After helping the earth mage, Moon made his way toward the next fight.

His eyes drifted to Alaric and Ace as he moved, checking in on their exchange every few seconds.

Their battle looked like a stalemate. Alaric’s golden swords and Ace’s daggers continued to clash.

Neither one had gained meaningful ground since the fight began. Both of them were still pacing themselves, still holding something in reserve. The exchange had become a war of attrition, and neither side seemed to be running out of stamina yet.

On the Ascender front, the tide had turned.

Klein’s failed assassination attempt had exposed him completely. His cover was gone, and Sierra was still very much in the fight. Tom’s presence added another Ascender to the Association’s side of the ledger. Ian’s earlier injury from Farid was still slowing him down with every exchange.

Farid was pressing him.

Ian’s grin was gone, unlike the others, he was heavily injured.

The dark organization was getting desperate, ’They’re likely to reveal their hands soon...’

Moon wasn’t worried about the three Ascenders fighting. They had all lived long enough to know when the enemy was about to burn its last resource. Battle experience like theirs read the pattern before it fully formed.

Moon was worried about the fighters around him...And himself.

The dark organization had lost most of their opening advantages. Klein’s ambush had failed. The corpse bomb barrage had been intercepted. The bracket was scattered but not slaughtered. Whatever end state the organization had come here to achieve, they hadn’t hit any of the milestones on the way to it.

And yet they were still here fighting, committing to a battle they were slowly losing. They should have retreated by now if the mission had been about simple casualties or reputational damage. A clean escape would have preserved their remaining assets for the next attempt.

Instead, they were doubling down.

Which meant the mission wasn’t about the casualties. It wasn’t about the bracket. It wasn’t about the venue. There was something else they still needed to accomplish, and they were willing to burn everything on the field to reach it.

’What could it be?’

Moon had a few guesses.

The most obvious one was him. The dark organization’s master had marked him personally, and Ace’s continued engagement with Alaric was keeping the Light Sword Saint away from Moon’s position. If the actual objective was Moon’s death, then every second Alaric couldn’t reach him was a second the organization was still winning.

But that theory didn’t fully hold. If Moon was the target, they would have committed harder against his position by now. He had killed the wiry man and taken his puppets without more than a handful of enemies pushing directly against him. If he was the priority, more of the reinforcements should have been converging on him.

The second guess was Sierra herself. The failed assassination had been public, and losing Sierra as a field asset would have been catastrophic for the Association. Klein’s move suggested that removing her was worth exposing the spy. The organisation could be prolonging the fight to search for an opening.

The third was worse.

The third was that the entire operation had never been about winning the battle at all. That the objective was something the Association wouldn’t recognize as a loss until later.

Moon didn’t know which of the three it was.

But he intended to jeopardize whatever it was.

’If I can’t stop them, I’ll make sure to reap the most benefits out of them.’

His eyes swept across the battlefield.

Hundreds of Evolvers and Surpassers were still fighting across the venue. Every dark organization body still standing was a life pool, spiritual energy and an experience source Moon had no intention of leaving on the table. Whatever the enemy came here to accomplish, he was going to leave the field richer than he entered it.

He moved.

For the next five minutes, Moon was a wolf among sheep.

He ran across the rubble at full pace, cutting through every enemy he encountered.

Lightning left his palm faster than most of his targets could turn to face him. His sword formed a Tempest Symphony through every group, phantom strikes leaving whole groups of fighters trying to guess which cuts to block until they died guessing.

When lightning wasn’t the right answer, he used fire. When fire wasn’t the right answer, he used water. When none of the elements were the right answer, he simply closed the distance and cut his opponent into pieces.

He left no enemy alive in his wake.

The screams behind him blurred into a single ongoing source of sound. The dark organization fighters he encountered had a moment to see him coming, then a moment to raise their guard, then a moment to realize the guard wasn’t going to help, and then they were on on the ground, their lights out.

At the same time, Moon kept working the Curse.

Any fighter who looked useful, any body that was stronger than the others became his subordinate.

Moon injured their souls first using his purple lightning. Then, he cast his curse, and the fighter became his own. The puppet count remained capped at six, any more and the mana drain would compound too fast.

Six was the limit where the sustaining cost stayed within a range his passive regeneration could handle. Whenever one of the six died, he replaced it with a fresh target. The rotation ran smoothly.

Although the puppets didn’t provide him with any lives, they were still helping others around the battlefield.

Notifications flooded his vision constantly.

[You have gained 3521 Lives]

[You have gained 3293 Lives]

[You have gained 3140 Lives]

[You have gained 3750 Lives]

[You have gained 3155 Lives]

[You have gained 3,882 Lives]

He stopped reading them individually after the first minute.

His mana burned faster than it filled, but only by a small margin. The rate held at something sustainable. If nothing changed, he could keep this pace for another ten minutes without exhausting himself.

His experience continued to rise with every kill. Until, he crossed the threshold to forty in the middle of the fourth minute.

[You have leveled up!]

With the abundance of powerful fighters around him, it wasn’t difficult to level up.

---

Author’s Note: Third Bonus Chapter. I owe you guys two more for the golden ticket ranking of last month.

Current Gt Ranking: 9

Let’s try to reach top 5 once again for another mass release next month (: