Chapter 711

Chapter 711

Under normal circumstances, the Zaun kin would have been isolated and eliminated individually—but they managed to organize themselves into a functional defensive line. This shift occurred as Alexandra, the leader of the family, and Lynox stepped to the vanguard, establishing an invisible barrier that halted the hostile momentum. Because the lizard-mounted foes were forced to navigate around this pair, they lost the speed necessary for an effective charge, leaving their every movement vulnerable to observation.

Before a portion of the riders could even launch their strike, Enkrid had dispatched Anahera to act as a preemptive wedge, shattering their coordination and plunging the field into a disorganized brawl. Despite this, Heskal remained composed.

“Sending Ragna instead of Anahera might have been the wiser move,” he mused.

That could have truly shattered their ranks. However, Ragna was far too vital to risk so early. If the head of the house served as the fortification, Ragna was the heavy artillery—designed to be launched for maximum impact. Since no one anticipated a human projectile, there was no reason to hold him back. Regardless, there was no window of time to reach Ragna with new orders; Enkrid had to trust in the warrior’s personal judgment.

His attention shifted suddenly. It wasn’t a sound that alerted him, but a subtle ripple in his perception—a faint hint of something unnatural. Even if it were merely a hand waving behind him, at this level of focus, even a stray breath drawn ten paces away would have signaled a warning. Despite the raging elements, his awareness mapped the environment with surgical precision.

Enkrid adjusted his focus to follow his gut—and caught sight of a threat closing in on Riley. It was a group of lizard riders reaching out with grasping hands. Among them was a beast with a sharp snout and dark scales flecked with crimson. A rare variant. This was a creature that would earn a specific title if it survived the day.

Concealed within the seemingly standard swarm of Scalers was a contingent of monsters possessing supernatural gifts that made their kin look like harmless offspring. Simultaneously, Anahera sensed the hidden offensive and cried out:

“Something is holding me!”

She wasn’t physically pinned—no grip held her limbs—but Enkrid understood her alarm instantly. Telekinesis.

Enkrid drove his blade into the soil and pushed his senses even wider. Several creatures moving with unnatural patterns spiked in his awareness. He intensified the flow of data—sight, sound, scent, taste, and touch. Every sensation was reconstructed in his mind, fitting together perfectly. Like dark ink appearing on a pristine canvas, the monsters gifted with supernatural powers stood out clearly in his mind’s eye.

While his senses mapped the threats, his hands remained in motion. He pulled a pair of horn-blade daggers from his chest rig, holding one in each palm. Jaxon had once remarked that these were the most loathed tools on the continent.

“They don’t muffle noise—they increase it? This is terrible,” Jaxon had complained. Truly, they clashed with Jaxon’s personal style and preferences.

The memory was gone in an instant. His body reacted instinctively. He locked onto the targets his heightened perception had flagged. Everything around him—particularly the Scalers reaching out—seemed to slow to a crawl. The mental processing speed of a knight far outstrips that of a common person; it felt as though he had stepped into the narrow crevices of time, observing from a hidden vantage point. This temporal dilation was likely why stray thoughts were able to wander in.

“Single-point concentration.”

When time stretches, the body feels as if it is submerged in thick sludge—but Will flows through his veins, providing the necessary force to act. With that power, he could move unhindered through the temporal mire.

What was the objective? Aim and release.

He centered himself, merging Jaxon’s specialized throwing methods with the observations he’d made of Riley. He drew both arms back, compressing his power to its limit, channeled Will into his muscles, and snapped forward like a pair of whips. The horn-blade daggers cut through the atmosphere.

Boom! Boom! Bwooo!

The air groaned. The blades buried themselves in the skulls of two Scalers practicing telekinesis. Each impact was followed by a heavy, resonant blast. Even through the howling gale, the sound of the hits was unmistakable. The daggers didn’t stop in the bone—they punched straight through, leaving fist-sized cavities in the monsters’ heads. Not even a troll could walk away from such a cranial wound.

The beasts that had been reaching through the air collapsed, their frames folding into the muck. Enkrid pulled his sword from the mud.

“I’ll handle the unique variants.”

It was clear he could no longer remain a spectator. There were multiple monsters with extraordinary abilities, which meant he would have to immerse himself in this chaotic theater of war. And those telekinetic beasts were merely the opening act.

Kwarururung!

Thunder rolled through the heavens, and a terrifying weight settled over the area. Enkrid looked upward. The storm clouds churned, and from the black vapor, moisture began to aggregate into a massive silhouette. An enormous serpent took shape in the sky—not a dragon, but a long, serpentine entity that hovered above the conflict in league with the monsters. The chilling sensation crawling down his spine confirmed this was high-level sorcery.

“I was waiting for them to play that card,” Enkrid whispered.

The spell’s impact was instantaneous. The moment the serpent manifested, the monsters’ ferocity spiked.

Shaaaaaa!

The cries of the Scalers grew more piercing, and his internal alarms flared.

“Maintain your positions,” he said, passing by Riley.

“You don’t have to tell me—I’m already on it!” Riley snapped back.

As he moved, Enkrid executed a fluid sweep of his blade. Three Iron carved a rising path, catching the throat of a lizard lunging from the shadows.

Spwick, dududuk!

It was as if a jagged wire had cinched around the neck and snapped it away. The edge traveled around the creature’s windpipe and decapitated it entirely. It had been suppressing its presence with high proficiency, but the rhythm of the rain hitting the earth and the slight vacuum in the downpour had given it away.

Heskal.

Enkrid began to grasp the man’s strategy. If masters like Kraiss or Abnaier were watching this play out, they would likely observe: “He intends to finish this with one crushing blow.” And before that final move, he intended to sap the defenders’ vitality, both in body and spirit. He was using monsters to tire out the knight-class warriors, likely intending to use the surviving Zaun soldiers to slaughter their own, breaking their resolve. Knights were the ultimate variables; taking one down was worth an army of beasts.

“Quite skilled.”

As a strategist, Heskal was formidable. Enkrid had to participate in the game to a certain extent. He had tried to conserve his strength, but that was no longer an option. He had done just enough to keep Riley and the others from falling and breaking the group’s spirit. If the line failed here, the path to Zaun would be unguarded, leaving the rear vulnerable.

His intuition shrieked a fresh warning, and Enkrid whipped his head toward the horizon.

“Get down!”

Wasn’t this a bit excessive? The thought crossed his mind. The sorcerous serpent was already amplifying the monsters’ physical prowess. And now, another unique entity had entered the fray. A supernatural beast—much larger than the rest—reared up at the back of the ranks.

Shaaaak.

A mass of writhing serpents sat atop its head—the mark of its power. This creature dominated the field by its presence alone. Its title: Medusa.

It stood five times the height of a Scaler, surpassing even a giant. The petrification it radiated wasn’t an absolute death sentence; those with sufficient Will could fend it off. However, the requirement to constantly resist it was the real threat. It forced a drain on one’s Will in a conflict where every drop was precious. Enkrid would have to engage these supernatural monsters while fighting a curse that tried to turn his very blood to stone dust.

In a standard engagement, his side had the upper hand. Against supernatural monsters, they were matched. With the serpent sorcery, they were losing. Now, with Medusa present, defeat was all but certain. Heskal had calculated every step.

“He’s using Medusa as a tactical anchor.”

Instead of a direct charge, he used her to maintain a zone of suppression. The source of the sorcery was now evident; Medusa acted as both a strategic asset and the focal point for the ritual. The enemy’s power was undeniable, backed by a sorcerer and a master of alchemy. If that specter Drmul actually achieved his dream of godhood, he would surely be known as the God of Pestilence.

Enkrid decided the best course was to fight without using his eyes at all. Even with his vast internal Will, a portion would be wasted if he looked directly at the threat. He knew the Zaun swordsmen were capable of this; they had been drilled in blind combat since childhood. The Zaun martial style incorporated such sensory mastery.

“Keep your heads down! You don’t need your eyes!” Enkrid commanded—though he kept his own head high for a moment longer. He needed to verify one last detail visually.

The Medusa’s curse triggered upon visual contact. Above him, he heard the sound of beating wings. Heskal had kept the aerial units in reserve until now, releasing them to capitalize on Medusa’s presence.

“He’s looking for the perfect overlap between his tactical curse and his air support.”

Perhaps the winged creatures required the serpent’s enchantment to fly through such a violent storm. Regardless, Enkrid stared forward, challenging the Medusa’s power. He relied on the constant tide of Will within him—and the Will of Defiance he had developed. It was successful; the petrification could not take hold. Anyone else would have felt their blood thickening into stone by now.

“I suppose I’ll have to deal with the air units.”

He pushed his soaked hair out of his face. A grim realization hit: if they couldn’t uncover a hidden card to turn the tide, they were finished. His intuition and his logic reached the same conclusion.

Very well then.

The Lua Gharne-style tactical swordplay was never meant to be performed from the safety of the back line. Intuition reached into his subconscious to provide the path—and the power he held. Enkrid mapped the route forward through sheer instinct. A recent epiphany had sharpened his vision.

He lowered his gaze.

“Lynox uses his Will to create ripples.”

Enkrid began to mimic what he had seen. While he didn’t consider himself a natural prodigy, his command over Will was undeniable—not through raw genius, but because his massive reserves allowed him to practice without end. Consequently, high-level maneuvers often felt more natural than basic ones.

“Restraint.”

He ignored Medusa. He masked his Will, synchronizing his internal frequency with the environment. It was total alignment. Ironically, this was the moment he finally mastered the synchronization method that Knight Jamal of Azpen had once demonstrated. If Rem were present, he would likely scream:

“Are you serious?! You’re just now figuring this out?”

Enkrid could almost hear the phantom shouting. He dissolved into the background of the battle. He thinned his breathing to a steady, imperceptible rhythm and touched his tongue to the air to taste the rain. A subtle sweetness conveyed information via his palate—distance, orientation, placement. It wasn’t a perfect map, but it was enough to track presence.

He decided there was no point in keeping his eyes open. So, he closed them.

In place of sight, he leaned into his hearing. Auditory input became his vision. He didn’t need to generate sound for echolocation; the rain did it for him.

Ssshhhhhhh.

As the roar of the downpour faded into a background hum, Enkrid’s perception transitioned into a world of monochrome shapes. At last, he saw it all clearly: the positioning, the intent, and the essence of his foes. Following the mental map created by his Lua Gharne techniques, Enkrid stepped forward.

None of the Zaun fighters nearby, not even Riley, noticed him move. The enemy remained equally oblivious. He stayed in his state of synchronization, only letting his Will flare at the exact moment of impact.

His first target was a Scaler preparing a telekinetic strike. Enkrid unsheathed Penna and drove it through the monster’s jaw.

Puk!

The blade hammered through the skull, sending dark ichor and bone fragments out the top of its head. Before the strike was even finished, he had retrieved the blade, cleared the gore, returned it to its sheath, and moved eighteen paces to the side. It looked like a casual stroll, yet he moved with the velocity of a sprinter.

There, he intercepted an Owlbear—a stealth specialist about to release a volley of toxic plumage.

Bdudududuk!

Its feathers, designed to cut through the gale like poisoned needles, bristled for launch. Each one was a lethal dart. Left to its own devices, it might have decimated the line. But the Owlbear never got the chance. The edge of Three Iron sliced through the armored feathers and decapitated the beast. Black blood erupted like a geyser, but the rain immediately washed it into the mud. To Enkrid’s sound-based vision, it looked like the merging of two distinct fluids.

He moved on, locating enemies through sound and vibration, only releasing his power when necessary.

Puck!

The next Scaler had a hide of incredible thickness, but Penna found the eye socket and shattered the brain. Death wasn’t instant, but a second blow was redundant.

Next.

There were three primary categories of supernatural threats: the telekinetics, the ones with reinforced bodies, and the stealth variants. Enkrid focused on the third group—the ones masking their location. This black-and-white mental world was a training arena built specifically for him. He felt like a singular free entity navigating a complex web.

Aker’s Web—the art of imposing order on chaos and severing it with a blade. He fused his prior training and experiences with the principles of Lua Gharne. From that point, it wasn’t even a struggle. It was simply a task he was capable of performing. And through that single-minded focus, Enkrid ensured that not a single person standing near him—no one who carried the name Zaun—would fall.