For the first time since he had been knighted at the age of nineteen in King's City, Sir Carter Lannis walked a wartime perimeter with his hands feeling strangely empty.
His steel longsword still hung in its scabbard at his left hip, of course, its leather grip worn smooth by decades of daily practice. Yet over the past forty-eight hours, the Chief Knight had grown unexpectedly accustomed to the heavy, six-kilogram balance of the oiled flintlock musket resting across his chest.
Today, however, that iron thunder-tube wasn't in his hands.
As Prince Roland's primary personal shield, Carter's foremost duty was to ensure that not a single stray arrow or assassin's blade ever came within ten paces of the royal bloodline. Because the Prince refused to sit locked inside his bedchamber for four months while his subjects bled on the frontier, Carter and Commander William had hammered out a strict tactical rotation the evening before.
For one full day out of every three, Carter would stand on top of the southern concrete rampart alongside Iron Axe to oversee the firing lines and maintain iron discipline among the recruits; for the remaining two days, he would return to the inner keep to command the Prince's close-protection detail.
Whenever Carter rotated back to the castle, his sector on the wall—along with the immense honor and responsibility of carrying the Chief Knight's personal flintlock rifle—was handed over to Erik, one of the four veteran patrolmen who had held the line to the brink of death during the granary tunnel ambush.
Walking briskly along the covered wooden gallery connecting the western watchtower to the inner castle gatehouse, Carter flexed his gloved fingers against the biting cold and looked out toward the southern defensive line.
Even to a traditional knight raised on tales of lances and plate armor, the firearm still felt like a dark miracle pulled straight out of a fever dream—yet Carter could no longer deny its brutal, clinical effectiveness. As he paused by a stone embrasure, watching the swirling sheets of white snow swallow the yard below, he found himself wondering how quickly Erik's frost-stiffened fingers would manage the twelve-step reload sequence if a second pack of wolves hit the western flank.
Thud-thud-thud-CLACK!
The frantic, heavy slapping of leather boots sprinting up the ice-slicked wooden stairs of the gatehouse shattered Carter's thoughts.
Instantly, Carter pivoted on his heel, his left hand dropping automatically to the pommel of his longsword as his body dropped into a balanced defensive stance.
Bursting onto the upper landing with his wool cloak flying wildly behind him was nineteen-year-old Saldon—one of the young quarrymen from the eastern sector whom William had designated as the wall's primary field runner after scanning his Speed: 9 attribute.
Right behind Saldon came two younger militiamen who had been helping haul reserve spear crates from the armory; both boys had abandoned their handcarts at the bottom of the ramp, their faces as white as the snowdrifts and their eyes wide with raw, contagious panic.
— "S-Sir Carter! Chief Knight!" — Saldon gasped, skidding to a halt on the frosty planks and bracing one hand against his knee as his chest heaved like a blacksmith's bellows, thick clouds of white steam pouring from his mouth.
Before Carter could even ask why a runner had abandoned the front line without a horn signal, Saldon jerked a trembling thumb back over his shoulder toward the central sector of the concrete wall.
— "It's a nightmare out there, Sir! A complete nightmare!" — the boy choked out, his voice cracking an octave higher. — "We cleared the first wave of wolves and boars, and then the mist parted by the forest! Lord William and Deputy Commander Iron Axe said it's a Hybrid Species! It's taller than the cottages, Sir, and it's marching dead-center toward our wall!"
Behind Saldon, one of the two supply recruits grabbed his companion's sleeve, his voice shaking so badly his teeth clicked together: — "W-we saw it from the ramp! Ten oxen couldn't pull a beast that big! No wall can stop that thing, Sir Carter—it's going to crush the stone and eat us all alive!"
Carter felt the blood in his veins turn colder than the mountain gale.
Throughout the Four Kingdoms, Hybrid Beasts were spoken of only in hushed, terrified whispers around late-night tavern fires—grotesque, stitched-together abominations born from the deepest hell of the northern peaks. Even in the worst winters recorded in Graycastle's military archives, creatures of that magnitude rarely descended into the southern valleys before the dead of mid-winter, after the smaller packs had exhausted the region's food. For a fully grown Hybrid to march openly against a fortified line during the very first morning of the snow was virtually unheard of.
Yet before the dread could touch his face, thirty years of iron martial training snapped Carter's spine straight. He knew that on a battlefield, fear spread faster than fire.
Stepping forward, the Chief Knight fixed the two trembling supply boys with a glare sharp enough to draw blood.
— "Shut your mouths and hold your ground! Both of you!" — Carter barked, his deep, commanding baritone cutting through their hysteria like a broadsword. — "No one retreats a single step from their post! Pick up those spear crates at the bottom of the stairs and get back to Deputy Commander Iron Axe's line immediately! If I hear another word about the wall falling before a single stone is cracked, you will answer to my blade before the beast even gets there! Saldon—back to Commander William and tell him I am bringing His Highness and the heavy powder teams right now! Move!"
— "Y-Yes, Sir Carter!" —
Snapped out of their spiral by the knight's ferocious authority, Saldon and the two recruits spun around and raced back down the wooden steps toward the southern clearing.
The instant their boots cleared the landing, Carter didn't waste half a heartbeat.
Turning on his heel, the Chief Knight bolted down the inner stone stairwell and sprinted straight across the castle courtyard. His heavy riding boots kicked through six inches of fresh, powdery snow without slowing down, his mind racing frantically through every worst-case contingency he had prepared as head of the royal guard.
If that abomination breaches the central concrete rampart, Carter calculated grimly as the wind whipped across his face, William and Iron Axe can only buy us ten minutes at most in the open yard. I will need twenty elite guards with halberds at the southern river pier and two river barges kept clear of ice so we can force His Highness aboard and retreat downstream toward Willow Town before the town is overrun!
Reaching the top of the main keep's front steps in record time, Carter threw his shoulder against the heavy iron-bound oak double doors and burst straight into the heated ground-floor hall, dragging a swirling gust of wind and snow across the flagstones behind him.
And right there in the middle of the hall, Carter stopped so abruptly his wet boots slid three inches across the stone.
Ten paces away, right beside the roaring stone hearth where the pine logs crackled warmly, sat a lone man at a small oak reading table.
It was Count Arthur.
Having returned twenty minutes earlier from his noon inspection up at the North Slope Mine, the twenty-four-year-old strategist had hung his snow-dusted black overcoat on a wooden peg and was sitting with his back straight, a cup of hot spiced tea steaming beside his elbow. In his pale, ungloved hands, he held a fresh sheet of parchment filled with dense charcoal equations, the dancing orange light of the fire reflecting calmly inside his dark, unblinking eyes.
The atmosphere surrounding the young scholar was one of such absolute, library-like tranquility that he looked as though he were sitting in a sunny garden in King's City rather than a frontier fortress on the brink of annihilation.
Chest heaving from his sprint across the yard, Carter stared at him for half a second before stepping forward.
— "Lord Arthur!" — Carter called out, his urgent voice echoing loudly off the high stone arches of the hall. — "Where is His Royal Highness?! Is he down in the backyard workshops?!"
Arthur didn't flinch, nor did his hand twitch by a fraction of a millimeter.
Slowly, deliberately, the strategist finished tracing the bottom line of a chemical ratio with his index finger, placed a brass paperweight neatly on the corner of the parchment, and raised his calm dark eyes to examine the snow-covered, panting Chief Knight.
— "His Highness is upstairs in his third-floor study, finalizing the granulation ratios for the heavy artillery charges we drafted this morning," — Arthur replied, his baritone voice level, unhurried, and completely devoid of stress.
Tilting his head slightly, Arthur looked from Carter's wind-flushed face down to his white-knuckled grip on his sword hilt.
— "Why the dramatic entrance, Sir Carter?" — Arthur asked mildly, reaching out to take a calm sip from his tin mug. — "Judging by the fact that the concrete rampart hasn't echoed with a single grenade detonation, and nobody has carried any bleeding recruits into the dining hall for Miss Nana to stitch up, I assume William's opening defense went off on schedule."
Carter's jaw tightened so hard his back teeth ground together, a hot wave of sheer frustration boiling up through his knightly composure at the man's icy detachment.
— "That calm is about to end in less than five minutes, Lord Arthur!" — Carter snapped, taking a sharp step toward the table. — "A runner just sprinted in from the central bastion! A full-grown Hybrid Beast has emerged from the Concealing Forest and is marching straight toward Commander William's line! It is a cataclysmic-class abomination, and His Highness gave strict orders to be summoned the exact second one of those monsters showed its face!"
For two full seconds, the only sound in the entrance hall was the soft pop of a pine knot burning in the fireplace.
Arthur didn't jump out of his chair. His pupils didn't dilate, and his heart rate didn't rise by a single beat.
With his Magic Power: 10 [Telekinesis] humming silently inside his chest and his Intelligence: 14 mind having already discussed the exact physical limitations of Hybrid Beasts with Roland the afternoon before, Arthur knew there was zero reason to run around screaming like a headless chicken. If the thirty flintlocks, the black powder barrels, and William's sixteen points of Strength somehow failed to crack that monster's shell out on the wall, Arthur would simply walk out onto the ramparts himself and crush its braincase from eighty paces away.
To Carter Lannis, however, who knew nothing of Level 10 Telekinesis, the young advisor's reaction looked as if Carter had just politely informed him that it was drizzling outside before lunch.
— "I see. Slightly ahead of the projected mid-winter schedule, then," — Arthur remarked smoothly, setting his mug down on the wood without a splash. — "By all means, go upstairs and fetch His Highness, Sir Carter. I will have the warehouse stewards load two extra carts of black-powder kegs and meet you at the southern ramp in five minutes."
Carter gaped at the dark-haired youth for a fraction of a second, a cold curse dying under his breath.
By the seven hells, both of these scholars from the Kingdom of Dawn are completely insane! Carter thought, shaking his head in utter bewilderment as he spun toward the main staircase. One of them jumps off a twelve-foot wall to fistfight mutated wolves in the snow with a grin on his face, and the other hears that a seven-meter titan is marching on the gates and doesn't even put down his teacup!
Refusing to waste another breath trying to comprehend the alien psychology of Roland's two top advisors, Carter bolted up the stone steps three at a time, nearly bowling over Assistant Minister Barov on the second-floor landing before hammering his iron gauntlet against the oak door of the Prince's study.
Ten minutes later, flanked by a razor-tense Carter Lannis and six elite castle guards carrying heavy iron canisters of corned gunpowder, Prince Roland Wimbledon climbed the wooden access ramp and stepped out onto the central walkway of the concrete wall.
The freezing northern gale tore at the gray hair beneath the Prince's fur-lined hood, whipping his heavy wool cloak sideways as he marched straight up to the stone crenelations where William and Deputy Commander Iron Axe stood side by side like twin statues carved from dark iron.
Ten paces down the walkway, Trevor and Van'er had already formed the riflemen into a double rank, keeping their flintlocks primed and covered beneath their cloaks while the front row of pikemen braced their fifteen-foot ash shafts against the stone curb.
Stepping right between William and Carter at the highest point of the central bastion, Roland rested his gloved hands on the frost-covered concrete and squinted out into the blinding white swirl of the snowfield.
— "So the legendary ruler of the winter forest finally decided to grace us with its presence on day one, William?" — Roland asked, his voice tight but remarkably steady over the howling wind. — "When Carter burst into my office ten minutes ago, he looked as though he had just seen the devil himself."
Standing with his arms crossed calmly over his navy-blue doublet—the blood of the earlier wolf pack already frozen into dark, rust-colored crusts along the rim of the steel shield leaning against his leg—William didn't answer with words right away.
Instead, the Commander of the First Army simply uncrossed his right arm, raised a black-gloved hand, and pointed a single index finger straight ahead into the parting wall of gray-green fog two hundred paces out.
— "Take a look for yourself, Boss," — William said quietly. — "Mother Nature really outdid herself on this ugly bastard."
Roland leaned forward over the stone lip, following the line of William's finger as a gust of wind briefly tore a wide gap through the swirling snow curtain.
Then, the Prince saw it.
And in that first second of crystal-clear visibility, Cheng Yan felt the breakfast inside his stomach lurch violently toward his throat.
As a twenty-four-year-old mechanical engineer raised on twentieth-century science, Roland had spent the past two days trying to rationalize the monsters of the Months of the Demons through the lens of evolutionary biology and viral mutation. He had assumed that even under the corrupting influence of high-density magic miasma, a mutated forest animal would still obey the basic anatomical blueprint of its species—a larger wolf, a thicker-skinned boar, or a heavier bear.
What was marching across the snowfield toward his wall right now spat directly in the face of Darwin, Mendel, and every law of natural anatomy.
Back on Earth in the nineties, Cheng Yan had watched plenty of late-night creature features on television—from classic Japanese kaiju films to Hollywood sci-fi horrors like The Thing—yet not even the most twisted special-effects designer in cinema could have dreamed up an abomination so absurdly dysfunctional, stitched-together, and viscerally repulsive.
From three hundred yards away in the mist, the creature's dome-like silhouette had initially looked like a gigantic, prehistoric snapping turtle.
Now that it had closed to within a hundred and eighty paces—its ponderous, rhythmic footsteps sending dull seismic thud-thuds vibrating straight up through the bedrock into Roland's boots—the sickening anatomical details came into sharp focus.
Protruding from the front of the massive shell wasn't a reptile's beak.
Instead, sprouting side by side from a single, grotesquely thickened collar of black, scarred flesh were two complete, oversized wolf heads.
What in the name of God is that thing?! Roland stared in cold horror, his fingers digging into the frozen concrete of the parapet. Did some madman in the northern mountains stitch three dead animals together on a butcher's table and pump high-voltage current into the corpse like Dr. Frankenstein?!
The sheer scale of the monstrosity defied comprehension. At the highest arch of its back, the beast towered nearly four meters off the ground—putting the crest of its shell almost dead level with the top of Border Town's twelve-foot concrete wall—while its body stretched a staggering seven meters from nose to rump. It wasn't an animal; it was a moving mountain of rotting, corrupted biomass easily weighing between fifteen and twenty tons.
To keep a frame of that colossal weight from collapsing under its own gravity in the mud, the miasma mutation had engineered a grotesque structural anomaly underneath its belly: the creature possessed six legs instead of four.
Three on the left and three on the right, those six limbs looked nothing like a wolf's paws or a turtle's flippers. They were stubby, pillar-thick, muscular columns reminiscent of a prehistoric rhinoceros or a siege elephant, wrapped in overlapping plates of calcified, gray-black skin as thick as slate roof tiles. Each individual foot was as wide across as a stone flour millstone, crushing the frozen earth and snapping buried tree roots flat with every single step.
Even more unsettling than its six legs, however, were the two giant wolf heads at the front.
In every fantasy comic or monster movie Roland had ever seen, a two-headed beast had two competing brains that snarled at each other, snapped for dominance, or scanned different directions.
These two wolf heads didn't fight at all. In fact, they looked completely dead inside.
Both massive, foam-flecked skulls hung loosely at the ends of short, disproportionately thick necks, swaying left and right in a limp, sickening rhythm with each heavy step of the six legs. Yellowish-black discharge crusted the corners of their eyes, and unlike the frantic, glowing red bloodlust of the common wolves William had crushed earlier, all four of the hybrid's eyes held a dull, opaque, lifeless sheen—like polished brown wood or the glass eyes of a taxidermied corpse.
It looked as though neither wolf head possessed a functioning mind of its own; the entire twenty-ton colossus was lurching forward like a lobotomized zombie, driven solely by an inexorable, dark command programmed into its nervous system by whatever lay behind the northern peaks.
And resting across the top of that six-legged nightmare was the feature that made Roland's engineering mind go ice-cold: the carapace.
Covering the beast's entire upper torso from the base of its twin necks all the way back over its haunches was a monumental, dome-shaped turtle shell at least a foot thick. Its surface was a mottled, muddy dark brown, encrusted with centuries-old black swamp algae, jagged mineral deposits, and weird, bioluminescent purple fungi that pulsed faintly inside the damp cracks of the bone plates.
This is a worst-case tactical scenario, Roland's mind raced, the pragmatic project manager inside him forcefully shoving down his initial revulsion to analyze the geometry of the target. If that monstrosity retains the basic defensive instincts of a tortoise—if it marches right up to the mouth of our central Kill Zone and pulls its legs and those two wolf heads inside that foot-thick calcified dome—our lead musket balls will bounce right off it like raindrops! An indestructible, twenty-ton bunker parked ten paces in front of our rampart will block every firing lane we have while the smaller packs use its shell as a bridge to scale the parapet!
Swallowing the bitter taste of adrenaline at the back of his throat, Roland forced his breathing to stay slow and even.
No—don't panic. Every physical structure has a trade-off, Cheng Yan reminded himself, his gray eyes narrowing as he timed the intervals between the creature's six-legged strides. Kinematics and conservation of energy are absolute. A biological frame carrying twenty tons of bone and shell cannot sprint, and it cannot jump. Look at its pace: it's moving at barely four miles per hour. It is a slow, lumbering siege tower that cannot dodge a single shot.
His eyes locked onto the two swaying wolf heads protruding three feet out from the front lip of the brown carapace.
Master Karl's twelve-foot hydraulic concrete wall is anchored straight into the bedrock; even if that thing rams the stone head-on, the wall will hold for at least three or four impacts, Roland calculated rapidly. Before it reaches the concrete, we concentrate every musket and heavy crossbow straight into those four dead eyes and the soft throat tissue between the two necks. And if the worst happens and the bastard pulls its heads inside the shell to play the armored coward... I'll have Van'er and the demolition squad roll two fifty-pound barrels of black powder straight down a wooden chute underneath its belly. Let's see how tough that turtle shell is when we blow a crater in the frozen mud underneath it and flip it onto its back like a beetle!
— "Fascinating piece of work, isn't it, my dear Roland?" —
William's calm, deep baritone sounded right beside the Prince's shoulder, pulling Cheng Yan straight out of his mental demolition math.
Turning his head slightly, Roland looked at his Commander-in-Chief.
Unlike the pale-faced recruits further down the wall—or even Carter Lannis, whose jaw was clenched like iron beside the powder crates—William stood with his broad shoulders completely relaxed, watching the approaching seven-meter titan without a single flicker of fear in his dark eyes.
— "That charming little fellow you are staring at with such philosophical horror," — William continued conversationally, resting one gloved hand on the pommel of his sword, — "is what the frontier hunters call a true Hybrid Beast."
As William spoke, however, the playful smirk faded from his lips, his expression turning sharp and analytical as he pointed toward the flanks of the snowfield behind the giant turtle.
Emerging from the swirling mist fifty yards behind the six-legged colossus were another thirty common demonic beasts—wolves, black bears, and jagged-tusked boars—trotting in a tight, disciplined semicircle directly in the hybrid's wake without a single animal breaking formation to charge ahead.
— "And watching how those wolves and bears are marching behind its shell right now," — William said, his voice dropping into a serious register so only Roland, Carter, and Iron Axe could hear, — "finally answers the question Iron Axe asked me twenty minutes ago. In the first wave, species that normally rip each other apart in the wild were charging our trench funnels in coordinated waves. They haven't signed a peace treaty, Roland. Look at how their ears are pinned toward that shell. The common beasts are operating under the direct hypnotic or pheromonal command of the Hybrid. That two-headed freak out there isn't just a heavy tank—it's the field general directing the pack."
Roland's gray eyes widened by a fraction of an inch as he processed the implication.
A mobile command node? A cold shiver ran down the Prince's spine. It's like watching a zombie lion herding a pack of rabid wolves into battle. Brute muscle is one thing, yet even rudimentary tactical coordination makes this winter horde ten times more lethal than the history books claimed.
Pulling his wool cloak tighter against the biting wind, Roland kept his eyes on the six-legged monster as it crushed the outer line of wooden warning stakes a hundred and fifty paces out, then spoke to the man beside him:
— "I understand the tactical priority now: cut off the general's head, and the pack's coordination shatters," — Roland said calmly before glancing sideways at William's broad frame. — "During our first war council in my study three weeks ago—right after you recruited Iron Axe—you mentioned that back in the Kingdom of Dawn, you killed a lion-and-basilisk Hybrid Beast the size of a carriage in under thirty seconds using your bare hands and that 'Pure Arcane Magic' of yours. With the strength you showed against the foxes earlier... can you replicate that feat against this one?"
Standing two paces to the left, Deputy Commander Iron Axe also turned his head, his hunter's eyes locking onto William with intense focus.
Inside his head, William didn't even wince at having his shameless bullshit from Chapter 10 thrown back in his face at the worst possible moment.
Damn it, Cheng Yan, you really had to bring up my lion-rug brag right in front of a twenty-ton kaiju, didn't you?! William laughed silently inside his own skull, though his exterior poker face remained as solid as the concrete beneath his boots.
With his Strength: 16, Speed: 11, and Endurance: 14, William knew he could easily outrun those six rhino legs, and his fists could probably smash one of those swaying wolf skulls into paste if he got a clean shot. However, jumping down into the deep snow alone to wrestle a fifteen-ton turtle surrounded by thirty bears and wolves while its foot-thick shell could crush him flat was the textbook definition of an idiot's death.
Without missing a single beat, William shook his head once, his voice ringing with the cool, measured professionalism of a grandmaster assessing a matchup:
— "Unfortunately, no, Your Highness. Jumping down there solo right now is off the table," — William replied smoothly, weaving his old lie straight into the present reality without a seam showing. — "The lion-lizard hybrid I killed in the south was a fast, four-legged predator no larger than a warhorse; against a beast of that stature, close-quarters martial arts and internal breathing can snap its spine before it reacts. This specimen, however, is a completely different weight class. Look at those six calcified legs and that dome—nature didn't just bend the rules on this one; it threw the rulebook away. Trying to grapple twenty tons of walking stone in knee-deep snow is a waste of stamina when we have modern metallurgy and high explosives sitting right behind us."
Roland nodded immediately, completely accepting the mechanical logic of the answer. To an engineer, using a human body—no matter how strong—to stop a twenty-ton bulldozer when you had cannons and gunpowder on hand was pure stupidity anyway.
THUD... THUD... THUD...
Down in the snowfield, the six-legged colossus crushed its way past the hundred-and-forty-pace marker, its two dead-eyed wolf heads swaying grotesquely as trails of black, steaming drool froze in the white tracks behind it.
Stepping right up to the front crenelation so every officer and militiaman along the central bastion could see the royal cloak flapping in the gale, Prince Roland raised his voice to full battle volume:
— "It is crossing into the outer extreme range of our bowmen!" — Roland's command cut cleanly across the parapet. — "Deputy Commander Iron Axe! Signal the archers and the heavy windlass crossbows in the flanking watchtowers! Do not aim for the shell—concentrate continuous volleys straight at those two protruding necks and its four eyes! Let's see if we can blind it or force it to pull its heads in before we spend our gunpowder at close range!"
— "By Your Highness's command!" — Iron Axe roared back, turning toward the wooden watchtowers and raising a red signal pennant high into the freezing air. — "TOWER ARCHERS! HEAVY ARBALESTS! NOCK AND DRAW! TARGET THE FRONT NECKS—LOOSE AT WILL!"
Thwack-twang-THWACK!
Up in the elevated timber towers flanking the concrete wall, twenty bowstrings and four heavy steel-prodded windlass crossbows snapped forward at once, sending a dark flight of iron-tipped shafts whistling out into the snowstorm.
Right away, however, Roland's eyes narrowed as he watched the physics of the frontier winter work directly against them.
Although the blinding snowfall had thinned slightly over the past five minutes, a brutal, unrelenting headwind was blowing straight down from the northern mountain peaks right into the faces of the defenders.
For lightweight wooden arrows and crossbow bolts relying on aerodynamic flight over a hundred and三十 paces, that sub-zero gale was devastating. Half of the normal arrows were buffeted off course in midair, losing their kinetic energy and plunging harmlessly into the snowdrifts ten feet short of the monster. Even the four heavy iron arbalest bolts—which struck the beast's thick, calcified front legs and the sloped edge of its brown carapace with loud, metallic clacks—had so much velocity stolen by the wind that the iron tips simply sparked and bounced off the armor plates without drawing a single drop of black blood.
It was a sobering display of just how useless traditional medieval ranged weapons were against an apex winter abomination.
Yet as Prince Roland glanced sideways down the concrete walkway to check if the failed arrow volley had caused panic among his peasant recruits, the young prince paused in genuine surprise.
Nobody on the wall was trembling anymore.
Along the central bay, Van'er, Trevor, Saldon, Rick, Zuler, and young Dergus stood with their boots planted like oak trees in the frost, their eyes steady and their jaws set as they waited for the fifty-pace musket mark.
In fact, despite a seven-meter, twenty-ton nightmare shaking the very stone beneath their feet, the morale of the First Army wasn't just holding—it was blazing high.
And looking at the way every single recruit's eyes flicked periodically toward the tall, broad-shouldered figure in the navy-blue coat standing beside the Prince, Roland immediately understood why.
To these former miners and serfs, the laws of physics and weight classes meant nothing compared to what they had witnessed with their own eyes over the past twenty-four hours. They had seen Commander William shatter iron-bossed shields in the dark; they had watched him jump off a twelve-foot wall to punch the skulls off charging winter foxes barehanded; they had watched him swing a fifteen-foot pike like a wooden club and kill three leaping wolves in a single blow.
In the simple, visceral faith of the militiamen on that parapet, if the arrows bounced off, if the gunpowder got wet in the snow, and if the concrete cracked... their invincible Commander would simply leap down from the battlements, grab that giant two-headed turtle by its collar, and beat it to death with his bare fists.
Standing motionless beside the Prince with the wind whipping his dark hair across his forehead, William heard the recruits whispering his name like a talisman down the line—yet behind his calm, predatory mask, the fighter's mind was boiling with a fierce, razor-sharp conflict that none of them could see.
He wasn't worried about dying today.
Between Roland's black-powder demolition barrels, thirty high-caliber flintlocks, Nightingale waiting in the mist, Arthur sitting back in the castle with Level 10 Telekinesis, and William's own superhuman frame, he knew they had more than enough firepower to turn this six-legged turtle into a smoking crater.
What was gnawing at William's gut as he stared at the dead, wooden eyes of the two wolf heads was the timeline.
In the original story of Release That Witch, the first Hybrid Beast wasn't supposed to appear on the very first morning of the snow—it was supposed to show up weeks later, after the militia had fought dozens of smaller battles and artillery cannons were already cast.
First the granary sabotage gets bumped up, and now a twenty-ton Hybrid shows up on Day One of winter while we only have thirty muskets and clay pots, William thought, his right hand tightening around the hilt of his broadsword as the six-legged colossus crushed the hundred-pace stake line and the thirty beasts behind it let out a deafening, unified roar. Every time Art and I alter the plot to earn credits and save lives, the world pushes back harder to balance the scales. If we play this too safe, the next wave might bring two of these things at once—and if I jump in too recklessly to farm credits, I'll expose the System right in front of Roland and Nightingale!
Eighty paces.
Seventy paces.
As the seismic thud of the six millstone-sized paws shook the frost off the stone crenelations, William raised his left arm, signaling Van'er and the thirty riflemen to uncover their flintlocks and bring the heavy iron barrels level over the wall.
The opening skirmish was over. Now, the true collision between modern gunpowder, superhuman ambition, and the horrors of the northern abyss was seconds away from detonating.