I Can Copy And Evolve Talents

Chapter 1368: First Humiliation

One more Drifter flew off the Airship and joined the fray below, each one wielding an unfair amount of strength. The soldiers had lost their talents, and without them, they were little more than targets.

From that point onward, morale plunged to the bottom of their hearts. Men were suffering great losses and watching their friends and partners fall. This was the Seventh Legion of the Empire. They prided themselves on siege battles. There was no fortress they wouldn’t have been able to take down. Ryugan? Ryugan was the least of them.

If the Empire had ever worried about a nation, it would never have been Ryugan. They were simply too small, too insignificant. No one had imagined the small nation would spend its resources on sellswords, mercenaries with such deleterious power.

The soldiers suffered devastating casualties, men falling and dying to their left and to their right. Their enemies were brutal, impregnable. The soldiers were debuffed and greatly weakened, and fear crept deeper into their hearts with every killing blow they were dealt.

Fire rolled across the ranks, and some had to watch the mates they’d shared meals with, the friends they’d fought to protect, cry and suffer in agony while they could do nothing but turn and run for their own lives.

Raising a shield was useless because nothing was stopping the Drifters’ advance anymore. These people were simply too strong. Their strength made no sense, and it was baffling that any caliber of fighter like this had been developing somewhere without the Empire’s notice.

A tanned woman with thick muscles tore across their ranks with blows that crushed them outright. One of her punches sank into the face of a soldier, and despite the closed helmet, his entire face caved inward along with the metal. Teeth, eyes, all of it splattered out from the force. She practically ripped him off his feet and punched him into the ground, burying him there.

She shot forward with a speed that sent shockwaves rippling through her surroundings, twirled, and smashed the back of her fist into the temple of another soldier. His armor split. Blood sprayed from him, and his comrades could only watch with wide eyes as both helmet and head scattered in fragments, painting everyone nearby in red. And the woman’s onslaught did not stop there.

She barreled forward and grabbed another soldier, tore him off the ground, and slammed him back into the earth. Then she raised her lower body, swinging her legs through the air with her hands planted on the ground, and the legs smashed into anyone who dared to come closer, simply crushing them, no questions asked. Her kicks were breaking swords and cracking the prideful shields of the Reimgardian soldiers like they were made of clay.

Swords fell to the ground. Shields were no longer raised with vigor. The great army of the Empire was being routed at the hands of people they would call riffraff. This small nation, Ryugan, was handing them shame and humiliation on a platter of plastic, and in all the books of history, across every age of powerful Drifters that had come and passed, no nation had ever dealt the Empire this manner of defeat.

The soldiers themselves began to scream for retreat in their desperation to escape the savagery, since their standing commander was nowhere to be found.

”Retreat! Retreat!!” The cry sounded somewhere between the ranks and traveled quickly. The soldiers fell into formation, though the word was generous for what it actually was.

Men stumbled over the fallen, abandoned shields clattering against the bodies of those who would never retrieve them. They pushed back into the plains with none of the discipline they had marched in with, tearing away from their enemies in a tide of clanking steel and ragged breath.

Sael turned and made to chase them across the air. The other two had the same thought. Raven had already unveiled her wings and Annette had dashed into the sky when a cold presence washed over all of them.

It hit like plunging into deep water. The heat of the battle, the momentum of their pursuit, the blood still singing from victory, all of it went quiet in an instant. Something vast and heavy had settled over the battlefield, pressing against their skin, and every instinct they possessed told them the same thing at once.

They all stopped and turned.

The source of the presence stood in the center of the battlefield where the soldiers had just vacated. A single soldier who seemed to have been left behind. Or, in more sensible terms, had refused to leave.

They all turned fully toward the presence, all at the same time. His crimson cape flew back and fluttered in the wind that was suddenly picking up, as if the air itself wanted to be dramatic.

The land fell silent. Only the distant clash of metal between Jerimoth and Judgment still sounded, that one battle continuing regardless of everything else. Jerimoth was distracted at some point when he noticed the lone presence, and he smiled, but Judgment had not missed the chance to smash his face and send him reeling back.

The man standing there reached for the clasps of his armor and unfastened them one at a time. No urgency or acknowledgment that six powerful Drifters were watching him from every direction. He pulled the breastplate free and let it drop beside him, then rolled his shoulders as though the armor had been the only thing bothering him about this entire battle.

Red hair, slick with sweat, fell across his face. He shook his head and pearls of moisture scattered into the air. He carried himself as if he were simply stepping out of a bath in a warm spring.

Then he swept his hair back with one hand, glanced at the helmet still in his grip, and tossed it away. The metal clanked against the ground with a hollow sound, feeling pretty useless now.

No one moved. The wind carried the faint smell of iron and smoke across the field, and in the silence, the six Drifters watched the lone man who stood among the dead as comfortably as if he owned the ground beneath them.

The man fixed Sael with his crimson eyes first. On the left corner of his eye, there was a scar that curved around the edge, old and deliberate.

Smiling with no ounce of hostility, he spoke to Sael, but his voice carried loud enough that everyone on the field could hear.

”Hello! You there on the black mount, you’re the Arrow Sage, right? Good stars, I’ve heard so many awesome things about you. You are even more amazing in person. I enjoyed every last bit of this show!”

His smile got creepier. ”I am Zebelon, the commander of the Nightbloods. Shall we get started? Properly this time.”