Free Web NovelChapter 76: A Lost Battle
It was gradual, and that made it worse. There was no precise moment when everything changed, there was only the slow, inevitable realization that those shapes were not smoke, were not energy, were not anything a human being could classify with any sense of comfort. They were beings. Creatures. Things that did not belong to this world and made no effort to hide it.
Some crashed down onto the rubble and didn’t get back up, or at least not immediately. Others recovered almost instantly, straightening with movements that didn’t follow the logic of a normal body. Others never touched the ground at all, remaining suspended in the sky with a presence that could be felt even from a distance, heavy, ancient, completely indifferent to everything around them.
A chill ran down the spine of every adventurer still standing.
Not the kind that comes from exhaustion or cold. The kind that comes when something instinctive, something primal, tells you that you are in the wrong place and that the odds are not in your favor.
Many of those who had chosen to stay began to regret it in silence.
And how could they not?
Who the hell would ever have been prepared enough to face what was descending from the sky in front of them?
"Everyone get in position!" shouted the bald man, summoning his weapon as he spoke.
It was a hammer, large enough to dwarf the man himself, with a massive, brutal head that made anyone who laid eyes on it instinctively want to be somewhere else.
The other B-rank, a woman in her forties with short black hair, summoned her weapon as well, a magnificent bow covered in intricate engravings, its aura no less imposing than the hammer beside it.
They were the two commanders of this group of adventurers, and even though they both sensed that what stood before them was not something they could realistically hope to overcome, neither stepped back. They had already sent word to the capital, not that it was needed, it was unlikely the anomaly in this region had gone undetected.
The only thing left to do now was hold.
As the various dark streaks of smoke descended and took shape, revealing creatures of every form, size, and rank, one in particular drew everyone’s attention.
A cocoon, not a streak or anything else, but a proper cocoon, nearly two meters tall, descending not pulled by gravity but simply coming down at a calm, steady, controlled pace.
It didn’t land. Instead, at a certain point, it stopped mid-air.
Everyone stared up at it with expressions caught between confusion and unease, and before their eyes the cocoon began to be traced by lines, straight, jagged, curved that once they appeared lit up, and soon the cocoon began to come apart along those points.
Only then did the adventurers realize it was not an object at all.
It was a living creature.
The glowing lines were not cracks.
They were fractures.
With a sharp, almost wet tearing sound, the cocoon split open along those lines, not exploding outward, but unfolding in segments, each piece detaching with an unnatural precision, as though guided by some invisible design.
What had appeared to be a smooth, uniform surface was now revealed to be composed of interlocking plates, thin, chitin-like structures shifting and separating, reorganizing themselves in mid-air.
The cocoon was reshaping itself.
From within the opening segments, something began to extend outward.
Limbs.
Long. Angular. Articulated at too many points.
They didn’t emerge all at once, they slid out piece by piece, as if assembling rather than emerging.
As the outer shell continued to unfold, the creature’s core came into view,
but even that didn’t resemble a body.
At its center floated a hollow mass, a dark void wrapped in thin, trembling filaments that pulsed like veins. Around it, the segmented plates drifted and rotated, no longer attached, yet still part of it, forming and reforming a constantly shifting exoskeleton.
Then the head took shape.
Not by rising, but by aligning. ƒrēewebnovel.com
Several plates rotated toward one another, locking into position with a series of dry clicks, forming something that vaguely resembled a face, if a face could exist without symmetry, without eyes, without any defined structure.
They opened, not eyes, but slits.
Dozens of them.
And across the rest of its surface, thin fractures spread, each one revealing a faint pulsing glow beneath.
At the sight of it, every person present felt their heart clench. Some adventurers felt their legs go weak. Others looked away, as if simply staring at the creature caused them pain.
"S-Sir Dorian... this... can we really hope to do anything against these creatures?" one of the C-ranks behind Dorian, the bald man, asked.
His expression already said everything, he had given up and could find no way out of the situation. He wasn’t alone. Every single person there felt the same.
Dorian said nothing. Not because he didn’t want to, but because he didn’t know what to say. Even he understood there was no real chance against these creatures. If before they could at least have hoped to hold out for a while, now he wasn’t so sure, not with that being up there.
’An A-rank... perhaps at the advanced stage,’ he thought, making a quick evaluation based solely on the presence it emitted. He had encountered many elites, both weak and strong, and being one himself, he could judge strength, at least roughly.
Its presence was strong. Very strong. Almost on par with Cedric, perhaps even stronger.
He didn’t think it was an Overlord. Which was reassuring, even if he had no idea how long that would remain true. freёwebnovel.com
Cedric was there, a few steps from the others.
His condition had improved compared to before, but only marginally. His left arm still ended in nothing halfway down, his face marked by cuts and burns that no quick treatment had yet properly addressed. He was on his feet, which counted for something, but anyone could see he was in no condition to fight yet.
He assessed the creature suspended above with cold, narrowed eyes.
And understood.
Even at his peak, he would have struggled to fight it, let alone in his current condition.
He said nothing. There was no need.
The being above seemed to have finished its own assessment.
It didn’t open its mouth. It made no sound. And yet something moved, a subtle, almost imperceptible wave that spread from it in every direction like a ripple across still water. It wasn’t energy in the conventional sense. It was something closer to an impulse, a command transmitted not through words but through something far more primitive.
And the creatures responded.
Those already on the ground, which until that moment had been standing still as if waiting, moved all at once. Not one at a time, all of them, simultaneously, like a single thing with many bodies. A wave. And as they advanced, more kept descending from the vortex to join them, feeding the moving mass without pause.
The adventurers braced themselves.
Those on the front line tightened their grips and held their ground. Those equipped for support fell back, ready to intervene from a distance. Those who still had enough strength to push forward did so, trying to break the wave before it swept everything away.
The chaos of the earlier battle, the one that had gone quiet when Veylan intervened, returned. But different. Quieter. And precisely because of that, more lethal.
It didn’t take long before the difference made itself felt.
People began to fall.
Not simply because those creatures were stronger, though they were. But because fighting them the way one fought the beasts of the forest was wrong. Fundamentally wrong. Beasts attacked out of instinct, out of territory, out of hunger, and within that instinct there was a logic that an experienced fighter could read and exploit.
These things had none of that.
They didn’t seem to register wounds. They didn’t slow down. They didn’t retreat. They advanced, clawed, and devoured, nothing else, driven as if nothing in the world existed except the urge to slaughter, destroy, and consume everything they encountered. And they did it with something that resembled, in a deeply unsettling way, enjoyment.
All of it beneath the impassive gaze of the being suspended above.
The battle had started minutes ago. It was already moving toward a disastrous end.
And then, in that moment of pure desperation, something changed.
A bolt came down.
Silent. Without warning. Unannounced by any thunder, by any visible buildup of energy, it appeared and struck, and in the moment it did it hit the advancing mass of creatures dead center. An enormous handful of them were razed to the ground in an instant, as if they had never existed.
The battlefield stopped.
Even the being above seemed to feel it, a presence pushing forward, something that even that creature could not ignore. Slowly, it turned its gaze upward.
And there, suspended in the sky above everything and everyone, was the King of Solren.
His appearance was no longer the regal, immaculate one from before. The damage from the Duke’s detonation was still visible, and something in his bearing betrayed that he had not come through unscathed. But his eyes were another matter entirely. Cold. Fierce. With a ferocity so absolute and so quiet that it alone seemed capable of making even the creature staring up at him tremble.
