The glowing light of the youngest Swordsman's Aura flickered, sputtered like a drowning candle, and died completely. His Mana Core had burned the last drop of its Mana. His legs gave out, and he collapsed face-first into the dirt, entirely unconscious from severe Mana exhaustion.
The defensive circle was broken.
A collective, terrifying growl rolled through the dense trees, a sound so deep it vibrated in the marrow of the Adventurers' bones. The nine hundred and sixty Abyssal Blindhounds stood up from the tall grass in perfect, predatory unison. They did not feint this time.
The massive wave of black, leathery bodies surged forward, charging the shattered line with terrifying, blinding speed.
Elian slowly stood up. He drew his twin daggers, his hands trembling so violently the steel rattled. The charismatic leader, the Level 6 Thief who always had a bright smile and a flawless plan, had absolutely nothing left.
Behind him, the young female Healer collapsed to her knees, dropping her wooden staff. She buried her face in her hands and began to sob hysterically, screaming the name of the daughter she would never see again.
Her cries pierced through the deafening roar of the charging monsters, hitting Elian's ears like shattered glass.
Something inside him snapped. The sheer, overwhelming pressure of impending death violently ripped away his polite facade.
"Stop crying!" Elian roared, turning his head to glare at the trembling woman. His voice was ragged, desperate, and entirely stripped of its usual charm. "This is our last stand! If we are going to be butchered in the dirt, at least die with dignity! Pick up your staff and stand up!"
The Healer gasped, her breath catching in her throat. She looked at Elian's bloodshot eyes. She wiped the tears from her dirt-streaked face with the back of her trembling hand.
She gritted her teeth, grabbed her wooden staff, and forced herself to her feet. She began channeling every last drop of her healing magic into her staff, ready to burn her soul out.
Elian turned back to face the black tide. His mind was a chaotic, spiraling mess of shattered pride.
I thought I was a legend in the making, Elian thought, the cold, sharp reality of absolute fear gripping his lungs. I thought my speed made me invincible. But I am nothing. I am just a piece of meat standing in front of a thousand jaws. We are all going to die.
The slaughter began.
The first wave of Blindhounds crashed into the Tankers. The sheer kinetic force of the impact threw huge men backward into the dirt.
"Hold the gap!" a Swordsman screamed while swinging his heavy sword. The steel bit deeply into a hound's skull, spraying thick, foul-smelling black blood across the combatants.
It was a chaotic, visceral meat grinder. Adventurers were screaming while swinging wildly as the beasts swarmed them. Claws tore through leather armor; teeth sank into shoulders.
"Damn you! Die, you bastards! Die!" an Archer yelled, point-blank firing an arrow through the eye socket of a leaping hound before another beast slammed into his chest, knocking the wind out of him.
The Healers in the center were spamming low-tier coagulation spells, desperately trying to force the frontliners' torn flesh to knit back together before they bled out.
The exhausted Swordsman lying on the ground was violently dragged backward by his collar just as a set of big jaws snapped shut on the exact patch of dirt his head had occupied a second before.
"Leader!" the senior Mage screamed, his barrier cracking under the weight of three hounds. "They are breaking through!"
---
A few hundred meters away, down the long stretch of the dirt road, a black carriage rolled to a sudden halt.
Mirelle pulled back hard on the heavy leather reins, her blistered hands screaming in pain. Her bright blue eyes widened in pure horror as she looked down the road.
Dust was kicking up into the sky. She could hear the agonizing screams of humans and the terrifying snarls of hundreds of monsters.
Up on the reinforced alloy roof, Lexi sat cross-legged, staring blankly at the bloodbath unfolding a few hundred meters ahead.
"Kian," Lexi called out, her voice entirely flat, completely devoid of urgency. "There are people ahead surrounded by monsters. What should I do?"
There was no answer. Only the soft, rhythmic sound of Kian snoring drifted through the heavy wooden door below. He was completely dead to the world, taking his mid-day nap.
Mirelle, sitting on the driving board, felt her heart beat violently. She was an Imperial Princess.
She had spent her entire childhood safely behind towering stone walls, but the imperial tutors and her father, the Emperor himself, had always drilled one absolute truth into her mind: The nobility exists to shield the subjects.
She looked at the Adventurers being torn apart. She knew exactly how terrifying Lexi was. The pink-haired Thief had casually dismantled a hundred wyverns in mid-air. These grounded dogs would be entirely effortless for her.
"Lexi!" Mirelle screamed, pointing frantically at the slaughter. "Help them! They are dying! Go down there!"
Lexi did not move a single muscle. "I cannot do that. I need his permission."
Mirelle stared at the roof in sheer, utter disbelief. "What are you talking about?! People are being eaten alive! Just go!"
Lexi's terrifying, deadpan eyes looked down at the twelve-year-old girl. Behind those blank eyes, a deeply ingrained, completely misunderstood directive was holding her in place.
---
Flashback: Three days ago.
Kian had been sitting in his portable chair while glaring intensely at Lexi. He was deeply annoyed because Lexi had briefly stopped the carriage to look at a ruined merchant cart on the side of the road.
Kian, terrified that Lexi was going to adopt another annoying orphan and ruin his peaceful vacation even further, had pointed a strict finger at the pink-haired Thief.
"Listen to me very carefully, Lexi," Kian had ordered, his voice dripping with severe warning. "No more strays. Do not get involved in random messes on the road. Do not do a single thing unless I explicitly tell you to. Understand?"
He meant: 'Do not bring another crying child into my carriage.'
But Lexi, operating on strict combat logic and absolute loyalty, interpreted the command literally. The directive was encoded into her mind: Zero autonomous intervention in external conflicts without a direct verbal override from him.
---
Back in the present.
Lexi stared at the dying Adventurers. "He instructed me not to get involved in random messes on the road. If I intervene without his command, I am disobeying a direct order."
"Then ask him for permission!" Mirelle shrieked, tears of pure frustration welling in her eyes.
"I cannot do that," Lexi replied calmly. "He is currently sleeping. He will get mad if I disturb his rest."
Mirelle's brain completely short-circuited. Her theory that this master was an absolute, irredeemable lunatic solidified into concrete fact. To prioritize a nap over human lives was an act of pure evil.
"I will ask him then!" Mirelle yelled.
She hurriedly entered the door. By stroke of luck, Kian had forgotten to lock it.
"I advise against that," Lexi warned softly from the roof, making no physical effort to stop her. "You will be scolded."
Mirelle ignored her. She ripped the wooden door open and threw herself inside the dark, padded fortress.
Kian was lying flat on his back, buried under three soft blankets, an open comic book resting over his face.
Mirelle scrambled across the expensive rugs, her heart pounding with desperate adrenaline. She grabbed Kian's shoulders and shook him violently.
"Wake up!" Mirelle screamed.
Kian grunted, swatting blindly at her hands, but he did not open his eyes. He just rolled over and pulled the blanket tighter around his neck.
"Wake up! Wake up!" Mirelle shook him again, harder this time. Five times. Ten times. Raw desperation clawed at her throat.
She looked through the open door and saw a person get thrown into the dirt by a huge hound. Time was running out.
Her royal conditioning, her empathy, and her absolute hatred for this man's laziness violently collided, resulting in an explosive, hysterical tantrum.
"Wake up, you lazy jerk!" Mirelle shrieked at the top of her lungs, her voice echoing out of the carriage.
Tears streamed down her dirty cheeks. She completely lost her filter, screaming the exact curses she had whispered to the dirt for the last fifteen days.
"You are the worst king of the worst dirt pile in the entire world! My hands ache every single day from scrubbing your stupid shoes! You complain about the tea being too hot, and you complain about it being too cold, but there are people dying out there right now! Wake up, you terrible, lazy jerk!" she said while crying.
She grabbed the collar of his shirt and pulled him upward, her small arms shaking with hysterical strength.
"Please!" she sobbed, her tears falling directly onto his clean sleeping clothes. "I will take any punishment! I will clean your boots forever! I will wash your blankets every day! Just send her to save them! Please!"