Chapter 57: The Beast Tide [ 2 ]
The animal crashed violently into the hidden stakes, its own momentum driving sharpened timber deep into its chest. Several smaller beasts directly behind it couldn’t stop in time and slammed into the carcass, tumbling over one another.
The trench suddenly became visible as dozens of animals dropped into it almost simultaneously.
Then the entire front line hit. The sound was brutal. Wood snapped, animals screamed.
Bodies crashed together. Snow erupted in huge clouds as the prepared trenches swallowed the first wave.
Some beasts cleared the gaps. Exactly as planned.
The surviving animals immediately surged toward the two deliberately open corridors.
Raymond’s raised hand dropped.
"Fire."
The northern wall erupted.
Hundreds of arrows launched almost simultaneously from the elevated platforms, streaking across the white sky before falling into the tightly packed creatures below.
Hunters aimed for eyes, throats, exposed legs, and weaker animals. Ordinary arrows bounced from the thick hides of several Bronze-ranked beasts, but concentrated volleys struck repeatedly until bodies began falling.
The kill corridors became chaos. Creatures that had avoided the trenches crowded toward the apparent openings, only to find sharpened stake barriers narrowing the passage further ahead. Their numbers pressed them together, preventing larger animals from turning easily.
Bronze Knights moved.
Garret stepped into the western corridor first, his heavy shield braced before him as three Ironhorn Elk charged together. The impact would have flattened an ordinary soldier.
Garret barely moved.
His boots carved deep grooves into the frozen earth, but the massive shield held.
Two Bronze Knights attacked from either side, swords flashing through legs and throats while hunters fired downward from the platforms above.
The eastern corridor became even more violent.
A Snowback Bison smashed through the first wooden barrier and continued forward despite three arrows buried in its neck.
One Bronze Knight met it head-on.
The warrior swung a heavy sword with both hands.
The blade struck the beast’s skull with a dull crack.
The massive head snapped sideways.
The bison collapsed so suddenly that two beasts behind it crashed into the body and tumbled into the snow.
Raymond watched from the wall, almost forgetting to breathe.
The defenses were working not perfectly but working.
The outer trenches had broken the front wave’s momentum exactly as planned. The open corridors funneled survivors into narrower spaces where the beasts couldn’t use their numbers effectively. Hunters fired from above while Bronze Knights handled whatever forced its way too close.
The first hundred creatures died quickly.
Then another hundred reached the defenses.
Raymond began issuing adjustments. "Shift the western archers ten meters south. They’re wasting shots into the trench."
Boris repeated the order. "Send two Bronze Knights to the center. The bodies are forming a bridge across that section."
Jonathan responded immediately, dispatching a pair. "Tell the oil team to wait. We don’t need fire yet."
Another runner disappeared.
Raymond’s fear didn’t vanish but it became quieter.
There was too much to do. The battlefield became a problem with moving pieces.
Where were bodies accumulating? Where were hunters exhausting arrows? Which barricades were weakening? Which Bronze teams were taking too much pressure?
Once his mind entered that rhythm, everything else faded.
The first defensive line became brutally efficient.
A group of Frostfang Wolves used the larger herbivores as cover and leaped over one section of trench, sprinting directly toward the wall. Tristan’s mobile team intercepted them before they reached the gate.
The Silver Knight moved through the pack so quickly that Raymond could barely follow the strikes. One wolf lost its head. Another was split across the ribs. A third tried to retreat and collapsed after Tristan’s blade severed both rear legs.
Farther west, an enormous boar-like beast with plated shoulders broke through a barricade and scattered three civilian defenders.
Jonathan moved.
His sword came down once and the beast’s skull split.
The Silver Knight didn’t even stop afterward.
Raymond finally understood just how terrifying his summoned Silver warriors actually were.
Until now, they had been overqualified construction workers. Now they looked like monsters fighting monsters.
The battle continued for nearly an hour.
The northern field became unrecognizable.
White snow turned dark beneath blood.
Bodies filled the outer trenches, broken arrows covered the ground. Steam rose from dead beasts while surviving animals stumbled over fallen carcasses trying to escape the pressure from behind.
At one point, the western corridor nearly collapsed when a group of Snowback Bison pushed forward together, but Garret’s defensive team reinforced the barrier long enough for hunters to focus fire on their legs.
Another section failed completely when enough bodies filled the trench to allow smaller predators across, but Raymond ordered the nearest barricade closed rather than wasting men trying to reclaim the position.Layer by layer.
Exactly as planned. The first wave gradually weakened.
The number of creatures rushing toward the defenses dropped.
Then dropped again. Eventually only scattered beasts remained near the field, many injured and confused. The final Ironhorn Elk charged through the eastern corridor with blood covering half its body.
A Bronze Knight sidestepped the antlers and drove a sword through its neck. The animal collapsed.Silence didn’t arrive immediately.
Men still shouted. Wounded animals still cried.
Weapons struck surviving beasts but the constant thunder of the charge had stopped.
Raymond stood on the wall breathing heavily despite never having swung his sword once.
He looked across the battlefield. Hundreds of Magic Beasts lay dead outside Althoff.
The trenches had worked. The kill corridors had worked. The Knights had worked.
Most importantly, the wall was still standing.
Raymond turned toward Boris, and for the first time since the tide appeared, a genuine smile pulled at his mouth.
"We actually did it."
Boris didn’t answer.
Raymond noticed the captain was still staring north.
His smile faded slightly. "What?"
Boris slowly lifted one hand and pointed beyond the battlefield.
Raymond followed the direction. At first, all he saw was drifting snow beyond the mass of dead animals.
Then the ground trembled again.
Raymond’s eyes narrowed.
Far beyond the outer trenches, the northern plain was still moving. Dark shapes continued pouring over the distant ridge.
More than before. Much more.
Boris’s face had gone completely serious. "My Lord..."
Raymond stared at the horizon.
The hundreds of corpses outside the wall suddenly looked very small.
Boris swallowed once before finishing. "That wasn’t the Beast Tide."
His eyes remained locked on the endless movement in the distance.
"That was the front edge."