While Ken had his battle with the five monsters, the rest of the battlefield did not stop to watch.
Steven could be seen fighting 1v10 against fifth-rank beasts, Henry fought against two of them, and the rest of Ken's team fought against the remaining three.
The rest of the soldiers were doing their best to slaughter the beasts; the third-stage guards aimed at second-rank and first-rank beasts, while the captains fought everything on their paths. They barely stopped a small portion of the beasts, but every kill counts.
The guards on the walls were reloading their bows and shooting arrows profusely, almost every arrow put an end to the life of a beast or wounded it considerably. They stood in a formation that channeled Bow Qi into their weapons, making their arrows a few times stronger. With the aid of the formation, their strikes were almost as strong as a fourth-stage cultivator.
The others used nets to trap fourth-rank beasts that managed to slip between the attacks of the captains, dropped rocks to crush them, or shot the bolts from the crossbows to put an end to their lives while they were fazed from crashing into the wall once; only those under the fourth rank could not survive a single collision.
Out of everyone, those that caused the most damage to the beasts were Ken and Steven. The former by causing chain accidents while the latter dealt the damage by the collateral damage of his techniques against the 10 beasts. Needlessly to say, he was doing it on purpose.
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"Jake, Max, you deal with the weakest beasts, the two monkeys," Miles shouted orders. Henry already sent two palm attacks toward two beasts, so Miles took the strongest of the remaining three.
"Yes, Senior Brother!"
Jake brandished his two daggers and ran toward the monkey, engaging in a high-paced battle. The monkey screamed as it jumped from beast to beast, using them as stepping platforms and tree branches to move agilely.
Max also rushed to fight his opponent, and with two short swords, he began chasing the second monkey. The two opponents were the weakest, but their agility was the highest, making them troublesome opponents to fight.
Miles unsheathed his saber and coated it with flame while entering a staring contest against an ox. The ox kicked the ground multiple times before finally charging forward, its horns aiming at Miles's throat.
Henry was having a relatively easy time against his opponents, a weird duo of a stag and a bear. The stag used its antlers to resist Henry's palms or dodge them with its swift legs, while the bear took them head-on with its paws.
Henry did not care much about the safety of a few extra guards. In fact, he was already doing a great deed and saving lives by fighting those two beasts, he had nothing to feel bad about. Thus, he was not going all out and bided his time during the fight.
He was sitting inside a large ethereal demonic Buddha, both were crossed-legged. The beasts colliding with his defenses had their heads turned into a mess of broken bones and brain matter.
Every time he clapped, two palms would form, trying to capture one of his targets between them. The bear desperately poured out its Metal Qi from its paws, breaking the clapping hands, while the stag boosted itself with Fire Qi to jump above them or resist them when it couldn't.
They could not attack back for a single moment. They had to fight the palms trying to swat them like flies, sometimes by clapping and sometimes by descending from the sky.
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The mayor skipped the beasts on the ground and went directly to his targets; as a sixth-stage cultivator, his mind could condense the Qi into invisible steps that allowed him to walk in the air.
While it pained him to leave his soldiers in danger, he knew the price would be much higher if he was exhausted during the third wave.
Steven was pressuring the minds of the beasts as his spear was thrown to the ground with great power. Earth pikes rose from the ground, claiming the lives of dozens of beasts, but the fifth-rank beasts managed to get out of it with only a few wounds.
The man landed in front of a tall ape and exchanged blows with it directly, until his spear made it back and pierced the ape from behind, putting an end to the animal's life.
Next, he rotated the spear around his waist, deflecting two charging boars and a tall stag. He kicked with his leg and a large boulder came out flying from the ground, crashing into a lion that tried to ambush him from behind.
The lion was sent to the ground with a thud, and the boulder continued rolling down and trampling many beasts to death.
An elephant tried to crush the tiny human under its trunk, but he side-stepped at a speed far higher than the beasts could catch. He picked the stronger side; Ken's side barely had any peak fifth-rank beasts, while his enemies had five of them.
He thumped the ground with the butt of his spear, and the ground turned gooey, making the beasts' legs sink into it in surprise. Their minds were under pressure the whole time, slowing down their reaction time and focus.
With a jump and a thrust of his spear, another beast died, a boar this time. His spear pierced through its heart, putting an end to its life.
Steven then soared to the sky with a tall jump and watched the animals from above. The elephant tried to bring him down with its long trunk, but the mayor simply threw his spear again.
The elephant coated itself with a thick layer of Metal Qi, gaining another layer of defense additionally to its thick skin, but to no avail. The spear pierced through the beast's right eye and remained stuck there, only a few centimeters away from the animal's brain.
"Auuuuu!"
The elephant trumpeted in pain as the spear shook in its eye and eventually managed to set itself free and fly back to its owner. Despite the major stage between them, Steven was not powerful enough to kill the elephant in a single blow, but blinding one eye was plenty.
The beasts turned enraged on the ground. The battle was taking place too high for them to intervene, and they could not do much beyond watching. They did their best to throw techniques at the levitating man, but their power decreased greatly by the time it reached his height, rendering them harmless.
'I can't leave them hanging like that,' Steven thought as he looked at the screaming beasts. In truth, he caused no collateral damage by fighting at this height, so despite being the safest option, he did not favor it.
He rolled in the air, his head facing the ground, and kicked the air behind him. He was sent in a powerful momentum to the ground, right between an ox and a lion, and the shockwaves killed them both instantly, while the rest of the beasts lost their footing. The weaker beasts in the vicinity died along with two of their leaders.
'Rain of spears,' Steven thought to himself as large ethereal spears began descending from the ground, claiming countless lives while injuring the beasts in the lower or intermediate phase of the fifth rank. When the technique was over, two more fifth-ranked beasts lost their lives.
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