Sera stood in the ash, her white armor stained black, her sword heavy in her hand. She had killed thousands. She had cut a path through the spawns that should have been impossible. But there were always more.
"Sera!" someone called. "Behind you!"
She turned and killed in a numb fashion before she continued fighting. Perhaps she was not worthy to reach the end of this road; no one here was, even the prince of lightning, whose thunder was growing weak.
Her eyes found Tarian in the forefront, and his eye-catching blue hair was now grey with ash.
His lightning still came when he called it, but it was weaker and slower. The bolts that had carved through half the city were reduced to thin, flickering threads.
His Heaven Grade Legacy was not exhausted; it could not be exhausted, but he was. His body was a cage of fatigue, and his muscles were screaming and his lungs burning.
He had been fighting for hours. He had not stopped, and he could not stop, even if he wished to.
"Form up!" he shouted. His voice was hoarse. "Hold the line!"
Tarian glanced back at those who were still fighting, and he pushed himself to keep going; surely there must be an end to them… There must!
The spawns kept coming.
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A discerning observer would not notice that it was not the strength of the spawns that broke them. It was not their speed or their claws or their teeth. It was the weight. The endless, crushing weight of a tide that did not stop.
And there were observers on the wall that were watching, and they all turned to one man, the Lord Protector, as they could see that he did not call off this trial.
A Guild Gradmaster asked a single question aloud, "Why?"
The Lord Protector was quiet for a moment before he pointed in Elias's direction. For hours, they had seen how Elias did not appear to be a being of flesh and blood, but literally and figuratively, and he alone had been holding back a portion of the calamity.
"If we pull back our candidate, then according to the agreement I have made with the Commander of the Asylum, we can no longer send anyone back in there, and it would be monopolized by the Asylum. In exchange for this unfair deal, they sent only one candidate against our three thousand."
He paused and muttered to himself a while later, "I should not have taken that deal."
No one on the wall spoke, because doing so would admit what they were all beginning to fear… these creatures, they were not natural, especially the man who stood alone fighting them.
Ⓔ
The candidates here had killed tens of thousands. After fighting for hours, they had poured every talent, every technique, every drop of Lumina into the slaughter, and the enemies were not ending, and they began to fall faster.
Only a society that was made for war, like the Siphons, could endure such brutal combat without fleeing. Their powers grew in slaughter, and so it was not surprising that they knew that they would perish in slaughter.
A new danger suddenly arose as a boy with ice in his blood collapsed, his body frozen from the inside, his talent consuming him after it had grown to the extent that he could not control it any longer.
No one here expected that this place was not just going to be a meal that would fill them up, but also overflow.
Everyone wanted a greater talent, but that also meant a greater burden on the body, and clearly, no one would ever believe that they would reach a point where they would burst from too much of a good thing.
A girl with lightning in her veins exploded, her power turning inward, her flesh burning. A young noble who had never known fear stood in the shield wall and wept as the spawns tore his squad apart around him.
They could run, but that would mean a fate that was worse than death, and it would be better to die than to bring this sort of shame on your faction.
Previously, they had been pushing themselves closer to the pit, and now they had retreated back to the square, creating a circular formation as they were covered on all sides by monsters.
However, the square was shrinking, and the perimeter was showing signs of imminent collapse. The ashes from the dead were now piled so high that it was hard to even see the spawns when they tore through them.
This was madness; everything was madness.
It came to them slowly, even though they tried to deny it, even Tarian knew that they were not winning. In fact, they had never been winning. The spawns they had killed were not the enemy; they were the appetizer. The tide they had held back was not the tide; it was the first wave.
All the hours they had spent killing meant almost nothing as the opposition they faced became ridiculous.
Not because the spawns were stronger. They were not. Not because the spawns were faster. They were not. But because there was no end to them. They poured from the pit in a flood that did not diminish, did not slow, did not care how many died.
The candidates had killed tens of thousands. It was not enough.
The spawns had lost tens of thousands. It did not matter.
"Where are they coming from?" someone screamed.
No one answered. They all knew that it was the pit, but what did that knowledge mean exactly?
The shield wall broke at the four-hour mark. It was simply exhaustion taking its toll. In any normal battle, these three thousand candidates were the best of the best, and they could have fought for hours, but not here.
The shield-bearers could not lift their arms, the ranged specialists could not summon their talents, and the healers were dead.
The spawns poured through the gap, and they moved in silence. The candidates were too tired to run, fight, or even scream.
What came next was one of the most brutal slaughters imaginable, and for those watching on the wall, this was not an easy sight to swallow, but no one could change anything, except the Lord Protector, who was squeezing his fist so tight that he was beginning to bleed, and he was not even aware.
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