Ashen dove back into the dark forest alongside the Pride army, and immediately understood what they'd survived.
Corpses.
Everywhere. Human and Narkal alike, piled in heaps, scattered across roots, draped over fallen logs. So much death that the forest looked more red than green. Blood and gore decorated every tree leaf and every patch of dirt, the smell of rot so thick it coated his throat.
Instead of a battlefield, this looked like a graveyard masquerading as one.
His horse picked its way carefully between bodies, and Ashen kept his eyes forward, focusing on the rhythmic glow of the Riven Formation ahead. If he looked too long at the corpses, he'd see their faces. Better not to.
The sound of steady, mechanical chopping reached them first.
Then they saw the Narkals, hacking at trees with crude blades and claws, felling them slowly but methodically as they advanced through the forest.
The demi-human army crashed into them like a golden wave.
Where humans fought with discipline and formations, demi-humans fought with instinct and speed. Fox kin leaped from branch to branch, blades flashing as they descended on isolated Narkals. Wolf kin circled in packs, coordinating kills with practiced efficiency. Elves loosed arrows from elevated positions, each shot finding eyes or throats.
Their confusion magic turned clearings into mazes. Illusions made single Narkals see dozens of enemies, sent them swinging at phantoms while real blades opened their backs. The mana capacity enhanced by the foxes' tails let them sustain this brutal pace for hours.
But hours were never enough to overcome this.
Against endless numbers, everything fell back into futility. Mana pools drained. Movements slowed. Soldiers who'd danced through the canopy hours ago now struggled to lift their swords.
From her position at the rear, Alice watched it happen and acted.
A red mana missile shot into the sky from the eastern flank, exploding into a star-burst pattern. Mana depletion.
Alice's response was immediate—a green missile launched from her position, exploding into an arrow pointing west. Fall back, rotate out.
The system was simple but effective. The demi-human theater was divided into two army groups, Northern and Southern, each containing multiple armies broken down into corps, then brigades, then battalions. Color-coded mana missiles identified which corps was signaling. Shapes conveyed the message: star for mana drain, shield for reinforcements needed, crossed lines for retreat, circle for casualties mounting.
Alice conducted the rotation like an orchestra, pulling exhausted battalions back to recover while fresh units surged forward. The frontline never collapsed because it never stayed the same frontline.
But even while commanding. She was also studying.
Her golden eyes tracked Narkal movements, cataloging patterns. How they swung their weapons. How they reacted to threats from above versus below. How their body composition changed between tribes—some heavily muscled, others lean and fast, some with thick hides that turned blades.
Every observation filed away in her memory, building a mental database of weaknesses and behaviors. When she finally joined the fray herself, she'd know every possible action and reaction.
A blue missile burst overhead—shield pattern. Reinforcements needed.
Alice signaled the reserve corps forward without looking away from the battlefield.
⛧⛧⛧
The Pride army adapted differently.
Rowan divided his four hundred thousand survivors into four groups of one hundred thousand each. Within each group, he designated a single soldier—the most skilled, the most experienced—as the executioner. The other 99,999 became escorts.
They roamed the forest hunting Great Beasts.
Ashen rode in the second group, part of the protective ring around their executioner—a scarred veteran named Kael who'd served for twenty years. They found their first Great Beast trampling through a cluster of Narkals, its hundred-meter frame barely fitting between the ancient trees.
"Formation!" The group commander's voice rang out.
Soldiers formed a protective circle. The Riven Formation blazed to life, milky white light engulfing every man.
Then the light moved—flowing like water from ninety-nine thousand nine hundred ninety-nine soldiers into one.
Kael blazed like a star, so bright Ashen had to look away. The man's body shook, veins standing out like ropes, eyes wide and bloodshot as more mana than any human should hold flooded his system.
He had minutes before it killed him. Maybe less.
Kael didn't hesitate. He launched forward, moving so fast he blurred, and his sword, glowing white-hot with channeled mana, carved through the Great Beast's ankle.
CRACK.
The tendon was severed, and the Beast stumbled.
Kael was already moving, running up its falling leg, blade carving through knee, thigh, hip. He reached its chest and drove his sword into its heart with both hands, pushing with strength that cracked his own bones from the force.
The Great Beast died.
Kael fell with it, hitting the ground hard. Blood leaked from his nose, ears, eyes. His body convulsed once.
Then he was still.
The light faded, and the formation redistributed.
"Next executioner, forward!" The commander's voice didn't waver.
A woman stepped out of the ranks—younger, maybe twenty-five. They moved to the next Great Beast.
⛧⛧⛧
It happened again. And again. And again. The cycle kept repeating itself.
Some executioners died mid-strike, brains hemorrhaging from mana overload before they could finish the kill. Others lasted long enough to bring down their target, then collapsed with internal bleeding or hearts that simply stopped.
Each death was as gruesome as it was necessary.
And each time, the next executioner stepped forward without hesitation or fear.
The Pride army, with a fraction of its former strength, killed more Great Beasts than the million-strong demi-human force.
It was humanity's terrifying potential on full display: what they could accomplish when they discarded conflict, prejudice, and became fearlessly united in the face of death.
⛧
Morikawa's group was different.
Only fifty men plus Rowan himself, moving like ghosts through the chaos, using the larger groups as cover to reach their targets.
When they found a Great Beast, Rowan channeled the mana of just fifty soldiers into Morikawa.
And that was enough.
Morikawa moved with efficiency that bordered on art. He targeted joints—ankle, knee, hip—making the titanic creatures kneel. Then he went for the kill: blade through the eye socket, or throat, or heart, depending on which was most accessible.
It looked effortless, but it was anything but.
The mana of fifty soldiers would kill an average man in seconds. Constant channeling like this should have turned Morikawa's insides to mush within minutes.
But his mana control was superb, and his body, trained to inhuman levels, could bear what others couldn't.
He made it look like a chore. Another Great Beast kneeling. Another blade to the brain. Moving on.
It was just taking out the trash for him.
⛧
⛧
⛧
Against all odds, they struck an equilibrium.
The demi-humans held the frontline with rotating battalions. The Pride army bled itself killing Great Beasts. The Narkals kept coming but couldn't break through fast enough.
For a brief, impossible moment, it seemed like they might actually survive until reinforcements arrived.
Alas…
"SCREEEEEEEEEEECH"
A screech reverberated through the entire forest, so loud it felt like the trees themselves were screaming. Narkals froze mid-swing, completely still for less than a second.
Then their behavior changed.
Regular Narkals stopped engaging entirely. They turned to the trees and began hacking with frenzied intensity—all of them, simultaneously, chopping at trunks with claws and weapons.
Individually, they were slow. Collectively, they were catastrophic.
Trees fell by the hundreds. Then thousands. The forest that had sheltered the alliance was being erased in real-time, torn down by sheer numbers acting with unified purpose.
As for the mastermind behind this…
A figure stood on the horizon. Not Great Beast-sized, but beyond them in rank. Its form was vaguely humanoid.
A Demon. Fourth stage of the ancient beast classification. While not the strongest physically, its absolute control over everything monster rank below it made its classification deserved.
And it had just made use of such control to have the forest destroyed.
Alice's rotation strategy shattered as demi-humans lost their cover. Fox kin leaping between branches found only empty air. Elves firing from high positions had their perches cut out from under them.
The Narkals swarmed.
The demi-human army started dying in droves.
On the distant horizon, between falling trees, Ashen saw soldiers break. Some fled deeper into the shrinking forest only to be run down. Others simply stopped fighting, standing motionless amid the carnage, waiting for death.
Morale collapsed like the trees around them.
Alice's voice rang out… commands, signals, desperately trying to reform the line. But there was no line anymore. Just chaos and blood and the steady thud-thud-thud of axes against wood.
Ashen's group pressed forward anyway, hunting their next Great Beast, because what else could they do?
His executioner, the fourth one since Kael, blazed with borrowed light and charged.
Around them, the forest fell.
And the Demon watched, satisfied, as its prey was driven into the open.