The horde did not thin quickly.
That was the reality of an engagement at this scale — the numbers that made it dangerous at the start were the same numbers that made the middle phase feel like standing still despite constant, unrelenting effort.
Students who had been fighting for forty minutes had killed more demons than most of them had encountered in their entire academy careers combined, and the front edge of the horde still presented itself with enough density to make the progress feel invisible.
It was not invisible.
But it felt that way.
The students at the front line were running on the particular fuel that sustained people through engagements that went longer than expected — not enthusiasm, not the clean energy of a fresh start, but the harder, grimmer thing underneath it. The thing that didn't require feeling good to keep producing output.
Elias moved through the hardest section of the field and was aware of all of it.
