The Insane Regressor: Throne of Pride

”Attention!”

A single voice rang across the entire battlefield like a thunderclap, drawing the eyes of every human soldier and every retreating orc alike.

Even Ravian, Lysandra, and Frank went still the moment it reached them.

And at that moment, Ravian’s eyes quietly returned to their calm crimson color.

’That feeling again...’ Ravian remembered the state that had taken hold of him, pressing one hand against his head and curling his fingers slowly. ’I need to learn to control it as soon as possible. In a dangerous situation, it could cause far more trouble than it’s worth.’

He made that decision, then raised his head and looked up at the figure hovering high above the battlefield, gazing down at all of them from the sky.

”The Marquis!”

”The Marquis has arrived!”

”The Guardian of our city is here — victory is ours!”

Soldiers and knights across the field erupted in shouts of jubilation, their voices raw with relief at Karius’s arrival and at the knowledge that they would be going home alive for one more day.

”Victory!”

”Victory!”

”Victory is ours!”

Ravian stood in genuine shock, staring as the soldiers cheered with the kind of desperate, unrestrained joy that only people who had nearly died could produce — and some of them were weeping openly, tears cutting lines through the blood and grime on their faces.

In that moment... Ravian understood, for the first time, what a battlefield truly was.

Not a place for training. Not a stage for proving oneself. It was a place where blood was spent and lives were taken, where tens of thousands — sometimes hundreds of thousands — fought simply to survive each time they stepped onto it.

Ravian closed his eyes while the cries of victory still rang around him, and he did not open them again until that steady, deep voice spoke once more.

”Honor to our fallen!” Karius opened with those words, his Aura pressing against the pull of gravity beneath his feet to keep him aloft.

”Your brave brothers died on this field today!”

”And in return for their sacrifice, we have been rewarded — we have seized victory!” His voice was even and unshaken, carrying across the wind.

”Every one of us has lost someone dear today, and I am no different — I am the first among you in that loss!”

”But the war is not over. This was only our opening battle!”

”Those who fear death may return to their families — because there is no place for cowards in our ranks.”

”But let them not regret it later, when they find invaders storming the very village where they live with those same families. And if that day comes — fortunately for us — we will not be alive to witness that disaster.”

Karius’s gaze swept every corner of the battlefield as he spoke.

”But tell your families to rest easy, my soldiers — because if they ever see an invader near them, it means I am already dead. And I see no one within the reach of my eyes who is capable of killing me!”

”Hurraaaa!”

The soldiers answered with a single, bone-rattling roar that seemed to shake the air itself.

Then, without warning, Karius reached back and drew the spear from his back.

Ravian’s eyes widened — along with what seemed like every pair of eyes on the battlefield — at the sudden movement. Karius pulled the spear back slowly, loading it with the deliberate tension of someone who intended to break the limits of what a thrown weapon could do, and the entire spear began to blaze with white light, burning like a miniature sun suspended in the sky above them.

”Haaa!” The shout that left him was thunderous.

”Hup!”

He threw it.

Swoosh!

The spear tore through the air with a sharp, piercing whistle, carrying a force that seemed to warp the very space it passed through, shooting over the heads of the soldiers in the blink of an eye toward the direction where the orc hordes had retreated — and then—

”Graaaa!”

A deep, guttural roar erupted from somewhere deep within the jungle, and a massive red Aura surged upward to intercept the incoming spear.

Claaang!

The sound of the collision — two forces of that magnitude meeting head-on — reached Ravian and the soldiers around him even across that distance.

For a few moments, silence.

And then a sound several times heavier came rolling back.

Booom!

A massive explosion shook the jungle to its roots, and the tremor reached Ravian through the soles of his feet, rattling the ground beneath the entire battlefield.

”What the he—” Ravian started, and then the words died in his throat as a pillar of white Aura erupted above the treeline and blazed into the sky — visible clearly even from over a mile away.

’There’s no way those bastards survived something like that,’ Ravian thought, staring at the traces of the explosion, which the other side had very clearly not managed to withstand.

And then the cheers rose again — but this time they had a name.

”Karius!”

”Karius!”

”Karius!”

The soldiers chanted around him in waves, and Ravian stood among them, eyes fixed on the distant figure in the sky.

Then Karius turned.

And his gaze locked directly onto Ravian.

’...That old man was watching me this entire time?’ The realization landed with quiet weight. He had already been wondering how Karius could throw him into his very first battle without any precautions — but it seemed it had never been without precautions at all. It had simply been a test conducted under watchful eyes.

What Karius did next, however, was something Ravian had not anticipated in the slightest.

The Aura gathered around Karius’s feet began to swell visibly, and his figure seemed to grow larger — or rather, closer — by the second.

”Is he actually making himself bigger?” Ravian said, squinting and rubbing his eyes before opening them again. ”No — that old man is coming here?!”

Yes. Karius wasn’t expanding. He was descending in a straight, direct line — aimed squarely at Ravian.

And in the next moment—

Thud!

Dust exploded outward from the impact point right beside Ravian, the force alone enough to send a shockwave through the ground.

”Damn it!” Ravian threw his arm up to cover his face, along with Lysandra and Frank, who had been watching everything unfold right beside him — though Ravian himself had entirely forgotten they were there for most of it.

The dust settled, and it revealed a large, powerfully built man of advanced age — black hair shot through with silver, wearing a full suit of heavy metal armor that was nothing like the leather Ravian had seen on the field soldiers, and on his back rested the same enormous spear from before, somehow already returned to him.

”Hello, my dear disciple. Did you enjoy your first battle?” Karius said with a composed, unhurried smile as he dropped his hand onto Ravian’s shoulder with a speed and force that had nothing composed about it.

Thump!

”I-It was wonderful, old man!” Ravian managed to answer, barely keeping himself from being driven straight into the ground by the weight of the gesture, planting his feet hard and pushing upward against it with everything he had.

”Oho! Now that is my disciple!” Karius said, clearly savoring the furious expression Ravian was working hard to keep off his face.

”Wait — the disciple of Company Commander Karius Dmitri?!” Frank’s voice shot up beside them, his shock entirely uncontained.

”Ugh. Embarrassing,” Lysandra said flatly, watching Frank’s reaction with undisguised exasperation.

”Hm. Frank?” Karius raised an eyebrow. ”What are you doing here? I was waiting for your report, and here you are chatting with your sister in the middle of the battlefield?” His frown carried just enough edge to make the question feel like more than a question.

”His sister?” Ravian turned and looked between Frank and Lysandra.

Lysandra didn’t meet his gaze — which, given how little she was typically bothered by anything, was answer enough.

”Chatting? No, no, Commander, I swear on my life!” Frank said quickly, hands raised. ”I was only checking the identity of this Ravian — it was my first time seeing him, and he was already speaking so freely with my sister Lysandra, so I thought—”

With every word out of Frank’s mouth, Lysandra looked increasingly like she wanted to be somewhere very far away.

”Frank,” Karius said, cutting through him without raising his voice.

”Yes, Sir Karius?”

”You are jealous of my disciple because he can speak with your sister without difficulty, while you cannot.” Karius delivered this observation with a completely straight face.

”What? Me? Jealous? That is impossible. No, absolutely not.” Frank shook his head with considerable force, his green hair swinging with every denial.

All three of them looked at him with the exact same flat expression.

”I said I’m not, didn’t I?!” Frank’s voice cracked slightly as Lysandra’s deadpan stare hit him from the side — somehow the most unbearable one of the three.

”Frank,” Karius said again, his tone shifting cleanly into something else.

Frank straightened immediately. ”At your command, Sir Karius.” His entire demeanor changed in an instant — posture sharp, expression clean, the embarrassment gone as if it had never been there.

”Take your platoon, gather the other four platoon leaders, and proceed to the main building ahead of us. I’ll join you as soon as possible,” Karius ordered.

”Understood!” The word came out crisp and immediate, and Frank turned and was gone at a near-run before the dust had even fully settled.

Karius watched him go for a moment, then turned back to Ravian and Lysandra.

”And now, you two...” he began, and from the look on his face alone, it was already clear that whatever came next was not going to make Ravian’s day any easier.