The heavy log pressing down on the Axe Tanker's shield lifted slightly, and the roots pushing against Kaelen's shield completely stopped. The beast halted all movement to heal its shattered bark.
Kaelen's gamble paid off.
"Fall back!" Kaelen ordered.
The four frontliners scrambled out of the mud and retreated. The Mages dropped their hands, and the Thieves vaulted backward off the timber.
They regrouped at a safe distance of fifty meters and kept their battle formation perfectly tight as the heavy smoke slowly cleared from the air.
The towering Miasma-Titan stood completely still in the crater. Its shattered bark and severed roots were already fully healed, looking exactly as pristine and dangerous as it did before the clash.
One of the Mages collapsed to her knees, her chest heaving as she gasped for air.
"Give me a break," she wheezed. "After all that, it looks like we didn't even scratch it."
Korinn adjusted his grip on his daggers and stared at the beast. "That entire barrage barely drained a tiny drop of its total Mana."
"Just a tiny drop, huh," another Mage muttered bitterly, wiping sweat from his brow.
"That is enough!" Kaelen yelled, cutting off the complaints. "We expected this exact outcome. We are fighting a Calamity. Prepare for the next clash, but we are changing the strategy right now. The vanguard cannot engage at zero distance again. We will not repeat that mistake."
A Swordsman let out a long, heavy sigh and rolled his aching shoulders. "That was too close."
"Yeah," the other Swordsman agreed.
The brief moment of rest ended, so all twelve members of Group A tightened their grips on their weapons, fully preparing to throw themselves back into the nightmare.
The clash dragged on for hours.
"Vance!" Kaelen shouted over the roaring flames.
The Thief darted through the thick mud and came to a fast halt next to his commander.
"Boss," Vance panted, pointing a muddy dagger toward the gigantic beast. "I think the Titan's Mana has decreased by almost two percent compared to when we started."
The estimate was far from precise. Thieves lacked any sort of magical measuring device to read the exact numbers of a monster's Mana reserves.
But they could clearly see the terrifying pool of Mana swirling inside the Titan's huge body, so they relied on their raw instinct to translate that visual data into a rough mathematical guess.
Kaelen nodded and immediately barked instructions to the eleven other members of Team A. "Everyone, it has been almost six hours! Keep attacking until Team B arrives! Just two more minutes, so hold the line and then we can rest!"
The heavy tension on the Adventurers' faces seemed to lighten the moment Kaelen said those words. They were nowhere near their physical limits yet, but they desperately wanted a break from six hours of continuous combat.
A minute later, Team B emerged from the gray fog. Thorne led the fresh squad, and they took their designated formation right away.
Team A's Mages and Swordsmen saw the relief arrive and pushed their remaining energy into one final barrage. Fireballs and Aura-coated blades smashed into the petrified wood. The Titan stopped moving momentarily as it regenerated from the sudden burst of damage.
"Everyone—" Kaelen shouted.
Then he stopped.
Thorne looked at him through the thinning smoke. The old Mage seemed to have a clear idea of what Kaelen had been about to say.
In that brief moment of pause, a heavy struggle raged inside Kaelen's mind. He debated whether or not to issue a very specific instruction.
The math required to kill a Calamity-class monster is incredibly simple. Team A and Team B shift in rotation every six hours for fifteen days. That schedule creates sixty combat rotations in total.
If the monster begins the battle with a hundred percent of its Mana, then dividing that total by sixty shifts equals roughly 1.67 percent.
This meant the raid team needed to burn at least 1.67% of the monster's Mana reserves during every single shift. They had to maintain this pace because failing to hit that mark meant they would fail to kill the beast by the end of the fifteenth day.
Any competent commander would naturally announce this strict quota to keep the team on track.
But Kaelen hesitated because of a nightmare from ten years ago.
The last time Kaelen and Thorne faced a Calamity, they nearly died. Something terrible had happened to that old raid team, and the memory froze Kaelen's tongue right now.
Ten years ago, their commanders used the exact same rotating schedule and the strict fifteen-day strategy. The time limit was never a random choice. Fifteen days represented the biological limit a high-level hunter's body could handle drinking Mana potions.
Humans could easily burn their energy and recharge it with alchemical liquids, but a stomach could only process so many harsh potions before the body violently rejected them. That toxicity threshold made fifteen days the hard deadline for any long-term raid.
During that old hunt, the leaders strictly enforced the 1.67 percent quota. Both teams pushed themselves to ensure they hit the required damage before their shifts ended.
But that rigid goal carried huge, fatal consequences.
In a long battle of attrition, Adventurers deliberately chose not to use their full strength from the start. They needed to save their maximum power for the final day.
The principle behind this is identical to running a marathon.
A marathon runner never sprints at full speed right at the starting line. If a runner sprints early, their muscles will burn out and they will collapse long before the finish line. They must maintain a steady, relaxed rhythm to ensure their body lasts the entire distance.
If a dungeon raid only lasted three days, the Adventurers would gladly unleash their full destructive power. But a Calamity is a long-term struggle, so fighters must attack moderately. They avoid early fatigue by pacing themselves.
If Kaelen gave his current team the strict quota of 1.67 percent right now, they might end up repeating the exact same tragedy.
Ten years ago, the demand to reach that specific number made the fighters prioritize short-term damage over long-term stamina.
Whenever a team fell short of their goal near the end of their six hours, panic set in. They forced a desperate, heavy barrage of attacks to catch up, completely sacrificing their steady rhythm in the process.
They achieved the short-term quota, but they ruined their stamina for the long marathon.
Everything seemed smooth for those first ten days, but then the eleventh day arrived and everything broke. A Swordsman died. He desperately risked his own defense to land a heavy sequence of hits on the monster because their shift was falling behind the quota. The instruction had made him reckless. He was not a fool, but he knew the entire raid would fail if they missed their numbers.
That single death was not even the real crisis. On the twelfth day, the physical toll of sacrificing their steady rhythm finally took effect. The Adventurers became sluggish. Their bodies felt heavy as extreme fatigue kicked in.
Kaelen and Thorne only managed to defeat the Calamity-class monster and survive through pure luck, but it came at a high price. Thirteen Adventurers died in that raid ten years ago, leaving only twelve to walk away.
That bloody memory was the exact reason Kaelen stood silent in the fog. If he said the word "quota," these Adventurers might become reckless just to hit the numbers.
They would make mistakes and die. They would sacrifice their stamina for the marathon just to satisfy a short-term quota.
Kaelen gritted his teeth and looked at the fresh fighters.
"Team B, maintain your stamina," Kaelen ordered, his rough voice carrying over the bubbling sludge. "Attack moderately. Don't die. Team A, let's move back."
Thorne heard the command and let out a quiet, heavy sigh of relief.
The days blurred together. The swamp became a nightmare of mud, black blood, and shattered wood. The fight became a brutal, rhythmic cycle.
---
Day 3
It was the third day of the subjugation. Team B stood in the thick mud. Thorne led the squad, and his lineup consisted of three Tankers, two Swordsmen who preferred lightweight blades, two Thieves, three Mages including Lumina, and three Healers including Celia.
The Calamity-class Miasma-Titan loomed in front of them. The environment remained exactly the same as the previous shift. A heavy fog covered the entire battlefield in a hundred-meter radius and reached about ten meters high above the ground. This toxic gas was actually made up of Mana.
The energy leaked naturally from the Titan's massive body, so the monster had absolutely no control over it. From a Thief's perspective, this leaking fog fell directly into the definition of Life Force. But this specific Life Force was incredibly dangerous to humans.
The beast stood completely stationary in the sludge. It simply produced another batch of Mud Crawlers, and the swarm immediately scrambled toward the thirteen Adventurers.
At that exact moment, the Titan launched a massive wooden log from above.
"Incoming!"