Chapter 190: Spark in the Storm
The beasts shrieked and roared amid the settling dust as thousands of them were blown to pieces across the gorge entrance. Volcanic rock shrapnel and shattered metallic carapaces rained down over the gravel, burying the main approach under an abyss of smoke and fire.
Seeing the front wave of monsters pulverized by the collapsed stone, the officers along the battlements began celebrating with cheers. However, the celebration lasted only a few seconds.
"Look up!" Tari shouted, pointing toward the night sky.
Two fire sparrows—colossal birds composed of flame and white-hot plumage—came sweeping down from the Ash Valley peaks at terrifying speed. The soldiers and officers reacted instantly and began firing their rifles. The gunshots thundered off the ramparts and the lead bullets struck the firebirds directly, but the sparrows suffered no damage; the bullets simply passed straight through their fiery bodies without slowing their descent.
"Watch out!" Boran bellowed from the courtyard below, sprinting toward the main entrance. "They’re closing in! Close the gates!"
Boran managed to slip inside the perimeter right as the second wave of the beast tide closed in on the heavy wooden gates.
Atop the wall, rifle fire echoed without pause, but the civilians who had been handed weapons failed to reload in time amid the panic and trembling hands. Chaos reigned supreme in the thick of combat, with smoke blinding the defenders, when a earth-shattering roar echoed across the mountain, shaking the fortress straight to its foundations.
"Ignis, charge...!" Kellar’s voice echoed from the distance.
The tribe’s war horn sounded deep across the valley, and the defenders’ morale soared as everyone shouted in a single voice:
"It’s the Shaman! The Shaman is with us, do not fear!"
"Freyja, take down those birds!" Kellar ordered through the link.
Freyja leaped off his shoulder and shot into the air like a white blur. Seeing her approach, the firebirds shrieked and banked sharply upward, unleashing a torrent of flame from their beaks. The cat dodged the inferno in midair with agility, but the roaring fire struck several wooden houses near the entrance, setting the village ablaze within seconds.
"Fire! Fire! Bring something to put it out, fast!" the villagers screamed as thick smoke began choking the streets.
The chaos was overwhelming. Civilians cowered in corners gripped by panic, while the soldiers fighting along the battlements and front gates couldn’t abandon the front line to douse the flames without letting the walls fall.
In the sky, Freyja delivered an energy-laced swipe, decapitating one of the giant birds. The fire sparrow’s body erupted into a flare before consuming itself into ash. The remaining firebird attempted to flee toward the clouds, but Freyja pursued it, catching up in an instant and piercing its core before it could get away.
Out on the front, Ignis leaped into the middle of the horde with an impact that shook the ground. Kellar, braced on his back, cast his status magic, throwing [Poison Curse] and [Slow Curse] across the surging tide. However, to his dismay, these beasts were entirely immune to biological afflictions and movement reduction.
Kellar felt a flash of frustration upon seeing his curses fail, but he shifted tactics immediately and began hurling lightning spears. The change was devastating: the steel-plated centipedes took massive area-of-effect damage, as being packed tight and touching one another allowed the electrical current to flow freely through their metallic bodies, frying and paralyzing dozens at a time.
The riflemen’s bullets struck the beasts immobilized by the electric current, but they only caused minor surface wounds against the thick carapaces. Seeing the ranged fire fail, Brak, Grok, and the veteran hunters drew their battle axes and hurled themselves straight into the iron mass. Brak, fueled by his strength, delivered a strike that split a giant centipede cleanly in two, forcing the tide of monsters to stop clawing at the city gates and turn aggressively toward them.
"Good, we got their attention!" Grok shouted, burying his axe blade deep into another monster’s shell. "Lead them away from the city!"
Seeing their commanders’ maneuver, the new recruits began to fall back in formation, keeping up a concentrated hail of gunfire to distract the rest of the swarm.
Kellar kept hurling lightning in all directions, but there simply weren’t enough hands to hold off the sheer size of the horde. Deciding to take control himself, he stowed his magic, drew the Overlord Club, and leaped straight off the back of Ignis—who at that exact second had just decapitated another centipede by clamping his jaws around its neck.
With a thunderous strike from the war club, Kellar brought the weapon down on an iron insect’s skull, shattering it to pieces through raw impact force alone.
"Looks like bullets are useless against these things, but with blunt force impact we can crush them!" Kellar roared over the din of battle.
Hearing the Shaman’s cry, all the soldiers dropped their rifles to the ground and unsheathed the heavy combat knives and axes at their belts, charging headlong into hand-to-hand combat against the armored insects. They had relied heavily on firearms and the safety of ranged combat, and now, pinned in close quarters against a metallic horde, they adjusted on the fly.
Inside the village, Vael shouted at the top of his lungs:
"Everyone who knows how to fight, follow me!"
Vael, the former overseer of the Black Skull, was an expert in hand-to-hand combat. Grabbing two steel mining picks, he charged straight into the fray.
The police force and the rest of the army dropped their rifles without hesitation, snatching up picks, axes, and shovels from the work carts before flinging themselves fiercely at the horde to reinforce the vanguard.
Meanwhile, along the village streets, Tari shouted through the thick smoke:
"Put out the fire!"
Spotting a man cowering against a wall in panic, she grabbed him by the collar and landed a ferocious slap across his face, screaming:
"Wake up, idiot! Where are your balls?!"
Watching Tari slap the man out of his stupor, the surrounding villagers snapped out of their paralysis. People began slapping one another to shake off the panic, quickly forming bucket lines to fight the flames engulfing the homes.