“Form ranks!”

“Form ranks!”

“Defensive formation! Form up!”

The messengers galloped through the lines, waving their flags as they relayed the order through the entire formation.

“Form up?”

But the “soldiers” receiving the order all looked bewildered.

“How the hell are we supposed to do that?”

Old Bear struggled for quite a while before finally pulling off the helmet that was one size too small for him, then turned blankly to the person beside him.

“You know how?”

The man next to him, sporting a mohawk, shook his head wildly.

Form ranks?

What kind of joke was that?

Guys like them, who came out of the underworld, had only ever stood in their neatest lines in some filthy alley in the Lower District, queueing up to pick which girl they wanted. How the hell were they supposed to know how actual soldiers formed up in an army?

Wasn’t standing in rows already a formation?

“Wasn’t the whole point just to put on a show? Why’s it suddenly real?”

“How should I know? Maybe it looks more convincing this way?”

“Bullshit. At a time like this, what’s the point of looking convincing?”

Old Bear glanced around and scratched his head.

“I haven’t noticed anybody spying on us for a while now. Don’t tell me we still have to act convincing even when nobody’s watching?”

“Professionalism. That’s called professional acting, you idiot,” the mohawk man said with open contempt.

Old Bear flew into a rage.

“What the hell’s professionalism good for? Back in the day, those highborn bastards with all their precious refinement still had to rely on my smuggling routes!”

“And that’s why after all this time, you’re still just a crude thug.”

“You—”

Old Bear rolled up his sleeves, ready to show the bastard next to him just how powerful a man could become after throwing professionalism out the window. But before he could swing, he seemed to sense something. His movement faltered, and he stared blankly into the distance.

Under the astonished eyes of the people around him, Old Bear frowned in confusion for a moment, then suddenly dropped flat to the ground and pressed one ear against the earth to listen carefully.

“Is it possible...”

A moment later, Old Bear raised his head, his face grave.

“Is it possible the reason they told us to form ranks isn’t because of professionalism at all, but because the enemy has actually reached us?”

“You’ve got to be kidding.”

The mohawk man had been bracing himself, thinking Old Bear was really about to say something serious. But hearing that, he burst out laughing.

“The enemy? You mean those Kingdom bastards? Old Bear, don’t tell me you actually bought into that rumor. You think those Kingdom pieces of trash could really break Notasia? And even if they did break Notasia, what, soldiers don’t need to regroup? The army doesn’t need supplies? How could they possibly launch another attack this fast?”

“No, I can feel it...”

“Feel it? Since when can something like this run on feelings? This is what happens when you don’t read enough, Old Bear. Fine, maybe you’ve got no refinement, but you should at least have some common sense. Those Kingdom bastards aren’t some kind of superhuman freaks who can run a hundred miles a day on their own two legs. How could they possibly get here that fast?”

The mohawk man laughed and pointed at the shield in his hand.

“If those Kingdom bastards really do get here that fast, I’ll eat this shield—”

Boom!

Before he could finish, a tremor like a tidal wave rolled in from afar, spreading across the land.

At first, it was faint, no more than the murmur of a brook a few hundred yards away.

But in the time it took to exchange two jokes, the sound—and the vibration underfoot—suddenly swelled, layering over itself until it became a tsunami that seemed capable of swallowing everything whole.

Old Bear and the mohawk man both looked up in shock. Beyond the endless military formation, at the far edge of the horizon, they saw a shadow spreading with the tremors, as if it were devouring the earth itself. It quickly expanded until it filled the entire northern half of the plain.

“Those vaguely human-looking things are °• N 𝑜 v 𝑒 l i g h t •° Kingdom soldiers?”

The mohawk man stared blankly for a while before muttering, “I’ve never been to the Kingdom. So that’s what people there look like? That... rugged?”

“I guess so. I’ve never been there either.”

Old Bear nodded first, then turned expressionlessly to look at him.

“So are you planning to eat the whole shield in one go, or tear it into smaller bites?”

“This is not the time for that old joke! The enemy—the enemy’s here! Hurry up and get ready!”

The mohawk man’s voice was already shaking as he clutched the shield in his hands.

At a moment like this, only that food... no, that shield could give him even the slightest sense of safety.

“If we don’t get ready now, we’re going to die here today.”

“I fucking know that! But I don’t know what I’m supposed to do to get ready! I already told you, I don’t know how to form ranks!”

Old Bear roared right back, his whole face twisted up.

Back in the Lower District of Belrand, he had counted as a local big shot, controlling several smuggling routes worth a fortune every day.

But to be honest, war had always been something very far removed from his life. He had never once imagined that one day he would stand on a battlefield as nothing more than an ordinary soldier.

Even a flashy local snake in the Lower District, once thrown into this bloody battlefield, was nothing more than expendable cannon fodder.

Just like everyone else around him, he was afraid.

Just like everyone else, he trembled.

So... had the path he chose in order to climb higher been the wrong one after all?

Old Bear could not help sinking into thought. But before he could think it through, a furious shout burst into his ears like his mother yelling at him to get out of bed in the morning, too urgent to ignore for even a second.

“What the hell are you standing around for?”

The messenger soldier from before had come back.

“Grab your shields and get to the front! Don’t scatter! The moment you scatter, it’s all over!”

“Oh! Right!”

“And get the magic cannons out! Before the enemy gets all the way here, use the cannons to cut down their numbers and kill their momentum as much as possible!”

“Magic cannons...”

Old Bear’s eyes lit up.

Right. They still had those!

Ignoring the mohawk man beside him, who was already hustling forward with his shield raised, Old Bear ran straight to the rear.

By now, the compartments of dozens of wagons had already been removed, and the carefully arranged camouflage stripped away. The thick barrels of the magic cannons glinted with a cold, grim light beneath the sun.

These were all the newest magic cannons, meant to be shipped to the front as reinforcements.

The cannons were in place already, but because of the chaos caused by the sight of that enormous enemy force, no one could find enough gunners.

Old Bear did not waste a single word. He rushed over and grabbed the sighting handle himself.

The cold touch surged straight into his soul, and yet it made his blood ignite all at once.

For a single instant, Old Bear felt as if he had found again the bold ambition he had once had when he helped hunt down that criminal wanted by His Majesty the Emperor.

That was right...

So what if it was the Kingdom army? So what if they came roaring in with overwhelming momentum?

As long as he had this machine of pure violence in his hands, he was the kind of man who would fire even at one of those top-tier monsters who could slap him to death with a single blow!

So what were a few Kingdom bastards supposed to do?

“Come on!”

Old Bear roared as he quickly aimed at the dark tidal wave spreading toward them.

“Whatever the hell you are, eat a shot from Old Bear first!”

Boom! 𝗳𝐫𝚎𝗲𝚠𝚎𝗯𝕟𝐨𝘃𝚎𝗹.𝗰𝗼𝗺

A torrent of gathered magic tore through the sky and crashed into the all-devouring shadow like a falling star.

...

...

A blinding burst of light exploded within the shadow.

And then it was swallowed up almost at once by the vast tide.

“No good. Useless.”

Muen lowered the telescope.

“There are too many of them. The magic cannons won’t do much either. Those things were never really about firepower on a battlefield in the first place—their deterrence mattered more than their actual damage. But from the look of it, these monsters that only barely still resemble human beings... don’t feel fear.”

Muen’s gaze shifted slightly.

At his feet, the first one that had rushed him had already been hacked down into a limbless stump, writhing across the ground like a maggot.

But even so, that maggot still had not given up crawling toward the living people in front of it. On its gaunt, horribly twisted face, one could still vaguely make out an overwhelming hunger.

“No fear. No reason. Little sense of pain. Hard to put down. Following the scent of the living...”

Muen drew in a deep breath, temporarily suppressing the blackness deep inside his pupils.

“To be honest, if I didn’t sense absolutely no Evil God aura from them, I’d think this was the work of some madman serving one of the Evil Gods again.”

But clearly, whatever method had turned them into monsters seemed even more refined than the methods some Evil God cultists used.

After all, the reason the monsters made by Evil God cultists were so hard to kill was because they were under the influence of an Evil God’s power.

But these freaks were just as troublesome, and they also seemed to possess a kind of “immortality”...

Not because they were truly immortal.

But because they were constantly burning themselves.

Their flesh, their bones, their souls...

Burning without pause.

Dancing without pause.

Like candles.

Like the dancers in fairy tales who put on red dancing shoes and cannot stop.

Until they have burned themselves completely away, they will never stop.

That was why they were so ravenous.

Why they chased after other living creatures with such madness.

Because only by doing that could they keep burning.