Chapter 668: Moon’s Plan

A beast this tough could stand at the front line alongside Vela and Marek, taking damage instead of his team, giving the team a third wall of muscle when the fighting got heavy. Against a hundred beasts, tanks that could absorb punishment were worth as much as anything that could deal it.

He didn’t waste time.

Lightning poured from his hand, bolt after bolt hammering into the Arctic Grizzler, and the beast bellowed as the current tore through its body. Moon calibrated the attacks carefully, grinding down its body and weakening its soul foundation without pushing it past the point of no return, cracking the defenses that would otherwise resist his control. The Grizzler’s roars grew weaker with each bolt of lightning that struck it until eventually Moon deemed it ready.

[Curse]

The thread reached out and sank into the Arctic Grizzler’s mind.

It went still for a second, then it was under his control, following him alongside the Arctic Fire-Prowler

He turned toward Marek.

"Can you heal it? I’ve beaten it down pretty far. If it’s going to fight for us, it needs to be back at full strength."

Marek nodded.

"I can handle it."

The support moved to the downed Grizzler and began channeling his skill, green light washing over the beast’s wounds, knitting the damage Moon’s lightning had torn into it.

Moon could have healed the Grizzler himself, a few rounds of Minor Mend would have done the job, but he chose not to.

If he did everything alone again and again, his team would start to feel like passengers rather than teammates. Handing Marek the healing kept them involved, gave them a role in what he was building, and kept the team a team rather than an audience.

He watched Marek work, the Grizzler’s wounds sealing under the healer’s hands.

Moon and the team continued along their heading.

Over the next hour, Moon added two more Arctic Grizzlers to his subordinate roster, beating each one down with lightning and binding it with Curse, then letting Marek heal it back to strength. His horde grew to four now, one fire Prowler and three Grizzlers, a small core of durable frontline beasts.

The Arctic Fire-Prowlers, unfortunately, were nowhere to be found. He had hoped to stack several of them, given how perfectly they countered the frozen horde, but after the first one the species simply didn’t appear again.

It was a shame, and Moon felt the loss of it. The Prowlers were the piece he wanted most.

Then he stopped dead in his tracks.

His eyes had caught something ahead, a massive shape rising out of the snow in the distance, and the sight of it froze him mid-step.

Behind him, the team stopped too, one by one noticing the same thing.

"Stop." Theo’s voice cracked out, his mouth twitching. "This has to be a joke."

Rising hundreds of meters ahead of them stood another spire reaching towards the sky, as if hoping to grab hold of a cloud or two.

But where the northern spire had been black ice, this one was pure white. The complete opposite of its dark twin in the north, and somehow no less unsettling for it.

"Another spire? Don’t tell me..." Kayn breathed, his eyes slowly dropping down to base level.

And just as he’d feared, gathered around its base was another horde. Arctic Grizzlers among them, and other beasts, dozens upon dozens, the same force that had guarded the black spire, drawn to the white one the same way the Stalkers and Creepers had clustered around the norther spire.

The wasteland had two of them.

Nina stared, finally understanding the horror of their revelation.

"We have to kill both?"

One spire with a very intelligent commander had been enough to send them into a retreat. Now there were two, north and south, black and white, each with its own army.

Moon didn’t answer right away. His eyes moved across the white spire, across the horde at its base, and a slow hint of understanding began to form behind his focused eyes.

Two spires of opposing colours on opposing sides of the realm.

Each with its own horde of unique beasts.

If I play this right, things are about to get a lot more interesting.

A plan already began formulating on his mind, the pieces connection together as fast as he could see them.

Without hesitation, he turned to his team.

"How far apart are the two spires?"

Vela ran a quick mental calculation, her eyes flicking north and then back.

"Almost three hours on foot. Could be shorter if we push straight through without breaks or worrying about holding formation. Call it two if we move at a normal pace."

"Okay. Let me tell you what I’m thinking."

Moon laid out the plan.

The team listened, and their brows climbed higher the longer he spoke. He walked them through it step by step, the way everything would go if things were done right.

It was audacious to say the least. It relied on a chain of things going right, and on beasts behaving the way their instincts dictated.

When he finished, they looked at him with a tinge of doubt.

"Are you sure this is going to work?" Kayn asked. "It sounds hard to pull off. There are a lot of moving parts, and if any one of them fails, we would be blowing out a massive element of surprise."

Moon shook his head.

"I’m not sure it’s going to work. But it’s worth a try, if it fails, we’re no worse off than we are right now. We can’t beat either horde head-on, so we lose nothing by trying. Worst case, we pull back and think of something else. Best case, things pan out the way I told you."

The team exchanged glances.

"Any issues?" Vela asked, her eyes settling on Kayn, who had been the most skeptical.

Kayn held the look for a moment, then let out a breath and shook his head.

"No. It’s better than anything I’ve got."

"Okay, let’s do it." Vela said.