Chapter 128: Holding the Breach

The razor-sharp talon missed Ethan’s throat by a paper-thin margin.

Instinct took over before his thoughts could catch up. Sensing the incoming threat, Ethan tilted his head back just in time, feeling the icy draft of the strike graze his skin.

SPLURT!

Hot crimson blood erupted across Ethan’s cheek and armor.

The creature’s momentum carried it past him, its jagged talons sinking deep into the throat of the soldier standing right beside him. The steel neck guard tore apart like paper.

For a terrifying, stretched second, time seemed to slow down. The soldier’s eyes widened into pools of horror as he clutched at his severed neck, unable to draw air. Disbelief crossed his dying face, then he succumbed to death, the light in his eyes vanishing completely as he collapsed onto the frozen stone.

It was a Shadow-type Beast Lord known as the Shadeblink Falcon, a higher variant of the Shadow Beasts, specialized in stealth and terrifying speed, known for its lethal attacks using Primal Force. Its kind usually lived deep in the Winterveil Mountain Range. Barely a meter from beak to tail, it was small enough to vanish against the night sky, blending smoothly into the darkness—practically invisible even to heightened senses until the moment it struck.

The monster twisted mid-air with blinding speed, its shadowy wings beating against the freezing wind as it swooped back to finish its actual target: Ethan.

As the Shadow Beast lunged toward him, its jaws dripping with blood, Ethan channeled the Unknown Energy into the Eternal Sovereign Blade. Shifting his balance to his left foot and bending his spine, he dodged the attack, the strike missing him by a hair’s breadth. Before the beast could move even a few inches away, Ethan thrust the black blade forward with overwhelming force.

THWACK!

The blade pierced cleanly through the Shadow Beast’s vital point, shattering its Beast Core. A guttural screech died in its throat as Ethan flicked his wrist, dislodging the creature’s limp, shadowy carcass and letting it fall to the ramparts below. The Unknown Energy stirred slightly as it entered the beast, but Ethan barely noticed, already pulling the energy back.

Silence settled over the immediate section of the wall for a brief heartbeat. Soldiers who had been swinging a moment earlier stood frozen with their weapons half-raised, staring at the body.

Ethan stood motionless, wiping the warm blood from his face with the back of his gauntlet. He looked down at the pooling blood on the battlements, where the soldier lay motionless beside the slain Beast Lord. The frozen expression of fear on the fallen man’s face struck a quiet chord deep within Ethan’s memory.

"They go for the throat! Keep your necks covered and stay shoulder to shoulder!" a veteran Black Raven Captain shouted.

The soldiers snapped back into motion, tightening their formation a step closer together and lifting their shields higher. Iron Wolf drew the squad in around Ethan, shields up, his claymore angled to cover the open side.

Shadeblink Falcons were striking at several other points along the wall simultaneously. Marcus sensed what had just happened, but he didn’t let it shake him; he knew Ethan was safe. He was killing Tyrant Beasts alongside Evelyn wherever they tried to collapse the walls, which would have resulted in massive casualties. Where Evelyn’s aura swept a stretch of stone, the climbing beasts burned and fell; where Marcus’s aura cut through the Tyrants, they stumbled back, each stroke short and economical.

Both of them had long since noticed the anomaly in the beasts and their increased madness compared to a normal Tide. The suspicion Marcus held, that someone was manipulating this surge, had deepened to the point where they could no longer dismiss it. An unknown threat was far more dangerous than a visible one, so both Marcus and Evelyn tried to conserve as much energy as possible while keeping the heavy beasts in check.

Marcus looked across the miles of Northwatch battlements. Everywhere he looked, the siege had devolved into a brutal meat grinder. Torchlight illuminated horrific clashes: soldiers screaming as flying beasts dragged them off the walls, mercenaries fighting back to back as their injuries piled up, and mages collapsing from sheer exhaustion after expanding their mana reserves again and again. The battlefield reeked of iron and death.

Ethan stared at the dead soldier’s lifeless eyes and the endless ocean of beasts below. For a second, his vision flashed with vivid memories of the bloody battles from his past life. A gnawing realization dawned on him: the more he changed the future, the more the timeline diverged because of his actions. For a second he blamed himself for everything.

Heavy guilt gripped his heart as he looked over the bleeding soldiers and mercenaries. A Tide of this scale would demand heavy casualties, and he couldn’t avoid that truth. But he intended to protect as many of them as he could. Calming the overwhelming emotions trying to consume him, he tightened his grip on the hilt of his blade.

Beside him, Rune continued cutting down the beasts. Sensing Ethan’s inner turmoil, he did not stop. As if understanding Ethan’s intent, Rune charged at the monsters threatening the defensive line, moving like a silver blur.

Far away, watching through the Falcon’s eyes, Riennal’s eyes widened. The last thing he had seen before the connection severed was a calm, blood-streaked face looking straight at the bird.

"H-how... did he notice?" A look of genuine shock crossed his ruined face.

The Shadeblink Falcon was a beast capable of hunting creatures far stronger than itself, virtually imperceptible to even Advanced Knights. Yet the young knight had not only sensed it, but killed it in an instant.

The wounds that had stopped bleeding when Riennal received the Demon Lord power began to reopen, oozing fresh blood and pus down his face. A sudden surge of pain made a groan escape his lips, stoking his madness even higher. Looking at that Black Knight, his deep-rooted hatred flared uncontrollably.

"GO!" he screamed into the dark.

Near the fortress walls, within a few hundred meters of Ethan, dozens of Shadeblink Falcons that had remained concealed until now launched a concentrated assault. Glacier Trolls and Orc Generals scattered across the field also converged on that single point, leaping high and swinging heavy clubs and axes with raw ferocity. They hammered the same spot repeatedly. The stone shuddered beneath the soldiers’ boots, and within seconds, deep cracks spread across the battlements.

CRACK!

The fractures reached the heart of the masonry. With a violent groan that echoed down the line, a twenty-meter stretch of the parapet sagged and collapsed.

Dozens of soldiers lost their footing, screaming as they tumbled with the falling rubble into the waiting swarm below. Several were instantly torn apart by the ravenous tide. A dozen lay dead, crushed beneath fallen slabs. But others were still alive, pinned under masonry, trapped against the broken wall, dragging themselves away from the beasts closing in.

"Maintain your positions and defend!" the Black Raven Captain barked over the noise.

Ethan ignored the order. Vaulting over the crumbling parapet, he dropped directly into the abyss below. Rune leapt after him without a moment’s hesitation.

"H-hey! Don’t go down there!" the Captain shouted, thrusting his broadsword through a leaping monster.

Iron Wolf watched Ethan jump and didn’t hesitate for a single second.

"Squad, with me!"

Vera, Corvus, Stone, and Finch along with the rest of the squad exchanged wide-eyed glances. They hadn’t expected Ethan to dive off the wall into thousands of beasts, but despite their bone-deep exhaustion, they stepped forward and vaulted off the edge right behind Iron Wolf.

Ethan hit the frozen ground in the middle of the swarm. His blade claimed two beasts before they registered his landing, while Rune tore through a third. Driving forward, Ethan carved a protective perimeter around the rubble where the wounded lay, slaying every beast that attempted to cross it.

On the wall, Marcus saw Ethan jump, his jaw tightening. He couldn’t abandon his post, six Advanced Tyrant Beasts were pressing his sector simultaneously, and the line behind him would crumble if he looked away. Evelyn was busy pinning a massive column of climbers to the stone with her fire aura. Neither could step away to assist.

Ethan faced the breach alone, and for a few breaths, his blade was an impenetrable shield.

The squad landed behind him hard enough to make Finch stagger.

"Get them out of the rubble!" Ethan shouted over the roar of combat. "Deploy the formation! Cover the wounded!"

"Ring!" Iron Wolf roared. "Hollow Ring, NOW!"

IRON FANG FORMATION ART — THIRD FORM: HOLLOW RING!

Stone and Vera heaved a heavy stone slab off a pinned mercenary while Finch dragged him into the center. Corvus hauled out two more survivors. The squad’s breathing locked into step with Iron Wolf’s count, and a faint line of aura resonated from body to body until the ring had no blind spots. The wounded lay in the middle; the strongest faced outward.

A pack of Rotfang Hounds slammed into the formation. Before they could breach the gap, Vera flashed her twin short swords, dicing two hounds instantly.

"HAAAAAAH!" Stone bellowed, raising his battleaxe to cleave three beasts apart in a single heavy arc.

Corvus unleashed his techniques to clear the flanks, while Iron Wolf unleashed his Peak Knight Commander aura, crushing the advancing horde under sheer pressure.

Outside the ring, Ethan and Rune held the mouth of the breach. Ethan cut down beasts by the dozen, never letting more slip past than the squad could manage. Rune moved like lightning given form, and the pile of beast corpses atop the shattered stone grew into a rampart of its own.

Hundreds of high-tier beasts surged toward the breach, led by dozen Glacier Trolls that had reached the realm of an Advanced Beast Lord, alongside few Orc Generals followed who were in the same realm.

Ethan expanded his senses to their absolute limit. Raising the Eternal Sovereign Blade, he stopped holding back his reserves and flooded the weapon with both his Intent and the Unknown Energy. Taking a step forward into the tide, he deployed the Northern Gale Step, weaving like water through the gaps. With a single cut, several beasts fell; with a thrust, several more succumbed to the destructive potency of the Unknown Energy and Intent pairing with his flawless technique.

Faced with dozens of high-tier monsters, Ethan drew upon the Mercenary King War Art. Up until this moment, he had relied on basic sword forms to conserve his stamina. But now, surrounded on all sides, he unleashed the Mercenary King War Art—an art built on raw instinct and ferocity, perfect for brutal, close-quarters combat against monsters.

MERCENARY KING WAR ART — FIRST FORM: RENDING GALE

Ethan vanished, his black blade turning into a blur of pure storm as he cut through Beast Lords and Apex Beasts alike. Sweat drenched his body and his arms grew rigid from exertion, yet his mind cleared with every passing second. He absorbed a deep claw mark across his back from an Apex Beast while engaging the Beast Lords, but Rune instantly leapt, snapping the creature’s neck with his jaws. Rune’s brilliant blue eyes burned with ferocity, unable to bear seeing Ethan injured.

All the while, the Unknown Energy pulled in surrounding mana to sustain Ethan’s energy. Yet in the heat of battle, Ethan failed to notice that every time he killed a beast, the Unknown Energy was also quietly drawing in the purple mist controlling them.

From the battlements above, the soldiers and mages Ethan had saved watched the spectacle in awe. Seeing him hold the line against hundreds of beasts rekindled their fading hope. Unable to watch him fight alone, few of the Mage Commanders began chanting, raining down offensive magic to support the perimeter. Archers whose fingers were bleeding loaded volley after volley, firing into the horde with renewed pride.

Hour after brutal hour passed. Beasts poured through the breach, but Ethan and Rune met them at the throat of the gap. Whatever squeezed past, the Hollow Ring destroyed.

Inside the ring, twenty-three wounded soldiers and mercenaries lay protected. A mage with a broken arm bandaged her comrades, her lips moving silently as she tracked her recovering mana.

By the early hours of the morning, the squad was reaching its limit. Stone’s arm trembled every time he raised his axe; Finch swayed on his feet; Corvus was bleeding heavily from a gash across his ribs. Ethan caught their exhaustion in brief glances between strikes and adjusted his positioning, taking on the massive Beast Lords himself and leaving only the smaller beasts for the squad.

From above, Marcus finished off the Tyrant Beasts, though new ones continued to emerge from the darkness. Keeping an eye on Ethan, he felt a surge of pride for his nephew’s unwavering warrior spirit.

Suddenly, a massive fifteen-meter-tall Ice Claw Bear, a Tyrant Beast with gleaming snow-white fur, converged toward Ethan position.

"Van," Marcus called out.

"Commander," Van replied, stepping forward.

"Kill it. I’ll hold the position."

Van leapt from the wall in full Black Raven armor. Before the Tyrant Beast could reach Ethan, Van materialized in front of it, his sword ignited with glowing aura. He delivered a devastating slash across its chest, kicked the beast in the eye, and engaged it in a furious duel. Within minutes, Van drove his blade cleanly through the monster’s skull, its massive body collapsing onto dozens of lesser beasts below.

Ethan had long since sensed the approaching Tyrant Beast, just as he had felt Marcus’s protective gaze drifting down toward him throughout the night. He had already calculated that Marcus would send Van to handle the highest-tier threats, so he had continued killing the beasts without wasting a second looking back. Even if Van hadn’t come, Ethan was confident he could have held the line by pushing his Intent and Unknown Energy to their limits.

As the first thin rays of gray light broke over the eastern horizon, dawn arrived over Northwatch. Warm light touched Ethan’s blood-streaked face. His body was pushed to absolute exhaustion, his muscles burning, yet his stance remained firm.

The morning light illuminated the broken wall, the hill of beast corpses stacked before the gap, and the Hollow Ring still standing proudly in the rubble—twenty-one of the twenty-three wounded soldiers had been pulled out alive.

Van stood nearby, his armor cracked on one side, clearing the remaining stragglers alongside Ethan until the path back to the battlements was secure. Ethan finally stopped at the edge of the rubble, resting a hand on his knee as he watched the sunrise. His hands were shaking from muscle fatigue; he flexed his fingers repeatedly until the trembling stopped.

Every soldier, officer, and mercenary standing atop the battlements stared down at the scene below in breathless awe, a spectacle that stirred their hearts even more than Marcus strike at the beginning of the battle.

The nightmare of the first day was finally over.