Chapter 610: Chapter 610: Against the Horde [IV]

The front changed the moment the Ascendants stepped into it.

The shift ran through that section of the battlefield like a fresh current. Fighters who had been holding on through sheer stubbornness fell back in tighter rotations while stronger defenders moved forward to take the worst of the pressure. The line did not become clean. It became harder.

Marcus advanced with Garron and Laziel into the more dangerous strip of ground without needing to say much. These monsters were not like the ones from earlier waves. Faster to react, heavier in their movements, tougher to bring down, and meaner in the way they attacked.

A wolf-like beast with plated forelimbs lunged through a gap between corpses and broken stakes. Marcus met it head-on, his blade tearing across its throat before he twisted his free hand downward. “Stoneburst.” The ground under the next two monsters exploded upward in sharp rock fragments. One staggered. The other lost its footing completely. Marcus stepped into the opening and sent “Azure Flare Strike” through the chest of the first, the short burst of blue fire punching in and exploding out the other side in a spray of heat and blood.

To his right, Garron handled the direct pressure the way only Garron could. A broad-shouldered beast with bone growths around its arms slammed toward the line, and Garron simply met it, boots grinding into the dirt as the impact rolled through both bodies. He caught one arm, dragged the monster off its angle by raw force, and smashed his forehead into its face before driving it down hard enough to shake the ground beneath them.

Laziel stayed half a step behind the line where he could still see everything. He controlled the space around them with sharp, efficient casts, throwing out barriers of frost, tangling roots, and quick disruptions whenever too many enemies tried to flood the trio at once. Every time one monster slipped too wide, Laziel was the reason it did not become three.

The rhythm began to settle. Kill. Push. Cover. Advance. For the first time in a while, that part of the line was not merely surviving. It was starting to recover ground.

Then the rhythm broke.

Something heavier crashed through the monsters behind the front like they were debris in its path. Marcus saw it only a moment before it hit. The beast was huge and low to the ground, built like a battering ram wrapped in muscle and bone. Pale plating covered its shoulders and upper skull, one horn broken short and jagged while the other curved forward long and intact. Dark hide stretched over a body made for speed and impact, and white ridges ran along its spine like old blades buried beneath flesh.

The Gravehorn Ravager did not slow. It tore through a cluster of defenders with one charge, sent bodies flying, crushed a shield line apart, and drove straight into Marcus’s section with enough force to make everyone there understand at once.

The Gravehorn Ravager hit like a landslide given fangs.

It smashed into the front of Marcus’s section and turned formation into ruin in a single breath. Shields cracked apart under its weight. One dwarf was thrown sideways hard enough to spin through the air before crashing into a broken cart. A line of stone spikes raised by a nearby mage did not stop it, the beast simply tore through them, fragments exploding around its body as if the earth itself had failed to bite deep enough. Its longer horn drove into one defender’s chest and sent him backward in a spray of blood before the Ravager ripped free and kept moving.

Regular fighters tried to stop it anyway. Spears thrust toward its flank and scraped off bone plating. Swords hit dark hide and barely drew more than shallow lines. One knight brought a hammer down with both hands onto the beast’s spine, and the Ravager answered by throwing its body sideways and crushing the man under its shoulder like a door slamming shut.

“Back!” Marcus shouted, already moving. He stepped into the line of its next charge and snapped his hand forward. “Stoneguard.” A slab of rock surged up just as the monster crashed into it. The impact sounded like a tower cracking. Stone shattered into heavy fragments flying in all directions, but the barrier stole enough force to keep the charge from hitting him clean.

Even then, the blow still drove him backward. He dug in immediately. “Rooted Stance.” Mana sank through his legs into the ground, anchoring him hard enough that the next shove from the Ravager only dragged furrows through the dirt instead of launching him away entirely. His sword flashed into the side of its neck as it passed, but the cut did not go deep enough. Too much muscle. Too much plating. Too much speed.

Garron roared to his right and slammed into the beast’s flank, throwing his entire body into the collision just to drag its angle off-line. That bought them one opening. Laziel took it at once, roots and frost bursting from the torn ground beneath the Ravager’s forelegs, slowing it for a single heartbeat.

Marcus raised one hand. “Blazing Pillar.” Blue fire erupted from beneath the beast in a vertical blast, swallowing its lower body in a furnace-like column. The Ravager screamed, but when the flames burst apart it was still moving. Burned. Angry. Alive.

He sent “Azure Flare Strike” into the exposed hinge of one foreleg. The blue burst exploded against the joint and finally forced a visible stagger, but still not enough. He began drawing more mana, earth and heat gathering for “Molten Lance,” but the Ravager twisted before the cast could stabilize and broke the line again with another savage rush. The spell had to be abandoned before it backfired in his own hands.

All around them, that section of the battlefield was bending. Defenders had started giving ground, not because they wanted to, but because the beast made every position around it unstable. People saw it tear through stone, through shields, through men, and the effect spread faster than blood.

Marcus exhaled once, eyes fixed on the monster as it turned for another charge.

This was not something he could kill by simply hitting harder. He would have to understand it first.

The Ravager came again, and this time Marcus did not rush to answer it with force alone.

He watched. The beast lowered its body a fraction before every real charge, not much, just enough to gather itself like a drawn bow. Its left side was harder to damage, the heavier bone plating there turning aside glancing blows far better than the right. After each impact, its rear right leg reacted a shade slower than the rest. Not enough for ordinary fighters to exploit. Enough for Marcus to notice.

That changed the fight.

“Left!” he shouted, and Garron moved without asking why. The big man crashed into the Ravager’s better-armored side just as it turned, forcing the beast to answer from the direction Marcus wanted instead of the one it preferred. Laziel followed by throwing a spread of frost and tangled roots across the ground behind Marcus’s position, not to stop the monster outright, but to narrow its path and keep the flanks from opening wider.

The Ravager lunged. “Stoneguard.” Rock surged up in front of Marcus. The barrier cracked under the impact almost instantly, but it did what he needed. It slowed the charge, turned the head slightly, and gave him half a heartbeat to step off the direct line and cut low into the damaged foreleg joint from earlier.

The beast reacted harder this time. Good.

It came in close, too close for clean casting. Marcus pulled heat and earth around himself. “Molten Skin.” A layer of blue heat and hardened mineral mana wrapped over his body like forge-fire pressed into armor. When the Ravager’s plated shoulder slammed into him, the force still hurt, but the contact punished the beast in return, and Marcus stayed upright long enough to drive his sword up into a softer seam near the underside of its neck before being forced back.

Then the real impact came. The monster wheeled and hit again with enough weight to crush both him and Laziel if it landed clean. Marcus stepped in front without hesitation. “Earthen Shell.” Stone rose around them in a heavy curved dome just as the Ravager crashed into it. The shell buckled, cracked, and sent dust and fragments bursting inward. Laziel stumbled, caught himself, and immediately sent roots out the moment the shell opened, tangling around one hind leg for barely a second.

Marcus used that second. “Stoneburst.” The ground under the Ravager’s footing exploded upward, ruining its balance. He stepped through the flying fragments and struck twice, one cut into the damaged foreleg joint, another lower across the lagging rear leg. “Azure Flare Strike.” The blue burst followed straight into that same limb and made the beast lurch harder than before.

He began drawing for “Molten Lance,” then stopped. Still not enough. Still no clean line.

But now he understood why. The kill was not in the head, not in the shoulders, not in trying to overpower the charge. It was in breaking the rhythm of the body first, then taking it through the leg and into the exposed line beneath the neck when it dipped.

Marcus tightened his grip on the sword as the Ravager dragged itself back into position, wounded now, angrier now, but no longer unreadable.

The fight was still dangerous. But it was finally starting to look winnable.

The Gravehorn Ravager launched itself again, and everyone around Marcus understood what this charge meant. If it broke through now, the line would collapse with it. The beast came low and fast, its body cutting through churned earth and broken shields like a battering ram wrapped in bone, the longer horn fixed on the weakest point ahead.

“Garron!”

No explanation needed. Garron slammed into the beast’s heavier-plated left side with everything he had, not trying to stop the charge completely, just forcing it off its clean line enough to ruin the angle. The Ravager still came forward, still carrying enough weight to tear men apart, but now it was entering Marcus’s range crooked instead of perfect.

“Laziel!”

“I know!”

Roots burst from the ruined ground with frost clinging to them, wrapping around the Ravager’s foreleg and dragging across the slower rear leg Marcus had already damaged. They did not hold for long. They only needed to interrupt the body for a breath.

Marcus stepped forward and cast “Rooted Stance.” Mana sank through his legs and locked him to the ground. When the Ravager crashed into him, the impact tore through his whole body and split the earth around his boots, but he did not move. His sword cut low into the ruined foreleg joint, and then his free hand drove power downward. “Stoneburst.” Jagged rock exploded under the beast’s chest and lifted its weight unevenly, forcing its body to dip exactly where Marcus wanted it.

There. That opening beneath the neck.

He gathered earth and blue fire into a single violent pull, heat and stone compressing until “Molten Lance” took form in his hand like a spear ripped straight from a furnace. He drove it forward. The lance punched into the exposed line beneath the Ravager’s neck, tore through flesh and softened bone, and burst out the other side in a spray of blood, flame, and broken plating.

The beast screamed and still tried to push forward. Marcus did not let it. “Blazing Pillar.” Blue fire erupted from beneath the Ravager in a vertical blast that tore upward through the wound left by the lance and engulfed the beast from below. When the pillar collapsed, the Gravehorn Ravager hit the ground in a smoking heap and did not move again.

The defenders saw the corpse. They saw Marcus still standing in front of it, bloodied, scorched, breathing hard, but upright. Fear loosened. Voices rose. Soldiers who had been yielding ground tightened their grip and stepped forward. Garron roared. Laziel, pale and drenched in sweat, still found enough breath to laugh once.

The line stopped bending there. It pushed.

Not enough to win the battle. Not enough to erase the war pressing over the whole territory. But enough for that section to feel alive again.

Marcus stood over the corpse with his chest rising hard and every muscle burning. That section had not held through luck. It had held because he made it hold.

Source: Webnovel.com, updated by NovelKeep