"I'm eating! I'm eating! I'm eat-eat-eating! Urk! I'm choking! Could you two kill a little slower?! The dishes are coming out way too fast, I can't even chew!"
"Hang in there, Abby."
"There's plenty more where that came from."
Amid the seemingly endless Tacet Discord Tide, both Rovers carved a path back with their Emeralds of Genesis, alternating strikes in seamless rhythm. When he swept the field clear and that fraction-of-a-second gap opened before his next swing, her blade was already there, filling the window like a meshing gear.
Together, they erased each other's openings.
Two swords wove a kill net without a single gap, and no matter how many Tacet Discords poured in, all they did was deliver Abby's next course.
"Ahaha, watching you fight is exquisite!"
Camellya let them pull her along by the hand. Under normal circumstances, a few injuries wouldn't slow her down. She'd have already shifted into her red state, thrown herself into an Overclocking Spiral, and danced through the Tide on her own terms.
But now...
I never imagined someone would protect me. It's not my style, but... this doesn't feel bad at all.
For once, Camellya chose to behave. She followed obediently, hand in hand with the two of them, content to stay sheltered in their wake. Rover had said it himself: Leader's orders.
What surprised her most was herself. Rebellious by nature, the kind of person who'd do something the instant someone told her not to, she'd somehow... listened. Without a fight.
That wasn't like her at all.
It was like a stray cat that had finally found its owner.
But as she'd thought: this felt good. Especially getting to watch them fight from this close, every strike brutal and clean, violence distilled into something gorgeous. Her heart hammered. She was about to bloom again.
Then a voice cut through the chaos.
"Tch! It's them. And... that woman!"
On a hillside some distance away, Phrolova spotted all three. When she saw Camellya being led by the hand, shielded between both Rovers, the fury hit like a physical blow.
She pressed a palm to her chest and drew a sharp breath.
Not heartache. But also heartache.
Three days ago, her battle with Camellya had ended in mutual annihilation. She'd overwhelmed the girl with swarms of Tacet Discords and left her mangled, but that suicidal flower had found an opening in her guard and driven a blade straight through her heart.
Both had taken wounds that should have killed them.
Both were tenacious blooms who refused to stay dead.
Phrolova especially. Her abilities bordered on true immortality. She'd "revived" after about fifteen minutes, the fastest comeback in history.
But unlike Camellya, who had people to hold her hand and fuss over her, Phrolova knew she'd never be cared for like that again.
And so, Solaris-3's most formidable scorned woman made her move.
"Hmph. Futile and pointless. But an eyesore all the same."
She slashed the air with her crimson Spider Lily like a conductor's baton, and the overture of a ruined world began. Countless red petals drifted down onto the Tacet Discords, driving them into frenzy even as they bent to her will.
In an instant, mindless monsters gained an external brain. They organized, coordinated, and launched a focused assault on all three.
All three felt the shift at once.
The Tacet Discords surged harder, wilder, throwing themselves forward in suicidal charges as though even being destroyed was worth it if they could keep the trio from reaching camp. It made no difference.
The two Rovers exchanged a glance and adapted on the spot.
"Time alter, quadruple accel!" Both at once.
She took his Emerald of Genesis, dual-wielding five-star weapons as she plunged ahead in a one-woman army, while he scooped Camellya into his arms.
At their next speed, Camellya couldn't keep up on foot.
From Phrolova's vantage, two golden streaks tore through the Tacet Discord Tide. Thousands of monsters couldn't lay a finger on them. In the space of a blink, the encirclement shattered.
"After them!!"
Fury drove the order. Her Tacet Discord proxies gave chase, external brain and all, but there was one inconvenient truth: that external brain wasn't particularly clever either.
If the Rovers had wanted to retreat cleanly, they could have opened a portal and vanished. They'd chosen to run on purpose, dangling themselves as bait, giving the horde something to chase.
Straight into the defensive line's kill zone.
"All units, open fire!!"
"Yes, sir!!"
Countless figures rose from concealment, Tacetite rifles leveled, and unleashed a storm. Echo Bullets rained down in sheets, and within the overlapping fields of fire there was nowhere to hide. In moments, thousands of Tacet Discords were annihilated. Frequencies began drifting free of the remains.
"M-me! I'll eat them!!"
Abby wiped its mouth, expression deadly serious, and inhaled with everything it had. The Frequencies were caught before the Threnodian could claim them, and both Rovers leveled up several times over.
"Urgh! Hic... can't... can't eat anymore. Please, let me rest. Just... hic... let me digest a little before the next round."
Abby patted a belly swollen to the size of a basketball, struggling to speak. It clamped both hands over its mouth, terrified that opening it again would let everything back out.
The Tacet Discords had all been Common Class and Elite Class, low in nutritional value per kill for Resonators at the Rovers' level. But the sheer volume made up for it, and for the first time, Abby was genuinely, uncomfortably full.
It needed time to process all that Frequency before it could stomach anything more. Rover, however, had come prepared.
"Here. I had Baizhi develop these digestive tablets. No idea if they work on Echoes, but give it a shot." He fished a handful of candy-colored pills from his belt pouch.
"Hic...! F-fine..."
Abby's expression went through several complicated stages as it popped one into its mouth, then gave up on flying entirely. The little Echo plopped down on the ground and sprawled flat.
Meanwhile, cheers erupted across the camp.
"Now that's what I'm talking about! Never wiped out that many Tacet Discords in one go!"
"Stay sharp. Tethys System says there's more incoming."
"Bring it! We'll handle however many come!"
"Shame we can't deploy the autonomous combat rigs at full scale, though."
Even the Midnight Rangers and Black Shores veterans had never faced a Tacet Discord Tide this massive. A war-class Threnodian's battlefield never ran short of soldiers, and annihilating the first wave in one sweep had morale soaring.
But Jinhsi, Rover, Jiyan, and the rest of the command staff knew better. This was only the beginning. Losses on this scale didn't even register for Ovathrax. They barely qualified as a rounding error.
"Hm? We've barely used any of those devices."
Camellya noticed something odd. Black Shores had brought a considerable stockpile of high-tech equipment for this operation, including experimental autonomous combat rigs. Place them correctly and they'd generate high-voltage fields, freezing frost zones, ground-spike traps, and more.
The kind of gear that, in Rover's previous life, Kuro had turned into tower-defense event content. Tailor-made for shredding large-scale Tacet Discord swarms. And yet almost none of it had been deployed.
"Yeah... can't be helped."
Aalto wandered over, scratching his head with a rueful look.
Black Shores' intel on Ovathrax had been limited. Some of this was brand-new information: the Threnodian could absorb the Frequency of weapons and equipment to strengthen itself. The more powerful the hardware, the greater the boost.
"So even though we've got plenty of solid gear, it's too effective for its own good. Deploy it and we're feeding the war-class Threnodian. Making it stronger. The autonomous rigs can only go in at critical points, minimum deployment. What a miserable enemy to fight."
A Threnodian, through and through. Born to negate Civilization itself.
Powerful weaponry was one of Civilization's proudest achievements. And Ovathrax could devour the Frequency of every weapon on the field. The stronger the arsenal, the stronger it became.
"That's exactly why the Midnight Rangers only carry the bare minimum," Jiyan said, flicking Tacet Discord blood from his blade. His fist clenched around the grip. "One sword, one rifle. Not even a spare knife. This thing forced us to adapt from the ground up."
It was why the Rangers had stopped recruiting non-Resonators years ago. Ordinary soldiers needed Tacetite weapons to stand a chance against powerful Tacet Discords, but their output paled next to a Resonator's, and the weapons' side effects took their toll. Worse, every weapon on the field was a gift to the enemy.
The downsides had long since outweighed the advantage of greater numbers.
So the Midnight Rangers had committed fully to an all-Resonator elite force, one where the most dependable weapons were their own skill, their Forte, and their trust in each other.
"The matchup really is the worst..."
Rover stared up at the Threnodian's moon, expression grim. As a fellow countryman in his past life, his first reaction to learning Ovathrax's design had been a heartfelt what the hell. Every citizen of his homeland shared the same chronic condition: the nagging fear that you didn't have enough firepower.
And Ovathrax's whole thing was that it loved your firepower. The more you brought, the stronger it grew.
That was why the Rangers' defensive lines were so light on heavy ordnance. Every single Ranger was an elite who could take on a hundred opponents in the outside world. They'd long since grown accustomed to fighting Tacet Discords at arm's length, bare-knuckle if they had to.
All of it beaten into them by the war-class Threnodian.
"A war-class Threnodian," one of the Black Shores members murmured, shaking their head. "It's the negation of Civilization itself. How have you held out against this thing for so long?"
A Midnight Ranger nearby grinned, tired but fierce. "Because Jinzhou's right behind us. No way in hell we're letting that bastard snuff out the lights back home."
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