rapidly spinning universe.

’I swear Yanderes are more scarier in real life... how the hell do I get her to at least let go of me?’ Cakes thought.

She rested her flawless pale cheek directly against his cold dark-steel pauldron, ignoring the hard uncomfortable metal.

Her glowing crimson eyes were half-closed in a state of enjoyment as a blissfully serene smile graced her soft lips.

She was publicly staking her claim over the predator.

If any of the surviving Imperial Knights or disgraced mercenaries dared to even walk within fifty feet of their section of the palisade,

Aurelia didn’t speak.

She didn’t ignite her golden flames.

She simply cracked her left eye open and shot them a single razor-thin glare of pure soul-crushing malice.

The killing intent was so heavy that hardened veterans instantly averted their eyes, violently changing their patrol routes just to avoid stepping into the Mad Sun’s territorial radius.

Caius let her cling.

He didn’t pull his arm away.

He didn’t reprimand her for the display of extreme yandere possessiveness in front of the Imperial Army.

He was treating the unstable royal pyromancer with the exact same logic he applied to his combat encounters: if she was happy, she wasn’t melting the trench.

Bomb defusal was an ongoing active process.

However, deep within the darkest vaults of his soul, the temperature had violently plummeted to absolute zero.

The serene silence of his spiritual core was completely shattered.

’Look at this pathetic farce...’Ereba grumbled loudly.

The ancient reality-devouring Goddess of the Void was pacing furiously around the boundaries of his soul.

Her smooth melodic voice was dripping with disdain.

’The arrogant silver fool in the sky is hemorrhaging his divine authority like a leaking bucket,’ Ereba critiqued ruthlessly with her divine perception analyzing the distant lightning strikes with contempt. ’He is overcharging the atmospheric electrons by thirty percent! He is completely wasting the secondary shockwaves! It is amateurish! It is the brute-force flailing of a spoiled child who has never actually had to conserve his vitality in a true war of attrition!’

Caius watched another blinding flash illuminate the horizon.

’He’s an Ascendant, Ereba. He has the backing of a Major God do he doesn’t need to be efficient... he just needs to be loud.’

’Loud is for the weak,’ Ereba scoffed instantly. ’True power is silent... True power is the frictionless consumption of reality. If I had unrestricted access to this physical vessel, Champion, I could devour that entire gathering horde in a single microscopic expansion of the Void, and I would not waste a single pathetic spark of light to do it.’

’I know you could,’ Caius agreed smoothly, entirely used to stroking the ancient deity’s massive ego. ’But we are laying low... We let the Empire expend its resources.’

Ereba fell silent for exactly two seconds.

Then, the freezing presence in his soul changed targets.

The critique of the Storm Saint had just been a smokescreen.

It was a thinly veiled excuse to vent her true rapidly escalating irritation.

’And furthermore,’ Ereba hissed with her voice dropping so low it sent a shiver down Caius’s spine. ’Tell the flammable mortal to unhand our vessel.’

Caius blinked, keeping his face perfectly stoic. ’What?’

’You heard me, Reincarnator...’ Ereba demanded with her own divine jealousy violently spiking.

The conceptual embodiment of Nothingness was throwing a literal tantrum inside his chest.

’She is clinging to your arm like a parasitic leech! Her heat is highly irritating! She is rubbing her face against our newly forged dark-steel plating! It is undignified! We are the apex predator of this reality, not a glorified body pillow for a deranged royal!’

Caius internally pinched the bridge of his nose.

Was Ereba... jealous?