Chapter 74: Charred!
In the sky, six black dots circled in wide loops, as if searching for the best target to swoop down on.
Those dots were six Crow beasts drawn in by the beast tide. And true to crows' well-known intelligence, these beasts were no exception. Even though a hidden force in their minds kept pushing them to attack that imposing building at the heart of the Territory, they resisted the urge stubbornly.
The reason was simple.
The giant ballistae mounted atop the Lord's Hall.
The Common-rank crows realized they stood no chance against those defenses, but at the same time, they couldn't retreat either, due to the control affecting their minds, along with the orders of the Crow King circling far off, watching the battle.
After several loops through the sky, their attention finally settled on the three catapult platforms.
Those were far easier targets.
The crows folded their wings, then dove from the sky at tremendous speed. As they dropped to a height of roughly two hundred meters, they split into three groups of two, heading toward the catapult platforms.
But what those crows failed to realize, believing they'd carefully chosen their targets...
Was that they were diving straight into an ambush prepared for them in advance.
Asra emerged quietly from among the workshops, then flapped her small wings powerfully, and at that same moment, six fireballs condensed above her six claws. With precise control, she launched them all at once, each one toward a different target.
CAAAW!!
Panicked screeches rose from the crows as they saw the lines of fire tearing through the sky toward them. They tried to change course and pull away, but the distance was far too short.
It was already too late.
Of the six beasts, four couldn't dodge the attack in time and died instantly, black feathers scattering without a trace, four corpses falling with charred holes burned through their bodies.
The skies over the Fertile Lands Territory hadn't been left unguarded.
On Kaiden's orders, Asra had stayed hidden since the battle began, taking no part in the fighting on the ground. Even the flying beasts had deliberately ignored her, waiting for them to fly straight into the ambush zone themselves.
To Asra, these weak crows weren't worth the trouble of chasing down — but if they scattered across the sky, wiping them out would become far more of a hassle, so she'd chosen to finish them off all at once.
The two crows that survived the first strike were dealt with quickly, sentenced to death the instant they began dropping altitude.
Once it was done, she turned her head toward the sky and fixed her eyes on the giant crow circling far off, watching everything.
The Crow King.
Despite the massive difference in size, she didn't hesitate for even a moment, charging toward it at a speed astonishing for her small body.
CAAAW!
The Crow King let out an enraged screech that filled the sky. It wasn't the death of its followers that angered it — it was this small creature's audacity in challenging it.
It spread its massive wings until they blotted out the sunlight, a dark aura radiating from its body, before its feathers shuddered violently.
ZZZT!
Dozens of sharp black feathers launched at once, like a hail of arrows, cutting through the air in blurred black lines toward Asra.
Even though the attack closed off most of her evasion paths, Asra made no attempt to flee.
She opened her mouth and unleashed a fireball far larger than her previous ones.
The ball exploded amid the hail of feathers, burning a number of them away and opening a narrow gap. At that same instant, Asra folded her wings and slipped through the opening at lightning speed, clearing the attack by a hair's breadth.
But she felt no relief. What she'd escaped... had reached the ground instead.
BOOM! BOOM! CRASH!
Several residential huts collapsed under the hail of black feathers, wood scattering in every direction as a thick cloud of dust rose into the air.
Fury blazed in Asra's eyes.
Her master had entrusted her with protecting the Territory's skies...
She let out a sharp screech, then shot forward like a streak of green cutting through the sky, determined to get her revenge.
The Crow King wasn't an easy opponent either, and so the first true aerial battle over the Fertile Lands Territory began.
Back on the battlefield, every front had erupted into full-scale combat. No one had time to congratulate Kaiden on taking down the first Rare-rank beast — everyone was consumed by their own fight.
The defensive fortifications kept working without pause, the towers and wall-mounted weapons raining arrows down on the beasts, while the militia soldiers surprised everyone with their own decisive role, never stopping in their hurling of stones from atop the walls, shattering beast skulls and limbs whenever the chance arose.
Beast corpses began piling up in front of the walls, and the density of the beast tide gradually thinned, a faint smile spreading across Kaiden's face. It was time to move on to the next step — promoting the Elite Soldiers who'd reached the rank threshold, so he could send them to relieve the pressure on the other fronts.
But what Kaiden hadn't anticipated, nor had anyone else, was that the most dangerous beast on the battlefield wasn't the hyena or the boar, but an ordinary-looking fox. Its size was no different from the other common foxes running among the beasts, yet in truth, it was a Rare-rank beast.
And here Kaiden made his biggest strategic mistake. He should have accounted for this back when he'd obtained Asra — that not all Rare-rank beasts were large in size.
Had anyone looked into that fox's eyes at that moment, they would have seen an intelligence beasts shouldn't possess. Since the start of the battle, it had never once attacked — instead, it let the hyena and the boar draw all the attention, while it slipped in among the common beasts, patiently watching the defenses and troop positions, waiting for the perfect moment.
And when it found it... it moved.
Its target wasn't Kaiden — it recognized that the unarmed human standing there was the most dangerous person on the battlefield, and it had also noticed his strange ability to vanish in an instant, so it chose a different target instead.
It slipped through the beasts until it drew close to the Elite Soldiers' formation, using a massive black buffalo to shield its body. Then it leaped onto the buffalo's back, sinking its claws in to gain extra momentum, and leaped again, this time upward — and in that instant, a massive fireball gathered inside its mouth.
It all happened in less than the blink of an eye.
KABOOOM!!
The fireball struck the heart of the Elite Soldiers' formation and exploded with tremendous force, instantly reducing the soldiers closest to the blast center to charred bodies, while a wave of flame and shockwave swept over everyone around them.
Kaiden was standing only a few steps from the center of the explosion. The blast of hot air slammed into him with full force, his hair whipping backward. He instinctively closed his eyes and raised his arm to shield his face. When he opened them again, he found a scene before him like something out of hell — charred corpses, wounded soldiers screaming in agony, the smell of burning flesh filling the air.
The ringing in his ears kept going until he felt two lines of blood trickling from them, and for one brief moment, he froze under the weight of the shock.
*No... I can't lose control. Not now.*
That moment lasted no more than a second before the turmoil vanished from his eyes, replaced by that cold calm he'd grown so used to. He instantly killed the beasts trying to exploit the chaos and pounce on the wounded, then raised a thick earthen wall around the formation to buy them a few moments of safety. He didn't expect the wall to hold for long, but he only needed a few seconds. He carved out an arched tunnel leading straight into the Territory.
"Move the wounded, now!"
His voice thundered across the battlefield.
The fox, which had shown itself for barely a fraction of a second, had already vanished.
And no one knew where its next strike would fall.
End of Chapter 74.