Lu PingAn's Soldier Path was a pure Black Knight route.
It followed the route of "life as ammunition/consumables." Cruel, yet effective; in short, decisive battles, its power could even be several times that of a White Knight.
The only problem was that "ammunition" was not easy to come by.
Intelligent beings had reason. Even under high-pressure rule, forced enslavement had its limits. Generally speaking, Big Cat's lineage solved this through "beast taming," using an endless Magical Beast Army as ammunition and cannon fodder.
Clearly, Lu PingAn's fifth and sixth tiers had both embodied the power of this "path."
The "warlord" in Shadowspawn Warlord highlighted the "dictatorial" and "coercive" nature of its abilities. If it were the White Knight Path, top-tier professions would often use relatively neutral terms like "ruler," "Monarch," or "Lord of XX."
This had actually been inevitable. Soldiers were a branch of the Death-type, and the Death-type and Life-type were two sides of the same coin, deeply influenced by the Courtyard and World Fragments. After Lu PingAn consecutively consumed three Adverse Winds of Fate from the Mother Goddess Church—Big Cat, the Sophist, and Barn the World Devourer—his path had advanced by leaps and bounds while also becoming steeped in the flavor of the Mother Goddess Church.
In fact, as foundational paths, both Black Holy Grail Holder and Adverse Silver Child of War were Mother Goddess Church paths, while Shadowspawn Warlord represented their culmination.
Big Cat's Black Knight Path was even one of the main paths. After he had "learned" this path from Big Cat, reaching this point had been only natural. It was just that—
"It's much stronger than I expected. In fact, the intensity of your Shadowspawn has virtually no upper limit. Used properly, it's even more useful than a Tier 7 or Tier 8 warlord."
This