187 The Feast of Traitors (1/2)

It was currently night. Everything was blanketed with heavy snowfall, making this frozen area even more difficult to withstand.

Even the strongest warrior would be unable to do anything without the sense of sight. Yet that wasn’t the most critical negative aspect of this battlefield.

”It’s so cold! How many can even live through such a night?”

Even the Bear Tribe Leader Ronde, who seemed like an immovable ice mountain to his tribe members, was not as emotionless and made of iron as he appeared. After all, in the frigid winter of the Northlands, nighttime was more than ten degrees colder than the already chilly weather, and it was now reaching the point where one’s breath would freeze immediately.

Even if the beastmen on the battlefield all had strong bodies, they were nevertheless living creatures. They still had to pay attention to the cold during the fierce battling, and it was so dark that they needed their battle horns and flags to lead them. The most difficult of all was the alleyway battles, where, in the darkness, some would treat the enemy knife-wielding assassins as their friends while slicing off their comrades’ heads with their own axes…

In such a situation, according to the unwritten rules of combat in the north, both sides should have rested and come to a temporary truce to prevent the most unacceptable outcome of all—the outcome where one side won but there was nobody left to celebrate.

Now, however, time was of the essence. Time equaled life itself; with each minute of hesitation, countless lives perished. Don’t even mention a temporary truce; right now, both sides wanted to hurl every last possible weapon at their enemy. Only the utter and complete destruction of the enemy would allow the existence of more survivors.

Ronde could already imagine the scene—a beastman warrior would defeat an enemy with great difficulty, but his blood, pouring from his injuries, would freeze into ice. He would lose large amounts of blood as his steps would grow slower and slower before he finally froze to death beside the desolate corpse of his human opponent.

To Ronde, these dark alleyways resembled the vicious beasts from the abyss with their mouths wide open, as they grinned maniacally while they waited for food to deliver themselves into their mouths.

Ronde suddenly felt a chill run down his spine. He had an ominous premonition. Perhaps he wouldn’t live to see the next day’s rising sun.

This, however, wasn’t baseless at all. Ronde’s sharp sixth sense had helped him overcome numerous life-and-death situations, but this time, he decided not to listen to his instinct’s warning.

”Don’t let the other tribes look down on our tribe’s sharp claw! Everyone, press forward! We definitely can’t fall behind the others. Conquer this castle, and the honor of having destroyed the northern humans’ pride will be ours! The War God is protecting us! His heroic spirit shall keep spots aside for our warriors, and if we’re destined to die here, then let us meet each other again while feasting in the Hall of Valhalla!”

He said something he knew was impossible. Yet his warriors still answered his summons.

They silently drank some rich alcohol to help them defend against the cold, before resolutely stepping into the pitch-black battlefield, into the maw of the abyss from which there would be no return.

There was no hesitation and no cowardice. This war had no justice; there was nothing divine, nothing evil. Everyone was fighting for their own species, fighting for resources and land. They were fighting so that their own species wouldn’t have to fight in this cruel Holy War.

The castle wall was now meaningless. Every moment, at every place, warriors could be seen bleeding and fighting to the death. Human lives were now worthless. Humans were all flesh-and-blood mortals, after all; even a high-ranked battlefield commander may be killed at any moment from an ordinary shovel making its way through the crack of a house.

”We’ve lost contact with Kazlo’s tribe. Twenty minutes ago, we also lost contact with Kamala. The air cavalry is requesting to go to battle; this is their letter signed in blood!”

”Ronde is requesting reinforcements; he lost contact with two squads under his command, and he’s met with an obstacle. Many of his warriors have gone missing. He needs more warriors to be able to surround the enemy.”

”The Wolf King has been successful in advancing to the designated location as scheduled, but he’s already lost forty percent of his warriors, and he still refuses to retreat.”

Each fresh dose of bad news caused Eron’s eyes to twitch. Humanity’s stubbornness had far surpassed their expectations, and the damned snow created an even worse meat grinder for the cruel battlefield.

”Tell the air cavalry to not stir up any trouble for me right now. If they go out now, they'll fall right back down immediately without even a hint of what hit them. Even if they die, they need to die a worthy death. Reinforcements? Let the newly created tribe go support Ronde…”

The messenger hesitated for a moment and was about to question Eron when he ended up swallowing his words.

Newly created tribe? That was the tribe consisting of the tribes that had lost almost all their tribe members; all those beastmen were injured losers. They had lost their tribe leaders, their tribe names, and totems, which was why they had banded together and formed a new tribe.

Perhaps they weren’t strong enough, but they were still the seeds of the future. But when even the seeds had to participate in battle, that was evidence of the dire straits the beastmen were in.

However, going against orders would be insubordination, and everybody understood that this was no time for hesitation and that the decisive would be victorious. Whoever gritted their teeth and stayed in this until the end would become the new ruler of this land, and now was the time to compete in who was willing to sacrifice more and had the stronger will.

The beastmen were enduring tremendous sacrifices, but for the humans, this war was even more difficult.

This chaotic battle with no rules was an all-around test of people’s abilities. After the defending human army lost the advantage of the castle walls’ defense, their losses were magnified many times, to double, triple, and even ten times their original rates.

”We have nowhere to retreat! Other than us, there are only the weaponless citizens! If we lose Red Maple Castle, there’s no difference from losing the entire Northlands, and we’ll become the most vilified humans in all of human history! All our ancestors will be shamed!”

The humans were unwilling to retreat even more than the beastmen. This defensive battle for them wouldn’t allow them to withdraw one bit; they were guarding their homes!

The snow would eventually stop, and the sky would eventually get lighter. But at that time, who knew just how many humans could survive. The side that ended up with more survivors would definitely be the victor.

But this night wouldn’t pass quickly. The Frigid Nightmares were all riled up to move in the darkness.

”Ahhh!”

In a small alleyway, a beastman soldier only gave a shout of surprise before disappearing without a single trace.

In an adjacent alleyway, the exact same thing happened to his companions. With their shouts of surprise, they were also dragged into hell by the dark hands that suddenly reached out from below the ground.

”Ahhh!”

”Shamans, destroy this entire area for me!”

Ronde was no longer able to watch his subordinates disappearing in succession. Under his command, the beastmen elemental shamans no longer tried conserving their already low mana, and they communicated with the elements to summon mighty thunderbolts and waves of earthquakes to flatten all the buildings in this entire area.

Of course, this helped reveal the true identity behind the beastmen soldiers’ disappearance.

”Flowers?”

Right before them was a flower; in fact, it was an incredibly rare and valuable flower in the Northlands. Luckily, Ronde had learned about such a flower in the south before. The flower stem and colorful petals matched the ones in his memory, but…

”Isn’t this too huge!”

That’s right, a flower garden could be seen before them. It was only that the flowers within it were rather abnormal. The magic spells that even destroyed all the buildings had zero effect on them, and the most common flowers among them were sunflowers that were growing larger and larger. They were at least the height of two humans, and these otherwise ordinary-seeming flowers were already more than three times taller than they should have been.

Even though these flowers before them were so beautiful, Ronde, who had experienced hundreds of battles, sucked in a breath of cold air. The incredibly strange sight caused his sixth sense feel an indescribable amount of danger; it was to the point where he felt needles pricking his back. All he wanted was to run away.

”Hey, isn’t that the missing soldier Katar? Those flowers are currently eating him!”

The moment these words were spoken, all the flowers suddenly turned around in unison. Those flowers actually had huge mouths growing on them, and they were currently chewing on the beastmen’s missing soldiers as their fertilizer.

Each flower only had one huge mouth filled with teeth, and even though these flowers had no eyes, the beastmen quickly realized that the flowers had locked their targets—them. That was the instinct of prey that had met its predator.

”I’ll be the rear vanguard!”