Chapter 306: Guard Captain

I didn’t draw Oathstorm. I didn’t even shift my feet from the ash-dusted gravel trail.

Instead, I simply crossed my arms over my high-collared dark tunic, stepping half a pace backward into the shadowed overhang of a craggy boulder to give the captain room to maneuver.

Let’s see what a veteran frontier officer is actually made of, I thought, my eyes narrowing as my passive [Combat Analysis] subtly activated, framing the captain and the approaching abomination in faint, diagnostic overlays.

Before the planar gates tore open and the sky turned to blood, standard garrison captains were mostly seasoned soldiers who dealt with minor monster culls, bandit suppression, or tax escort duties.

But months of surviving on the front lines against true demonic incursions meant those who were still breathing had either adapted through brutal trial by fire or had been buried in mass graves.

I wanted to gauge the baseline combat capabilities of Cassandra’s vanguard troops. If a frontline captain couldn’t handle a single low-tier bone beast without high-tier magic intervention, her company’s defensive perimeter was far weaker than she claimed.

—

The dead canyon was suffocatingly quiet, saved only by the wet, rhythmic scraping of the beast’s claws against the frost-covered stone.

The creature, a lower-tier bone-plated stalker, lowered its front shoulders, its four hind legs digging deep into the loose gravel. Pale yellow sludge dripped from its unhinged, needle-lined jaws, sizzling against the frozen rocks with a quiet, acid-like hiss that burned the damp earth beneath it.

Its muscular frame was reinforced by overlapping plates of jagged, calcified bone armor, warped and hardened by months of exposure to raw, corrupting demonic mana.

The guard captain took a deep, shuddering breath, his scarred jaw tightening until the muscle bulged beneath his skin. He adjusted his two-handed grip on his iron broadsword, sliding his right boot back to anchor his weight against the slight incline of the trail.

A faint, pale blue light flared around his forearms and wrists, the distinct, unrefined glow of standard military physical reinforcement. It wasn’t high-tier element-infused magic or an ancient martial art, but it was practical, dense, and built for brutal, short-range melee survival.

“Stay right where you are, Sir Raith!” the captain grunted, his voice tight, refusing to break eye contact with the creature for even a fraction of a second. “Don’t move, don’t scream, and definitely don’t draw that fancy blade of yours unless I fall. These scavengers feed on panic and sudden movements.”

I kept my mouth shut, watching the distribution of mana in his posture. His footing is solid, but his center of gravity is too far forward. If that thing lunges high, he’s going to have to take the full kinetic impact on his shoulder.

GROOAAAR!

The beast didn’t waste time posturing. It exploded forward off its hind legs, kicking up a spray of black dirt and shattered gravel. It crossed the fifteen-yard gap in a heart-stopping second, its massive, razor-lined jaws snapping wide open straight for the captain’s neck.

The captain moved with practiced, instinctual speed. He didn’t attempt to dodge to the side; on this narrow, gravelly slope, a misstep meant losing footing entirely and falling into the canyon gully. Instead, he raised his heavy steel kite shield, bracing his left shoulder firmly behind the iron-reinforced rim.

BANG!

The impact sounded like an iron hammer striking an anvil. Two hundred pounds of dense bone armor and pure muscle slammed directly into the captain’s shield.

The sheer kinetic force drove the officer back three full paces, his iron-shod boots tearing deep furrows into the frozen ground, sparks flying as his greaves scraped violently against buried granite.

The beast snapped its jaws frantically against the top edge of the shield, its foul, sulfurous breath washing over the captain’s face. Black, acidic saliva spattered across his neck guard, smoking as it ate through the outer leather straps.

“Get off!” the captain bellowed, his face turning bright red as he gritted his teeth against the crushing weight.

He gathered the mana in his core and shoved outward with his shield arm, leveraging his entire body weight to throw the beast’s momentum off-balance.

As the creature stumbled backward, its front legs skidding on the gravel and its lower ribcage briefly exposed, the captain didn’t hesitate. He stepped into the opening, driving his broadsword forward in a clean, disciplined thrust.

CLANG!

Sparks showered into the cold air. The blade struck the thick bone plating along the beast’s flank, failing to bite deep into the flesh. The sheer density of the demonic armor sent a violent vibration humming up the broadsword’s full length, numbing the captain’s gauntleted fingers and forcing him to loosen his grip slightly.

The beast screeched in rage, whipping its long, spiked tail around in a blind, violent horizontal sweep.

“Tch!”

The captain ducked low, dropping his center of gravity, but the spiked tail grazed the top of his shoulder guard with terrifying speed. The impact tore through the thick leather harness, snapping the metal rivets and sending a spray of iron fragments clattering against the rocks.

The captain stumbled, his breath coming in ragged, painful gasps as the impact bruised the muscles beneath his armor. But he didn’t lose his head.

He rolled along the gravelly slope, narrowly dodging a follow-up pounce from the beast’s front claws. The monster slammed headfirst into the craggy rock wall where the captain had stood a second prior, cracking the solid granite and dislodging a small rockslide.

Taking advantage of the creature’s temporary recoil, the captain pushed off his knee, channeling every ounce of his remaining physical mana into his broadsword’s edge. The steel gleamed with a sharp, concentrated pale blue aura.

Before the beast could shake the dust from its eyes and turn its heavy head around, the captain leaped forward, driving the full weight of his body behind the point of his blade.

He didn’t aim for the heavy bone armor this time. He targeted the narrow, unarmored soft tissue right beneath the creature’s lower jaw, a textbook weak point for lower demonic quadrupeds.

THWACK!

The broadsword sank six inches deep into the beast’s throat, slicing cleanly through its central mana vein and severing its windpipe.

The creature let out a choked, wet gurgle. Its body spasmed violently, its clawed legs thrashing against the gravel in a desperate, dying frenzy.

The captain held his ground, planting his heavy boot squarely on the monster’s snout and twisting the hilt of his blade with brutal, ruthless efficiency until the creature’s thrashing slowed, shuddered, and finally went completely limp.

A thick puddle of viscous, black demonic blood pooled beneath the corpse, hissing loudly as it dissolved the frost-covered rocks beneath it.

The captain kept his boot on the monster’s chest for a few agonizing seconds, making sure the vital mana had fully drained, before yanking his broadsword free with a wet, squelching sound.

He wiped the dark sludge from his blade using the hem of his dark woolen cloak, his chest heaving as he caught his breath. Sweat dripped down his scarred jaw, mixing with the gray ash falling from the sky.

Slowly, he straightened his back, rolling his sore shoulder to test the bruised muscle beneath his torn shoulder guard. He turned back toward me, a proud, confident smirk breaking across his hardened, battle-worn face.

“There,” the captain said, puffing out his chest slightly, his voice dripping with the quiet satisfaction of a veteran soldier proving his worth.

“That’s how we handle the filth out here on the frontlines, Sir Raith. High-tier magic looks real pretty in the Academy classrooms, but down here in the mud, it comes down to solid steel, quick reflexes, and knowing exactly where to strike.”

He sheathed his broadsword with a sharp, crisp clack, wiping his brow with his leather gauntlet as he gave me an approving nod.

“You kept your head calm and stayed out of the way,” the captain added, clearly feeling accomplished. “I’ll give you credit for that much. Most noble offspring who haven’t seen true blood would have screamed their lungs out or fumbled a spell the second that thing lunged.”

I kept my arms crossed against my chest, watching him with an unbothered, silent gaze.

“Not a bad strike, Captain. Your recovery after that tail swipe was clean, though you left your flank open for a microsecond when you rolled.”

The captain chuckled. He reached for the wooden canteen slung at his waist, unscrewing the cap.

“Well, down in the mud, a win is a win, sir. Now, as I said earlier, we should turn around and head back toward the perimeter gate. A lone stray usually means—”

He didn’t get to finish his sentence.

The cold, whistling wind dying down the canyon was instantly replaced by a sudden, unnatural drop in ambient temperature. The sulfurous mist rolling off the high rocky crags grew thick, heavy and dense, reeking of rot, sulfur, and iron-tinged blood.

AWOOOOOOO!

A long, bone-chilling howl echoed through the canyon from the high ridge directly above us. It wasn’t the howl of a normal mountain wolf; it was a screeching, warbled sound that vibrated through the stone and rattled the very fillings in my teeth.

Before the echo of the first howl even faded, a second one answered it from the dense fog to our left.

AWOOOOO!

AWOOOOOOO!

Then a third. Then a fourth. Within seconds, the entire gorge echoed with a terrifying, overlapping chorus of guttural, ravenous howls coming from every direction at once.

The proud, satisfied smirk on the captain’s face instantly evaporated. The wooden canteen slipped from his numb, gauntleted hand, clattering uselessly against the gravel as liquor spilled into the ash. His face drained of every single ounce of color, turning as ghostly white as the falling snow.

“No…” the captain whispered, his voice trembling as he hastily re-drew his broadsword with shaking hands. “No, no, no…”

High up on the craggy ledges surrounding our narrow trail, dozens of glowing, blood-red eyes began to ignite through the thick gray fog.

Four-legged, bone-plated shapes slid out from the shadows of the rocks, their claws clicking ominously against the stone as they closed off every escape route along the ridge.

It hadn’t been a lone beast wandering out of the dead zone.

We had walked straight into the heart of a hunting pack’s territory, and there were at least thirty of them staring down at us from above.