Rising from the Ashes (Andrew) novel Chapter 2769

Andrew drew in a deep breath, looking at the sky as he said, "Back then, my target was Constantine Dracul, the Vampire Prince of the Dark Trinity. I honestly didn't think much of it at first because even though Constantine was already a martial god, he had just broken through. I was only a martial emperor, but I trusted the strength of the Iron Cavalry."

He added, "Forget about Constantine, even if another martial god showed up, we could have still pulled out alive. But nothing went the way I expected. It was a trap, a deliberate setup that forced me to watch the entire Iron Cavalry get wiped out.

"And that burning feeling in my body and that boiling, killing intent weren't battle adrenaline. They were instinctive warning signals, a plea for me to stop, a gut feeling telling me not to go any deeper."

He paused, lowering his head with pain in his eyes. "But I didn't know any of that back then. And after that… everything ended."

A sharp ache hit Luna's chest. She gently embraced Andrew, and the two held each other tightly on the quiet street.

"Andrew, none of us blame you. Besides, it was never your fault to begin with. Mr. Turman already told me part of it. Even though he didn't explain everything, the destruction of the Iron Cavalry wasn't on you."

Andrew laughed bitterly at himself. "Everyone's already dead. What does it matter whose responsibility it was? All I know is that I shouldn't have led everyone deeper into enemy territory. And at the time, my instincts were already warning me not to push forward. But back then, I was really foolish, really impulsive, really quick to trust others."

"I wanted nothing more than to kill every living thing I saw. Unfortunately, I was only at the martial emperor level back then. Even at the fifth stage, it wasn't enough."

Luna insisted, "That's not true. Do you know what your fifth-stage martial emperor strength meant to us all back then? Andrew, you were different from me, Valerie, Conrad, and all the other prodigies in Chetvine.

"To be precise, you weren't just a genius... You were you, one of a kind, someone this world sees once in 1000 years. Mr. Turman once said that the organization had positioned you as Holtrien's ultimate martial weapon."