Chapter 53: Operation: Extermination
The next day.
Atop a small hill not far from the source cave, a large plume of miasma concentrated into a slow-moving cloud and drifted steadily toward the clusters of beasts surrounding the cave entrance below.
Hela had used this before.
Her miasma had successfully warded off certain beasts in previous encounters, and killed off the ones that weren’t reactive enough to recognize the danger creeping into their breathing. But that wasn’t the function they needed from it today.
Her black cloud carried other properties alongside its toxicity. Cover was one. The ability to teleport the user, and whatever the user designated, was another.
While the cloud spread and thickened across the terrain surrounding the cave, Hela worked quietly and without drawing attention. In several locations to the left of the cave entrance, drums of high explosive materials were moved into position, teleported there under the cover of the miasma while the beasts below registered nothing unusual in the air around them.
When she was done, she pulled back.
A figure appeared on one of the higher cliff positions, arrow drawn, arm pulled back to full extension.
—shuu
—shuu
—shuu
The shots came out in rapid succession, each one finding a drum in the darkness below.
The explosions followed immediately, a chain of detonations that tore through the mountainside and sent sound rolling outward across the peaks in waves that swallowed every other noise entirely.
The beasts didn’t scatter.
They became alert, heads lifting, bodies orienting toward the sites of the blasts, and then they moved toward the destruction rather than away from it. The smell of blood and the presence of fallen bodies pulled them in without hesitation, the instinct to feed overriding whatever alarm the sound had briefly triggered.
This was exactly what the team had needed.
,,,,,,,,,,,,,
White Ghost appeared from a position to the right of the cave’s mouth, moving fast, a massive sword held in both hands, its blade bathed in steady purple light that didn’t flicker as he ran.
He didn’t slow to assess the beasts still in the surrounding area.
He pushed straight for the cave entrance, his team falling in behind him, boots finding the uneven ground without breaking the momentum of the advance.
"Where are my clearers?!!"
His voice cut through the residual noise of the explosions, sharp and carrying, pitched to reach everyone in the formation behind him.
To his left, Hela summoned her giant black serpent. The creature materialized in full, its body dropping into the terrain with a weight that pressed against the ground and displaced the air around it, scales catching the pale mountain light as it oriented toward the cave.
To the right, Lucas raised his hand and his summon appeared beside him. A creature built along the lines of a troll, massive through the shoulders, a giant club gripped in one hand, its frame large enough that its presence alone shifted the available space in the corridor of terrain leading toward the entrance.
From their prior observation of the cave system, the team had noted a pattern in how the beasts organized themselves inside. The creatures occupying the outer areas weren’t permitted entry. The ones that pushed too hard against that boundary were removed, brought out as corpses by the more elite Rock Drakes operating closer to the interior. The hierarchy was enforced from within.
A rearward ambush was unlikely because of it.
A forward attack from the interior was a different matter entirely. The beasts deeper inside the cave system had read as stronger than anything they had faced on the roads or the surrounding terrain, and the team had planned accordingly.
They pushed toward the entrance.
The first beasts noticed them before they reached it.
The response was immediate. Bodies broke away from the cluster and rushed forward, closing the distance with the focused aggression of creatures that had learned the interior of these mountains belonged to them.
Lucas’s troll went wide.
Its club came around in broad sweeping arcs that caught multiple beasts in each pass, the range of each swing keeping the forward pressure at a manageable distance, bodies knocked sideways and stunned before they could reach the tighter formation behind it.
Hela’s serpent moved differently. Its body swept in long lateral motions, the sheer mass of it clearing beasts away from the flanks in groups, displacing them rather than individually engaging, the scale of the creature making precision unnecessary.
One became two.
Two became four.
The count climbed faster than the initial engagement suggested it would, the flow of beasts emerging from the surrounding terrain and joining the press continuing without slowing, the numbers stacking until the group found themselves facing a moving wall of sixty bodies pushing toward the cave entrance from every accessible angle.
"Ethan, control!!"
White Ghost’s voice came hard and immediate from the front of the formation.
Ethan stepped forward, Morgan moving into position alongside him.
At tier 8, a summoner could replicate at least one ability from their contracted summon. From Vlad, Ethan had taken Black-Eyed Bat Evasion. From Morgan, the choice had been straightforward from the beginning.
[Spell Caster: The ability to create a myriad of spells in battle in quick succession, including air bursts, flame circles, chains of mana....]
Both of them released chains simultaneously.
Dozens of them, erupting outward from both Ethan and Morgan in overlapping directions, the mana threads finding the approaching beasts and coiling around limbs, torsos, necks, anything with mass to grip. Some were pulled off their feet entirely, dragged backward and away from the press, relieving the forward weight on Lucas and the serpent. Others were locked in place long enough for the clearers behind to close the distance and finish them before they broke free.
The system wasn’t clean.
It was never going to be clean against sixty beasts in a mountain corridor with limited room to operate. But it was functional, and functional was what the moment required.
The weight on the front line dropped. The pace of the advance steadied.
White Ghost didn’t stop moving.
He pushed deeper, the purple blade working through whatever reached him, the team holding its formation behind him as the cave mouth gave way to the interior and the mountain swallowed them whole.
Everyone had a role.
That much was clear in every exchange, every command, every body filling the space it had been assigned to fill.
And with that, they pushed deeper.
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