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There's a saying that only peers truly understand each other.

Before Keira and the others could prepare for the attack, the fallen sorcerer managed to break through their magic barrier with a spell. A hoarse incantation echoed, as if he hadn't had a drop of water in days, his voice sounding like a decaying corpse crawling out of a grave.

Red light shot from the sorcerers's staff, quickly merging with the magical barrier ten meters away. There was a loud crack, and the barrier that Keira and Kalkstein had painstakingly maintained shattered. The backlash from the magic caused both of them to suffer a temporary loss of their ability to cast spells.

Letho, watching silently, remained calm. His eyes showed no trace of fear or negativity. Despite the overwhelming odds, this giant of a man did not flinch. With a mighty shout, he raised his Viper School steel sword and stepped in front of the two sorceresses, declaring, "Prepare for battle!"

He, along with the other two Witchers and the few frightened mercenaries, charged headlong into the fallen warriors, engaging in brutal combat.

But as previously mentioned, the fallen warriors were physically superior to ordinary humans. Their sheer strength and relentless combat style meant that even Wayne would struggle to hold his ground against such numbers. After all, Wayne had not yet fully transformed from a regular human to something extraordinary. Despite his skills, he was still vulnerable, and if overwhelmed, he would be just as mortal as anyone else.

Sure enough, the gap in strength was not something that courage alone could bridge.

Even though Letho was an extremely powerful Witcher, he was soon overwhelmed by the fallen warriors' brutal, life-for-life fighting style. He sustained two bloody gashes on his face and forehead during the skirmish.

Among the mercenaries, who were much weaker than the Witchers, the situation was even worse. One mercenary was stabbed through the throat as he failed to react in time. His hands clutched his neck as he fell, causing several others to fall around him, their companion's desperate scream filling the air like that of a trapped animal.

The number of fallen warriors surrounding Keira and the others had now exceeded fifty, while Letho and his companions could only muster ten capable of fighting. The numerical difference made the battle even more dangerous, and despite their best efforts, they could not prevent the enemy from getting closer to the sorcerers, who had no means of defending themselves in close combat.

If the fallen warriors reached the sorceresses, Keira and the others would likely either be captured or killed.

What had started as a somewhat manageable battle now teetered on the edge of life and death with the arrival of the enemy sorcerer.

Wayne, who had been monitoring the battlefield from nearly sixty or seventy meters away, felt a surge of urgency upon realizing the situation. He had already considered the lives of the mercenaries and Kalkstein, but Keira and Margarita were women with whom he had shared a connection, and Letho and the others were his fellow Witchers, his companions on this mission. Saving them was his top priority.

With that in mind, he could no longer afford to keep his secret. He immediately activated the flickering power of his bloodline, propelling himself across the battlefield in the blink of an eye, appearing next to Letho and the others.

Udis, his warhorse, which had been left behind, turned into white dust after traveling more than ten meters away from him and returned to its place within the magic bell on Wayne's waist.

Once there, without a moment to spare, Wayne didn't bother with formalities. Magic surged through his body and into the swordy. Not waiting for the full charge, he gripped the mighty sword and swung it in a powerful horizontal slash, aiming directly at the oncoming enemy.

With magic power coursing through it, Wayne's eight- or nine-meter-long sword of light crackled with energy, cutting a wide arc in front of him. In an instant, a dozen or so fallen warriors—faces twisted in fanaticism as they closed in on Letho and the others—were cleaved in two. Blood and viscera spilled from their wounds, accompanied by the acrid smell of charred flesh.

For a brief moment, silence fell over the battlefield, but Wayne wasted no time. More than a dozen fallen warriors were still charging toward Keira and the others, and despite his strength, he couldn't intercept them all.

Quickly assessing the situation, Wayne teleported next to Keira and the others, now holding several scrolls. Channeling his magic into the scrolls, five skeletal mages and five skeletal archers materialized beside Keira and her companions.

Wayne would have preferred summoning skeleton warriors, but his supply of those scrolls had been exhausted during his time in Middle-earth. Still, even without flesh and blood, these skeletons—crafted from hardened bone—could serve as durable shields, their combat effectiveness largely unaffected even if limbs were severed.

Under Wayne's direction, they formed a line of defense.

Meanwhile, Margarita, the only sorceress still able to cast spells, had completed her incantation. With a gesture, a dozen crackling orbs of lightning, brimming with magical energy, appeared above her head. The orbs seemed to possess a keen sense of aim. As soon as they took form, they flew toward the fallen warriors assailing Letho and the others.

The powerful current bypassed their armor, surging directly into their bodies. Their mouths and noses emitted smoke as their bodies convulsed, quickly rendering them unable to continue fighting.

With Wayne and Margarita's powerful reinforcement, nearly half of the fallen warriors were eliminated in an instant, and the summoned skeletons provided additional protection. The pressure on Letho and his companions eased significantly, allowing them to fight without being overwhelmed.

After summoning the skeleton archers and mages, Wayne didn't join the melee. Instead, he activated his teleportation ability, appearing a few meters behind the fallen sorcerer who had broken their defenses.

Wayne wasted no time on words or demands for surrender. Instead, he swiftly tossed two North Wind bombs, freezing the fallen sorcerer Carlette—who was in the midst of casting a spell—and the fully armored strongmen wielding metal shields around him in place.

However, Wayne refrained from using the Aard Sign to shatter these frozen enemies into pieces. Sorcerers are valuable assets, and while Carlette had succumbed to corruption, killing him outright would have been wasteful. Preserving his body might allow necromantic magic to later extract valuable intelligence about the enemy.

With the main threat neutralized, the battlefield shifted in their favor. Keira, despite the lingering pain from the magical backlash, rejoined the fight.

With combined efforts, after over ten minutes of intense combat, most of the fallen warriors who had ambushed them lay dead. However, the fallen archers who had initially surrounded Wayne, as well as the commander who had orchestrated this ambush, had vanished without a trace.

This unsettling development cast a dark cloud over the group.

---

Following the battle, a tense silence fell over everyone, including Wayne. While others might not fully grasp the danger, Wayne had gleaned a disturbing truth about the dark realm from his encounters with these fallen ones.

Though he hadn't paid close attention to the lore while playing the game in the past, one thing stood out clearly. In that forsaken world, the power of hellish demons was overwhelming. Though they couldn't enter the human world directly through corpses, their dark influence could easily corrupt mortals.

Even more alarming was that in each game's storyline, even the protagonists—the heroes controlled by the player—risked succumbing to the demonic influence after killing the minions of hell. Over time, they would fall from heroism into the clutches of the Demon King.

And the true horror was this: these monsters from other realms might only be power projections. Even if slain countless times in various worlds, their true forms in the depths of hell would remain untouched, unharmed by their many deaths.

As long as the rifts connecting to the dark realm remain open, they will endlessly project and spread the corrupting power of hell into every facet of this world.

While Wayne was contemplating these weighty matters, Margarita approached with an unusually serious expression. This usually cheerful sorceress wore a look of grave concern, a rare sight.

In a tone that betrayed her unease, Margarita said, "Wayne, we used necromancy to interrogate Carlette."

She continued, her voice steady but grim, "We managed to extract some disturbing information."

Wayne's stomach clenched, feeling he might have underestimated the stakes of this mission. "What did you learn?"

Margarita frowned, crossing her arms, and spoke with a note of doubt in her voice, "Carlette claimed that a member of the Supreme Council has also been corrupted by otherworldly forces. He's betrayed us."

She paused, searching Wayne's eyes. "This entire bounty mission was supposedly a grand scheme orchestrated by this Council member. The idea was to lure the world's most elite forces here, laying a trap to decimate them, crippling our world's strongest spellcasters."

"The aim," she continued, "is to make our world vulnerable and ease the way for the otherworldly invasion to proceed unhindered."

Margarita's gaze hardened. "It's possible he fabricated this to sow distrust within the Brotherhood of Sorcerers," she conceded. "But if this is true… it's horrifying."

"Throughout our history, we've faced invasions, but nothing like this—not since the elves arrived. And this force carries a dark, malevolent aura, far more menacing than any monster from past conjunctions."

Her eyes glinted with determination. "We must get this information back to the Brotherhood of Sorcerers."