Mwooooo!!
From within the fog came the piercing roar of the deer cryptid.
Its howl of rage soon twisted into one of agony as it was struck by the mages’ counterattack.
“It worked! We’re getting a reaction from it!”
“Keep up the pressure! Don’t let it recover!”
The deer cryptid was completely different from the countless wolves scattered around it.
It was enormous, resilient, and filled with tremendous mana.
You could hardly call that black energy “mana,” but the way it was condensed and fired was unmistakably similar to pure magical force.
That alone made it an extremely troublesome foe.
It was like facing one of the mythical spirit beasts spoken of only in legends.
But now that the wolf cryptids protecting it had dwindled, the crusaders had finally succeeded in cornering the deer cryptid.
It wouldn’t be long before they could completely bring it down.
Because so many had gathered in this one place—numbering in the thousands—they split their forces and sent separate detachments toward the First Gate City.
After all, not everyone could take part in hunting a single beast. From a tactical standpoint, redistributing personnel was the right move.
While they waited for good news from the detachment dispatched to ◆ Nоvеlіgһt ◆ (Only on Nоvеlіgһt) the First Gate City—
They were instead met with shocking news.
“The detachment we sent to the First Gate City... was annihilated?”
The detachment composed mainly of paladins and priests had been wiped out.
It wasn’t that they’d received direct word of it—rather, the opposite.
There had been no word from them at all.
Not a single message from the hundreds they’d sent.
“What on earth... is in the First Gate City?”
They barely had time to dwell on it when—
Awooooo!!
A wolf’s howl echoed somewhere in the distance.
“This sound...”
The crusaders stiffened.
This wasn’t the howl of an ordinary wolf. It was far deeper—vast.
And sure enough, through the fog, a new cryptid appeared.
This time, it was an even larger wolf.
If the previous wolves had looked like they were molded from black mud, this one looked as though it were made of smoke.
Its dark fur shimmered like a heat haze, fading in and out of the mist.
It was larger than any other wolf cryptid, and unlike the others, its eyes glowed blue instead of red.
Grrrrrrr—
The wolf bared its fangs as it looked upon the cornered deer cryptid.
Then, with a thunderous leap, it charged at the crusaders.
“A new cryptid is coming!”
“Be careful! We don’t know what it can do!”
Everyone braced themselves.
Just by its sheer size, they could tell—it was another special variant, like the deer.
And indeed—
The wolf cryptid’s body blurred, dissolving into black wind.
“Wha—?”
The knights and paladins who’d been preparing to intercept it gasped as the breeze brushed past them like a taunt.
A moment later, deep gashes appeared across their bodies, as though slashed by invisible blades, and blood sprayed into the air.
“Gahhh!”
“Ugh! W-what is this?!”
They’d barely been grazed, yet the wounds were fatal.
Their own strikes, on the other hand, couldn’t touch it at all.
It was the wind itself—an incarnate storm.
Swords couldn’t cut it; the air around it was a razor that sliced everything nearby.
The black wind swept through the crusaders surrounding the deer cryptid.
The front line collapsed before they could even react, and the deer, cornered moments ago, regained its footing and withdrew.
Its wounds began to heal rapidly.
Beside it, the wolf cryptid solidified, standing proudly once more.
“To think there are two of those monsters... Don’t tell me there are more.”
“Damn it. Are these the kind of cryptids the Demon King commands?”
They’d expected a difficult fight—but this was beyond anything they had imagined.
With grim faces, the crusaders reformed their lines and raised their morale.
The wolf cryptid growled—then, suddenly, it lunged toward the deer.
“What the—!?”
“What is it doing?”
For a moment, they thought it was turning on its ally.
But it wasn’t.
The wolf and deer crashed together, entangling, merging like mud being kneaded.
Even for cryptids, the sight of their writhing, fusing forms was grotesque enough to chill the soul.
Their bodies tangled, spiraling together—until a massive bud began to take shape.
It rose sharply, twisting like a drill. Then the bud split from the tip, blooming wide open.
From within the black flower emerged a hybrid monster—a creature half wolf, half deer.
A wolf’s head, a deer’s antlers, and long, sinewy legs.
Chaaaarrrrk—
The open petals of the dark flower were absorbed into the creature’s body.
Its icy blue eyes flashed like frost, and the crusaders involuntarily shuddered.
At that instant, the fused cryptid moved.
It kicked off the ground—then ran through empty air.
The crusaders gasped as the enormous beast disappeared skyward in an instant.
“How—how can something that big fly?!”
“No, more importantly—how is it doing that?!”
The stationary firepower of the deer had combined with the wolf’s mobility.
High above the fog, black orbs began forming around the hybrid cryptid.
Concentrated masses of mana—pure energy given form.
The cryptid hurled them toward the ground.
Not one or two—but dozens, all at once.
“Everyone, move!”
“Fall back!”
KWA-KWA-KWA-KWA-BOOM!!!
Explosions ripped through the fog in succession.
Red flames roared skyward as shockwaves scattered debris and shrapnel in all directions.
It was like being bombarded by a fleet of bombers.
Except unlike bombers, this one never ran out of ammunition.
Shu-shu-shu-shoom—
More black orbs fell.
The bombardment rained mercilessly upon the crusaders below.
Mages and priests fired spells and holy light into the air, trying desperately to hit the creature.
Countless beams of color tore through the mist.
But the fused cryptid darted across the sky, stepping on the air itself, and unleashed another barrage.
Death and screams blossomed on the ground, blooming alongside the thunder of explosions.
* * *
Chaarrrrk—
The detached unit that had reached the First Gate City heard it clearly—the sound of chains.
Unlike the ruins of the Second Gate City, this place was still intact.
But though the buildings stood, the city was deserted, shrouded in a desolate stillness.
The dragging sound of metal echoed through the empty streets.
This was no ordinary chain.
From the sound alone, they could tell—it was massive, far heavier and thicker than any normal one.
And then, just as suddenly, the sound stopped.
“The noise stopped.”
“Stay alert. The Demon King’s underlings could attack from anywhere.”
The words had barely left his mouth when an entire building collapsed—
And something pitch-black came crashing down on the leading paladin.
KWAANG!!
It was a massive anchor.
The paladin, already on edge, immediately raised his shield and infused it with divine power.
But the anchor shattered the blessed shield and sent him flying through a building on the opposite side.
“W-what... the hell...”
Everyone froze, stunned by the sight that defied all reason.
It was a massive anchor—something that should have belonged on a warship—and the enormous anchor chain connected to it.
Who could have imagined such a thing appearing here, in the First Gate City?
Paaaang!
The anchor chain embedded in the wall suddenly went taut.
Something of that weight should have sagged under its own mass, but instead it hung perfectly horizontal in midair.
Then came the deep, grinding sound of metal. The anchor began to move.
“Everyone, down!”
A paladin who’d seen it up close shouted the warning as he threw himself flat to the ground.
He had quick instincts.
He’d witnessed the lead paladin—shield raised—being crushed in an instant, so he understood exactly how dangerous that weapon was.
But the ones farther back hadn’t seen it.
“Grant us Your holy blessing!”
“Shield us with the unyielding barrier of faith!”
“The Father’s grace be upon us!”
They raised shields, summoned barriers of divine light, or reinforced their bodies with holy power.
Even as a detachment, their number was nearly three hundred strong.
Surely, they thought, even if the Demon King’s servant appeared here, they could handle it.
It was an arrogant misjudgment—one that would be corrected in an instant.
The tension in the chain released. The anchor and links swung in a long, horizontal arc like a colossal whip.
Slaaaash!
And the world was cut perfectly in half.
“Wh—?”
The paladin holding his shield let out a puzzled sound.
He’d seen a black line sweep across—and suddenly, his vision tilted forward.
“Why...?”
His head turned stiffly to the side.
There, he saw the lower half of a body standing upright without its upper half.
It took him only a second to realize it was his own.
He wasn’t the only one.
Every paladin and priest who had stayed standing, who had tried to resist that black chain—
All of them had been sliced cleanly in two.
The surrounding buildings met the same fate.
“This... can’t be real...”
Those were the paladin’s last words.
Of nearly two hundred men, fewer than fifty survived—only those who had obeyed the command to duck.
In a single strike, more than a hundred and fifty had perished.
And these weren’t mere soldiers; they were the elite paladins and priests of the proud Bretus Holy Nation.
Everything in the black chain’s path had been bisected, reduced to rubble and ruin.
Collapsed buildings buried the corpses beneath heaps of stone and dust.
The survivors coughed as they struggled to their feet amid the haze.
“W-what... what the hell was that...”
Their voices trembled.
It had only been one strike.
Just one—and hundreds of their finest had been wiped out.
If I’d stayed standing, trying to hold my ground...
The thought alone sent a cold chill down their spines.
But who... who could do something like this?
Their gazes turned toward the center of the First Gate City—toward the circular crater that had been carved into its heart.
Chaarrrrk.
The sound of chains rattled as the smoke settled.
And then they saw him.
A towering beastman of immense build emerged from the haze.
Bronzed skin. Muscles stretched tight as if about to burst.
In one hand, he gripped an anchor the size of his own body, along with the massive chain that connected it.
At the other end of the chain hung a harpoon, black as pitch—just like the anchor.
Anchor, harpoon, and chain—linked together into a single monstrous weapon.
Could such a thing even exist in this world? And even if it did, who could possibly wield it?
That impossibility was standing before them now.
“Sharp ones, aren’t you.”
Pantos muttered as he surveyed the fifty or so survivors.
He’d meant to wipe them all out in one swing, but more had lived than he expected.
“Beastman? Did he just say beastman?”
“H-how could a savage mongrel like that be here...?”
The priests and paladins could hardly believe what they were seeing.
That a beastman was here at all was shocking enough—but that there was only one made it all the more unbelievable.
Pantos’ ears twitched atop his head, catching every word of their muttering.
“Savage... barbarian... There was another fool who called me that once.”
One of the three captains of the Bretus Holy Knights—once considered a hero—had his arm ripped off by Pantos while still alive.
“I wonder what kind of end you’ll meet.”
Pantos tightened his grip on the chain and began to spin it slowly.
The enormous anchor at its end whirled through the air like the blades of a windmill, whooshing faster and faster until its outline blurred.
A gale surged outward from the force.
Then—
Fwoosh!
A black streak shot forward like an arrow toward the crusaders.
It moved like a coiled serpent lunging for its prey.
The paladins who failed to react in time were smashed to pulp on impact.
The chain curved, whipping around to sweep through the ranks and shred the nearby survivors.
It didn’t take long for the detachment to be completely annihilated.
* * *
“Looks like he’s having fun over there.”
Watching a section of the city crumble to dust, Alex, who was tasked with defending the First Gate City alongside Pantos, gave a crooked smile.
He had expected Pantos to be irritable after being kept idle for so long—but he hadn’t expected him to unleash such destruction right from the start.
“At this rate, there won’t be anything left standing around him.”
Despite his words, Alex knew he’d probably do the same once the fighting began.
If the detachment had already reached the First Gate City, then things were moving faster than expected.
“They keep saying they’ll slow the crusaders down, but they’ve already made it this far. Sheer numbers really are terrifying.”
This was just the beginning—a taste.
More would come soon.
He alone couldn’t possibly stop them all.
No matter how well-prepared he was, a single man had limits.
Especially if master-class knights or Lexeler-level mages were among the enemy ranks—the battle would quickly turn against them.
“I really hope she doesn’t come.”
Alex murmured, recalling the face of his former lover.
Even though he knew perfectly well—she would.
