“This is just brute force! At this rate, we won’t win!” The Starbell Lily’s captain’s face flushed red, whether from panic or fear it was hard to tell.
Those masked mysterious n and the monsters seed to have reached so sort of pact, cooperating to wipe them all out in these waters.
“What organization are those masked people even from... there’s nothing about them in the Ark database!”
Their strongest forces were all tied down.
The ice sheet had nearly lted away. Even with the firepower of humanity’s most advanced magic ark, the golden-armored knights and the ship’s guards were steadily falling back, suffering heavy casualties.
On the ice, human corpses and monster corpses lay piled together, turning to ash in the flas.
The besieged Heroes were gradually losing ground; the white stag that the elf maiden had beco was battered and bloodied, one of its antlers even broken.
The elderly captain watched the apocalyptic scene and sighed long and low.
Though he had dread many tis of his own death, nothing in his dreams had prepared him for this sheer horror and despair.
In the cabins, passengers with no combat ability were already weeping uncontrollably. Through the small portholes they seed to see their deaths waiting outside.
This had been a strategic ark sent to support a war zone.
“Sigh—never thought my life would end here.”
A middle-aged man with stubble on his face carried a recording device on his back as he slowly walked past the captain.
A battlefield reporter’s job was dangerous, and this man had been at it for a long ti.
He used his life to record information about monsters ❖ Nоvеl𝚒ght ❖ (Exclusive on Nоvеl𝚒ght) in the human–monster wars, bringing that data back to the papers so people could learn these monsters’ traits, prepare ntally for first contact, and raise their odds of survival.
He dread of one day cataloguing every monster and sharing the knowledge with all humanity—but monsters kept appearing, new ones every day.
Humanity could never fully know every monster. Like when he was fourteen and did not know that the goblins that attacked his village were actually a weak species that feared fire... he had woken from nightmares countless tis staring at moonless black skies, wondering if things would have turned out differently if soone back then had known that fact.
The captain did not stop the lone man from leaving the ship and walking toward the monsters.
He thought of retiring in glory one day when monsters no longer appeared, returning to his small fishing village, living out his old age with dutiful children and playful grandchildren...
“R-reporter to captain! All our outgoing signals have been intercepted! Distress calls cannot get out of these waters!!” The thin second mate crawled over and delivered the bad news, breathless.
There was no ti to dwell on anything else. The captain glanced at the monsters closing in on the ark, turned, drew a cleaver etched with magical runes from the weapon rack, and headed toward the passage the reporter had taken.
“Just do your job,” he said as he walked. “You don’t need to report everything to anymore.”
The towering ark swayed like a skyscraper about to fall, ash drifting through the sky, and the water, scorched by the dragon-shaped monster’s breath, burned fiercely.
The old captain, one-handed on his blade, cut off the heads of so stray monsters he t along the way.
Though his body was old, he still wielded that rune-etched cleaver with fierce energy.
So monsters he dispatched with a single stroke; others made him tremble for a long ti. His neat uniform tore where monsters’ claws shredded it, crimson blood staining the white lining.
On the way he found the battlefield reporter—lying on the ice, a group of sharp-toothed eels gnawing his corpse. The reporter’s skeletal hands still clutched the delicate recorder; his brown eyes stared blankly at the sky.
“You damned beasts!” the old captain cursed inwardly, sprinted, and slashed the blade across one monster’s back in a single arc, ripping its entire skull away.
Black ichor sprayed the ground. After dealing with the eels, the captain pressed on toward the golden-armored knights and the guard units—the fiercest fighting was there.
“How does this old man still have so much strength?” the thin second mate wiped sweat from his brow and yelled toward the main magic cannon, “How long to finish loading?!”
“The mana crystals are loaded and charging—two and a half minutes... no, one minute left!” the turret commander shouted back.
Blades and spears clashed fiercely with shrill, violent sounds.
Rotisha’s arm had gone numb, but at the next instant she forced her power to rewind her own state back to a perfectly rested condition she’d had on the ship.
Relying on that extraordinary regenerative ability, she cut back and forth among a dozen masked n.
However, the leader wearing a tal mask had been avoiding her pursuit, seemingly communicating secretly with sothing.
After driving off the encircling masked n, Rotisha looked up toward the elf maiden. Pumled by several eighth-rank monsters and a sky-soaring interference dragon, the elf maiden was barely holding on.
Smaller monsters kept surging toward the ark as well, colliding with the defensive line ford by the golden-armored knights.
The situation looked bleak.
A shadow crossed Rotisha’s dark red eyes. She stopped conserving energy and forcibly amplified the potency of her power, using for the first ti strength beyond the eighth rank.
The rewind power flowed soundlessly, invisibly. In an instant several unprepared masked n were struck—so shriveled and shrunk into frail old n who collapsed to the ground, others reverted to the appearance of eight-year-olds.
Seizing the stunned mont, Rotisha dashed forward to finish them off.
Other masked n who tried to reinforce found their legs stuck as if in a quagmire, only able to watch their comrades die beneath the Hero’s spear.
“Truly a magnificent power...” The Black Mask watched from the side in an admiring tone; he was not afraid and rely shook his head. “A pity it’s used in such a place—wasted, so wasted...”
So hidden god of fate seed to emit a mocking, hissing laugh.
Rotisha suddenly felt cold all over; every nerve in her body tightened, frantically urging her: Run! Get out! If you don’t, you’ll die! Don’t worry about those on the ship!
But... how could a Hero possibly flee?
Rotisha drew a deep breath and steadied her heart rate.
Suddenly—light, asured footsteps ca from behind her, neither fast nor slow, like each step falling on a piano key—elegant, composed.
Cold sweat slid from Rotisha’s gloved palm that grasped the spear, bright as pearls.
The Black Mask looked at Rotisha, but his gaze dropped behind her. His tone softened:
“Lord Demon, such small matters—why trouble yourself to co here in person?”
“I did not want to co,” ca the reply, “but the wheel of fate shows you will all die here, so I had to make this trip.”
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