Chapter 437: Invasion [3]
Zarah planted her foot and arched backward before swinging her arm forward in one fluid motion.
A torrent of ice burst from her outstretched hand.
It raced across the battlefield like a freezing tide before erupting upward into a forest of jagged spikes.
The first orc, which had thrown itself forward with its weapon raised, was swallowed by the attack before it could even react.
The momentum of the spell didn’t stop there.
The surging ice continued through the group, slamming into the orcs behind it as towering spikes erupted beneath them, impaling several where they stood and hurling others off their feet.
The battlefield instantly dropped in temperature.
A thin layer of frost spread across the ground while shards of ice drifted through the air.
Several of the orcs were left badly wounded, their movements noticeably slower as frost rapidly crept across their bodies.
Zarah didn’t give them a chance to recover.
Another surge of mana gathered in her hands.
The ice condensed, taking the shape of a beautifully crafted longbow.
She drew back, and an arrow formed between her fingers, its translucent body shimmering with dense mana that made the surrounding air crackle with cold. Then she released.
The arrow shot forward with explosive speed.
Halfway to its target, it split into three identical projectiles.
Each found its mark.
They struck three separate orcs square in the face, embedding themselves so deeply they seemed to melt into the flesh rather than simply pierce it.
For a heartbeat, nothing happened. Then the true effect began.
The ice spread from the points of impact with terrifying speed, crawling across their faces like a living curse. Wherever it passed, flesh instantly froze solid, becoming so brittle that fine cracks appeared across the surface. Those cracks widened in an instant, racing through frozen skin, muscle, and bone alike.
The orcs barely managed to let out broken screams before their frozen faces shattered apart into countless icy fragments.
Zarah was already moving before the bodies hit the ground.
She created another arrow. Then another.
Each release was swift, precise, and merciless.
Within moments, five orcs had fallen beneath her barrage, their bodies collapsing into the frost-covered earth as she calmly drew back yet another shimmering arrow, already searching for her next target.
Meanwhile, Caius reached the portal assigned to him.
His situation was far worse than Zarah’s.
By the time he arrived, several of the orcs had already broken away from the portal and spread throughout the surrounding area.
The sounds of collapsing buildings and terrified screams echoed from every direction, and scattered across the ground lay the bodies of goblins who hadn’t been fortunate enough to escape in time.
The sight filled him with fury.
His grip around his sword tightened ever so slightly. But that was all.
Years of experience had taught him that anger clouded judgment, and judgment was the one thing he could never afford to lose on a battlefield.
He forced the rage back down. Then he moved.
In a single burst of speed, Caius appeared beside an orc that was chasing a pair of fleeing goblins just as the creature raised its weapon to strike.
He leaped into the air, and with a single, effortless swing, his sword flashed past the orc’s neck, severing its head before it even realized it had been attacked.
The head spun through the air while the headless body staggered forward another step under the momentum of its charge before finally collapsing to the ground with a heavy thud.
"Get to the shelter!" Caius ordered the stunned goblins without even looking back. "The clan is under attack!"
The two didn’t hesitate.
The moment they realized who had saved them, they turned and sprinted toward the evacuation route.
By then, Caius was already gone.
He flowed from one target to the next with almost surgical precision, every movement stripped of unnecessary effort. A single slash. A precise thrust. One clean kill after another. He never lingered, never admired his work, and never wasted energy on excessive motions.
Efficiency had always been his greatest weapon.
Ever since he lost his innate skills to Eli, Caius had deliberately changed the way he approached growth. Although he had still acquired new abilities as rewards from time to time, he had never gone out of his way to collect every skill available to him.
Most Chosen sought versatility, filling themselves with as many abilities as they could obtain in the hope that one of them would prove useful.
Caius disagreed.
To him, mastering a single style was far more valuable than becoming mediocre at dozens.
If a skill didn’t complement the way he already fought, he simply ignored it.
He would rather perfect what he already excelled at than become another jack-of-all-trades burdened by abilities that rarely saw use.
There were certainly disadvantages to walking that path.
It demanded far more time and discipline.
Every skill he chose to keep required countless hours of practice before he could truly understand it. He had to learn its limits, discover how it interacted with his other abilities, and refine its application until using it became instinct rather than conscious thought.
But Caius preferred that.
He had experienced the alternative before.
People often assumed that becoming stronger somehow meant your mind transformed into a supercomputer capable of perfectly recalling every ability you possessed.
That wasn’t how it worked.
Acquiring a skill didn’t automatically teach you how to use it to its fullest potential. You still had to experiment with it, test it in different situations, and uncover the countless nuances that separated merely possessing an ability from mastering it.
The more skills you accumulated, the more difficult that became.
Eventually, many of them would simply gather dust, existing on your status window while rarely, if ever, being used in battle.
Caius had no interest in falling into that trap.
Rather than farming skills endlessly, he chose to keep his arsenal as small and refined as possible, only adding an ability if it genuinely strengthened his fighting style.
As a result, his combat looked deceptively simple.
Throughout the battle, he had relied on nothing more than his innate skill, [Foresight], and the sword in his hand.
There were no flashy techniques or overwhelming displays of power, only flawless timing, precise footwork, and sword strikes that never missed their mark.
It was a simple style, almost deceptively so, but it was refined to such a degree that it became terrifying in its own right.
By the time he reached the edge of the portal, seven orcs already lay dead around him.
The remaining orcs gradually came to a halt.
One after another, their bloodshot eyes shifted away from the fleeing goblins and settled on the small figure standing before them.
None of the orcs dared to be the first to approach him.
It wasn’t because they had been ordered to stop. It was fear.
To them, it was as though an invisible boundary surrounded the small goblin standing before them. Every orc that crossed into that space had met the same fate—a single flash of steel, followed by death so swift they rarely understood what had happened.
The corpses scattered around Caius only reinforced that impression.
He stood quietly amidst them, his sword lowered at his side, his breathing steady and his expression unreadable.
He didn’t panic.
The current stalemate favored him.
But he also understood it wouldn’t last forever.
The orcs weren’t cowards. They were simply assessing the threat. Sooner or later, one of them would decide to test him, and once that happened, the others would follow. If more reinforcements emerged from the portal before then, he’d be forced to fight on multiple fronts at once.
He couldn’t allow the initiative to slip away.
Without another thought, Caius leaned forward and charged.
But...
He had barely taken two steps when [Foresight] suddenly activated, causing the world around him to slow as a vision flashed through his mind.
He saw himself taking one more step. Then, out of nowhere, a dark blur swept across his neck with terrifying speed.
His head separated from his shoulders before he even realized he had been attacked.
The vision vanished as abruptly as it had appeared, snapping Caius back to reality.
His body froze instinctively, every muscle locking in place as the vision faded from his mind.
He didn’t dare take another step, because he knew with absolute certainty that if he had moved forward even once more, he would have lost his head.