One of the bodies on the pyre, a still, shrouded form, began to twitch. A single, spastic jerk. Then another. It began to convulse, the movement growing more violent, more unnatural. It was not the gentle stirring of life, but the frantic, horrifying thrashing of a puppet being pulled by unseen, malevolent strings. The harvest of the dead was about to begin. The convulsion was a spark in a tinderbox of horror. The shrouded corpse on the pyre began to writhe with an unnatural, bone-snapping violence that defied all known laws of biology. The linen shroud, which had been a symbol of respect and closure, now became a grotesque veil for a monstrous birth. Lloyd watched, his mind a cold, clinical recorder, as the thing beneath the cloth contorted. He heard the sickening, wet-cracking sounds of bones breaking and re-setting themselves into a new, unholy configuration. The shape beneath the sheet was elongating, sharpening, its human form being brutally, violently rewritten into something alien. This was it. This was the moment of transformation he had risked everything to witness. The gruesome, agonizing, and absolutely vital intelligence he needed. Before he could even fully process the horror of the first transformation, a horrifying chain reaction began. As if triggered by the first one’s metamorphosis, three more of the shrouded corpses on the pyre began to twitch, then to convulse. The somber ritual ground of the village square had become a charnel house, a birthing chamber for nightmares. Four new monsters were about to be unleashed upon the world. The general in him made a cold, instantaneous calculation. Four hostiles. Newborn, but their potential was unknown. His objective was no longer observation. It was extermination. He could not allow a single one of these creatures to escape the village and spread the demonic taint further. He did not hesitate. He did not wait. In the dark, silent confines of his sniper’s nest, a silent, brilliant, and multi-hued cataclysm erupted. He reached into the unified, supercharged core of his being and called forth his army. The source of this content ɪs 𝗻𝗼𝘃𝗲𝗹✦𝕗𝕚𝕣𝕖✦𝓷𝓮𝓽 A flash of pure, brilliant azure light filled the room as Fang Fairy, his storm goddess, materialized, her silver hair crackling with contained lightning, her golden eyes blazing with cold, predatory focus. A wave of incandescent, oppressive heat followed as Iffrit, his demon king of annihilation, emerged from a vortex of crimson flame, his nine-foot form a monument of magma and fury, his flaming zanbatō already humming with destructive intent. Then came the new, stranger entities, the tools he had acquired for a different, more subtle kind of war. From the deepest shadows in the corner of the room, a formless, shifting being of silver light and darkness coalesced into existence. Echo, the Doppelganger, a living, silent question mark, awaited its command. And finally, the air itself seemed to liquefy, a swirling vortex of hyper-pressurized water taking the shape of a ten-foot Great White Shark. Abyss, the concept of oceanic death, hovered silently, its soulless eyes fixed on its master. In the space of a single, silent heartbeat, the humble mill office had become a council of war for gods and monsters. The four spirits stood in silent, perfect readiness, their combined power making the very air in the room thrum like a plucked string. Lloyd looked at his assembled legion, his loyal, terrifying, and magnificent family of divine weapons. The exhaustion, the grief, the human frailty he had felt earlier—all of it was burned away, replaced by the cold, exhilarating certainty of absolute power. He was no longer a doctor. He was no longer a healer. He was a commander. He was a harvester of the dead. “Targets acquired,” he whispered, his voice a low, dangerous hum that was barely human. “Initiate cleansing protocol. No survivors.” With a single, unified thought, he and his four spirits vanished from the office, becoming a silent, multi-vectored wave of death that descended upon the village square. The battle for Oakhaven, the true battle, had just begun. The battle for the village square was not a fight; it was a symphony of annihilation, a perfectly choreographed ballet of elemental fury and spectral violence. Lloyd descended from the mill office not as a man, but as the conductor of an orchestra of gods, his every thought a command, his every intention an act of war. The four newborn Curse Knights, their gruesome transformation complete, tore themselves free from their linen shrouds. They were skeletal, emaciated things, their bones still slick with the fluids of their profane birth, their movements jerky and uncoordinated. But the malevolent red light that burned in their eye sockets was ancient and full of hate. They let out a chorus of high-pitched, grating shrieks, a sound that was a violation of the natural order, and began to shamble forward, their rusty daggers held aloft. They were an army of nightmares, born from the bodies of honest men. But they were facing a legion of myths. Lloyd’s strategy was not one of defense, but of overwhelming, instantaneous, and multi-vectored assault. He and his four spirits materialized in the square, not as a single unit, but as five separate points of death, surrounding the nascent horde before it could even take a single, unified step. Iffrit was the anvil. The nine-foot-tall demon of fire simply appeared in the path of the first Curse Knight and, without a word, brought his colossal, flame-wreathed zanbatō down in a single, vertical cleave. The impact was not a clang of steel, but a deafening boom that shook the very foundations of the surrounding cottages. The Curse Knight was not cut in half; it was simply obliterated, its form and the section of the pyre it stood on vaporized in a column of incandescent crimson fire. One down. Fang Fairy was the storm. She became a blur of silver and azure lightning, a living thunderbolt that moved with conceptual speed. She appeared behind the second Curse Knight, her hand, now a claw of solidified lightning, plunging through its ribcage and shattering its corrupted spiritual core from within. The creature froze, the red light in its eyes flickering out, before its skeletal form crumbled into a pile of super-heated dust and ash. Two down. The other two spirits, the stranger, more esoteric weapons, executed a more complex, and far more terrifying, maneuver. Echo, the Doppelganger, the formless being of light and shadow, drifted silently toward the third Curse Knight. As the creature raised its dagger to strike the shimmering phantom, Echo surged forward and made contact. In a flash of silver light, it transformed, its shifting form solidifying into a perfect, ethereal replica of the Curse Knight itself. The creature froze, its rudimentary intelligence short-circuiting as it found itself facing its own ghostly twin. In that single, perfect moment of confusion, the fourth spirit attacked. Abyss, the great shark of hyper-pressurized water, surged forward not as a swimmer, but as a living battering ram. It slammed into the distracted Curse Knight with the force of a locomotive, its body of swirling, hydrodynamic force not just hitting the creature, but enveloping it. The Curse Knight was trapped within the shark’s form, its bones groaning and then cracking under the immense, crushing pressure of a thousand atmospheres. With a final, sickening crunch, its form was reduced to a slurry of bone fragments suspended in the swirling water of the shark’s body. Abyss then spat out the remains, a cloud of bone dust that settled on the cobblestones. Three down. The final Curse Knight, its twin still locked in a phantom battle with the Echo, was left for Lloyd. He moved through the chaos, a river of calm in a storm of elemental violence. His practice sword, a simple, unadorned piece of steel, was in his hand. He flowed around the spectral duel, his movements a fluid, deadly dance. As the final Curse Knight turned its attention to him, its dagger lashing out, Lloyd’s own blade became a silver blur. He did not block. He did not parry. He simply… moved. His sword wove a complex, intricate pattern in the air, a series of precise, surgical strikes that were too fast for the eye to follow. Each strike targeted a specific, critical joint in the creature’s skeletal structure: the wrist, the elbow, the shoulder, the knee, the ankle. With each silent tink of steel on bone, a joint was not just struck but shattered, its corrupted energy dispersed. In the space of three heartbeats, the final Curse Knight was not defeated; it was dismantled. It collapsed to the ground, a helpless, twitching pile of disconnected bones, its malevolent red eyes still burning with impotent fury. Lloyd stood over the pathetic ruin, raised his sword, and brought it down in a single, clean, and final thrust, piercing the skull and extinguishing the last spark of unholy life. Four down. The entire, brutal, and flawlessly executed engagement, from the spirits’ materialization to the final killing blow, had taken less than thirty seconds. The village square, which moments ago had been a birthing ground for monsters, was now a silent, smoking, and utterly cleansed graveyard.