Chapter 205: Pushed Back, But Not Broken
The shield wall let out a low growl. Not the sound of metal clashing, but the sound of standing men's breath pushing against one another.
Belmar ran toward the rear of the formation with his sword raised. In the distance beyond his field of vision, the plain was swelling.
"The enemy is coming!"
Sound came first. The scraping friction of tentacles raking beneath the earth, a horrific grinding as though bone and stone were being rubbed together. Then, clumps of dirt burst upward into the air.
The middle of the plain split open.
From that gap, a white hand burst out first. Fingers as slender and delicate as the arm of a three-year-old child. Yet they effortlessly tore through a mound of earth ten times their size. Then came an arm, a shoulder, a neck, and eyes rising up.
From the upper body alone, it was the shape of a beautiful woman. Smooth skin, disheveled yet naturally flowing hair, even the curve of a smile at the corners of her lips. However, those eyes were those of a vile temptress. As though blood had been thinly brushed across them, a lustrous crimson filled her pupils to the brim.
Those eyes curved gently, as though soothing a child.
[Found you.]
The soldiers at the front line drew a hollow breath. Some wore dazed expressions, some flushed red. But that too lasted only a moment, and without exception, they flinched.
The lower body followed upward.
A serpent's tail became visible. Not one, but hundreds upon thousands of scaled trunks tangled together into a mass. They formed one enormous clump, and with each movement they scraped and rubbed against one another, shaking the ground.
The Trampler, Saulak, twisted her waist.
The plain bent along with her. A shallow hill heaved, and that tremor sent a shock to the soldiers' knees.
"Raise your shields!"
Belmar shouted immediately.
The moment the cry rang out, several tentacle strands burrowed into the earth. They couldn't be seen with the eyes, but places where the soil had been packed firm suddenly caved in. It didn't feel like falling. It was closer to the earth beneath one's feet, drawing flesh down along with it.
"Ugh, aaaargh—!"
A soldier standing nearby staggered and fell. No, he had been mid-way through being sucked under and then stopped. Everything below his waist had fused with the ground as one.
His hands clawed at empty air, then came to a sudden halt. Without even finishing his scream, his face froze in place. The ghost of terror lingered in his eyes and the set of his mouth, and he was embedded in the ground like a statue.
"Don't, don't be shaken! Hold the gaps!"
A veteran soldier knocked on the helmet of the man ahead and bellowed, but the same thing was happening right beneath his own feet. Another body stiffened beside him. This time, without even a scream.
The middle rank of the alliance forces wavered for a single moment.
Belmar didn't simply stand by and watch. Without a word, he drove his blade deep into the ground. In the same motion, he seized the arm of a soldier standing without a shield and yanked him hard toward himself. The man's torso split apart with a tearing crunch, and the upper half of his body collapsed behind the shield.
"H-hey!"
"……He's gone!"
Belmar didn't bother to answer. In the corner of his vision, he could already see three ‘human shapes’ embedded in the ground.
He roared at the soldiers.
"Drive your shields into the ground! This is the land we are protecting!"
At the order, the alliance forces split by unit. Their movements were slow, but a fixed number gathered together and held firm.
Where the tentacles passed, the earth was drawn inward and carved out terrain like ravines, but those who had massed together were, strangely, left untargeted.
A soldier standing at the far edge of the front line gripped his shield handle even tighter. The sweat running from his palm made the handle slick, but he couldn't let go.
‘Too dangerous. This is far too dangerous.’
He acknowledged the reality. He had seen comrades dying right before his eyes. Every time the plain swelled, his body was telling him just how precarious the ground beneath him was.
Yet—
‘Still fine. I can hold on.’
It was different from the battles he had lost—when walls crumbled and formations broke. His shield was pressed against those beside him, his back entrusted to a comrade's breath. And in the gaps, the Mountain Rabbits were making their presence known throughout the front line.
If he was going to flee, now was the time. He'd have to fall back, show his back, and run. At least in those first few steps, he'd still be alive.
Yet, his feet wouldn't move.
Whether he turned his head left or looked to the right, in every direction he could find the continent's heroes. That, surely, must have been why he was still holding on.
Belief in victory kindled the ember of hope.
Around him, the Mountain Rabbits spread out. Along the edges of the shield wall the allied soldiers had formed, light footsteps followed in succession. Volga leapt forward and cut one of Saulak's tentacles in two, and the other Mountain Rabbits followed that current. They quickly shifted positions before the enemy's attacks could take hold of them.
True veterans.
At that moment, Saulak tilted her head. Those pupils, veiled in red, slowly swept across the mass of humans. A smile settled at the corners of the creature's mouth. A soft curve like the one just before lulling a child to sleep.
[They won't scatter…….]
Even with the battle not going her way, there was no sign of agitation. And then, all at once, the dark mana vibrated in fine tremors.
[How fortunate. Children who won't run,]
Saulak's long tongue slid slowly over her full lips.
[Taste so much better.]
***
The moment Saulak's gaze locked on the front line, movement stirred across the battlefield.
The Master of Viale, Serin, was already on the ground. Every time the earth shook, faint grooves formed across the plain. Not quite hills, not quite pits, an ambiguous size. Within them, bundles of tentacles were packed. Serin moved by deliberately stepping across them.
The places where Saulak had raked past were hollow like honeycombs. Not the trace of dirt, but of something alive having passed through. To Serin's eyes, it was all perfectly visible.
‘……They're connected.’
They weren't serpents moving independently. Hundreds of tentacles were responding as one body. A massive nerve cluster stretching outward from a single center.
What came next was something to be confirmed with the body.
At that instant, her shadow vanished from the ground. In the very moment a tentacle surged up from the earth, Serin's dagger drove into a joint. It wasn't the feeling of cutting flesh or tearing hide.
Tuck—
It was the feeling of a taut string, snapping.
The tentacle writhed as though shrieking and lost its strength. In the same instant, two soldiers who had been caught in its pull ceased their struggle. They frantically wrenched their legs free and gasped for rough breaths.
"Alive……."
There was no time to look back.
She continuously severed tentacles, searching for the force interfering with her ‘domain’. The denser the dark mana grew, the more her domain contracted—the closer she was getting to the enemy's true nature.
Then, Saulak whispered.
[A child who hides and cuts, needs to be disciplined.]
In an instant, her senses went haywire.
In a manner unbecoming of a Master, she misdirected her step. Her body refused to obey. As though her sense of direction had collapsed, the world slid by half a beat too slow.
Even so, Serin did not fall.
She bent her knees and steadied herself briefly on the ground. In place of sensation, she held her body up on experience. Once more, the dagger was swung.
Another connection was severed.
And at the same moment, the air across the battlefield shifted sharply.
Ella stepped forward.
She carried neither sword nor shield. Instead, she knelt on the ground and pressed her palms into the dirt. Vivid golden particles spread outward and pressed down upon the dark mana.
Sier and the senior clerics lent their hands. Multiple voices layered over one another and light flickered. It was not a complete Sacred Ground like before. But even so, it was enough.
As divinity and darkness collided, they hardened with the ground as their boundary.
Soon after, strands of Saulak's tentacles were dragged up to the surface. Things that had swum freely underground turned rigid all at once, as though suddenly gaining weight.
"Now!"
The priests moved in succession. They drove sacred relics into the ground, leaving markings behind. Around them, Saulak's ‘Trampling Force’ no longer reached.
The expressions of the soldiers changed.
The sound that had been scraping at their ears vanished. The nausea settling in their stomachs eased, and the whispers overturning their heads grew faint. Those who had been slumped on the ground drew ragged breaths and called up their mana.
Sier quietly murmured.
"Kriya grants us only the path we are capable of walking."
Ella nodded and replied.
"And it is our part to walk that path."
For the first time, Saulak's movements, which had dominated the battlefield, were cut off. The creature was still enormous, and still a threat.
But no longer could it freely chew and swallow the earth and flesh at will.
***
At the same time, Arankell, the captain of Latia, did not look at Saulak. He watched the ground. The moment the rhythm of vibrations that spread like ripples every time a tentacle moved—went off-beat.
"……It stopped."
Until just moments ago, this battlefield had belonged to Saulak. A creature that could move freely beneath the earth and tear anywhere open at will.
But now it was different.
The tentacles were bound to the surface, and the surface no longer swelled. The movements came in broken, stuttering bursts, and even the creature's main body, shaped in the form of a woman, staggered faintly.
Arankell did not turn his head. He simply raised one hand. With index and middle fingers crossed, he spread the signal unique to sailors.
"……Whale hunting!"
"The signal's out!"
It was a art unique to Latia, a passion, and also a culture. Unremarkable men challenging a great divine beast. Soon, his sailors split to both sides.
They kicked off with both legs and drove into the blind spots of the tentacles. All that they trusted and relied on were the harpoons in their hands. Not one but dozens of hooks flew out simultaneously.
Metal teeth sank into Saulak's body.
They couldn't pierce through, but they latched firmly onto the flesh and refused to let go. Into that gap, the navigators drove in. They shoved powder sticks into the open spaces between joints and joints.
"Light it!"
Crack-boom!!
No blood flew. No flesh scattered. Instead, the shape collapsed. The severed tentacles turned to black dust in an instant and swirled through the air.
Belatedly realizing the danger, Saulak sent tentacles shooting out, but the Mountain Rabbits charged in and blocked them instead.
Kotchap, cutting away at the enemy's flesh alongside Volga, called out.
"Those guys are geniuses at plundering!"
He was right.
Latia's sailors pulled on the ropes attached to their hooks, putting restrictions on Saulak's movements. When the recoil was strong, they deliberately let the rope loose, and then on the next beat they added more hands and yanked all at once. Before the ropes could snap, they threw hooks again, reinforced the lines, and spread their angles.
One by one, the ropes binding the enemy's body multiplied.
Saulak's body lurched violently.
First, the tentacles of the lower body lost their strength. The mass that had been gripping the earth latched onto the ground in reverse.
And at the end of it all.
Crash!
The upper body fell to the center of the battlefield. The earth roared as though an earthquake had struck.
The Trampler, Saulak, smiled no longer. Those crimson-stained eyes shook wide. Her breathing grew ragged.
[Again, again like this.]
Not fear.
[Do you intend to drive this body back into oblivion once more? Like that beast from the western desert?]
Saulak regarded every step of this process as humiliation.
[Then…… I will not yield so easily.]
At that moment, a young man with a sword in hand burst out from the center of the battlefield. Black hair, a silver blade, and over it all, a rippling grey mana.
It was Calix.