Rowan fully turned his horse as he gazed at the countless soldiers fixedly staring at him.
He could see the glimmer of hope in their eyes. They were waiting for their miracle invoker to bless them with another victory somehow, even in this impossible situation.
That was how much they trusted and believed in him. Sadly, there would be no miracles today.
"I won't say much; the situation is clear already. I won't foolishly promise you survival. I won't bring you to victory."
His voice was even, almost soft, but it reached the last man of the Pride army.
"Everyone will probably die, me included..."
Rowan ruthlessly killed the spark of hope that threatened to bloom. There was no place for that here. Hope was only for the living; for them, it was only poison.
"...But so what?" His impassive voice rose slightly. "How many deaths have we witnessed? How many of our comrades have we buried? Does death even faze us anymore?"
"..."
"..."
"...Isn't it just another day? Even when your brothers died right next to you, you still picked up your swords and fought, perhaps even more desperately."
His voice rose once more. "...So what am I seeing right now?"
"You look like scared little brats hearing bumps in the dark... Are these truly the unshakable soldiers who marched fearlessly in the face of death countless times alongside me? Is this really my Pride army...?" Rowan was almost snarling at this point.
Then, "If so, then where is your... Pride?" The question thundered in every soldier's ears, then their hearts, resonating with the whole army.
Yes. Pride. That was what kept them standing in the face of these monstrosities; how could they forget?
"Their numbers are higher, so what? They will kill us, so what?! Will our Pride allow us to just lie down and die?!?"
"""NO!!"""
The 'No' was so thundering, so resonating, that it almost drowned the increasingly closer snarls of the Narkal wave.
"Let them gorge on our flesh and defile our corpses, but they will never touch our will to cut down one more beast! Nor the pride that bears it!!"
"""KILL!!"""
"Yes! Kill! We'll kill as long as we stand! Keep killing as much as we're killed! Demi-humans came, and we cut them down. Narkals came in greater hordes, and we carved through even more... We'll keep killing as long as there's breath left in our lungs! That is the pride of humanity's shield!"
Rowan had long discarded his calm facade, now fully revealing a wildness befitting a man who'd spent most of his life between life and death.
"The demi-humans equate our race with selfishness, deceit, and heartlessness, but they do not know what humanity truly represents! It is precisely this! The will to stand here and gladly throw our bodies so our wives, children, and elders can live one more day! This is humanity, so show them!!"
Now, fire blazed in every soldier's retina. So what if they died? They'd long known the inevitability of death by coming here, but they still came. Wasn't it to defend their loved ones, their race, from those relentless beasts?
"The Narkals," Rowan turned back to face the tide, but the Pride army still heard every last word of their general. "They think sheer numbers and cruelty will solve it, but they understand nothing... of humanity's infinite potential in the face of inevitable destruction."
"So, show them!!!" With a last thunderous shout, "Riven Charge!!!"
""FOR HUMANITY!!""
""FOR HUMANITY!!!!""
The general charged first, but he wasn't alone. His friend and right-hand man was tagging along as always, like he was marching for a chore and not his death. Behind them, a cavalry of more than two million trailed.
⛧⛧⛧
The clash came like thunder.
The first line of soldiers hit the Narkal tide, and for a heartbeat, the world was nothing but sound: Steel meeting flesh, screams of rage meeting bestial roars, the wet crunch of bones breaking and the slick tear of bodies being pulled apart.
Men died.
They died in droves, in dozens, in hundreds. The Narkals were stronger, faster, more vicious, and much, much more numerous… A single swipe from a Gorefiend could disembowel three soldiers. The shock troops crashed through formations like battering rams.
But the Pride army didn't break.
A soldier fell, throat torn out by claws, blood fountaining—but even as he collapsed, his sword was already swinging, carving through the Narkal's knee, bringing it down. His comrade finished the job, blade through the skull, before turning to face the next monster.
Another man's arm was ripped clean off at the shoulder, but no more than a grunt left his lips. He just switched his sword to his remaining hand and kept fighting, one-armed, teeth bared, until a Narkal crushed his skull—but not before he'd opened its belly, spilling its guts across the blood-soaked ground.
Everywhere, it was the same. Soldiers dying, but taking them down.
A battalion was overrun, Narkals tearing through them like paper—but they didn't flee. They formed a circle, back-to-back, and when the last man fell, seventeen Narkal corpses surrounded him.
This was spite made manifest. This was humanity's answer to extinction.
You want to kill us? Fine. But we'll drag as many of you to hell as we can.
⛧⛧⛧
Through it all, the Riven Formation blazed.
Battalions closest to the Narkal flanks suddenly shone with milky white light, soldiers and horses alike glowing as Rowan channeled mana through the formation's network.
A glowing cavalry unit crashed into a cluster of Narkals, scattering them like bowling pins. Before the beasts could regroup, the light faded from that unit and blazed on another—this one sweeping in from a different angle, cutting down the scattered Narkals before they could reform.
Kite. Strike. Withdraw. Repeat.
Rowan's commands flowed through the formation like blood through veins, precise and instantaneous. Even as he fought, he was conducting, orchestrating two million soldiers across a battlefield that stretched for kilometers.
"Third battalion, flank left! Seventh, pull back! Nineteenth, reinforce center—now!"
His voice didn't shout. It didn't need to. The formation carried his will directly to each unit leader, and they responded without hesitation.
A section of the line was about to collapse under a Great Beast's charge. Rowan felt it through the formation, and then saw it in his mind's eye as if he stood there himself. He poured mana into that battalion, and they blazed bright, suddenly fast enough to scatter before the Great Beast's foot came down. Another unit swept in behind, hacking at the exposed back of its ankle.
The Great Beast stumbled. Didn't fall, but stumbled.
That was enough.
⛧⛧⛧
Morikawa moved through the battlefield like a ghost.
Where other soldiers fought desperately, he fought efficiently. There was no wasted movement or excess energy. It was just clean, surgical violence.
A Narkal lunged at him. He sidestepped, blade flashing once, and its throat opened. The beast was dead before it hit the ground.
Another came from behind. He leaned slightly instead of turning, letting the claws pass over his shoulder, then drove his sword backward through its chest. Pulled it free. Moved on.
Three rushed him at once. He killed the first mid-stride, stepped over its corpse, used the second's own momentum to redirect it into the third, and beheaded them both in a single horizontal slash. Then he jumped back onto his horse and kept moving.
It looked effortless... Bored, even.
Someone watching might think he wasn't taking it seriously or that he was holding back and conserving energy for a real fight.
They'd be wrong.
This was him taking it seriously. This was just what happened when someone with Morikawa's skill fought enemies beneath his level. It didn't matter how many there were. They still had to get past his sword, and they couldn't.
A soldier nearby stumbled, about to be torn apart by a shock trooper. Morikawa was there before the claws fell, blade punching through the Narkal's eye socket and out the back of its skull. He yanked it free, shoved the corpse aside, and moved on without a word.
The soldier stammered thanks to empty air. Morikawa was already ten meters away, cutting down three more.
It looked like he was doing chores. Taking out the trash. Washing dishes.
Just another day at the office.
⛧⛧⛧
Formations were humanity's answer to individual weakness.
Alone, a human was fragile. Outmatched by beasts in strength, speed, and ferocity. But together, unified under a single will, they became something more.
The effectiveness of a formation depended on two factors.
First: synchronization. The army's resonance with the eye of the formation, usually the leader. This came from trust, respect, even fear. An army that believed in its general would move as one organism, their collective will amplifying the formation's power.
Rowan commanded supreme trust from his men. That was the first reason he was unparalleled in Formation mastery.
Second: capacity. The leader's ability to handle the formation's demands. Communication formations required broad vision and mental strength. Power-concentration formations required the capacity to bear combined force. Mana-manipulation formations required exquisite control.
The Riven Formation was a mana-manipulation type. And Rowan possessed an innate talent that made him its perfect master: Mana Authority.
His authority over mana was supreme among his race. Mana became docile under his will, bending to his commands with minimal resistance. And the more he trained his control, the more his mental capacity expanded—because his talent didn't just make mana obedient, it naturally cultivated his mental strength alongside it since it was one of the two main ingredients to controlling mana following Will.
Willpower was too complex for a single ability to influence directly. But mental capacity? That, his talent could enhance.
And so the Riven Formation, which should have been impossible for any human to maintain across two million soldiers, became Rowan's signature weapon.
Through the formation, he felt every battalion, saw through their eyes, felt their injuries, and knew when they were about to break.
…All to keep them alive.
Not all of them. Not even most of them. But certainly more than should have been possible.
⛧⛧⛧
The losses mounted anyway.
Thousands dead. Tens of thousands. The Narkals were endless, and even perfect tactics couldn't overcome infinite numbers.
The Great Beasts were the worst. Each one required entire battalions to bring down, and even then, they'd kill hundreds before falling. One Great Beast's foot came down on a glowing cavalry unit, and fifty men alongside their horses were crushed flat in an instant, their light snuffed out like candle flames.
Rowan felt every death through the formation since he felt the connections sever one by one, like strings being cut.
But he never stopped and kept fighting. They all kept fighting.
But it wasn't enough. It was never enough…
The Narkals were pushing them back, compressing them, about to encircle them completely. In minutes, they'd be surrounded, unable to maneuver or kite. They'd be slaughtered where they stood.
Unless—
Rowan's eyes snapped to the west. Through the formation's shared senses, he saw it: a massive, dense forest, stretching for kilometers.
There.
"All battalions!" His voice thundered through the formation. "West! Into the forest! MOVE!"
The army pivoted as one, the Riven Formation's coordination making the maneuver impossibly smooth for such a massive force. They charged toward the tree line, Narkals pursuing, but the humans were faster now, almost as if desperation lent them speed.
They crashed into the forest like a wave breaking on rocks.
⛧⛧⛧
The trees changed everything.
The Narkals' numbers meant nothing when they couldn't mass properly. The Great Beasts couldn't maneuver between the ancient trunks. The shock troops got tangled in roots and underbrush.
And the Pride army, connected through Rowan's formation, suddenly had a massive advantage. This was all thanks to one of the Riven Formation functions. It created a mental map of the surroundings, built from the collective senses of every soldier.
Rowan saw the entire forest in his mind. Trees, clearings, paths. He guided his units through it like a general moving pieces on a board, using the terrain to split Narkal groups, isolate Great Beasts, and turn their overwhelming numbers into a liability.
The kiting strategy that had been barely working in the open became devastatingly effective under the canopy.
Battalions would glow bright, strike from ambush, then vanish into the trees before the Narkals could retaliate. Another unit would hit from a different angle. Then another. The beasts were being bled, cut apart into pieces too small to overwhelm but large enough to hurt.
It was working.
They were still dying. The forest floor was slick with blood, human and Narkal alike, but they were holding.
⛧
⛧
⛧
One day passed.
Then night.
Then dawn again.
The Pride army fought without rest. Soldiers dropped from exhaustion, were trampled, and kept fighting on their knees. Men with shattered bones kept swinging swords. Men with mortal wounds kept standing until blood loss finally dragged them down.
Rowan didn't sleep or eat. He became akin to a machine that only knew how to channel mana through the formation and keep his army moving, fighting, and surviving.
Morikawa fought beside him the entire time, as efficient as ever, but still bored-looking, and still killing with every breath.
On the Narkals's side… They kept coming, kept dying, kept coming.
Slowly, agonizingly slowly, the tide began to thin. Not because the Narkals were running out. They weren't. But because the forest was becoming impassable with corpses.
Mountains of dead. Valleys filled with bodies, and giant trees painted red.
It was an image that would haunt any fragile soul, but also the Pride army's mark of resistance.
⛧
They reached the forest's eastern edge near midday of the second day.
The Pride army, what remained of it, stumbled out into open air, blinking in sudden sunlight, still glowing faintly with formation light.
Rowan took one look at his men and felt a crack in his chest.
Maybe four hundred thousand left… Out of two million.
Three-quarters dead. But they have done the impossible feat of holding until now.
Behind them, the Narkals were still in the forest, trying to navigate the corpse-choked passages. They'd emerge eventually, maybe in minutes, maybe an hour.
Rowan opened his mouth to give the order to form ranks, prepare for the final stand—
—and stopped.
On the horizon, barely visible through the heat shimmer, was a golden line.
It grew as he watched it expand and then revolve into shapes.
Banners. Thousands of them.
And at their head, nine golden tails caught the sunlight like flags of flame.
The demi-human army had arrived.