The Gamer's POV

Roben was still on one knee with his hand in the sand to maintain the skill which was binding the legs of the giant lord.

Since Roben had been put in charge of a unit, the members began to gather around him after the Last Resort command. They spread out some meters around him, and the long-range cadets who could still fire attacks at the lord kept doing so from this distance. Before long, about thirty-two cadets had joined him, with ten of them using their long-range skills.

By now, the giant lord was in a really bad state, and his size had massively reduced as he struggled under the constant barrage of attacks.

The cadets of Roben’s unit were focused on their target, when unbeknownst to them, a small black moth flew through the air toward one of their members who was the farthest to the rear.

When the moth reached the girl, it landed on her hair. It took her a second to notice it. But then, all of a sudden, the moth exploded like a grenade, taking her torso and head and leaving only her waist down standing.

The cadets all shuddered as they snapped their attention to see the lower half of their comrade suddenly drop to the ground.

Confusion and a torrent of emotions washed over them as they saw the cause of the sudden death.

In the distance, a lord was standing with a large smile on his face and his hands in his pockets. He had many tattoos on his torso and arms. Some of the tattoos were of insects, and others were of all sorts of horrendous creatures. But that wasn’t even the strangest thing.

The cadets could all see that the tattoos were detaching from the lord’s body, moving into the air or onto the ground.

As they hit the sand, they began to grow in size and continued to solidify. More than that, even as they detached, the tattoos on the man’s skin didn’t fade. Instead, they seemed to keep producing more of these horrendous creatures.

It was as if his skin were a factory for nightmares, and he was just standing there with a smile, letting them spill out into the world. After which they began to lunge toward the cadets in a dark wave.

"That’s one of the lords!" one of the members of the unit yelled. He was a tanned berserker with a massive sword, and his abilities allowed him to double his strength and absorb damage.

Barely a few seconds after he yelled, his body grew a bit in size.

"I’ll go for the horde!" he roared again as he suddenly dashed toward the obsidian monsters almost upon them.

But then Roben yelled with wide eyes, "No, Raja!"

The boy leapt into the air, then descended upon a massive chitinous centipede. But just as he smashed the beast into the sand, it exploded, taking the entirety of his body with it.

Seeing that, Roben yelled, "We can’t go close to them, and we can’t let them get close to us!"

The cadets... those with long-range skills all quickly began firing their skills at the horde to stop them from getting close to where they stood.

Roben gritted his teeth as he lifted both hands and hit the ground again. This time he was facing the horde.

The moment his hands slammed into the sand, massive roots like vines with sharp thorns suddenly burst out of the ground in front of the cadets, then rushed toward the horde like massive green serpents. The roots then entwined with the obsidian monsters, crushing them before they could reach the line.

At the same time, the creatures exploded in violent bursts as they were destroyed, shattering the wood that bound them and sending jagged shards flying through the air.

Roben then sent out more mana, and from the churned earth around him, ten pillars of dense, gnarled timber emerged. In a blur of shifting bark and sap, each one shaped itself into a perfect wooden clone of Roben, standing in the same low, grounded stance as their creator. As one, they rose, and from their hands, jagged spears grew and hardened in their grip. Without a sound, the ten constructs burst through the line of the attacking cadets and charged directly into the heart of the obsidian horde.

Since the ten constructs were as skilled as Roben himself in terms of combat, they tore through the front line with a singular, terrifying efficiency. But then, as they began to cut down the obsidian monsters, the creatures exploded in violent bursts, shattering the wooden clones and sending splintered shards of timber flying in every direction.

However, something unnatural happened.

The shattered pieces of wood, scattered across the sand, began to grow like a rapidly spreading vine until the clones that had fallen were standing among the chaos once again, fully restored and continuing their relentless assault. Even when their hands were blown apart, the wood would simply regrow from the limb in a flurry of shifting bark. If a torso exploded, the core of the construct simply knit itself back together, and even if a clone was shattered completely, a single splintered fragment would regrow into a full, lethal copy.

The other members of the unit also possessed formidable skills, and they managed to hold the line against the encroaching obsidian creatures.

Among them was a cadet who possessed a similar skill to the lord. She was a waifish, unassuming girl with long auburn hair and spectacles that seemed perpetually slipping down her nose.

While the others around her unleashed torrents of flame, jagged bolts of lightning, and other explosive manifestations of power, she dropped to her knees and quickly unfastened her haversack, which was heavier and larger than those of others. She dipped her hand inside and hurriedly began pulling out thick, rolled parchment, the kind of heavy-duty paper used by master architects and illustrators.

She began to unfurl them one by one with trembling fingers. The first she opened revealed a charcoal sketch of a three-headed lion.

"No," she whispered, shaking her head and immediately tossing the expensive paper aside. She grabbed another and rolled it open to reveal an eerie, detailed drawing of a field littered with dozens of the restless dead that looked like zombies.

"No," she said again, her voice rising in panic as she threw it away and frantically grabbed the next. "Where is it? Where is it?"

She unrolled one more, and her eyes suddenly widened behind her glasses. It was a haunting depiction of a vast volcanic wasteland under a churning sky of dark, ember-filled clouds. In the center of that scorched earth was a meticulously drawn horde of flying, monstrous insects.

Seeing the image, the girl, Juliana, immediately scrambled to her feet and ran to the front of the line, clutching the painting to her chest as if it were a weapon.