This Beast-Tamer is a Little Strange

The alarm bell rang through the city, its sharp, urgent sound echoing off the stone walls, ensuring that all residents heard what, to many of the citizens, was like the urgent warning of their impending doom.

Soldiers and beast-tamers scrambled to their positions, gripping weapons with white-knuckled hands as they rushed toward the city walls. The air was thick with tension, the scent of sweat, metal, and lingering abyssal rot filling up their lungs.

Kain vaulted up the nearest set of stairs, taking two steps at a time as he reached the top of the city wall.

From his elevated vantage point, his eyes swept over the battlefield. The Abyssals had regrouped—a seemingly never-ending wave of corrupted spiritual creatures and abyssals moving toward the city like a nightmarish tide. But this time, they weren’t just mindlessly charging.

Towering at the rear of their ranks were massive war machines, dark and jagged, constructed from what appeared to be bones, metal, and some unidentifiable objects. They loomed like grotesque monuments, pulsating with an eerie red glow as if alive. Strange currents of light ran along their surfaces. The defenders immediately noticed the addition of these monstrosities, but their purpose remained unknown—at least for now.

However, despite the abyssal seemingly being better prepared to launch an attack this time, the pressure on the defenders was actually much lighter than it was before.

The defenders unleashed volleys of arrows and spiritual skills, and were largely responsible for cutting down the smaller Abyssals before they reached the walls.

Meanwhile, the more powerful abyssal creatures were handled by the spiritual creatures. The air shimmered with bursts of flame and lightning as various creatures hurled attacks into the fray. Kain’s own spear stabbed straight through a low-level Abyssal drone that had attempted to scale the wall, the creature’s inky-black blood splattering against the stone before quickly disappearing—the remnants of its body absorbed.

Aegis.

The entire floor of the city wall and the ground just beyond had become a pitch-black surface, as if tar had seeped into every crevice and hardened. Whenever an injured soldier, beast, or even an Abyssal itself landed on this surface, writhing tendrils that resembled cilia or sea anemones shot up and coiled around them. But instead of pulling them under or attacking, the tendrils extracted the corruption, draining the abyssal energy and leaving the soldier rejuvenated, their aura stabilizing.

The moment one of the defenders collapsed, gasping and trembling as the corruption threatened to overtake them, the tendrils lashed out and latched onto their body, siphoning the corruption away in thick, oily strands. Seconds later, the soldier was back on his feet, grabbing his weapon with renewed strength and charging back into the fray.

Even the Abyssal creatures were not immune. Those that had fully succumbed to corruption screeched and thrashed as their power was drained, their flesh turning pale and brittle until, eventually, they became nothing more than husks—hollow shells of what they once were.

Aegis took the siphoned corruption and molded it, the swirling darkness condensing into a massive obsidian wall just beyond the city’s original wall. This new barrier grew thicker with each moment, absorbing more and more energy until it stood as a second line of defense. The corruption that had once threatened them was made to protect them all.

For the first time in what felt like ages, hope flickered in the hearts of the defenders.

“We might actually win this,” someone muttered breathlessly.

That hope was shattered in the next instant.

One of the originally silent Abyssal war machines shuddered to life.

A deep, resonating hum filled the air, a frequency so low it made Kain’s bones vibrate. Crimson light pulsed along the grotesque artery-like chords around the machine, gathering into a single, blindingly bright core. The defenders barely had time to react before the weapon discharged.

A beam of pure abyssal energy launched forward, carving through Aegis’ newly formed wall like it was nothing more than paper. The sturdy blackened defense—once thought impenetrable—melted away in an instant, the stone formed from corruption turning into tiny dust-like particles.

Unfortunately, after destroying a section of Aegis’ wall, the beam did not stop.

It sliced clean through a section of the city wall behind it, vaporizing stone, steel, and flesh alike. An entire stretch of the defensive line crumbled in an instant, taking the defenders standing there with it.

Screams filled the air as bodies tumbled from the collapsing wall, some lucky enough to merely suffer broken bones, others not surviving the fall at all. Those directly caught in the beam’s path never had the chance to scream—they were simply gone, erased as if they had never existed.

Chaos erupted as the city wall trembled under the devastating impact. Dust and debris clouded the air, mixing with the horrible scent of burned stone and flesh. The cries of the wounded mingled with the shrill screeches of the low and mid-level Abyssals pushing forward, sensing the momentary lapse in the city’s defenses.

Kain barely had time to regain his footing before the second war machine roared to life. A deep, pulsating hum reverberated across the battlefield, signaling another impending attack.

“Move!” Kain barked, already launching himself off the targeted section of the wall. The defenders scattered just in time, the second beam of abyssal energy slicing through another section of the wall not far from where Kain had been standing, reducing it to rubble in mere seconds.

Then came the third.

And the fourth.

The once-sturdy walls of the city, which had held strong despite past invasions and beast-tides for decades, were now filled with holes like swiss cheese.

Through the gaping wounds in the city’s defenses, low-level and mid-level Abyssal creatures poured in like a relentless tide.

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Aegis attempted to drain the abyssal energy of the infiltrating abyssal to reform the city defenses. However, the quantitative change triggered a qualitative change, and their massive amount of numbers became too much for Aegis to fully drain them all before they infiltrated the city.

After they scrambled over broken stone, and only had some of their energy siphoned off by Aegis, many of them still surged toward the inner city where civilians were huddled in their homes in fear.