A Long Night in the Meat Grinder

Shien stood at the edge of the Sacred Flame platform, wrapped in a heavy, dark cloak.

Thanks to the intensive battle formation drills of the past few days, Shien had grown adept at using Basic Battlefield Awareness and Battle Formation Command Logic. Basic Battlefield Awareness had even risen to Lv. 2.

Now he pushed both skills to their limits, driving them beyond their normal capacity. The cost was clear: his mental strength was being drained bit by bit.

Exhaustion scraped at his nerves like a dull knife. Tiny black spots had begun to appear at the edges of his vision.

To sharpen his focus, Shien closed his eyes.

The roars and sounds of hacking below slowly receded from his awareness, and the entire position reassembled itself in his mind.

He sensed exactly which gap had spearmen beginning to slow, and which battered wagon was close to giving way. It was as though he could see the battlefield from above.

On this killing ground, his mind was the command center. Ivan, half a step beside him, was his signal tower.

"The fighters at gap two are at their limit," Shien murmured. "Send in the second line."

Ivan whipped up the signal flag in his hand.

At gap two, Kyle and the others caught sight of the signal from the platform. Their taut nerves eased at once.

In perfect coordination, they drew their heavy iron shields half a step back at an angle.

Almost at the same instant, the fresh troops who had been waiting behind them surged forward.

Spears shot through the openings left by the shields like striking vipers, driving the Rat Tide back into the heap of corpses before it could pour through.

The defensive line completed its rotation like the gears of a machine.

But even the best tactics could not prevent accidents on a battlefield this chaotic.

Crack—boom!

West of the platform, the thunderous sound of timber breaking erupted.

Hundreds of frenzied Corrupt Rats piled on top of one another, pressing into a huge ball of flesh that crushed a heavy supply wagon beneath its weight.

A gap four or five meters wide was torn open in an instant.

A reeking black tide of rats, laced with sickly green Corpse Poison, flooded through the breach and into the inner circle of light!

"Guards, hold the west side! Convicts, bring supplies and fill that gap!"

The signal flag in Ivan's hand whipped furiously through the air.

Dozens of elite knights who had been resting in the inner circle roared and drew their greatswords. They slammed their bodies, sheathed in Battle Aura, straight into the breach.

Using themselves as shields, they held the black-mudslide surge of rats beyond the shattered remains of the wooden boards.

Behind them, crowds of Convicts desperate to erase their brands through military merit charged forward with heavy Pig Iron ingots and burlap sacks full of gravel, heedless of their lives.

Sharp claws raked through the gaps in the knights' leg armor, tearing the arms of several Convicts in the front row into bloody shreds.

"Aaaah!"

Amid screams from people being ripped apart alive, a new makeshift wooden wall was hammered into the mud at the cost of human lives.

The breach was sealed by force, and the position regained its precarious balance.

And so Shien stood on the platform, holding the battered position together through precise orders and the bodies of his soldiers.

The night deepened, and the Blood Moon overhead shone ever more harshly.

At the highest point of the camp, Shien did not dare take even one full breath.

Without warning, an uncontrollable chill shot up his spine and pressed against the back of his skull.

Shien spun around and looked toward Ivan.

The Resonance Realm knight was staring into the bottomless darkness beyond the light to the west.

He was not alone. Every one of the few dozen high-level fighters in the camp who had reached the threshold of the Resonance Realm fixed their gaze in that direction at the same instant.

Far behind the waves of lesser rats throwing themselves to their deaths, several vicious presences lurked deep in the Blood Mist.

They watched the frail circle of light with cold detachment, using tens of thousands of lesser Corrupt Rats to wear down the humans' strength and exhaust their options, yet still refusing to strike.

Through that night, with those hostile presences watching and screams rising across the ground, the people of Blackpine Fief somehow endured.

By the time thick black blood in the trenches and breaches had risen above their shins, the despairing dark red finally began to peel away from the sky.

The lifeless light of day struggled to spread over the Blood Moon's Blood Mist.

With shrieks of frustration, the black tide swiftly retreated, the rats scrambling back into the shadows of the dead forest beyond the light.

The entire camp fell silent for several breaths.

Clang—

Someone was the first to lose their grip, and a notched sword fell into the muddy water full of torn flesh.

Then weapons began clattering to the ground everywhere.

As if their spines had been pulled out, the soldiers collapsed into the bloody water, gasping for air. They had been drained so completely that they could not move even a finger.

Shien watched the tide of rats recede. He knew this was no victory.

That long, bloody first night had been nothing more than a test by the Dark Races.

On the second night, the army would be utterly spent and much of the makeshift wagon wall would be ruined.

When the suffocating evil deep in the Blood Mist tore through the circle of light and entered the battle itself, what would the battered Blackpine Fief have left to stop it?

Just then, Shien's vision wavered.

The Battlefield Perception he had maintained all night suddenly gave way in his mind, like a string snapping after being pulled too tight.

A sharp pain burst through his nerves, and his body swayed despite himself.

Ivan noticed at once and instinctively reached out to steady him. "My lord!"

Shien raised a hand to stop him. He drew a deep breath, forced the exhaustion back into the depths of his mind, then slowly shook his head. "I'm fine."

Ivan frowned at him but said nothing more.

After a moment to steady himself, Shien walked down from the platform.

Keeping Battlefield Perception active all night while issuing orders with relentless precision had left his head feeling as though countless steel needles were stabbing through it. But he could not stop to rest.

He passed the soldiers sprawled in the bloody water, gasping for breath, and went straight to the base of the Permanent Sacred Flame Platform.

By the faint firelight, Victor and a dozen High-Tier Artisans were sweating as they scraped oxidized bloodstains from the base's main bearing with slender blades.

The shriveled, one-armed old man looked as though he had just been dragged from a swamp. Dark red Bloodrust and unidentifiable grime covered him, and his remaining left hand gripped a Refined Steel scraper.

"How are the repairs going?" Shien stopped, his voice hoarse with exhaustion. "How much longer?"

Victor's clouded eye avoided Shien's gaze. "My lord... the surface cleaning... is about half done.

"I had the others scrape the thickest Bloodrust from around the main shaft overnight. Give me one more day, and we can finish it. But..."

Victor's voice dwindled, and he drew back without realizing it. "But... there's one critical problem..."