Hunting the Ghoul

Shien stood atop the platform, his silver-white hair whipping behind him in the wind.

His eyelids lowered. He sank his mental power into his mind without holding anything back, activating [Lv. 3 Macro Battlefield Command].

The dense Gray Fog below, thick as slurry, became a ghostly blue Sand Table.

In his mind, he looked down over the entire battlefield as if from above. His projections were precise to the millisecond, but nearly two seconds still passed between an order and the knights' physical response.

Two seconds were enough to kill. He would have to make up for that delay by anticipating what came next.

Shien raised his hand in a crisp tactical signal.

Beside him, the herald drew a sharp breath, and a clear blast rang from the long brass horn.

"Roar!"

The Ghoul's roar exploded against Bard's eardrums.

Acidic drool splashed across his visor. It hissed and sent up white smoke, while the stench of carrion filled his lungs.

The terrifying pressure bore down on him like an invisible mountain, stiffening his limbs.

The next instant, claws flashed toward his face.

A foul wind swept across Bard's face. His pupils contracted.

I can't dodge it!

Bang!

A violent impact slammed in from the side.

Two shieldbearers from the Sixth Combat Squad charged into the blind spot with low growls. Their Ironbound Oak Shields caught the claws at a cunning angle and forced the blow aside.

Bard's heart clenched. They had saved his life.

A monster of this caliber could usually only be held back at the cost of lives.

Yet under their lord's command, it had been pinned in this hollow, unable to break through the line of seventy men.

Then something went wrong. The flank suddenly buckled. Several knights, their Battle Aura exhausted, were struck by the Ghoul and sent flying, shields and all.

"Toot! Toot!"

Before the Ghoul could exploit the opening, the horn sounded.

The reserve squad surged forward on the same beat. They slid in, planted their shields, and took position in one smooth motion.

Heavy iron shields slammed into the mud, sealing the gap at once. The whole line flowed like quicksilver without a hint of collapse.

Bard gasped for breath. Every bone in his body ached, but he kept pressing forward to the horn's rhythm.

I'm not fighting alone. I'm just one gear in a huge killing machine. All I have to do is follow the horn.

The Third-Tier High-Rank Ghoul finally realized it was trapped in a mire woven from flesh and blood.

Without Blood Moon Frenzy to sustain it, half an hour of attrition had left its gray-white bone armor riddled with cracks.

The Demon Beast's instincts took over completely. With a savage roar that tore through the air, the bone spikes on its back and arms suddenly lengthened.

It crouched, shattered the Frozen Tundra beneath its hind legs, and tried to leap out of the encirclement, even at the cost of grave injury.

On the stone tower, Shien stared coldly at the data stream spiking across his Sand Table and pressed three fingers down.

"Toot! Toot! Toot!" Three urgent blasts cut through the wind and snow.

From their hiding places along the cliff, knights hurled several clay jars covered in crude Runes into the air.

They were Victor's experimental Pressure-Triggered Poisonfire Mines. With their pressure mechanisms removed, they had become simple throwing weapons.

Boom!

The jars burst over the Ghoul's head just as it leaped.

Sacred white light and sickly green Poisonfire twisted into a strange fireball, swallowing its upper body whole.

Scalding acid and Holy Silver Powder poured through the gashes that had been hacked open again and again, burrowing into its flesh.

"Aaaagh!" A shrill scream erupted.

Its regeneration was forcibly suppressed, and its eyes burned away in the concentrated acid.

The huge body lost its balance and crashed back into the mud like a burning lump of charcoal, thrashing in the Poisonfire.

"Bwooo!"

The signal changed. A high horn call soared into the sky.

Close the net!

All fourteen combat squads in the hollow pressed forward at once, moving with the flawless rhythm of a harvesting machine.

Bard gulped down air and tightened his grip on his greatsword. As the horn rose, he instinctively stepped forward and drove the blade into an exposed joint.

Shnk!

Dozens of weapons struck almost simultaneously.

Swords, spears, shield rims... They locked down every point the Demon Beast could use to exert force, pinning it firmly in place.

The next instant, two figures plunged from the cliff above.

Ivan and Fabien crossed paths in midair, one just ahead of the other.

Violent Battle Aura and platinum Holy Light formed a cross-shaped silhouette, then slashed down with the force to tear through anything.

Crack! The sound of breaking bone rang out.

The massive head flew off in a single blow. A column of black blood shot skyward and fell as rain.

The headless corpse twitched twice, then toppled.

The battle was over.

Weapons clattered to the ground one after another.

All seventy knights gave out almost at once, collapsing haphazardly into the mud.

"Urgh—" Bard tore off his visor, braced his hands on the ground, and vomited violently.

Other knights retched around him. Even Fabien leaned against the stone wall, his face deathly pale.

No one had died. No one was even seriously wounded.

But their bodies had borne the full cost of the battle.

Their Battle Aura had been drained in a remarkably short time, and they had kept their nerves stretched to the limit, never daring to miss a beat of the horn.

Once that state of relentless strain let go, the backlash hit them full force, bringing spasms that felt as though their insides were being torn apart.

After the retching passed, Bard raised his hands and looked at his uninjured arms, then turned toward the mountain of a corpse.

No fatalities. They had killed a Third-Tier High-Tier Demonic Beast head-on in the open, without losing a single man.

Something burst inside his chest.

Gritting his teeth, he used his sword to push himself unsteadily to his feet.

He turned toward the stone tower and drove his right knee into the muddy water.

Then a second knight knelt, and a third... All seventy knights, Fabien included, rose from the mud and dropped to one knee.

Shien made his way down the twelve-meter stone tower, step by step.

The wind had weakened closer to the ground. His silver-white hair settled against the collar of his dark coat.

His expression remained calm, untouched by victory or the knights' reverence.

"Clear the battlefield. Prepare to return to camp."

The kneeling knights came to their senses and swiftly dispersed.

Some stood guard with shields, others butchered the corpse or gathered weapons. Every movement was clean and efficient. No one wasted words.

Shien walked straight through the mud and stopped before the headless Ghoul's remains.

Even up close, the Third-Tier Demonic Beast was imposing.

The gray-white bone armor embedded in its rotting flesh was hard as steel. Black blood, sharp with the smell of acid, kept welling from its severed neck.

Ivan stepped forward and drove his short sword into the dark red flesh at the center of its chest, where the tissue had not yet fully charred. He flicked his wrist.

A fist-sized crystal was gouged free.

Dark red and deep in color, it was covered in fine lines, like a heart frozen solid.

Even separated from the body, the energy inside it pulsed slowly, giving off savage, primal Blood Moon energy.

Ivan knelt on one knee and presented the Primordial Blood Crystal.

Shien took it. Heat seeped through his skin.

Victor's designs for his alchemical creations now had another core capable of powering them.

Just as the knights prepared to continue carving up the corpse, someone cried out.

"My lord... Look at this."

Bard used his sword to lift a layer of rotten cloth from the Ghoul's waist.

Beneath several thick, tough animal sinews hung a polished slab of black stone.

Shien stepped closer. His pupils narrowed almost imperceptibly.

Several crooked, chaotic lines had been carved into the stone.

To anyone else, they were merely claw marks left by a Demon Beast.

But in Shien's mind, the three-dimensional Sand Table of Blackpine Fief's defenses unfolded instantly and aligned with those lines.

They traced the outline of Blackpine Fief's defenses.

Even the unclosed gap in the first trench had been marked with a noticeably deeper indentation.

The breathing of several nearby knights faltered. A chill crept up their spines.

They suddenly realized something: this Third-Tier Ghoul, which they had surrounded and killed in broad daylight, had not been a wandering beast.

It had come with a mission.