Negary spoke of humans as casually as he might have spoken of slices of bread, sending chills through everyone from the Kingdom of Roas.
"Attack!" Smick shouted. His body twisted and vanished from sight. The others drew their knight swords and charged at Negary as one.
Belts around the waists of the Roas soldiers' uniforms held a row of thumb-sized vials, each filled with a different colored liquid.
With practiced ease, the soldiers pulled out a vial filled with rippling scarlet liquid and tossed it into the air. Their knight swords struck the vials with pinpoint accuracy.
The scarlet liquid spilled out and coated the knight swords, wreathing them in eerie, blood-red flames. The flames carried a strange, ominous power.
"This power..." Negary narrowed his eyes and studied the blood-red flames. According to the intelligence he had gathered, the Kingdom of Roas had relied on only two major supernatural powers over the years.
One was the Breathing Method, wielded by the nobility. The other was the Ancestral Spirit Armor, known as a national treasure. Historical records claimed that the entire Kingdom of Roas possessed only a dozen or so suits. The armor itself was ordinary; the key was the Ancestral Spirit within.
Ancestral Spirits were heroes from the history of the Kingdom of Roas. When they sensed old age approaching, they performed a ritual that transformed them into beings known as Ancestral Spirits, at the cost of their lives.
Afterward, the Kingdom of Roas's artisans would bind an Ancestral Spirit to a suit of armor. Anyone who earned its recognition could wear the armor and receive the Ancestral Spirit's blessing.
Every warrior who wore Ancestral Spirit Armor was a champion capable of facing a hundred foes on the battlefield.
When Negary had first learned of the Ancestral Spirits, he had