Chapter 688 When surviving needs a miracle.
Moon watched the battle shift entirely, taking another course in the span of seconds.
The archer drew its bow and loosed a volley toward the swordsman's beasts, and five of them died instantly, the arrows punching clean through their skulls and hearts.
The shots came laced with crimson-tinged force now, each one carrying the killing weight of its new Surpasser strength, and the sacrificial charge the southern commander had staked everything on withered in a single breath.
The blademaster lunged during the archer's volley, seizing the window while its rival's attention was on the horde, both blades sweeping in for a killing strike.
~Whoosh~
The archer dodged the fast approaching blade without difficulty. The strike that would have opened it hip to shoulder an hour ago found only empty air.
It's toying with him now, Moon thought, watching the archer let the swordsman recover rather than punishing the failed strike. It knows the gap's too big to close. It's not even worried. It's playing.
And it was playing.
The southern commander pressed the attack with increasing desperation, its blades flashing faster, its strikes coming harder and wilder, throwing everything it had into every exchange because it understood there would be no second chances after this.
The archer slipped every blow, side-stepping most, ducking and diving each attack without struggle. The difference in their powers has become apparent, and difficult to ignore.
And between the blademaster's frantic strikes, the archer kept loosing arrows into the sacrificial horde, thinning the beasts around.
The taunting made the blademaster angry. The archer could have ended the fight quickly, and it chose not to.
It let its former rival exhaust itself, let it watch its horde die arrow by arrow, let it feel the full helplessness of the gulf that had opened between them.
Every ignored strike was a statement.
You are beneath me now. You were always going to be beneath me.
The southern horde collapsed.
The beasts that had charged the archer fell in heaps, cut down by arrows or torn apart by the northern horde's counterattack.
Moon had long since ordered his beasts to retreat, using the last remaining chaos to conceal their appearance. Of course, not before letting his Arctic Fire-Prowler and Snow Creeper fight it out against each other into their retreat.
Thirty became twenty.
Twenty became ten.
The swordsman's army melted into the reddening snow while its commander swung and missed and swung and missed, its desperation curdling into something like despair as it realized nothing it did would land.
Its strikes were powerful, but it simply wasn't enough to land them.
Moon watched it all, his mind racing, recalculating everything.
The northern commander was a Surpasser now, and it fought like one.
After a minute, it finally stopped playing.
It said something to the blademaster, and even without translation the contempt in its tone was unmistakable.
Whoosh!
An arrow flew from its bow at an insane speed. The blademaster barely had time to move before the arrow caught it through the knee.
Crack!
The sound of the southern commander's knee getting obliterated echoed in the region.
The blademaster buckled, dropping to its knees in the bloodstained snow. Before it could recover, the archer was on it. It grabbed a fistful of the elf's pale hair, wrenched its head back, and then slammed it down, driving the blademaster's face into its rising knee with a brutal crack that echoed across the wasteland.
The blademaster's face turned bloody, its nose broken by the attack.
Away from the fight, Vela's hand shot out and tugged at Moon's sleeve, hard. Her eyes were wide, her signal unmistakable even without words.
They needed a plan and they needed to move now, they did not have much time left. If the archer finished the swordsman and turned its attention away, seven Evolvers had nowhere to run and nothing that could stop it.
Moon gestured sharply for the team to stay still.
Then he summoned his bow.
It was time to use the B-rank weapon Sierra had given him, its dark spirit-wood limbs.
Moon adjusted his stance, unfortunately, he wasn't standing for the perfect shot. But with the help of his old and new archery skills, he had no issues in drawing from a laying position.
Moon drew an arrow from his quiver and his team looked at him in confusion almost immediately.
Elsa most of all. Her eyes went to the bow, and then widened as she recognized it was a B-rank weapon, a full grade above her own C-rank bow, a weapon that took power and status and reputation just to have the opportunity to acquire.
He's good with a bow too? Surely not. He's a mage. A swordsman. He controls beasts, he vanishes like assassins. There's no way he's also an archer. The thought ran through her mind even as the evidence sat in his hands. But owning a good bow and using one are two different things.
The rest of the team shared her doubt. They'd watched Moon do the impossible all day, but archery was Elsa's specialty, her life's discipline, and against a Surpasser-tier target, a few arrows from a mage seemed like the least useful thing he could possibly reach for.
Moon was good at many things. But could he really make a difference at this distance, with a bow, against a monster that had just ascended past all of them?
'He could have asked Elsa to do that... and he could have used that window to close the distance himself and land an attack... what is he doing?!' Vela thought but did not utter out loud, knowing that she won't change his mind.
Moon nocked the arrow and closed his eyes for a moment, steadying his breath.
Then he opened them, and his gaze fixed on the distant archer with a focus none of them had seen from him yet.
In Moon's mind, he weighed a gamble.
One that would either turn the battle in their favor or expose the entire team and force a fight with the northern commander today, right now, instead of on his own terms.