Chapter 212: The Permitted Battlefield
The ground had already crumbled, making it nearly impossible to find solid footing.
Where The Great Gromchi's power had reached, dark energy churned between shattered earth and broken stone. The fissures writhed as though alive.
"Close the gap! Hold the line!"
Someone shouted, but it was easier said than done.
A young soldier gritted his teeth and tried to move his feet. The moment he stepped forward, all sensation vanished from his thighs down. As though something had carved through below his knees, the strength holding his body upright drained straight into the ground.
"Ugh……?"
He had no idea why. Both legs were clearly planted on the ground, yet his balance refused to hold. Even the sounds reaching his ears felt wrong. The battlefield was still deafeningly loud, but the noise came to him as though from behind a wall of glass—distant, muffled.
"Aike!"
The veteran soldier beside him grabbed him by the collar and yanked. As his body lurched forward, it swung back the opposite way and he toppled. In that same instant, a shield before him twisted and crumpled. His life was unharmed, but his elbow snapped clean through.
Ironically, the scream that tore from his mouth was what told those around him he was still alive.
Soldier Aike stumbled back several more steps on reflex. And just like that, the world returned to what it was. As though a wad of cotton had been torn from his ears, sound came crashing in all at once.
The screams at the front line, the clash of steel, the detonations of mana, curses flying in from every direction. Everything that had been blurred only moments ago snapped back into sharp focus. The feeling in his legs returned a beat later.
"Pull yourself together! It's fine here!"
A hoarse voice came from behind him. The old soldier who had saved his life muttered in a spent tone.
"As long as you don't step inside, you'll be alright! This spot is safe. At least up to here……"
Aike forgot entirely about the pain of his shattered elbow. He looked down at his right hand in silence. His fingers were trembling uncontrollably, regardless of his will.
At last, he managed to squeeze out words.
"What…… Was that just now? Was that…… magic?"
"Magic would've been easier to deal with."
The old soldier looked up at the sky as he continued. His field of view barely fit the upper half of The Great Gromchi.
"Everything around it is warped. The ground, the people—all of it. Don't bother trying to make sense of it. That thing is a monster beyond reason."
When he finished speaking, the old soldier pointed the tip of his spear at the ground. There, a single line had been drawn.
The color of the earth was off somehow. Half of it looked untouched, while the rest had been stained by darkness, turned a deep, blackened hue. Along that boundary, the soldiers of the alliance forces had naturally come to a halt. Those brave enough to push further stumbled and staggered, drawing desperate breaths only after scrambling back.
"No approach! Hold formation! Any unilateral action will—!"
The frontline commanders screamed until their throats were raw. But their words couldn't reach their ends. Because others were already stepping past that line.
Fwooooosh!
Light flooded in.
A blinding white flash blazed out, pushing back the boundary of the darkened zone if only for a moment. The soldiers instinctively shielded their eyes. Only those who forced them open could see the figures walking into it.
Simple but immaculate armor. Their weapons were each different, but one thing was the same. Not a single one of them wavered.
They moved across the shadow-swallowed earth as though walking down a flat stone road.
"……They're Masters."
Someone murmured, and even the soldiers nearby fell quiet. The curses and screams that had been boiling over until just moments ago, even the prayers calling on the names of gods, went completely silent.
The old soldier tapped Aike on the shoulder.
"You saw it, didn't you? From here on, it's not our place. Neither you nor I can go in there."
The young soldier felt something lodge in his throat—a feeling he couldn't name. He couldn't tell whether it was relief, shame, or something else entirely. He could only watch the backs of those pressing forward.
Quite some time passed before he gathered himself enough to speak.
"Clearly…… it was never a place for someone like me."
"That's right. That's why those people are the ones going in."
The old soldier answered evenly. Like a man who had come to accept that fact long, long ago. In the meantime, the mana of darkness grew only more vivid.
Outside, tens of thousands of troops stood locked in a standoff. But inside that boundary, only warriors who had earned the right were drawing closer to The Great Gromchi's shadow.
***
Beyond the boundary where the light had split, two warriors leapt in simultaneously.
At the vanguard was Belmar.
The man who propped up the battlefield not with a shield, but with his very existence. With every step he took, the dark mana flinched—yet he didn't so much as twitch. Calling it walking over fissures didn't even do it justice. He simply drew his sword and slashed down across The Great Gromchi's ankle.
Behind him, a lean and swift silhouette followed close.
Viale's Master, Serin. The elven man drove into The Great Gromchi's domain and matched his rhythm to Belmar's. The Great Gromchi swatted its foot as though swatting away something irritating, but Serin was already gone from that spot. What remained was an afterimage—and a shred of torn air.
And then, the two Masters' blades converged.
A movement that carved into one leg from both directions simultaneously. Belmar's sword bit into the inner ankle of The Great Gromchi, while Serin gouged out the outer. Not a word exchanged, not a single glance shared—yet their movements were as precise as those of a single body.
Crkk-CRACK!!
"GRRRAAAAGH—!"
For the first time, a howl full of pain rang out. Every living thing on that vast battlefield turned toward The Great Gromchi. As the giant buckled to one knee, a thick cloud of dust billowed up from the impact.
But the Masters knew.
This was only the beginning. Rather than their attack having truly landed, The Great Gromchi had deliberately shifted its center of gravity.
‘I can't let my guard down.’
Serin murmured inwardly. He launched himself through the billowing dust, having anticipated the violent movement of his opponent a beat ahead of time.
The Great Gromchi raised its left hand and brought it crashing down toward him. In response, Belmar pressed forward with a sharp offensive drive. He poured mana into his legs and vaulted into the air in a single bound.
He was aiming for the giant's head.
In an instant, an exchange of offense and defense erupted.
CRAKRAKRAK!!
The ground where the giant's fist connected could hold no longer and caved in entirely. As the area collapsed, The Great Gromchi's body sank underground up to knee height.
In that opening, Serin dodged The Great Gromchi's fist with nimble footwork. Chunks of rock flew, but they posed no real threat.
The Great Gromchi, on the other hand, drew blood for the first time.
"The hide is thick."
Belmar landed atop a large boulder and looked up at the enemy's massive frame. He had aimed for the head, but The Great Gromchi had spread its opposite hand and intercepted his attack.
Apex of Annihilation—even with the full force of a Master's blade behind it, merely slicing through the hide was the best he could manage. No, more than that—it had been dangerous. Had he not expelled mana into the air to pull himself free mid-flight, he would have been swept away by the enemy's palm.
He narrowed his brow, expression heavy. At this range, under these conditions, a single mistake meant death outright.
"……This isn't good."
Serin saw the same thing.
Belmar had carved a deep wound into The Great Gromchi's palm, yet it appeared to impose no restriction on the enemy's movements whatsoever. More precisely, it acted as though the very concept of injury didn't exist for it. The Great Gromchi moved on its giant's instinct alone—swinging both arms wide, sweeping everything around it.
It was then that the gazes of the two Masters briefly met. Simultaneously, they recalled the warning that Mage Yelayen had given them.
"The enemy before you is not one, but two. Do not forget that."
With that, Belmar and Serin suppressed their desire to force a quick conclusion. They had not come here to win. They had come to buy time.
It was what Calix had also stressed repeatedly.
Just then, The Great Gromchi swung one arm again. This time, from beneath the collapsed ground, it scooped up a chunk of erupting lava.
Belmar took the front, and Serin drove in from the flank.
Still—
There was no advantage to be had.
***
Calix stood atop a low hill.
A position that gave a clear view of the entire battlefield. Far enough not to face The Great Gromchi's domain head-on. The last boundary where human standing still held meaning.
He drew a slow, deep breath and opened his field of view.
He looked with his eyes, but read with his mana. The sensation threading through his bloodline—the lineage that read the world in color—spread out fully before him.
The battlefield was caught within a single great current.
Light and darkness, layers of faint pulses folding over and moving through one another. The Tunnel Worms cutting through underground, the giants and the soldiers resisting them, the wind Mage Yelayen had conjured and Ella's divine power. And at the center of it all—
Two distinct masses came into clear view.
"……Two, as expected."
Calix's expression hardened.
One was already visible. The being shaking the earth to its foundations—The Great Gromchi. And then there was the other one.
Invisible to the eye, yet a force enveloping the entire battlefield. Calix's gaze pinpointed its nature precisely.
‘Marcaron, Who Twists The Natural Order.’
It did not step forward. Instead, it lingered at the fringes of the battlefield, toying with its currents. The Corrupted with crushed skulls rose back to their feet. Even severed arms and legs crawled across the ground in a single direction.
The result was that gaps were filled without any reinforcement of their numbers.
"They're holding out better than expected. If it stays like this—"
The allied command spoke as though they had done everything right, but Calix's thinking was entirely different. The front line was neither being pushed back nor gaining ground.
‘They're just churning through people in the same spot.’
He clenched his jaw.
What was most dire was that even The Great Gromchi was resonating with Marcaron's power. It reacted to wounds and pain, but that was nothing more than reflexive wariness. The mana of darkness had woven together to create a giant that refused to die.
Masters Belmar and Serin were holding on, but what they had been holding down was only one giant.
"With this structure…… It won't last long."
Deploying additional Masters.
The obvious option. If Calix went himself, or sent Niboria's Master—Sevi Belgrado—the balance against The Great Gromchi could be broken at minimum.
But Calix shook his head.
That choice had never existed to begin with.
"If one of the two must be taken down first……"
At his murmured words, Gregor at his side responded.
"You're saying to go after the one that's the head of the enemy, yeah?"
"……Yes."
He quietly reached his conclusion.
The longer this dragged on, the more disadvantaged the Alliance Forces became. Left as it was, they would bleed soldiers, lose momentum, and eventually lose their chain of command.
In contrast, the enemy would simply keep pouring in, over and over again.
Calix breathed out slowly.
In the end, there was only one option.
To break this structure, Marcaron had to be cut out first.
"When to move will be everything."
Gregor's counsel was correct.
However, Calix said nothing more. It wasn't yet the stage to put it into words aloud. For now, it was a time to endure.
But when the moment came—
‘I won't hesitate.’
Ultimately, this battlefield would only end when one side had to break. His thoughts were already moving toward the next phase.