Chapter 130: The Abnormal Beast Tide

A low, resonant horn echoed across the fortress walls, its long blast piercing through the relentless thunder of battle.

Down in the staging yards, soldiers and mercenaries who had been pulled off the line earlier because they couldn’t continue from exhaustion or bleeding had rested briefly and healed. They forced themselves back onto their feet and dragged themselves up the stone staircases to take the places of comrades who could no longer hold their weapons or had fallen to their injuries. None of them had their full strength, and no one pretended otherwise.

Iron Wolf led the squad quickly to a bare chamber in the barracks behind the wall. He pushed open a heavy iron-bound door. Inside, dozens of Black Raven Knights, mercenaries, and mages were resting and cultivating to recover their energy. Two fully armored Black Raven Knights were guarding the room.

Before Ethan had closed his eyes, he had ordered the squad to find a room and recover. None of them had dared question him about where he intended to rest. They knew their Captain had his own methods, and after everything they had witnessed over the past few weeks, they trusted him completely.

The chamber was quiet except for slow breathing. The air smelled of herbs and old sweat, and the soldiers sitting along the walls didn’t even glance up as the squad walked in.

Iron Wolf turned to his team, his voice low as he gave the instructions. "You have three hours. Circulate your energy and take a brief rest. We don’t have much time...," he said.

Vera, Corvus, and Stone, along with the rest of the squad, sat down in cross-legged postures without wasting a second and began to use their cultivation techniques to recover their energy. Stone lowered himself into position, wincing as the freshly healed skin over his thigh pulled tight. Corvus stiffened as his healed back protested, then went still. Finch’s lips moved as he tried to calm his fear of the battle, counting to steady his rhythm. Vera was breathing evenly before the others had even finished sitting. Iron Wolf walked the circle once, nudging Finch’s shoulders straighter with two fingers, then sat down next to them and started as well.

Meanwhile, Ethan still stayed in a small enclosed space on the battlements, a narrow alcove built into the thickness of the wall, barely wider than his shoulders, with an arrow slit that looked out over the field. He closed his eyes and circulated his energy, drawing mana from the atmosphere while standing.

His Predator Sense was working actively and would let him know of any threat before it emerged, and with Rune perched on the stone sill of the slit, looking over the horizon, he didn’t have to worry. Below the slit, the roar of the beasts rolled against the stone like surf. Usually, energy was circulated in a secluded chamber in a sitting position, where the person wouldn’t be disturbed, since a disturbance would disrupt the circulation and lead to internal injuries. But the breathing techniques of the Mercenary King War Art allowed him to circulate his energy and recover even in the middle of a battle, which was highly useful.

Even the Northern Heaven War Art and other high-rank cultivation techniques allowed this, but they had certain drawbacks, and the recovery took longer unless they were done the traditional way. The breathing techniques of the Mercenary King War Art had no such drawbacks. He could even recover a small amount of energy while fighting, combined with the Unknown Energy he had and its voracious nature of absorbing the mana it drew when used. His old weakness of low aura reserves had been greatly reduced. The constant use of Intent had drained his mental energy, and together with the unknown energy, it had placed a heavy burden on his body. The stats he had gained from the Blood Essence and his refined control over both powers had reduced the strain, but it was still excessive as he had used them repeatedly all night. So he intended to use this brief rest to recover as much of his strength as he could.

The Recovery Potion he had handed to Anna and Sepharina not only recovered physical energy but also mental exhaustion, but it only worked on normal people. It was something he had brought from the System, and he had added a few herbs of his own to remove the accumulated toxins. He had been disappointed when he tested the potion on himself. It helped him regain his energy, but only to a small extent, and the mental exhaustion didn’t decrease by a fraction, all at the cost of two thousand War Merit for a single potion. So he didn’t even think of using it for the squad or himself, as circulating the energy would help them regain it faster.

Two hours had passed since Ethan’s squad had left the battlements. The sun stood high over the plains now, and the field below looked no emptier than it had at dawn.

Not only Marcus and Evelyn had sensed the unusual nature of the Beast Tide. Even most of the veteran soldiers and mercenaries had sensed the increased madness in the beasts by now. It was not uncommon for beasts to be like that during a Tide, but even then they would falter in front of stronger soldiers. Here, they just kept rushing and trying to scale the battlements and kill the soldiers, as though that were the sole purpose of their lives.

When a beast saw a threat from a stronger opponent, its instincts usually made it leave and find others it considered prey. But the repeated pattern of them attacking even stronger knights and soldiers was worrying the veterans who had fought in dozens of Beast Tides, along with the scale of this Tide.

The number of beasts they had killed in a single day far exceeded what normal Tides produced over several days, yet no matter how far they looked there was no end to the beasts, as if the mountain of corpses piled at the base of the battlements was not even a fraction.

Usually, by the second day or sometimes the third, they would go through the gates and fight the beasts openly, defending only on the first day. But seeing no end to the Tide, they were sure they would have to defend longer than usual this time.

"Is it always like this?" a young archer asked the veteran beside him, his voice cracking.

"No," the veteran said, and loosed another arrow.

"Where the hell are they even coming from?" one of the veteran mercenary leaders grimaced as he slashed at a few incoming beasts.

Similar complaints could be heard across the walls, yet they kept on fighting...

The longer the battle continued, the more the fortress began to feel like an island surrounded by an endless sea. Dead beasts lay piled along the foot of the walls and scattered thickly across the nearest stretch of the plain.

The soldiers had stopped counting the dead. No one had the breath for it. The smell of blood had become so thick that even the freezing northern wind could no longer disperse it. Yet the beasts showed no sign of exhaustion. They came from the mountains in wave after wave, as though something deeper within the range was continuously driving them forward.

———

Meanwhile, in the Mountain Range

Riennal stood frozen, the memory of Ethan’s bloody face, fighting until dawn in the sea of beasts, still fresh in his mind. Through a dozen Shadow Beasts perched along the ridges above the fortress, he could see every section of the wall. He had watched everything unfold: the collapse of the section of wall, Ethan’s descent into the swarm, and the way the young knight had fought until dawn while killing thousands of beasts.

He couldn’t sense Ethan’s realm, since Ethan still wore the concealment artifact he had taken from the Eclipse Conclave, and the enormous distance separating them didn’t help, but something about him felt off as he watched through the eyes of the beasts. Even among thousands of soldiers, the young knight looked the brightest, which only irked him more as he raised the soldiers’ morale.

"H-He... who is he?!" Riennal rasped, his voice sounding like dry bones grinding together.

An overwhelming desire to leap across the valley and rip the young knight’s heart out surged through his chest, his eyes glowing with an unhinged madness. When he saw Marcus, the son of his mortal enemy, his bottled-up hatred had flared into an inferno, but when he saw Ethan there was an enormous sense of unpleasantness that shook his very soul.

The pus and blood along with the enormous pain he thought he had under control came again with even more intensity. He brought his jagged fingers, oozing with the dense demonic energy of his Lord, to his face and took rasping breaths. A few dozen minutes passed before the energy slowly began to stop the pain.

"No... the plan will fail if I act recklessly," Riennal muttered through gritted teeth, his chest heaving as he forced his frantic breathing to slow. "I need to calm down..."

He straightened up slowly, his glowing eyes narrowing as he turned his gaze back toward the center of the battlements. There, Marcus and Evelyn stood quietly, effortlessly handling any high-tier beasts that attempted to scale the wall while carefully conserving their aura reserves.

"Those bastards are conserving their energy..." Riennal whispered.