The Extra is a Genius!?-Chapter 612: Against the Horde [VI]

From the high position above the battlefield, Noel saw Roberto begin to move and understood it immediately.

The quiet part was over.

Until then, Roberto had only been watching, letting the battle unfold while the world bled itself trying to hold back the horde. But now he had taken that step, and that alone changed the meaning of everything below.

"We move too," Noel said. "I need to reach him before he causes too much damage."

Beside him, Noir did not waste time answering with words. Her human form dissolved almost at once, black fur spilling back into shape as she returned to her wolf form. Not the tiny pup body from before, and not yet the massive eight-meter monster she could become now either. Just the size of a normal adult wolf, lean and dark, purple streaks along her fur and those sharp eyes already fixed on the battlefield below.

Selene looked toward him. "You’re going to use "Shadow Step" to close the distance?"

"I think that’s the best option."

Then the mana reached them.

Noel’s expression changed at once. The monsters advancing behind Roberto were nothing like the waves the battlefield had been handling until now. Stronger dragons. Unique monsters. Heavier presences layered one after another until the air itself felt wrong. He read them quickly, and that only made it worse.

Archmage. Almost all of them. Most at the top of the rank.

Archmage Elite.

"Shit," Noel muttered, the word leaving his mouth before he could stop it.

That changed everything. If those things reached the field cleanly, the line below would be torn apart before he even got the chance to engage Roberto properly. He looked at Selene and Noir.

"Buy me five minutes." Neither of them interrupted him. "After that I’ll go for Roberto. But first those monsters need to be stopped, or at least slowed enough that they don’t tear through everyone below."

"Understood," Selene said without hesitation.

Noel stayed where he was. Mana gathered in front of him and began compressing into a dark sphere, small at first, then slowly growing as black fire folded inward on itself with unnatural density. "Dark Sun." Not the old version. Not thirty seconds. Five full minutes at Manacode level.

Below, Selene and Noir launched themselves toward the battlefield. Above, Noel kept casting, the black orb in front of him growing heavier and darker with every passing second.

The next wave entered the battlefield properly a few breaths later, and the difference was immediate.

The earlier monsters had been dangerous. These were worse in a way the whole field could feel at once. Their presence rolled over the lines like pressure before a storm, heavy enough that ordinary soldiers and weaker mages understood without anyone needing to explain it. This was no longer a fight they could influence meaningfully. If they stayed in front of those creatures, they would only die there.

Orders spread fast. Fall back where possible. Make space. Let the strongest take the front.

The battlefield shifted again, harsher than before but cleaner too. Lower-ranked defenders withdrew in broken but disciplined steps while the real wall moved forward to replace them. Daemar stepped into the new line with the calm of a man who had already accepted how bad things were. Marcus came from one side with sword in hand and blood still on his armor. Garron moved beside him like a living siege weapon. Laziel followed close, pale and tense, but still advancing. Elena and Clara took their places in nearby sections. Redna moved up as well, mana already gathering around her. The personal imperial forces of Alveron IV advanced in formation, and with them came the other Archmages present across Noel’s side.

A war inside the war had just begun.

The stronger monsters crashed against that new wall almost immediately. Dragons descended lower. Massive creatures tore into the front with force that made the ground shake. Faster beasts slipped between the heavier ones searching for killing angles, only to meet higher-level spells, stronger blades, and people who could actually answer them.

Then Selene and Noir arrived.

They came in fast from above the battlefield, cutting into the new frontline before the pressure there could turn ugly. Noir hit the ground first in her smaller wolf form and then changed again without slowing, shadow pouring off her body as she expanded into her true adult shape. Eight meters tall, black fur and purple streaks rippling across a frame large enough to make nearby soldiers stare for half a second before relief reached their faces. To Noel’s side she looked like reinforcement. To Roberto’s monsters she looked like a problem.

Selene kept moving until she reached the position she wanted. Then she stopped.

Her wand, shaped like it had been carved from ice itself, rose slowly into the air. Around her the atmosphere shifted before the spell even began. The wind thinned. Breath started turning white. The cold arrived first, quiet and absolute, like winter had just decided to open its eyes.

The temperature around Selene dropped so quickly that the battlefield felt it before anyone understood why. Breath began freezing the moment it left the mouth. Moisture thickened in the air until every exhale looked pale and heavy. The wind itself changed, turning white at the edges, slower somehow, as if the whole space around her had been dragged into a deeper winter than the season had any right to hold. Even the monsters rushing forward reacted, some instinctively slowing, others snarling as frost gathered over claws, scales, and bone before the spell had fully taken shape.

Selene moved through that cold with "Gravity Step." Her body cut across the battlefield in impossible lines, one instant on the broken ground near the frontline, the next gliding over a collapsed barricade, then twisting through the air at an angle that should not have existed. She was not simply rushing forward. She was placing herself with precision, reading the density of the incoming wave and the shape of Noel’s line at the same time, until she reached the exact point where the spell would hurt the enemy most and her side least.

Then she raised her wand fully.

"Frostfall Requiem."

The battlefield changed in an instant. A pulse of freezing mana burst outward from Selene like a white heartbeat, silent for less than a breath and then immediately followed by violence. The cold did not spread gradually. It arrived all at once. A vast storm of white frost crashed over the incoming wave, swallowing dragons, giant monsters, and fast-moving beasts beneath a blizzard so dense it looked like a piece of the sky had broken loose and fallen to earth. Wind screamed through the field. Countless microscopic ice needles filled the storm, so fine they slipped into gaps in scales, under plating, through eyes and joints and open wounds, freezing from the inside where brute durability stopped mattering.

Hundreds of monsters were caught at once.

A dragon descending too low stiffened in midair as its wings froze over in spreading white, then dropped from the sky like a stone and crushed two beasts beneath it. One of the ten-meter monsters tried to push through the blizzard on sheer force, but frost climbed over its body layer by layer until its movement slowed, cracked, and stopped. Faster beasts that had been weaving between their heavier allies vanished inside the storm and came out as broken shapes tumbling across the frozen ground with limbs half-shattered by the pressure.

This was not the version of "Frostfall Requiem" she had once used before. Selene had grown too much since then. The storm she called now did not feel like an attack. It felt like a local disaster, a section of absolute winter forced into existence for a few devastating moments.

Noir made it worse for anything that survived.

She hit the outer edge of the frozen wave in her giant shadow wolf form like a black avalanche, crashing through half-frozen monsters, snapping necks, tearing open torsos, and batting wounded beasts aside with enough force to send them spinning into the ice-choked field. One dragon that had barely survived the first collapse tried to drag itself upright, only for Noir to leap onto its back and tear through the base of its neck before it could lift its head.

The effect on Noel’s side was immediate. The Archmages stepped into the opening at once. Marcus and the others pushed harder. Redna’s magic slammed into the staggered survivors before they could recover. Imperial soldiers under Alveron IV’s personal forces surged behind the stronger front, cutting down crippled beasts that moments earlier would have torn them apart. Even ordinary defenders found courage again when they saw dragons falling and giant monsters frozen where they stood.

That part of the battlefield, which had been on the verge of being swallowed, suddenly pushed back with all its teeth.

Far above, Noel had not moved.

In front of him, the black orb of "Dark Sun" continued to grow, folding in on itself with a density that made the surrounding mana feel wrong. Larger already. Darker already. The black fire compressed so tightly that even from a distance it looked dangerous in a way normal spells never did. He kept casting without interruption while the battlefield below froze, shattered, and surged forward beneath Selene’s storm.

When "Frostfall Requiem" finally began to thin, the damage it left behind was impossible to ignore. Frozen corpses and broken monsters spread across the field like the remains of a white catastrophe. The morale rushing through the line was almost physical now, sharp enough to turn fear into movement and hesitation into attack.

And above them, still casting, Noel stood before the growing black sun that had not yet been released.