He turned to face the hundreds upon thousands of mortal warriors.
"Take a good look!"
Mortarion's voice rolled over the fortress like muffled thunder.
"This is the 'god' you once worshipped and feared!"
With a violent swing of his arm, he hurled the heavy head toward the cliff at the fortress's edge as though throwing away a sack of rubbish.
The head traced an arc through the air and slammed into the cliff face, then tumbled down the steep rocks before landing with a splat in the filthy, poisonous mire below the fortress.
Covered in foul-smelling mud, it was no different from the mortal remains those monsters had trampled so carelessly.
Boom!
In the mortal warriors' minds, an invisible shackle seemed to shatter completely at that moment!
They had seen it with their own eyes: the invincible lord, that monster who stood so far above them, had neither commanded the elements nor risen from the dead. He could bleed, his blood stank too, and his head could be severed by ordinary steel and sent rolling into the mire!
"The monster is dead..."
An old warrior dropped his spear, fell to his knees, and sobbed. Those were tears of joy, but also cries of grief suppressed for a lifetime and finally released.
"We won! We killed the lord!"
"Long live humanity! Long live the Pale Reaper!"
After a brief, deathly silence, cheers erupted like a tidal wave inside and outside the fortress! This was the roar of mortals, the counterattack of the weak, the first true declaration of independence humanity had ever made on this hopeless, poisonous planet.
From that moment onward, they knew with certainty: even the monsters who towered above them could be killed by human ingenuity and ordinary steel!
Amid those earthshaking cheers, the Barbarus Resistance formally declared