The Behemoth Horns on the watchtowers scread again, their deep, agonizing frequency nearly drowned out by a deafening clap of thunder from the storm clouds above.
"Third wave! They’ve breached the clearing!" a scout shrieked from the highest parapet, his voice cracking with sheer terror, his arm pointing frantically into the dark, swirling abyss beyond the gates.
Sol didn’t hesitate. The exhaustion that had been dragging at his bones was instantly incinerated by a fresh, violent surge of adrenaline, his exhausted muscles screaming in protest, but the Sun Core in his solar plexus flared instantly, flooding his body with a fresh surge of refined essence.
He gripped the sapphire hilt of the Sky-Render, his silver-crimson eyes flaring as he kicked his muscles into gear. He prepared to vault right back over the walls and plunge into the at grinder.
But before his boots could leave the petrified wood, a heavy, unyielding hand clamped down hard on his shoulder.
"Hold your ground," Warchief Veylara commanded, her voice cutting through the rising panic with absolute, icy authority. She pushed him back, her grip shockingly strong even through the dense tectonic resonance of his Badger armor. "There is no need to go out there yet. Rest your core."
Sol frowned, his battle-lust chafing against the restraint. "If they hit the gates with another mass charge—"
"They won’t hit the gates," Veylara interrupted, her storm-colored eyes narrowing as she looked over the wall. She raised her obsidian spear high into the air, the tip glowing with a brilliant blue light, a beacon for the exhausted defenders. "Ranged units! To the walls! Do not let them touch the wood!"
The Veynar Vanguard shifted with desperate, practiced efficiency. The exhausted lee infantry fell back, swapping places with hundreds of archers and javelin-throwers.
Below them, the swirling dust cloud parted to reveal the next nightmare.
The third wave was smaller in raw numbers than the second, but it was infinitely more terrifying. There were no mindless fodder beasts here. This wave was composed entirely of hyper-lethal On Bloods and high-tier Essence Born predators.
They didn’t charge in a dense, easily targetable block like the unranked fodder. They scattered, moving in erratic, zig-zagging patterns, utilizing the piles of corpses as organic cover as they sprinted toward the walls.
"Fire!" Veylara roared.
The sky briefly turned black as a torrential rain of obsidian-tipped arrows and heavy throwing spears blotted out the lightning.
The volley struck the charging wave with devastating effect. The thud of arrows piercing thick hides, the shrieks of wounded beasts, and the shattering of bone echoed across the killing field.
"Again! Fire!" Veylara roared.
Another rain of arrows and javelins fell from the air, injuring a large number of beasts.
Sol watched the slaughter, his mind assessing the slaughter. Veylara’s strategy was brutally effective. The fire and the concentrated ranged volleys were drastically thinning the numbers of the highly agile wave, preventing them from utilizing their speed to scale the walls.
Once the initial charge was broken and the beast began to slow down, the heavy gates opened just enough to allow the Elite Vanguard and the Elders to slip out.
They moved as specialized kill-squads, hunting down the injured, disoriented beasts that had survived the initial volley, executing them with ruthless precision before slipping back inside.
But strangely, Veylara did not join them.
The Warchief, who had single-handedly held the center of the line an hour ago, stayed atop the ramparts. She paced the walls, her eyes constantly scanning the deepest, darkest sections of the tree line, ignoring the slaughter happening directly below her.
Sol watched her, his brow furrowing. Why is she holding back? The elites are out there burning their essence, and she’s just watching.
He didn’t have ti to dwell on the tactical anomaly. As the beasts of the Great Orrath were not mindless targets.
The surviving beasts from the third wave were cunning. A pack of Venom-Spine Gliders... reptilian horrors with flaps of skin connecting their limbs.... launched themselves high into the air, bypassing the attacks and gliding directly toward the parapets.
And since he didn’t have a bow, nor know how to effectively use one, he moved toward a heavy wooden rack holding bundles of massive, petrified-wood throwing spears.
These weren’t javelins ant for normal n, they were six feet long, thick as a man’s forearm, and weighed nearly fifty pounds each.
Sol picked one up. In his grip, it felt as light as a hunting dart.
He stepped up to the crenellations. He didn’t just throw the spear; he turned himself into a living ballista. He grounded his stance, channeling the tectonic mass of the Great Badger into his boots to anchor himself. Then, he drew his arm back, channeling the explosive, fast-twitch lightning of the Dreadwing into his shoulder and latissimus muscles.
He locked his silver-crimson eyes onto a Venom-Spine Glider currently diving toward a wounded archer.
Thwack.
Sol threw the spear. The acceleration was so violent it created a localized sonic crack in the humid air. The heavy petrified wood crossed the fifty-yard distance in a microsecond. It struck the Glider directly in the center of its mass, the kinetic force completely obliterating its ribcage.
The beast was carried backward by the sheer montum, flying another thirty yards before the spear buried itself four feet deep into the trunk of a dead tree, pinning the shattered corpse to the wood.
"Keep firing!" Sol roared to the stunned archers around him, grabbing another spear.
He went on an absolute killing spree. His sharp mind, combined with the sensory enhancents of his Lord Blood spirits, gave him an aim and a predictive control that was utterly inhuman. He didn’t just target the beasts closest to the wall, he sniped the most dangerous On Bloods from across the battlefield.
He impaled an Acid-Spitter before it could launch its payload. He shattered the skull of a stealth-cloaked stalker that thought it was hidden in the smoke. Every throw was a guaranteed, instant kill, his heavy spears hitting with the kinetic impact of a falling teor.
But the Great Orrath was a at grinder that did not care about individual heroics. At least not of weak ones.
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