Hunting Ghouls

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

His eyelids lowered slightly as he plunged his mental power into his sea of consciousness without reserve. [Lv. 3 Macro Battlefield Command] activated.

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

In his mind, it was as though he viewed the entire battlefield from above. His projections could be precise to the millisecond, but nearly two seconds still passed between an order and the knights' physical response.

Those two seconds could be fatal. He had to make up for them by anticipating what came next.

Shien raised a hand and gave a crisp tactical signal.

The signalman beside him drew a sharp breath, and a clear blast rang from the long brass horn.

"Roar—!"

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

Acidic drool splashed across his visor, raising white smoke with a hiss. The stench of carrion burned its way into his lungs.

Its terrifying presence pressed down on Bard like an invisible mountain, leaving his limbs stiff.

In the next instant, claws lunged straight for his face.

A foul wind swept toward him. Bard's pupils contracted.

I can't dodge it!

Bang!

A violent impact struck from the side.

Two shield-bearers from the Sixth Combat Squad charged into the opening with low growls. Their Ironbound Oak Shields caught the claws at a vicious angle and forced the blow aside.

Bard's heart clenched. He knew his life had just been saved.

Monsters of this caliber were usually held back with human lives.

Yet under their lord's command, it was pinned in this hollow, unable to tear through the seventy-man line.

But then the unexpected happened. The flank suddenly cracked. Several knights, their Battle Aura exhausted, were swatted away by the Ghoul, shields and all.

"Toot! Toot!"

Before the Ghoul could press its advantage, the horn sounded.

A reserve squad rushed in on the same beat. They slid, planted their shields, and took position in one fluid motion.

Heavy iron shields slammed into the mud, sealing the gap at once. The entire line flowed like mercury, without the slightest hint of collapse.

Bard panted hard, every bone in his body aching, but he kept pushing forward to the horn's rhythm.

He was not fighting alone. He was only one cog in this vast killing machine. All he had to do was follow the horn and let his instincts move him.

The Third-Tier High-Rank Ghoul finally realized it had sunk into a quagmire woven from flesh and blood.

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

The Demonic Beast's instincts broke free of all restraint. With a vicious roar that tore through the air, the bone spikes on its back and arms suddenly lengthened.

It crouched, smashed the frozen ground beneath its hind legs, and tried to leap out of the encirclement, even at the cost of grave injury.

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

"Toot! Toot! Toot!" Urgent short blasts cut through the wind and snow.

From hiding along the cliff face, knights hurled several clay jars etched with 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 intertwined into a strange fireball, swallowing its upper body whole.

Scalding acid and Holy Silver Powder burrowed into its flesh through the cuts opened again and again.

"Aaargh—!!!" A shrill scream rang out.

Its regenerative power was forcibly suppressed, and the concentrated acid burned away both eyes in an instant.

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

"Wooo—aaah!"

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

Close the net!

All fourteen combat squads in the hollow pressed forward at once, moving like a harvesting machine, every beat fitting perfectly.

Bard gulped for air and tightened his grip on his greatsword. On the rising beat of the horn, he instinctively stepped forward and drove the blade into an exposed joint.

Schluck!

At that moment, dozens of weapons struck almost simultaneously.

Swords, spears, shield rims... they locked down every point where the beast could exert its strength, pinning it firmly in place.

The next instant, two figures plunged from the high cliff face.

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

Raging Battle Aura and platinum Holy Light formed a cross-shaped silhouette and slashed down with the power to tear through anything.

Crack! The sound of splitting bone rang out.

The enormous head flew off in a single blow. A column of dark blood shot skyward, then fell as bloody rain.

The headless corpse twitched twice and collapsed with a crash.

The battle was over.

Weapons clattered to the ground one after another.

All seventy knights lost their strength almost at once and sprawled across the mud.

"Urgh—" Bard tore off his visor and braced himself on both hands, vomiting violently.

The knights around him were retching on the ground too. Even Fabien leaned against a stone wall, his face deathly pale.

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

But the cost of the battle had fallen entirely on their bodies.

Their Battle Aura had been wrung dry in a frighteningly short time, while their minds had strained to the limit, none of them daring to miss a beat of the horn.

The moment that forced, high-pressure state released them, the backlash came crashing down without mercy, bringing spasms that felt as if they were tearing their insides apart.

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

Zero deaths. They had brought down a Third-Tier High-Rank Demonic Beast head-on in the wilderness, with zero deaths.

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 came a second knight, a third... All seventy knights, Fabien included, rose from the mud and knelt on one knee.

Shien descended 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 adoration.

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

The kneeling knights snapped out of their daze and quickly dispersed.

Some stood guard with shields, others cut up the corpse or gathered weapons. Every movement was swift and clean, with no wasted words.

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

Even up close, the Third Tier Demonic Beast still exuded an oppressive presence.

The gray-white bone armor embedded in its rotting flesh was hard as steel. Black blood reeking of strong acid continued to pour from its severed neck.

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

He gouged out a crystal the size of a fist.

Dark red and deep in color, its surface was covered in fine lines. It looked like a heart frozen solid.

Even separated from its body, the energy inside it pulsed slowly, radiating a wild, primal Blood Moon power.

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

Shien took it. Heat seeped through his skin.

It meant Victor's plans for those alchemical creations now had another core that could actually power them.

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

"My lord... look at this."

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

Beneath several thick, coarse animal sinews was a polished black stone tablet.

Shien stepped closer. His pupils narrowed almost imperceptibly.

Several crooked, disorderly lines were carved into the stone.

To anyone else, they would have looked like nothing more than scratches left by a Demonic Beast.

But in Shien's sea of consciousness, the three-dimensional Sand Table of Blackpine Fief's defenses unfolded instantly, and the lines matched it.

They traced the outline of Blackpine Fief's defensive line.

Even the gap where the first trench had yet to be closed was marked by a conspicuously deeper notch.

The breathing of several knights nearby caught. A chill crawled up their spines.

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

It had come with a mission.