Chapter 447: Wounded Pride

"Boss, can’t we take it one step at a time?!"

Right after blocking the initial assault from the flying birds, the soldiers murmured shakily as they watched the tide of enemies approaching from every direction. They were practically pissing themselves with fear, as the horde seemed almost endless.

"You chose the path of ascension toward immortality, joined the sect, and dedicated yourselves to becoming stronger and stronger. This life is a race against time. The moment you slow down to catch your breath, your enemies will overtake you. Once you’re surpassed, you’ll be eliminated in the next battle. Survival of the fittest is the fundamental principle, and it’s cruel. If you’re not cruel to yourselves, your future will be far crueler," Priam said, his voice utterly indifferent.

The twins snorted and clenched their fists, genuinely ashamed of their soldiers’ fragile spirits. Only now did they recognize the critical flaw in their leadership: they had pushed themselves too hard while protecting their subordinates far too much.

*ROAR!*

The Corrupted Beasts roared in unison. Everyone drew their weapons and faced them head-on.

There was nowhere to hide. The terrain was extremely unfavorable, as they were surrounded on all sides. However, now that the enemies had arrived, they had no choice but to fight with all their might.

Suien, Meien, and the others gritted their teeth and charged forward. As a result, blood and guts flew through the air.

The twins’ offensive power was truly immense, but there were simply too many Corrupted Beasts. For every ten they killed, another ten took their place. There was no time to catch their breath.

The twins were forced to exterminate their targets with maximum power. If they took even one second longer, some soldiers would die as a result. They needed to kill as many enemies as possible to relieve the pressure on the others.

Even with the rest of the troops giving everything they had, they were still pushed to their absolute limits.

It wasn’t long before Meien let out a thunderous roar. She swallowed several pills at once and unleashed her full power. She had been saving them because she only had a few pills capable of boosting her strength so drastically.

*BOOOOOM!*

Suddenly, Meien transformed into a true Goddess of Fire, standing above a sea of ants.

She hovered in the sky, unleashing area attacks that reduced everything to ashes.

However, despite this, the pressure on the entire formation only continued to increase. There were far too many enemies to eliminate. If they let their guard down even a little, more would join the fray. If that happened, the ordinary soldiers would be subjected to an unsustainable burden.

The Holy Sages were also under tremendous strain, and the formation descended into chaos.

Seeing this, Suien also burned through all her resources. She summoned a multicolored offensive inscription that covered the skies with runes in a single second. Immediately afterward, blades of ice and wind began raining down upon the enemies.

The twins’ resources weren’t infinite; they could maintain that pace for no more than an hour.

As soon as the two began burning through everything they had, the pressure on the formation eased. The signs of disorder temporarily disappeared. The formation stabilized, and they gradually grew accustomed to the high-intensity battle.

Meanwhile, Priam watched the battlefield from high in the sky, using Transcendental Concealment to avoid being detected or attacked.

The archers and Arcanist Sages fired relentlessly. Everyone was drenched in sweat. They carried the greatest responsibility: if they failed to reinforce the areas under the heaviest pressure, they could cause the entire defensive line to collapse.

Pressured from all sides, they concentrated to the utmost, not daring to slow down.

With the twins’ temporary assistance, the formation held firm. But even after 50 minutes, the number of Corrupted Beasts wasn’t decreasing. On the contrary, more and more of them kept appearing on the horizon.

For the disciples fighting on the battlefield, that nearly an hour felt like an entire day and night. Even the twins were approaching the exhaustion of their resources, and the battle was about to return to a terribly precarious state.

Shortly afterward, when they stopped fighting at maximum power, it took mere minutes for the formation to descend into chaos once again under the relentless pressure, with soldiers constantly getting injured. The Holy Sages now had an endless amount of work to do.

"Boss, we can’t keep this up!" the Holy Sages shouted as they watched countless figures charging toward them. They were genuinely going to die like this.

Priam replied indifferently, "Don’t worry. As long as you hold out for another two hours, every last enemy will be dead."

"Another two hours?!"

Everyone who heard that nearly coughed up blood.

After just one hour of uninterrupted combat, the troops’ energy reserves had already dropped to seventy percent—and that was while they still had the twins’ full support. Now, without that maximum-power coverage, their exhaustion would accelerate exponentially.

"Boss, people are going to die!" some shouted, their voices choked with anxiety and desperation. An overwhelming number of casualties would occur among the disciples of both factions.

On the front lines, Meien and Suien’s faces shifted from red to purple with sheer rage. If they hadn’t been so bogged down in combat, they would have rushed over and punched every single person who kept pathetically whining to Priam.

Priam merely formed a faint smile, showing not the slightest trace of compassion.

"Becoming a Sage, fighting, and advancing in Rank in this world isn’t a game. It’s about staring death right in the face. If you’re not destined to become elite experts, you’ll eventually die humiliating deaths at the hands of your enemies. If that’s going to happen anyway, I’d rather you all die here and now. At least you’ll preserve a little dignity."

An icy chill gripped everyone’s hearts. They couldn’t comprehend how Priam could utter such cruel and merciless words.

"You can’t reap a harvest without sowing the seeds. If you want to become true experts, you must pay the corresponding price. In my eyes, all of you are nothing more than trash waiting to die. Do cowards like you really think you have the right to stand out? You want to join my faction and enjoy everything it has to offer while giving so little in return?

If you want my honest opinion, give up. You don’t even have the determination necessary to become stronger. Dying to the Sorcerers after consuming so many of the sect’s resources would be an unforgivable waste. So, it’s infinitely better if you all die here."

His words pierced the soldiers’ chests like poisoned arrows. Every single one of them felt deeply wounded, consumed by blazing fury.

"None of you understands what it means to be a top-tier expert. When your Ether and essence of creation run dry, a true expert fights using their own life force. When their life force is depleted, they fight with nothing but their physical strength. And when their physical strength reaches its limit, they fight with their willpower!

None of you understands what true willpower is. Even if your weapon has been destroyed, even if your body has been mutilated and is bleeding, when you still do everything in your power to tear out your opponent’s throat with your teeth, fighting to the death, that’s when you’re fighting with your willpower! If you can’t reach that level, if you want to retreat just because you’ve encountered too many opponents... do you really think you can become a top-tier expert? Are you trying to make me laugh?

Let me make this perfectly clear: if you’re cornered before every last bit of your physical energy has been exhausted, I won’t lift a finger to help you. I, Priam, will never lead a bunch of cowards. I refuse to humiliate myself to that extent," Priam concluded, his voice as sharp as a steel blade.

"We’re not trash!" someone in the crowd shouted, blinded by rage.

"We’ll prove we deserve the position we’ve earned!" another roared, his eyes blazing.

Countless similar shouts echoed throughout the formation, fueled by their deeply wounded pride.

"Then go ahead and prove it, so I can see whether it’s true. I’m watching with great expectations," Priam replied in a casual, contemptuous tone.

At that very moment, more and more Corrupted Beasts charged toward them. As the pressure mounted, the formation was squeezed tighter with every passing second, teetering on the brink of total collapse. If the line broke, annihilation would be inevitable.

Silently, however, Priam kept his attention focused on the subtle movements of Sages concealed in the shadows surrounding the valley.

’Fuck, how much longer are they going to make me wait?’