Dungeon King: The Hidden Ruler-Chapter 59: [Thrones in Ruin 8] - The Shattered Vanguard

Raven clenched his jaw as the trebuchet bolt slammed into the Gravewalker’s torso, sending a ripple across its stone frame — but it didn’t even slow.

Main gate is already breached.

Players are barely holding.

Focus.

Lose a street, you fight to take it back.

Lose the throne, you lose the war.

He couldn’t abandon the gate completely.

"Knights, archers, anyone with heavy CC—peel off and hold the main gate! Choke, scatter, bleed them! No hero plays!"

No waiting for confirmation. Raven fired another ballista bolt.

Fairyblade cranked the trebuchet beside him, hands trembling at first. Then—

Something shifted.

Players around them adjusted aim, moved on instinct. Fairyblade’s next crank was faster, sharper.

"Aim for the left knee!" she barked.

Her voice found ground. Others followed.

No hesitation now.

Somewhere deep inside, the lie cracked open: she hadn’t come to fix anything. She came to survive the flood she helped unleash.

The patch she signed off on.

The casualties she muted.

Fairyblade bit the inside of her cheek hard enough to taste blood.

No more excuses.

Just fight.

"Summoners, tamers, necros—" Raven started, then stopped.

Gone.

Their familiars, their second bodies, erased by sponsor politics. Silence rippled across chat. He have to thread carefully.

"Fallback to Inner Barricades! Basic spells, scrolls, ballistas, anything you have left! Just don’t get caught outside."

No arguments. Only grim survival.

Another bolt. Another hit. The Gravewalker stumbled — only for half a heartbeat.

A rooftop sigil flared.

"Move—!"

Lightning hammered down.

[You have died.]

Light seared his eyes. The Inner Sanctum’s stone walls flashed back into view. Raven staggered, the metallic taste of death still raw, but he didn’t pause.

Main gate status now deteriorating.

Middle District on the map is blinking red.

Just a move for them to reach inner sanctum.

Fold squads were forming beachheads.

Raven’s voice cut across zone chat again.

"Lymira. Forget the northeast. Take your people. Stall them. Kill them if you can. But don’t let them reach the throne first."

Pause.

[EC] Lymira: "Copy. Moving."

Good enough.

Fairyblade respawned close by. She blinked into existence — no cheers, no music, just the city’s funeral bells in her blood.

She spotted Raven sprinting with trebuchet kits in hand.

Without orders, she chased him.

This time, she chose.

The Gravewalker loomed ahead, a brutal monolith breaching the northeast wall.

It slammed its fused metal limb into stone.

CRACK.

A fracture webbed outward, deep enough to swallow a wagon.

Raven sprinted through the broken Middle District. Dust and blood in the air. World chat snippets flickered at the edges of his vision:

[EC] Lymira: "Frontline, staggered advance! Shield rotations up!"

Good.

Fairyblade caught up, panting but determined.

"Let me help! Please!"

Raven didn’t slow.

He wanted to snap back—say there was no helping now—but her desperation matched the fire in his gut.

"Then follow."

Tremors shook the streets underfoot.

Players spilled from alleyways, faces grim, clutching broken weapons. NPC squads staggered in ragged retreats.

No songs. No speeches.

Only survival.

The Gravewalker’s eyeless head rose above the wall, a god of ruin in stone.

It swung its colossal arm back—

Boom.

A shudder rolled up Raven’s spine. Dust burst from the seams of Greywatch’s ancient defense wall, the outer wall.

Boom.

The cracks widened. Mortar bled dust like open wounds.

One more breach and the northeast quadrant would fall.

Behind him, Fairyblade gripped her sword tighter.

She didn’t falter.

Neither did he.

Players clustered on the parapets, hurling everything they had: bolts, arrows, soul flares.

Chunks of stone cracked loose from the Gravewalker. Scorch marks blackened the ancient runes on its body.

It didn’t slow.

It didn’t roar.

It just kept slam its hand to destroy the wall.

Below, Fold soldiers moved like a black tide around its base, shields locked tight, arrows raining upward.

A frost witch unleashed a freezing gust, scattering Fold soldiers.

For a heartbeat, hope flared—

Until a mage speared her through the chest.

She crumpled over the battlements.

No summons rose to catch her.

Only empty air.

Arguments sparked mid-battle.

"Hit the golem!"

"No—kill the support first!"

"We’re not doing enough damage!"

Indecision fed the Fold.

Another trebuchet volley screamed overhead—

THOOM.

Another parapet shattered.

The wall wasn’t just cracking.

The strategy was cracking.

Where once summoned hordes would’ve plugged gaps,

where magical guardians would’ve shielded healers,

there was nothing.

Fairyblade gritted her teeth, slamming another trebuchet bolt into place, the phantom memory of lost companions deafening in her ears.

They hurt the Gravewalker.

Cracks laced its stone skin.

But not fast enough.

And every second wasted was another second the wall bled out.

Raven stood atop the shattered battlement, his chain coiled loosely at his side. He talk to zone chat, voice calm, lethal.

"All fire on the Gravewalker. Ignore the soldiers. You die, you respawn. You reload. You return. No exceptions."

He turned, locking eyes with Fairyblade. She nodded once, her hands already moving to steady the nearest ballista crew who wavered under the Fold’s return fire.

"If you can’t shoot," Fairyblade shouted over the chaos, "then reload! If you can’t reload, then drag the wounded! We hold until that monster falls!"

She threw herself into the fray, pulling a younger mage upright, slamming a fresh bolt into their trembling hands. Around her, hesitation snapped like a brittle thread.

It wasn’t orders that moved the players.

It was momentum.

It was survival.

And the Shattered Vanguard found its teeth once more.

The Gravewalker lifted its limb again—

The wall screamed.

Raven braced himself.

This wasn’t over.

Not yet.

Players died under the Fold’s relentless assault, their bodies falling from the battlements or crushed beneath the trebuchet fire—but death wasn’t the end.

A heavy knight took a Fold spear through the ribs, fell with a roar — only to reappear seconds later in the Inner Sanctum, bleeding mana and rage, sprinting barefoot to rejoin the line.

Within seconds, they respawned in the Inner Sanctum. No hesitation. No retreat.

One after another, they sprinted back toward the breach, weapons drawn, faces grim. They weren’t an organized army anymore.

They were a flood.

A constant, trickling reinforcement that refused to let the Fold push cleanly through.

Raven watched the pattern forming with brutal satisfaction. Death had become their weapon.

And finally—

The concentrated fire took its toll.

The Gravewalker’s runes dimmed, scorched black under the endless barrage. Huge cracks laced its torso. Segments of stone peeled away with each impact.

It lifted its colossal arm for another strike—but this time, the motion staggered halfway.

A trebuchet bolt slammed into its left knee. Another exploded against its hip.

The Gravewalker shuddered.

Fold captains screamed contradictory orders, their neat formations dissolving under the Gravewalker’s fallen mass. Some tried to retreat. Others charged blindly into the dust, blades drawn, as if defying gravity itself.

Then, with a groan like the death rattle of mountains, it toppled backward.

Its massive body crushed the Fold soldiers below, their shield lines collapsing into chaos.

Dust and broken screams hung in the air as the Gravewalker’s corpse cooled, a ruin of shattered stone and crushed Fold bodies.

The players, bloodied and battered, barely started catching their breath when Raven’s voice cut through zone chat again—

cold, sharp, slicing the chaos clean.

Dust choked their lungs. Blood slicked the stone. Victory tasted more like ash than triumph

"Hold the breach with rubble. No repairs. No retreats. Stall them at the gaps."

Another heartbeat passed.

"Everyone else — move to the Main Gate. Reinforce or die. If they breach there, we lose everything."

Simple. Brutal.

No room for negotiation. No illusions left.

Across the broken battlements, players staggered into motion, rallying with grim faces.

Some stayed behind — shieldbearers, steadfast archers, lone defiant mages willing to die at the northeast breach.

Most turned and ran — weapons drawn, sprinting through the battered streets to reach the main fight.

Fairyblade looked once at Raven as the crowd split.

He didn’t look back.

He already trusted her to know where she was needed.

Fairyblade didn’t hesitate.

She scanned the broken battlements in one sharp glance —

picked out the players who froze, who clutched broken staves or half-drawn bows, trapped in the aftershock of victory.

"Move!" she barked, voice cutting clean through the dust and fear.

She grabbed a swordsman by the shoulder, spun him toward the street.

"Main Gate — now! If you can walk, you can fight!"

Another, a healer trembling at the edge of the rubble, she shoved gently but firmly into the flow of the vanguard.

No speeches.

No waiting for permission.

Movement was survival.

She sprinted after the first wave of players charging through the battered streets, her sword raised in one hand, the other gesturing sharply toward alleyways and side paths.

A tamer without beasts followed her without hesitation, a broken chain leash dangling from his wrist. A bruised healer, face smeared with blood, clutched his staff and stumbled after her, because she moved like someone who still believed.

"Avoid open ground! Use the rubble for cover! Stay together!"

Every second they spent moving was a second the Fold couldn’t use to regroup.

Every step they took closer to the Main Gate meant one more breath bought for the Inner Sanctum.

Fairyblade’s heart hammered in her ears — not fear, not panic.

Purpose.

She wasn’t a broken summoner anymore.

She wasn’t a bystander.

She is Fairyblade. She always Fairyblade.

And today, she would fight with the vanguard of Cindraleth Union — or die with it.

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