I AM A MAGE BUT WITH MILF SYSTEM

Most importantly, they had fire behind their eyes — a burning, relentless determination that made them fight like men who had already accepted death and chosen to defy it anyway.

They didn’t retreat. They didn’t falter.

When the knights of Hermes broke through their lines, the Valthor warriors reformed almost instantly. Their mana were purer too, far purer, charging every strike and every spell with a terrifying power that the knights of Hermes simply couldn’t match.

The Duke never forgot how helpless he had felt as his people began to fall.

He was stood on a low hill, commanding the flank of the Hermes forces when the carnage had unfold. One by one, his comrades were cut down. Heads were taken by massive war axes. Men were lifted on spears and displayed like trophies before being thrown aside. Blood soaked into the earth until the grass itself turned crimson.

The screams of the death mixed with the roar of battle, creating a symphony of horror that would haunt his nightmares for the rest of his life.

And yet, strangely, the Duke felt no rage toward the knights of Valthor.

He could see the humanity in them. They didn’t fight with hatred. They fought with desperate resolve... the kind that comes not from ambition but from fear.

Before the siege, he had seen mothers and children watching from the walls of Valthor’s cities. He had seen the terror in their faces.

For them, this was not a war of conquest.

It was a war of survival.

That realization only made the slaughter harder to bear.

**

When the army of Hermes was on the verge of being completely wiped out, he finally appeared.

The man who would change everything.

The man known only as the Herald.

He descended onto the battlefield like a nightmare that had taken flesh. The sky darkened further, as if the sun itself had recoiled from what was coming. Black flames erupted from nowhere, twisting and coiling like living serpents searching for prey.

The Herald moved through the ranks of Valthor like a reaper collecting souls. He tore heads from shoulders with his bare hands, his fingers puncturing armor as though it were cloth. He opened throats with casual flicks of his wrist and black flames burst from the wounds, consuming the fallen before their bodies could even hit the ground.

What followed was complete annihilation.

The Valthor army, which had stood moments away from total victory, crumbled. Their courage turned to terror as the black flames spread like a plague through their ranks. Soldiers who had fought with unyielding fire in their eyes now fled screaming, only to be consumed where they stood. The ground blackened and cracked beneath the Herald’s feet. Trees withered in the distance and collapsed. Even the wind seemed to carry something like agony.

The Duke watched it all from his hill, his body locked in place, unable to move, unable to look away.

And somewhere in the middle of that horror, the truth finally settled over him.

This had never been their war.

They had been pieces on someone else’s board.

The King of Hermes had not marched them south for glory, or for justice, or for any of the things kings were supposed to fight for. He had led them as pawns in a larger game orchestrated by the Herald.

Ever since that day, the Duke had always hated himself.

Those innocent lives. Those shattered dreams. The children who had watched their homes burn. The mothers who had screamed for their sons as black flames consumed everything.

The Duke had carried that guilt like a chain around his soul for decades. Every night, when the castle grew quiet, the screams returned. Every time he looked at his own reflection, he saw the face of a man who had helped erase an entire kingdom for a lie.

And perhaps it was that very same karma that came back to haunt him, tearing his family piece by piece.

It started as a drift among brothers. Liam’s ambition had always been there, but after the campaign, it had grown hungrier. Then came the worst wound of all — his own son, Kraven, developing those forbidden desires toward his mother. The Duke had seen the signs long ago, but he had buried them, telling himself it was youthful folly and that time would cure it.

Instead, it festered.

And soon, like an uncontrollable flame, everything cracked.

The family he had fought so hard to protect was tearing itself apart from within.

That was why, thinking of it as retribution, he had accepted it wholeheartedly. He deserved this pain. He deserved to watch his legacy crumble. He had even been thinking of giving everything to Liam and taking his own life once the succession was secured.

A final atonement for the blood on his hands.

Liam might have thought that he had forced the Duke to name Marcus as the heir, but the truth was far more painful. The Duke had already planned for that.

And now, decades later, as he stood in the Forbidden Realm facing a man who bore the same cursed power, the Duke felt that old guilt surge uncontrollably.

”You speak of my wife,” Voss said, his voice echoing with unnatural resonance. ”But you forget that your hands are stained with the blood of thousands. You helped burn Valthor to the ground. And now you dare judge me for serving the only power that can bring true balance?”

The Duke’s barrier cracked further. Golden light flickered and dimmed as the black aura ate away at its foundation. He gritted his teeth, pouring more mana into the defense, but the strain was visible. His face was pale, his breathing labored.

The forest had become a graveyard around them. Nothing lived within the radius of their clash. The ground was blackened and lifeless. The air itself felt poisoned, heavy with the scent of decay.

”I know,”

The Duke finally whispered, his voice cracking with emotions that he did not quite dare name. The words came out strained, forced through clenched teeth as he fought to his barrier.

”I know well enough what I have done. And I am suffering for it.”