Chapter 130: Night of the Reaper
The wall shook violently. The heavy impact sent loose bolts sliding across the iron walkway and made the energy cannons wobble on their mounts.
BOOM.
The first wave had hit.
Thousands of Ridgeback Wolves slammed into the base of the eastern wall like a living battering ram. Their bodies piled up against the black iron, claws scratching and teeth snapping as they searched for any weak spot. Behind them, the Crawlers climbed over the wolf corpses, using them as ladders to scale the barrier.
"Shields up! Hold the line!" Emric shouted over the noise.
He was standing at the gate, his heavy shield planted in the mud. When the first few crawlers scrambled over the top and dropped down, Emric braced and caught them on his shield like a human wall.
CLANG.
The impact drove his boots two inches into the mud, but he didn’t budge. The Crawler bounced off and tumbled into the kill zone, where the veteran soldiers finished it with precise energy blasts.
"Second row, close the gap on the left! Cannon crew seven, adjust your elevation, you’re shooting over their heads!"
From the top of the gate tower, Renna was a blur of motion.
Twang. Twang. Twang.
Her arrows weren’t normal. Each one was wrapped in a thin thread of storm energy that crackled and popped in the rain. When they hit a target, the energy discharged in a small burst of lightning that cooked the beast from the inside out.
Winged crawler variants swooped down from the clouds. Renna shot them down so fast it looked like she was swatting flies.
"Oh no you don’t, not today, not ever, go back to whatever cave you crawled out of!"
Beside her, Lyra stood still.
Her eyes were closed. Her spear was planted into the floor of the tower, both hands wrapped around the shaft. Ice was spreading from the base of her spear in creeping veins, crawling across the tower floor and down the outer wall.
Then she opened her eyes.
The temperature plummeted.
A massive blizzard exploded from the top of the gate, howling down the wall and into the mass of climbing Crawlers. Dozens of them froze mid-climb, their bodies turning to solid ice statues that cracked and shattered when they hit the ground.
"Maintain the freeze!" Emric shouted from below. "Keep the left flank clear!"
"Already on it!" Lyra called back, her voice sharp and commanding.
The wall defense was barely holding. The soldiers were fighting with everything they had, Emric was conducting them like an orchestra, and Lyra and Renna were dealing damage that no normal sophomores should have been capable of.
But down in the mud, something else was happening.
Something the soldiers on the wall couldn’t see.
Holden moved through the monster army like a ghost.
The Void Mantle erased everything. His energy signature, his scent, all of it vanished. To the thousands of beasts surging toward the wall, the space he occupied simply didn’t exist.
He walked between two Ridgeback Wolves without slowing down. He stepped over a Crawler that was burrowing through the mud. He passed within three feet of a pack of Spine-Tailed Lizards, close enough to see the individual scales on their hides.
None of them reacted.
The Solar-Forged Sword appeared in his hand, its crimson edge dimmed to almost nothing.
He picked his first target.
A Siege-Boar. It was charging toward the gate with its head down, ready to slam into the barricade at full speed.
Holden intercepted it.
He matched its speed from the side, running parallel in the mud, his 6-Star body moving with a fluidity that made him look like a shadow sliding across the ground.
SHLICK.
He cut the Boar’s hamstring in a single clean stroke.
The beast’s rear leg buckled. Its momentum carried it forward, but without the back leg to drive it, the charge collapsed. The Boar rolled into the mud, squealing, unable to stand.
The wolves behind it tripped over the body and piled up.
[Ding!]
[Siege-Boar (Rank 2, 3-Star) Defeated!]
[+600 KP]
[2x KP Booster Applied!]
[+1,200 KP!]
Holden was already moving.
He found another Siege-Boar forty yards to the right. This one was bigger, easily Rank 2, 5-Star, with thick bone plating along its skull. It was pushing through a group of wolves, heading straight for a section of wall that was already cracking under pressure.
Holden circled behind it. The beasts around him didn’t flinch or glance his way.
He aimed for the throat.
SHLICK.
The Boar’s thick neck opened in a line of black blood. It staggered two steps, then crashed into the mud.
[Ding!]
[Siege-Boar (Rank 2, 5-Star) Defeated!]
[+1,000 KP]
[2x KP Booster Applied!]
[+2,000 KP!]
Up on the wall, a veteran soldier squinted down at the dead Boar.
"Did... did that thing just fall over?"
"Keep firing!" Emric barked. "Don’t take your eyes off the wall!"
Holden kept hunting.
He became a relentless machine of death in the mud. Find the biggest threat, move into position, strike and repeat. The Void Mantle meant he never had to fight more than one enemy at a time. He could pick off the heavy hitters while the army around him remained completely oblivious.
A massive Crawler with reinforced chitin plates was climbing the wall near the north corner. Renna’s arrows were bouncing off its armor.
Holden appeared beneath it. He drove his sword straight up through the soft joint where its leg met its body, then ripped the blade sideways. The Crawler’s leg detached and the beast toppled backward into the horde.
[Ding!]
[+1,600 KP!]
He took down two more siege-boars back to back. Then a pack of armored hounds that were trying to flank around the south side of the wall. After them came a spine-tailed Lizard that was preparing to launch venomous quills at the cannon crews.
[Ding!]
[+800 KP!]
[Ding!]
[+1,200 KP!]
[Ding!]
[+2,000 KP!]
The veteran soldiers were starting to notice. The big monsters, the ones that should have been smashing through the defenses, were just... dying. Dropping in their tracks for no visible reason.
"Something’s out there," a soldier muttered, reloading his rifle with shaking hands.
"Focus on the wall!" Emric snapped. "Whatever’s happening out there, it’s helping us!"
The pressure on the gate was easing. Without the Siege-Boars to break the lines, the remaining wolves and Crawlers were just crashing uselessly against Emric’s shield wall and Lyra’s ice barriers. The cannon crews were finding their rhythm, and Renna hadn’t missed a single shot in ten minutes.
Holden paused in the mud, breathing steady, his cloak soaked with invisible blood.
He looked at the horde stretching out behind him. Despite everything, thousands of beasts were still pushing toward the wall.
And then he looked at his System log.
[Ding!]
[Pack Leader Wolf (Rank 2, 4-Star) Defeated!]
[+1,600 KP!]
[Total KP Gained This Session: +20,000]
[Current Balance: 147,890]
Twenty thousand points in under ten minutes. And the army was still coming.
Holden pulled the Void Mantle tighter and marched back into the horde.