The Asuras.
The mightiest legion ever forged in the horrors of Verdun's history—assembled not out of ambition or glory, but out of pure necessity, in the blood-soaked dawn of the First Great War, nearly a thousand years ago.
They were formed under the reign of The Godly One, the last War-Emperor of Verdun—Emperor Zero Dawn. A name etched into both legend and reality, a sovereign whose very presence altered the course of fate. When the demon continent, under the dominion of Demon King Acronis, breached the never-ending oceans and marched upon Verdun with fury unmatched, our empire faced not just war, but extinction.
Acronis… a demi-god, a being so saturated with infernal mana that his power was beyond reason. According to the standardised power-scaling system of Sentienity, he was a 12th-rank Saint, far surpassing the threshold of what even the strongest human Saints could ever dream of. His armies? Unimaginable. Hordes of twisted demons, monstrous hybrids, sentient plagues and walking catastrophes—all loyal to their king with blind, terrifying devotion. Each of Acronis's generals could reduce entire regions to ash without raising more than a hand. Entire legions of Saints fell before them like stalks of grass in a storm.
And it wasn't as if Verdun was weak, not back then. At the height of our history before and during the invasion, the empire was safeguarded by nearly ten million Saints. A number so vast it could reshape entire continents if unleashed in unison. But against Acronis and his legions, those Saints fell short. We were strong... but not strong enough.
Emperor Zero Dawn understood this. He foresaw that the only way forward wasn't more numbers—it was sheer, absolute quality. So he did what none before him had dared. He handpicked, gathered, and trained the most elite warriors in all of Sentienity. A thousand individuals of unmatched skill, will, and potential. And from these thousand, emerged a singular force of handful individuals:
The Asuras.
They were not an army. They were a storm. They operated not only as a battalion, but as independent executioners—hunting down the Demon King's greatest lieutenants, the calamity-class threats that even Saints dared not face alone. While the Emperor himself prepared to face Acronis in a final clash, the Asuras were given one directive:
"Cleanse the darkness. One by one. No matter the cost."
And they did.
One after another, Acronis's most powerful generals—each worth a thousand Saints—fell. Ambushed, Slaughtered. Hunted. Outwitted. The Asuras fought not with overwhelming might, but with terrifying precision. They bled. They died. But they won. Slowly, painfully, they turned the tide.
Even after the Emperor himself fell in battle, and Acronis was finally destroyed in a clash said to have torn open the skies for a decade… the Asuras did not stop. They refused to. They pursued the retreating remnants of the demon kind across the far ends of the realm. They fought without rest. Without mercy. Until the last horned corpse fell. Until the last breath of infernal mana was extinguished.
And then they vanished.
Their legend ended not with a triumphant return, but with sacrifice. The price of victory was extinction.
All but a handful of the original Asuras perished. And those few who survived were said to have been cursed—doomed with fates worse than death, shackled by the very powers they wielded, forced into silence, exile, or something far darker.
"...The Sky Dragon and the Crimson Dragon..."
Lav spoke softly, as if invoking their names required reverence.
The last two surviving Asuras—not in name, but in consequence. The eternal guardians of Verdun.
The Sky Dragon, protector of the celestial barrier that shields our skies, and the Crimson Dragon, shrouded in flame and myth, resting in the uncharted depths of the Inner Rims.
Together, they are the unspoken sentinels of our realm, the only reason we've survived the attacks of the Primordials—the last, most grotesque offspring of the Demon King's will. For centuries now, the Sky Dragon has repelled assaults no mortal could fathom, while the Crimson Dragon—silent, rarely seen—has been known to emerge in moments of true desperation to aid its kin. And yet, most of Verdun's people do not even believe the Crimson Dragon exists. So deep does it slumber. So little do we understand it.
Lav tilted his head, narrowing his eyes in thought.
"So… these Wraiths—the shadow-bound, undetectable creatures- were inspired by that same doctrine? The strategy Emperor Zero Dawn used to birth the Asuras, and annihilate the walking demonic calamities?"
I didn't have to answer. He saw it in my face. He already knew.
Wraiths don't roar, they don't announce their arrival. They don't march in armies. They lurk. They learn. They strike only when it matters most. And above all, they are impossible to detect, even for someone like me.
Which means they're the perfect tools for a different kind of war.
A new war.
One we're not prepared for.
"It makes sense," Lav muttered. "Hit squads. Shadow units. Kill the S-Ranks and below—maybe even the SS. Target the infrastructure, the network of strength, the rising ones, the ones the Empire relies on to respond first." He rubbed his forehead, grimacing. "You laughed at this very theory of mine back then… said I was overthinking it…"
'Maybe you were the only one seeing clearly through the fog.'
With that thought, I gave a hollow smile. "Back then, your intelligence sparkled amidst a bonfire of idiots. Lucky you..."
Saints.
The pinnacle of mortal capability. Beings capable of erasing entire towns—or mountains, by a single flick of power.
Yet, even Saints no longer walk alone. The protocol changed around a few decades ago. The empire has mandated that no Saint, regardless of strength, is allowed outside without a Strike Group—a tight, handpicked team of S and SS-ranks prepared to act as defence, bait, or sacrifice.
And the stronger Saints? Those above 3rd-rank? Their escorts are fellow Saints. Sometimes multiple.
It was only when the discussion turned to the operational structure of the Saints—how they move, how they're never alone, always shadowed by a Strike Group—that Lav voiced the question no one else ever had the nerve, or the perspective, to ask.
"Why would a Saint need a Strike Group?"
It wasn't rhetorical. He meant it. Not just for the upper echelons, the elite few who could cause earthquakes with a gesture, but for the lower-ranked Saints, the newer ones, the ones still learning what it meant to become a weapon of the Empire.
Because on the surface, the logic seemed clear. Saints were the apex. Weapons of national consequence. Protecting them made sense. The stronger the Saint, the more vital they were to the strategic core of Verdun's defence. Losing one high-ranking Saint—especially those in the 4th Rank and above—would send tremors of unrest through the entire nation. Cities would mourn. Guilds would collapse. Borderlands would weaken.
But then came Lav's point.
"Why secure the lesser Saints, too? Why all of them? Even the ones just recently ascended? Why assign a full Strike Group—18 to 24 elite warriors—for someone who's barely breached the barrier into sainthood?"
He wasn't wrong. The cost was immense. Maintaining ten thousand Saints, each either commanding or belonging to a Strike Group, meant hundreds of thousands of elite warriors—S-ranks, SS-ranks, former battlefield commanders, frontline spellcasters, even retired knights brought back into the fold. Every one of them drew an eon-level stipend. Every one of them trained, armed, and quartered at the Empire's expense.
"Even during peace," Lav had once muttered under his breath, "we prepare for war."
And this… this wasn't a recent strategy. No, this policy dates back nearly a century. A full hundred years. The Empire began organising and implementing Strike Groups long before the rise of the Bloodfrost Rebellion, before the Winter War, even before the corrupted beasts emerged in the Middle Rims. Back when the worst the Empire had to worry about were rogue cults and criminal guilds operating on the fringes of civilisation.
So the question remained—
Why? Why go to such great lengths in an era that was practically a golden utopia?
It didn't make sense.
Unless…
My thoughts stuttered, grinding under the weight of a new realisation.
Does that mean… these Wraiths have been around for a hundred years now?
Hidden… watching… adapting?
That can't be—
"Don't forget," Lav interrupted, sharp-eyed as always. "A Strike Group doesn't just protect the Saint—they're made up of the most promising individuals from all across Verdun. The cream of the crop. The rising stars. Each one chosen for potential, loyalty, and raw strength. Mages, martial artists, barrier specialists, healers, and nullifiers. Some of them—former heroes. Others—young geniuses."
He leaned forward slightly, his voice lowering, not in secrecy, but in clarity.
"The Empire didn't just protect the Saints. It created moving fortresses. Eighteen to twenty-four elite individuals, walking together, living together, training together. Forming bonds. Becoming more than units—becoming families."
And then the hammer dropped.
"Because if something does attack a Strike Group... if something like the Wraiths emerges from the shadows... the Saint won't run."
"They'll fight."
"Because they'll be protecting more than assets. They'll be protecting their own, they'll be protecting each other."
And I realised... Lav wasn't just talking strategy. He was laying bare the Empire's long game. This wasn't about surviving an attack. This was about conditioning the Saints. Training them to care. To bond. To tie their fates to their team's survival. So when the shadows did strike—and they eventually would—our strongest wouldn't retreat.
They'll either fight with all their might, increasing their individual, as well as the survival chances of the strike-group together...
Or they'll die standing together.
Because they'd rather fall with their Strike Group than live as mourning cowards.
In hindsight, maybe Lav had been the only one paying attention all these years. While the rest of us mocked the redundancy of Strike Groups in a peaceful empire, he had been wondering:
"Peace for what? Peace for whom? And peace... at what price?"
And maybe… just maybe… the Empire had never trusted that peace to begin with.
Because something had been brewing for the past hundred years.
Something quiet.
Something unseen.
Something like a legion of Wraiths... slowly growing, maturing, waiting for the right moment.
Waiting for us to be lulled into safety, by peace we never earned.