A Tributary of History

What did killing feel like? What did it feel like to take the life of the same kind for the first time?

...I feel nothing.

There was none of the conflict and unease seen in films and television, let alone nausea-inducing physical discomfort.

Killing came so easily. Life was not as precious as the legends claimed. Once a professional warrior resolved to kill, it became work as ordinary as any other.

It was merely that the targets had changed from monsters to humans like themselves.

The golden wolf pack spread across the land, faintly resembling a golden sea. The sentries' gunfire blossomed amid the wolves.

"Aah!"

Amid screams, the glow of flame turned into bloody light, and one "blood flower" after another bloomed across the earth.

The Spin Force Stone firearms were indeed powerful, but their one-shot-at-a-time rate of fire sealed the sentries' fate amid the beast horde—especially against a Beast Tamer's beasts.

Under the Beast Tamer's command, the Beast King, Xiao An, kept roaring. Even as beasts continuously fell among the wolves, the pack did not retreat.

One slightly larger "knight" after another either led a charge, cunningly circled around for an invasion, or hid amid the pack, waiting for the moment to launch a fatal strike.

The initial cannon fodder did not even count as "soldiers." They were merely ordinary beasts that had lost out in natural selection, at most subjected to some rudimentary demonic alteration.

But once the pressure on the front line mounted, once wave after wave of wolves charged forward, the outpost—originally built to guard against beasts and competitors—could only fire two desperate volleys before its occupants were dragged from the building by the beast horde.

...Should we restrain them a little?

"Leave one officer alive and gather intelligence. As for the rest... save on