Misunderstood Hero: My Family Are All Villains

Archers stood on raised platforms behind the front lines, their bows singing in unison.

Volley after volley of arrows arced into the enemy ranks, each wave hitting a different section of the approaching horde.

Spell casters—lower-class Magi, Class Eleven and Ten—stood in clusters between the archers, their hands glowing with gathered Rukh.

They kept firing their elements at the approaching enemy, nearly all attacks finding their mark.

The long-ranged Magi rotated in shifts, never stopping.

One group fired while the other recovered. Then they switched. Then switched again.

Their movements were almost mechanical, drilled into them by many years of war, never faltering even as the enemy grew closer, and their screams grew louder.

The vanguard now held the front line, relieving the traitorous soldiers from carrying that burden alone.

They were heavy infantry in full plate armor, mainly carrying tower shields, spears, and greatswords.

They stood shoulder to shoulder, a wall of steel and Will that stretched across the battlefield.

The enemy crashed against them again and again, wave after wave of soldiers throwing themselves at the shield wall.

Using their elements, the vanguard pushed back.

Spears thrust through the gaps, punching through armor and flesh.

Bodies piled at their feet, forming makeshift ramps that the enemy used to climb higher.

No matter the changing landscape, the vanguard adapted and held the line.

Behind them, shield walls waited in reserve, ready to rotate in when they grew too tired to fight.

It was the same strategy used with the archers and spell casters.

That showed just how well they had adapted to endurance battles.

But of course, they wouldn’t have been able to do this without healers.

Moving behind the first two ranks, the healers wore white plague masks and long green coats.

Malik knew of them from his fragments.

Most weren’t of his army and were more like outside help.

Orators, they called themselves. A nomadic faction that went from place to place, healing people while documenting their history along the way.

As their name implied, they documented everything orally, storing it within themselves and/or passing it down to their own kin.

Thanks to something his past self did, which he of course didn’t remember, the Orators were made indebted to him and held an indefinite pause to their travels, fully joining the Sultan’s army.

Finally, something in Malik’s past that only brought positives.

These people were incredible, having obviously been trained for this since young.

A wounded soldier fell, his leg cleaved by an enemy blade, and within seconds, a healer knitted his flesh back together, fusing bone.

The soldier gasped, rose, and grabbed his weapon while the healer already moved to the next fallen warrior.

Truly a machine.

Nothing slowed them.

They were Malik’s second greatest advantage, the reason his army could keep fighting long after any other force would have collapsed.

Without them, he was sure that his army likely would’ve Fallen to the Demons, or at least reached too dire straits in their unending war for survival.

But even they had limits.

They had been at this for a while now, and the wounded never stopped coming.

The enemy had numbers.

Terrible, overwhelming numbers.

For every soldier Malik’s army killed, two more appeared.

The dust cloud on the horizon hadn’t shrunk; it had grown, spreading across the plain like a sandstorm.

Reinforcements kept coming, pouring onto the field and filling the gaps left by their fallen comrades.

No matter the coalition of factions, it didn’t make sense that they had this many soldiers and high-class Magi.

Someone was supplying them, someone with deep pockets and long reach, someone who wanted the Sultan’s head on a platter.

’The Order...’

Malik realized, still watching from his throne.

’They’re behind this too.’

Thankfully, not all hope was lost.

Familiar shadows moved beneath.

Guard of the Fifth, Malik’s special unit.

These were his greatest advantage, his most lethal weapon.

A terrifying bunch, moving through a patch of darkness beneath a hill, the shade cast by a shield, and the space between a soldier and an invader.

Wherever a shadow fell, the Guard likely visited.

An enemy commander raised his sword to give an order. A shadow beneath his feet reached up, and a blade emerged from his chest, driving through his heart.

He fell without a sound, his body crumpling to the ground.

His men panicked, searching for an enemy they couldn’t see.

A group of archers drew their bows, aiming at the shield wall.

Their shadows exploded.

Throats were cut, and necks were snapped.

The Guard disappeared before the bodies hit the ground as if they had never been there.

Each ambush annihilated entire squads. The enemy simply couldn’t adapt, because, well, they couldn’t even see what killed them!

They could only die in silence and in fear.

But the Guard was not infallible.

Shadows needed darkness to move through, and the Suns were high and merciless, shrinking their hunting grounds with every passing minute.

Worse yet, their movements grew slower.

Even still, Malik couldn’t help but be impressed.

’No wonder they survived this long...’

His army was truly incredible.

He was proud to claim them as his own.

And one had to understand that most of them weren’t even here, busy with the Demon wave and other attacks; they would have been many times stronger otherwise.

They were overwhelming the invaders, but of course, the enemy kept coming.

The battle raged while the Suns crawled across the sky, an arc from East to West, indifferent to the bloodshed below.

More and more bodies piled up, forming mounds that the living used as cover.

The ground turned to mud from blood, thick and red, churned by a thousand boots.

Screams of the dying never stopped.

Malik’s army was better trained, better equipped, and better led.

The healers kept their soldiers fighting long after they should have fallen. The Guard of the Fifth turned the enemy’s own shadows against them. Sinbad, Azeem, Zafar, and Noor held the sky, killing any enemy Magi strong enough to threaten the ground.

Yet despite all of that... despite it all.

Victory never once seemed to be in sight.

The enemy’s number simply kept on coming.

They so desperately wanted the sultanate to fall.

If this kept up, Malik’s army would lose.

Thus, he stood up from the throne.

He had watched enough.

His people had done their part.

Now, finally, it was his turn to do his.

Cracking his neck, he checked his Soul Glyphs one last time.

Two single Ember’s Touch. One Goliath’s Fall. One single Shifting Ground.

’It’ll have to be enough.’

Malik stepped off the platform and walked towards the battlefield.