Waking After the Battle, the War Machine That Ran Itself

Steam still rose from the canyon fault. Gravel and black blood streamed down through the cracks.

The black tide had been cut into three sections. The front was buried in the collapsed ruins of the abandoned fief, the middle was trapped at the choke point, and the rear was being whittled down layer by layer by the Mobile Holy Knights.

But some things had survived.

A dozen or so High-Rank Werewolves that had escaped the boulders dragged themselves out of the corpse piles. Puncture wounds covered their bodies, half their fur had been scorched by explosive canisters, and broken arrows still jutted from their chests.

Beneath the Blood Moon, they felt no pain. Leading the last few thousand Ghouls and low-level Demonic Beasts, they charged over shattered bones and rotting mud.

At the far end of the Gray Fog, Blackpine Fief's platinum Sacred Flame still burned steadily.

To them, that glimmer was their last path to survival—and a meal of meat that could replenish their blood.

They had stopped thinking. Only one instinct remained.

Rush in. Plunge into that fire. Drag out the people still alive inside and chew them to pieces.

The battered remnants burst from the canyon, but they had lost none of their speed.

A low, trembling boom sounded first from Blackpine Fief's tower bunker.

Boom—!

Three wrist-thick Rune heavy bolts fired at once from different angles. Steam valves blasted out searing white trails, and each bolt flew as though struck by a sledgehammer.

No rain of arrows. Only precise kills.

The three High-Rank Werewolves at the front had barely leaped onto the rubble slope when bloody holes burst open in their chests.

The tremendous force hurled them backward and pinned them to the rock walls on either side.

Even from that distance, the crack of bone