The system's voice erupted in multiple directions at once.
"Great Wall Defense."
"Iron Wall Defense."
"Swollen Armor."
"Imperial Flaming Armor."
"Wall of the Rising Tide."
"Dark Beam."
"Unheated Burst."
"Fragrance Storm."
The battlefield transformed.
Giant walls erupted from the earth.
Massive bubbles of hardened mana expanded outward.
Seas of fire swallowed sections of ground.
Water surged in walls that hit the advancing smoke like a collision of worlds.
Multiple explosives detonated simultaneously across different sections.
From the screens, different views of each part of the battlefield came through—some hunters defending behind walls, others in open chaotic combat, their mana visible, raw, burning in the air around them.
The screens showed everything.
And everything was losing.
---
A silence consumed the room watching the feeds.
All attention narrowed to one moment.
One creature.
One soldier still shooting.
His rounds hit the giant ant-like holy creature center mass.
Again.
Again.
The creature marched on.
Faced each shot.
Absorbed each impact.
Its black scythe-like appendage moved.
Alien.
Precise.
Penetrating.
It struck the soldier.
The vibration of the impact hit him before the pain did.
He flew.
Horizontal.
His body sailing through the air in the direction the creature had sent him, and the ground rose up fast and merciless.
He hit the earth hard.
A herd of soldiers and ants stampeding around him.
Through him.
Over him.
He screamed.
Forced into the mud.
Each footfall silencing him further.
Pressing him down.
Into the earth.
Into the dark.
Blood everywhere.
His voice becoming smaller.
Then gone.
The battle didn't pause.
Didn't acknowledge him.
The ants pressed forward.
The soldiers filled the gap he'd left.
The smoke rolled on.
And the battlefield swallowed him whole.