Chapter 203: The Ground War

The fortress gates opened.

The crash had damaged the forward mechanism, causing the heavy iron doors to swing inward on their own and leaving a twenty-foot gap in the fortress wall that every Imperial soldier within a mile could see.

Emric spotted it first.

"Gate breach," he said into the fortress comm channel.

"All fortress soldiers, form up behind the gate. Shields in front. Halberds behind. Two feet between each soldier."

The soldiers moved.

"First rank, angle your shields thirty degrees," Emric continued. "Deflect, don’t absorb. The enemy’s formation broke when the ship crashed. They’re scattered. We need to exploit the gap before they can regroup."

He turned toward Renna.

"Fire over the wall. Target groups between fifty and one hundred meters. Don’t aim at individuals. Hit clusters and disrupt their formation."

Renna was already on the wall. She nocked three arrows and drew the bowstring.

"Clusters. Got it. Fifty to one hundred meters. I can do that in my sleep."

She paused.

"I could probably do it in my sleep while eating a sandwich."

"I don’t recommend eating while firing."

Renna looked at him.

"It was a metaphor, Emric."

"An imprecise one."

She rolled her eyes.

"You’re impossible."

Then she released.

Three arrows arced over the fortress wall, trailing crackling storm energy. They descended on the scattered troops like bolts of lightning from a god with extremely specific aim.

CRACK!

CRACK!

Each arrow struck a cluster of soldiers.

Storm energy burst across the points of impact, sending powerful electric shocks through everyone nearby. Soldiers convulsed as the electricity tore through their bodies. Groups that had been trying to regroup were scattered again.

Renna reached for more arrows.

"I got thirty guys with three arrows!"

She was already drawing again.

"This is the best day of my life!"

Lyra stood above the gate, her spear raised toward the sky.

Frost energy gathered around its tip, swirling in tight, controlled spirals.

Then she thrust the spear downward.

A blizzard array erupted from the weapon, spreading across the fortress wall like a frozen waterfall.

Ice spread across the muddy ground below the gate, freezing the earth solid and creating a slick, treacherous surface.

The charging Imperial soldiers never saw it coming.

Boots lost traction.

Soldiers went down.

Others crashed into them.

Within seconds, the charge that had been building toward the open gate turned into a sliding, tumbling mess of bodies and weapons.

"Ground frozen thirty meters from the gate," Lyra reported.

Her voice remained calm and authoritative.

"They won’t be able to form another charge immediately. We have a window."

"Exploit it," Emric said.

He raised his shield.

"Fortress soldiers, advance through the gate. Maintain formation. Push them back. Don’t pursue beyond the ice perimeter."

Two hundred soldiers advanced. They moved in the formation Emric had designed, shields locked together and halberds ready.

They stepped through the gate and onto the frozen ground, their boots finding solid footing where the Imperial soldiers were struggling to stand.

The counterattack began.

Emric directed the soldiers from the wall, his 10x cognitive buff allowing him to process the battlefield in real time. He tracked troop movements, identified openings, and called out adjustments before the Imperial soldiers could exploit them.

"Second rank, shift left three degrees. They’re trying to flank from the northeast."

The formation moved.

"First rank, hold."

The shield wall remained firm.

"Third rank, extend the line. Don’t let them wrap around."

The soldiers obeyed.

The shield wall held. Halberds struck. Imperial soldiers fell back, disoriented by the crash, the ice, and Renna’s Storm arrows.

Then Emric’s voice came through Holden’s earpiece.

"Holden. The ground is stabilizing. We’re pushing them back."

A brief pause.

"But the siege beasts are still out there. They’re regrouping behind the main column."

Holden was already moving. He dropped from the battlement.

The Solar-Forged Sword was already in his hand, its blade blazing with crimson fire.

Soldiers on both sides turned toward him. For a moment, everyone seemed to forget what they were doing. A burning figure had just landed in the middle of the battlefield.

Holden ignored them. His eyes moved beyond the soldiers. Toward the massive shapes advancing behind the Imperial lines.

Siege beasts.

Thirty of them.

They had been held behind the initial assault, waiting for the right moment to act as living siege engines.

Now that the front lines were in chaos, their handlers were driving them forward.

The first beast reached the fortress soldiers.

It was enormous.

Four-legged and thirty feet tall, with a body covered in thick natural armor and iron plates. Its head was a mass of horns and tusks, while its feet were nearly the size of cars.

Every step shook the ground.

BOOM.

BOOM.

BOOM.

The beast slammed into the fortress formation like a living battering ram.

Shields flew.

Soldiers scattered.

The formation Emric had worked so hard to build buckled under the weight of nearly twenty tons of armored muscle and steel.

Holden stepped forward. The creature’s tusks swept down, aiming to tear him apart.

He shifted aside.

One tusk slammed into the mud where he had been standing and drove three feet into the ground.

Shhhk.

Holden’s sword moved. A single horizontal Hellfire Cleave cut across the beast’s front legs.

The leg separated.

The beast screamed. Its remaining legs struggled to support its weight.

It stumbled, then fell.

BOOM!

Nearly twenty tons of armored beast slammed into the ground. The howdah on its back broke loose and crashed down, sending the soldiers riding it tumbling across the battlefield.

Holden was already moving.

The next beast was twenty feet away.

Its handler was whipping it forward, trying to drive it straight into the fortress formation.

Holden met it head-on.

His sword rose with Hellfire Cleave.

shkkk

The blade split the beast’s head from jaw to crown. Crimson fire followed the cut, cauterizing the wound as it passed through.

The beast’s legs continued running for three more steps before its body finally realized it was dead.

Then it collapsed.

The System chimed.

[Imperial Siege Beast (Rank 3, 2-Star) Defeated! x2!]

[+4,000 KP!]

[2x KP Booster Active! KP Doubled!]

[+8,000 KP!]

Holden kept moving.

Third beast.

Fourth.

Fifth.

He cut through them like a harvester moving through a field.

One after another, the siege beasts fell.

Holden’s 10,000x processor mapped their positions and calculated their movements almost instantly. It identified the optimal targets and the fastest route between them.

He moved with ruthless efficiency.

The seventh beast fell.

Then the eighth.

The System tallied the kills.

[Imperial Siege Beast (Rank 3, 2-Star) Defeated! x8!]

[+16,000 KP!]

[2x KP Booster Active! KP Doubled!]

[+32,000 KP!]

[Current KP: 1,056,290]

Holden barely glanced at the notification. He cut down the ninth beast. The tenth turned and ran. Its handler abandoned his position, jumping from the howdah and sprinting away.

The remaining beasts hesitated.

Several began pulling back.

Their handlers screamed and whipped them forward, but the creatures’ instinct for survival was stronger than the handlers’ commands.

"Holden!"

Renna’s voice rang from the fortress wall.

"You’re scaring the elephants!! The big ones are running!"

"They’re not elephants," Emric said.

Renna stared at him.

"Emric."

"They’re Tharnak-class siege beasts. They’re distantly related to..."

"NOT THE TIME!"

The battlefield was shifting. The Imperial ground forces were already reeling from the flagship crash.

Now they were losing their siege beasts as well.

The fortress soldiers, emboldened by Emric’s commands and Renna’s covering fire, pushed forward.

Lyra’s ice still held the center, forcing Imperial troops to move around it and into the kill zones created by Renna’s arrows and the fortress soldiers’ halberds.

It was working.

Then Maeve’s voice came through the earpiece.

"Holden."

Something about her tone made him stop.

"Pull back. Right now."

Her voice was tight and urgent.

"I hacked the Imperial military communications," she said. Holden looked toward the Imperial lines.

"What did you find?"

"The ground forces were the vanguard." A pause.

"They were never meant to win."

Holden’s expression hardened.

"They were meant to soften the fortress for the main force."

"What main force?"

"Their actual commander."

Maeve’s voice dropped.

"He’s not on one of the ships."

Holden scanned the battlefield.

"Where is he?"

"On the ground. He’s been waiting in the forest on the eastern ridge since before the fleet arrived."

Another pause.

"He’s moving now."

"How far?"

"He just stepped out of the treeline."

Maeve inhaled.

"Holden, he’s at the eastern edge of the valley. Less than a kilometer from your position."

Holden’s eyes narrowed.

"What’s his rank?"

Static crackled in his earpiece.

Then silence.

The pause lasted too long.

"Maeve."

"Rank 3, 9-Star."

Holden stopped.

Nine-Star.

The absolute peak of Rank 3.

A 9-Star cultivator wasn’t simply strong. They were a natural disaster wearing human skin. And Holden was 6-Star.

In raw power, that wasn’t a gap. It was a canyon.

"Evacuate the fortress," Maeve said. "Get your team out. A 9-Star can level that fortress by himself."

Holden said nothing.

"Holden?"

"I heard you clearly."

He didn’t move. The battlefield went quiet.

The cannons stopped firing as the Imperial soldiers began pulling back, clearing a path from the eastern treeline to the center of the valley.

Thousands of soldiers moved aside with their weapons lowered and heads bowed.

They were making way.

A figure walked out of the treeline. He was not big. That was the first thing Holden noticed.

Commander Vorth had been a barrel of muscle and armor.

This man was lean.

He moved with the slow, deliberate stride of someone who had never needed to hurry because nothing in the world had ever been fast enough to threaten him.

His armor was dark. Spikes covered his shoulders, elbows, and knuckles. From a distance, the man looked like a hole cut into the landscape.

Then Holden felt his energy.

He felt it before the man reached the center of the valley.

The man’s aura pressed against the valley like a hand pressing against a balloon.

The air thickened and the mud hardened. Rain evaporated before it could touch him.

Tssss.

Tssss.

Tssss.

He walked through the rain without getting wet. His aura was so dense that the surrounding air itself seemed to recoil from him.

Rank 3, 9-Star.

Holden’s 10,000x processor began processing the information almost immediately.

Energy output: catastrophic.

Aura density: extreme.

Physical enhancement: maximum mortal threshold.

Combat capability: beyond anything Holden had faced.

This man stood at the peak. The absolute limit of what a human body could achieve without breaking through into Rank 4. Every cell in his body was saturated with power. Every movement carried that power with it.

The Warmaster stopped in the center of the valley. He looked toward the fortress.

At the soldiers on the walls, the burning wreckage of his flagship and the fallen siege beasts scattered across the battlefield.

Then his eyes settled on Holden.

The Warmaster reached over his shoulder. His hand closed around the grip of a weapon strapped across his back.

He drew it slowly.

The blade was five feet long, with jagged edges that looked torn rather than forged. A dark, heavy aura radiated from it, making the air around the weapon groan.

The Warmaster pointed it at Holden.

"You destroyed my flagship."

His dark eyes remained fixed on Holden.

"You killed my commander."

He lowered the tip of the sword slightly.

"And you slaughtered my vanguard."

Holden said nothing.

The Warmaster adjusted his grip.

"I am Warmaster Kael Drassen."

He took another step forward.

"I have conquered nine kingdoms."

His gaze moved briefly toward the fortress before returning to Holden.

"I have never met a cultivator below Rank 4 who could survive a fight with me."

The Warmaster raised the black sword into a guard position.

"You are 6-Star."

His voice remained calm.

"I am 9-Star."

The pressure in the valley seemed to increase.

"The gap between us is not something courage or cleverness can bridge."

He stared directly into Holden’s eyes.

"It is physics. Biology. The fundamental difference between what you are and what I am."

The rain continued to evaporate around him.

Steam curled upward in slow spirals.

"I will give you one opportunity to surrender."

He pointed the sword at Holden’s chest.

"Lower your weapon. Kneel."

His expression remained emotionless.

"And I will allow your soldiers to live."

Holden looked at him.

At the 9-Star aura.

At the black sword.

Behind him, on the fortress wall, his team stood.

Emric with his shield.

Renna with her bow.

Lyra with her spear.

Holden tightened his grip around the Solar-Forged Sword.

The blade blazed brighter.

White-hot crimson fire roared along the steel, pushing back the darkness, the rain, and the suffocating weight of the Warmaster’s 9-Star aura.

Holden didn’t kneel.