Assembly Line Combat

Kyle gripped the hilt of his Fine-Steel Longsword and stood at the gap, barely two meters wide, waiting for the Blood Moon to rise.

Cold night wind poured down his collar, but it could not dry the sweat soaking his back.

Kyle had spent two years fighting on the Long Night Defense Line. A veteran like him should not have been at the front, but he had followed the wrong lord.

Roland, that fool, had thought himself clever enough to slip away and leave a decoy behind. Every soldier under him had been branded a criminal.

Kyle would never forget the smell of his own flesh burning where the hot iron had touched his neck.

Nor would he forget that, while he lay in a mud pit waiting to die, the silver-haired lord on the platform had shattered his shackles and given him hope of freedom.

From that day on, Kyle had sworn an oath: his life belonged to Lord Shien. Even if the rats chewed him to pieces tonight, he would not retreat a single step.

He had given his life, but that did not mean he was unafraid.

He had survived two years beneath the Great Wall, and he knew what a Rat Tide spawned by the Blood Moon meant.

Kyle glanced to either side. Heavy wagons stripped of their wheels, broken planks, and loose rocks had been cobbled together into a barricade.

How could a shoddy defense like that stop thousands upon thousands of monsters?

As far as he could see, their fate was sealed. Everyone would be gnawed down to bare bones.

Suddenly, the dark red glow beneath the gray clouds split them wide open.

A Blood Moon, so enormous it took his breath away, hung directly above the ruins of Blackpine Fief. Its dreadful red light spilled down, and the entire wasteland plunged into darkness.

"Screee—!!!"

Shrieks that made his scalp prickle erupted from every direction. Thousands upon thousands of scarlet eyes lit up in the endless dark.

The Bloodthirsty Rot Rats surged toward the battle line like a black tsunami, carrying a sickening stench of corpses.

Kyle's pupils contracted at the sight of the dark wave, powerful enough to grind flesh into pulp.

They're here!! They're here!!!

We're finished!!!

Kyle clenched his teeth and braced his legs, ready to die where he stood.

He expected the fragile flagstones beneath his feet to collapse at once, and rats covered in festering sores to burst from the ground and bite through his boots.

But nothing happened. The flagstones held firm.

The boiling water and poison poured underground during the day had done their brutal work. The acrid fumes of quicklime and burning Holy Silver kept seeping up through the cracks.

The monsters had an instinct for danger. They would rather be crushed together aboveground than burrow up through the boiling earth.

"Bang—!!!"

The black Rat Tide slammed into the outermost defenses like a tsunami.

But the collapse Kyle had imagined never came.

The front hundred or so Bloodthirsty Rot Rats set their forepaws on the line of Holy Silver Powder the priests had spread outside the defensive ring that day.

Great plumes of white smoke rose. Flesh melted from the rats at the front, and they shrieked in agony, their charge faltering for an instant.

That brief hesitation shattered the force of the wave.

The rats behind them could not stop. They crashed into the front ranks, knocking them over and throwing the swarm into chaos.

Robbed of most of its momentum, the Rat Tide struck the ramshackle wagon barricade Kyle had thought would fall at a touch.

"Thud!!" Dull impacts rolled together into a continuous roar.

The steel wagon frames packed with Stone Blocks and the thick oak planks shook violently under the force, creaking so sharply it set his teeth on edge.

But the barricade held!

Unable to break through the makeshift barrier, the rats lost all reason to the Blood Moon's bloodthirsty pull.

They writhed along the wagon wall, instinctively searching for a way through. Nearly all of them surged toward the gaps Shien had deliberately left open.

"Kill them!!!"

As the black monsters poured into the gap, fear stripped Kyle of thought. He instinctively summoned all his Battle Aura and hacked wildly with his Fine-Steel Longsword.

But after less than a few minutes, Kyle noticed something strange.

The thousands upon thousands of rats were trapped outside by this vicious tactic. They had to line up and squeeze through the narrow, two-meter gap directly in front of him.

Heavy wagons and high-ranking shield soldiers protected his flanks and front. Behind him, spearmen stood ready to thrust at anything that slipped through.

He did not have to watch his left or his right. No rats would come up beneath his feet, either.

All he had to do was grip his sword in both hands, hold it level, thrust forward, then plant a foot on a rat's corpse and pull the blade free.

Thrust, withdraw, and repeat. Countless rats turned to mangled flesh beneath his sword.

To Kyle, a veteran, the bloody slaughter he had expected from a Long Night battle had somehow become tedious.

Was this even a battle? It felt more like harvesting a crop.

Kyle glanced at the young soldier beside him, who had wet himself in fear only minutes ago. Now the young man looked excited as he thrust his spear blindly into the gap again and again, Battle Aura flaring around it.

Each time he pulled the spearhead free, it brought out a spray of foul black blood and sent several Bloodthirsty Rot Rats tumbling.

He was not the only one. All along the line, the backs of the heavily armored infantry, once rigid with tension, gradually relaxed as they struck again and again.

The chill they had felt when first facing the monsters faded before they knew it.

Rats battered the Ironbound Oak Shields in the front rank, while spears darted through the gaps like venomous snakes.

"Shhk—shhk—"

The dull sound of blades cutting through rotten flesh and bone came one strike after another.

The soldiers' ragged breathing gradually fell into rhythm. Everyone repeated the same motions over and over.

From a distance, the terrifying battle line looked almost like an assembly line at work.

"Hah... hah..." Kyle gulped down air, kicked aside a rat hacked to pieces at his feet, and wrenched his longsword from the mangled flesh.

He looked up. The Bloodthirsty Rot Rats that had once terrified him were trapped outside the funnel.

They piled up layer upon layer, able only to writhe and bite at one another. In the end, they formed a mountain of corpses that slowly wept black blood.

With a moment to catch his breath, Kyle wiped the foul blood from his face and glanced back.

High on the sacred platform, the silver-haired boy of just fourteen stood quietly, his cloak stirring in the cold wind.

It was as though he held the entire battlefield in his palm.

Kyle's gratitude for having his life saved had changed before he knew it. Suddenly, he felt he ought to risk his life for this boy.

The soldiers beside the gaps, the armored infantry holding shields, the spearmen striking from behind... Many of them looked up at the platform, deliberately or not. Without realizing it, their eyes had taken on the same look as Kyle's.

What they did not know was that the Grace Value above each of their heads was climbing rapidly.