Chapter 224: Battle In Silverspire 2

"Here they come, boys!!"

?Marianne yelled, planting her boots firmly into the earth right behind a Knight, staring intently through the narrow gap between the interlocking tower shields as the wave of monsters rapidly closed the remaining distance.

?BAM!!!!

?The front line of beasts smashed violently into the Knights’ shields, the sheer impact forcing the front rank two full steps backward and kicking up a suffocating cloud of dust, and sand.

?"Kill anything that tries to cross this barricade!!" She roared at the warriors and assassins waiting in reserve. With a fluid, practiced motion, she thrust her sword straight through the gap between the shields, driving the glowing red blade deep into the skull of a hulking monster and dropping it instantly with a single, lethal strike.

?"Understood."

?"Hold the line!!"

?GRAAAA!!

?BAM!!!

?More claws, fangs, and heavy bodies slammed against the barricade, the relentless pressure shoving the struggling knights backward inch by inch.

?"The left flank and right flank need immediate reinforcement! Don’t let them squeeze past our perimeter!"

?"Ah, honestly? This brute-force grinding is so tedious."

?"...?!"

?Marianne whipped her head around in surprise, staring at Katherine as a sharp, biting frost began to emanate in visible waves from the young noblewoman’s skin:

?"Though this steady holding tactic minimizes our immediate casualties, it only serves to slowly drain our Knights’ stamina... Of course, Guild Leader Marianne, I fully comprehend the tactical wisdom of your formation, but it is also dreadfully boring."

?Without waiting for a reply, Katherine began to slowly ascend into the air, defying gravity with casual elegance:

?"You are all seasoned SSS-Rank fighters down there—why on earth are we wasting time brawling in the mud when you could just unleash a single decisive area-of-effect attack and wipe the battlefield clean?" She added, casually raising one delicate finger toward the gray sky.

?’Is this girl completely out of her mind?! Clear an entire monster tide in one single attack?! Of course every one of us has the destructive skill to do that, but the energy would consume well over half our total reserves—how on earth are we supposed to defend against those five boss-class monsters waiting in the wings if we drain ourselves dry now?’ Daniel thought, staring up at her through the chaos in sheer disbelief.

?"Pendragon Ice Technique... Eternal Frost Domain."

?’Wait! Isn’t that one of the legendary secret skills of the Pendragon Ancient Family? Even if she belongs to an influential branch lineage, how did she manage to inherit a core ancestral technique like that?’

?"This doesn’t feel right at all." The small floating monkey muttered, its sharp eyes narrowing as heavy, unnatural snowflakes began drifting down from the sky.

?Even the frenzied monsters suddenly hesitated in their tracks, their primal survival instincts flaring in response to the creeping, lethal chill carried by the falling snow.

?"Could she possibly..." Marianne’s eyes widened in sudden realization:

?"Knights! Fall back and immediately activate your highest-tier defensive arts!!"

?"Yes, General!!"

?The entire knights obeyed without hesitation, activating their spirit energy into overdrive. Dozens of glowing defensive barriers materialized in midair, stacking over one another to form a thick, secondary protective dome over the entire human army.

?"Descend."

?At Katherine’s single, freezing word, the millions of swirling snowflakes abruptly paused mid-air, hanging suspended as if time itself had stuttered to a halt—and then...

?BOOOOM!!!!!

?Millions of microscopic snowflakes instantly detonated outward in unison, shooting razor-sharp shards of absolute zero energy in every direction. In less than a single heartbeat, the entire blood-soaked battlefield was flash-frozen into a vast, silent expanse of pristine white ice. Every single monster in the vanguard was transformed into a fragile ice statue, instantly killed by the catastrophic thermal drop.

?’The Pendragon Ice Technique is notoriously ruthless and devastatingly dangerous. Historically, only direct bloodline descendants of the main ruling house were permitted to practice it—how on earth did she acquire it? Wait.’

?Marianne suddenly remembered Katherine’s earlier confession: out of all the scions in her extended family line, she was one of the exceedingly rare individuals who had successfully awakened the pure ancestral bloodline.

?’Did that elevate her past conventional branch restrictions?’

?"However..."

?Marianne lowered her gaze toward the field of frozen statues: "There is one glaring tactical problem with this kind of indiscriminate devastation."

?CRACK!!!

?"...?!"

?"Stay on high alert, everyone!! The tide isn’t over!" Marianne screamed over the howling wind.

?CRACK!

?BOOOM!

?".....?!"

?The awakened fighters blinked in shock as more than sixty percent of the frozen monster statues violently fractured from the inside out, exploding into a shower of ice chips.

?"I can only kill a fraction of them; the rest possessed enough raw vitality to force their way through my ice and enter their second evolutionary stage." Katherine noted coolly, hovering in the air and looking down at the awakening horde below.

?BOOOOM!!!

?The remaining ice statues shattered entirely, revealing a horde of living monsters. Every single one of them had mutated into their terrifying second combat stage, their muscle mass surging—though they had the silver lining of their overall stats temporarily dropping by twenty percent due to the severe stage rule.

?"You performed brilliantly, Katherine, but executing a scale-destroying technique like that must have drained a massive portion of your spirit energy. Drop down here and recover your stamina." Marianne ordered, looking upward at Katherine.

?"Katherine!! Watch out behind you!!" She screamed in absolute terror as a dark blur lashed out from the shadows directly toward Katherine’s blind spot.

?BAM!!

?".....?!"

?The small monkey blinked in surprise, staring down as a dense, autonomous barrier of ice instantly materialized and blocked its stealthy claw just inches from Katherine’s neck.

?The beast tilted its head in mild irritation, then kicked its legs off the air and vaulted backward, landing lightly on midair to observe from a distance.

?"A pathetic little monkey like you actually had the audacity to attempt a sneak attack on my blind spot?" Katherine turned her head slowly over her shoulder, her striking blue eyes glowing with cold, frigid fury.

?"Kekekeke... We honestly didn’t anticipate encountering a human anomaly wielding ancient ancestral blood skills out here in the frontier. You already wiped out sixty percent of our vanguard in a single breath, drastically crippling our total combat mass. If we don’t sever your head right here and now, the rest of us will fall." The monkey chattered, baring its teeth as Katherine turned fully around to face it.

?"That massive spell must have hollowed out your spirit reserves; this is indisputably our best window to eliminate you." It added, its voice dripping with malice.

?"Did you honestly think we would just stand by and watch you attack our allies?!"

?Marianne vaulted upward into the sky to intervene, but before she could cross the distance, a heavy shadow materialized silently behind her, swinging a massive, scaled tail through the air with the force of a falling meteor.

?"....?!"

?Marianne caught the incoming motion at the last possible microsecond, instinctively raising her red blade to crossguard her body as the colossal tail slammed squarely into the flat of her sword, generating a sonic boom that hurled her straight down into the dirt below.

?BOOOM!

?"You are my designated opponent, little human." The giant cobra hissed, its serpentine eyes locked hungrily on the deep crater where Marianne had crashed.

?"Do all the commanders in your monster army specialize in cowardly sneak attacks?" Marianne grunted, hauling herself out of the crater and casually wiping a thin trail of crimson blood from the corner of her lips.

?’This cobra is twenty meters long and as thick as a freight carriage... Not an unmanageable size, but dealing with a beast of this caliber entirely on my own won’t be a walk in the park.’ She thought, quickly flicking her gaze back toward Katherine:

?"Can you hold your ground against that monkey while I deal with this overgrown snake?" She called out.

?"You don’t need to concern yourself with my safety for a single second," Katherine replied smoothly, a sharp, confident smirk pulling at the corners of her lips.

?"I will make sure to go easy on this little pest." she added, her aura flaring with renewed intensity.

?"Glad to hear it." Marianne tightened her grip around the hilt of her red blade, her knuckles whitening:

’The monkey and the cobra have already engaged in battle, but the other three commanders are still hanging back, simply observing... I have to keep a sharp eye on their movements....’

?Marianne froze dead.

?In the blink of an eye, the ten-meter-tall bear suddenly expanded, ballooning into a towering twenty-meter colossus, and the very next microsecond, its massive bulk vanished completely from its spot in the distance.

?"What in the world?!"

?Marianne snapped her head around toward the human defensive line, her heart dropping as the colossal bear materialized directly above the clustered ranks of the Knights, and Awakened:

?"Watch out!!!"

?"Die, pathetic humans!!!"

?The bear raised both of its gargantuan, fur-covered arms high above its head, interlocking its massive paws into a devastating hammer-fist and smashing straight down upon the protective dome.

?"What the absolute fuck!" The Knights gasped in unison, staring up in horror as the colossal shadow blotted out the morning sun, dropping toward them like an avalanche.

?BOOOOM!!!!!!