"Kill!"
In the black-and-crimson world, splashing magma mixed with the dirt falling from overhead. Within this scorching underground realm, an icy-white path formed from frozen ice, steaming with white vapor. Violent tremors spread finger-width cracks across its surface.
Warhorses thundered past, knights charging bravely onward. From the magma lakes on either side of the frozen road, one Gaze Golem after another emerged. They roared, the snakes upon their heads having lost their petrifying power but still possessing fangs sharp enough to bite through metal. Yet before the Stag Knights, who remained entirely unaffected in such an environment, they could only struggle briefly.
Rip!
A longsword tore through a body made of magma. Before the liquid Gaze Golem could reassemble itself, the knight's blade had already pierced its head. The moment its head was impaled, the Gaze Golem lost all strength. Its magma flesh solidified into lava and was about to fall back into the lake. The knight stopped it, flinging out a metal chain to bind the lava-hardened corpse and smash it onto the frozen path. This prevented the Gaze Golem from returning to the magma lake and being transformed back into liquid.
On the underground battlefield, two extraordinary forces fought until the heavens and earth seemed to darken. The Gaze Golems were dwindling in number, but their strength was increasing. The greatest difficulty of this war was that they could not stop.
No matter how much earth and stone collapsed from the cracked ground above, no matter their losses, no matter how many Gaze Golems there were, the fighting could not stop. Otherwise, the Gaze Golems already killed would gradually turn liquid over time and flow back into the river. That outcome would mean far too little loss of Divine Essence.
This was also why the last remnants of