Arthur experienced the passage from the Dream Realm to the Waking World in the blink of an eye.
He hadn't even had time to settle into the Rhino before the city's alarm sirens invaded his ears.
"…We ask that you do not panic. The guards are already handling the situation. I repeat—we ask that you do not panic…"
Arthur frowned and immediately communicated with Sylvie.
'Sylvie, what's the situation?'
He received no response, so he decided to activate Djinn of War while his augmentations were already coursing through his body, and he exited the Rhino using Godstep, which carried him to the top of the city's tallest building.
From up there, with his enhanced vision, Arthur could see almost the entire city, and what he observed made his jaw tighten involuntarily.
To the north, atop the wall, most of the city's guards were opening fire constantly. The sound of gunfire echoed solidly within the walls, making them tremble slightly.
Understanding the situation, he didn't wait any longer and used Godstep multiple times to reach the wall. Along the way, he took the opportunity to wake Regis from his nap.
The moment his feet touched the black stone of the wall, Sylvie's voice sounded in his ears.
'Art! The creatures have started attacking the wall with more ferocity than before! And there are many more of them!'
Arthur didn't respond because, standing in that place, he could see the number of creatures charging toward the wall—and they were far more numerous than before.
Over the past four days, they had been holding off wave after wave, each consisting of nearly a hundred creatures, occurring several times throughout the day. The outcome of these waves had always been positive for them—they had managed to eliminate all threats.
By logic, this should have meant that the number of minions the Corrupted Terror had would decrease a little more each day. But the situation before Arthur made him think they had been gravely mistaken.
The current wave wasn't a hundred creatures, nor two hundred, nor even close to three hundred—it was more than double that number, almost reaching triple. And that was without counting the time they had already been fighting without him, so perhaps initially it had been closer to triple.
Arthur didn't need Sylvie to tell him to join the fight. The first thing he focused on was analyzing the situation precisely, to determine which flank needed his and Regis's help the most.
Standing at the center of the wave, he first focused on his right.
There, Seishan was fighting alongside a couple of her Echoes, with Owen, Hale, and a group of Awakened.
The Awakened were positioned at the edges of the group, handling the lower-ranked creatures. Arthur analyzed that their main objective was to prevent the stronger fighters from having to waste time on the weak ones.
Many of these were government Awakened assigned to the city for the evacuation—some of the best the government could offer, but still incomparable to the strength and skill of the other three.
Owen and Hale were fighting side by side, displaying impeccable teamwork.
Hale, with his larger physique of nearly two meters and his hunting axe, acted as the tank, while Owen, with his smaller build, moved nimbly through the openings his companion created, eliminating as many creatures as possible.
It was a model of effectiveness and teamwork, but the main strength of the right flank wasn't them. Their combined teamwork wouldn't even reach the heels of their leader.
Seishan, without using her transformation, moved across the battlefield like a plague.
Every creature that suffered even the slightest scratch was already destined for death. The blood of these creatures accumulated on the snowy ground, turning it red in some areas and blue in others—but it never stayed that way for long.
The blood on the ground seemed to have a life of its own. Every drop of blood from a creature was a trap for the next. It took different forms—spears, daggers, swords, or shapes that weren't weapons at all—but they never failed to kill a Nightmare Creature.
She moved across the battlefield with an ease and skill that made it abundantly clear who was a princess of the Song Clan and who was not.
Her side of the wave remained steady, but it was very clear to Arthur that if the situation didn't change within minutes, they would all be overwhelmed by the sheer number of creatures throwing themselves at their weapons.
Arthur shifted his gaze and focused on the center of the wave.
Here, the situation was slightly better than on the right. This was mainly due to the participation of someone like Soul Reaper Jet.
She didn't kill bodies—she destroyed souls. The Nightmare Creatures fell to the ground as if someone had cut their strings, with not a single drop of blood leaving their bodies in some cases.
With the acquisition of her Aspect Legacy, Jet's lethality had increased brutally, making her alone enough to handle multiple creatures of ranks above her without finding herself in a negative situation.
Jet's Legacy Relic had already reaped countless souls, the strongest of which had belonged to a Corrupted Devil, making the Relic equal to a Transcended weapon of the Fourth Tier.
She moved within the battlefield following a battle style that was brutal and domineering, honed and perfectly sharpened to achieve a single purpose—to deliver swift death and utter devastation to her enemies.
While it lacked flair and refinement, one could feel the lethal weight of thousands and thousands of deathly battles. She fought with the dire and simple inevitability of an experienced butcher, slaughtering her enemies both methodically and ruthlessly. Arthur identified that there was an awful beauty to her mesmerizing savagery.
Even with how strong Jet was, this wasn't enough to deal with all the Nightmare Creatures surrounding her. That was why she also had a group of government Awakened assisting her, so she could focus solely on the strongest creatures.
The same situation was happening on the left, where Sylvie was stationed. But there, the horde of Nightmare Creatures was being completely held back, and Sylvie was even gaining ground.
She wasn't in her dragon form, prioritizing her agility, dexterity, and skill on the battlefield.
Sylvie, in her silver armor, was overwhelming every creature that stood in her path. She was definitely the strongest figure on the battlefield.
Being an Ascended Titan with the ability to manipulate the ambient Mana, she was using all kinds of spells to inflict as much damage as possible.
Mana sometimes took the form of swords that appeared in the creatures' paths, other times it took the form of daggers that floated until they struck vital points, or it took the form of cables that bound the creatures and left them waiting for their death in the next moment.
She also used spells, generating explosions that sent creatures flying through the air. The weakest died from the explosions themselves, while the remaining ones became perfect targets for the multiple archers on the walls—Emily being one of them.
Taking the entire situation into his mind in less than two seconds, Arthur made a decision.
Speaking mentally, he commanded: 'Regis, go help Jet and keep an eye on Sylvie.'
Regis emerged from his core at that moment, manifesting in his majestic form, and replied.
'I won't say no to that! You take care of your girlfriend, master.'
Regis didn't stay for a response and launched himself directly to help Jet, while Arthur pushed the urge to say that Seishan wasn't his girlfriend to the depths of his mind. It wasn't the time to focus on those things.
Dawn's Ballad appeared in his right hand as he felt the Aetheric Pathways to reach the battlefield. The moment he arrived, the first thing he did was communicate with Seishan.
It was going to be impossible to speak to her over the noise of battle, so appearing at a prudent distance from her, he first tried to make eye contact.
Arthur saw a creature lunge at her—it had multiple legs, resembling a rabid dog with multiple rows of teeth and saliva dripping from its mouth.
Seishan's sword pierced the creature's head in an elegant movement, causing the momentum to carry her face in his direction.
His golden eyes met her black ones for an instant—but that was enough. After spending months fighting together, whether in the Dark City, in the zone of her Second Nightmare, or right there in Antarctica, their communication had reached extremely high levels.
A single glance between them was enough to know what needed to be done next.
Seishan immediately took on a different role on the battlefield. Instead of being the central figure, she stepped back a few paces and positioned herself at the same height as him.
The battlefield on the right flank underwent a brutal qualitative change, and it didn't take long for Arthur to demonstrate why.
The first creature lunged at him from the left, attempting to bite his arm, while moments later, from the right, another different creature launched itself from above, aiming to tear his head off with a single bite.
Arthur twisted his body slightly to dodge the first, causing it to overshoot its mark and land where he had been previously. Then he used Static Void and froze it in place.
The second creature—standing two meters tall, with three arms on each side and thick, completely black fur—couldn't halt its attack in time. Unable to avoid the collision, the first creature's skull ended up caught squarely in its jaws.
Arthur extended Static Void to encompass both creatures, and launched an attack with the tip of Dawn's Ballad—the blade pierced both skulls simultaneously before he released Static Void immediately.
The Spell echoed in his ears, notifying him of both kills, but Arthur wasn't in a position to pay attention to that.
He immediately turned and used Godstep, reappearing at a slight distance from the group and using himself as bait.
The creatures, seeing him alone, assumed he was easy prey and lunged at him with their jaws, claws, or whatever they had for attacking.
In a matter of moments, a circle formed around him—but at that instant, Arthur smiled.
King's Presence activated, enveloping all the creatures surrounding him in its effect.
The weakest collapsed to the ground, unable to move, while the stronger ones halted their movements abruptly, though they still kept trying to tear him apart or bite him.
The former fell victim to daggers of red and blue blood that materialized right before their noses—though some lacked noses altogether. The daggers moved with precision and embedded themselves in the creatures' foreheads, sending them on a one-way trip to death.
An important aspect of Seishan's ability was that the quality of blood mattered greatly when manipulating it. If the blood she shaped into a dagger belonged to an Awakened-rank creature, the dagger would share the same rank.
The latter group fell victim to multiple arrows—some rebounded off their thick hides while others pierced vital areas, though few died from that attack alone.
Arthur released King's Presence and, taking advantage of the second it took them to regain their battle readiness, moved among them with Dawn's Ballad in hand and multiple Aether swords appearing along his body through Aether Manipulation.
With the speed at which he moved, he only managed to identify that the first victim was a Fallen Monster with the distinguishing feature of antennae running along its entire back. Dawn's Ballad sliced the Monster's body in two with a single descending arc.
Then, using an Aether sword that appeared at his right waist pointed backward, he spun ninety degrees, and the blade severed the jaw of a Fallen Beast while, with his right hand—still gripping his Transcended-rank sword—he traced a horizontal arc and separated the head from another Fallen Monster's body at the neck.
The first Fallen Beast didn't die from the jaw wound, so Arthur finished the job with a spear that materialized at his left waist, its tip piercing through the Beast's skull.
The rest of the Nightmare Creatures met no better fate. All of them were cut, pierced, and sent into the oblivion of death.
Slowly, the number of creatures began to dwindle at an accelerated rate, each passing minute providing further evidence to Arthur's perspective.
Yet he still didn't lower his guard, because this "army" of Nightmare Creatures was merely the minions of a Corrupted Terror…
A Corrupted Terror whose location they had no idea about.
Arthur, during the fight, expanded his Aether sense to encompass all the waves and even beyond them. It was an approximate distance of five to six kilometers, and even then, he hadn't determined the Terror's position.
Which meant the creature wasn't in that area. But that wasn't exactly a surprise, since currently the waves didn't contain any Corrupted-rank creatures.
Suddenly, Arthur's Aether sense detected something on his periphery, a few kilometers to the north.
On a snowy peak of the mountain, a new wave of creatures appeared—but these were slightly different.
Their bodies were larger than the previous ones, and when looking at them using the perspective sense of any Awakened, one would conclude that all the creatures—some running on two legs, others on four or more, and even some flying—were of Corrupted rank.
The new wave of Nightmare Creatures was approaching at a rapid speed. Arthur suspected that within a minute, they would be upon the city's defenders.
Even so, he frowned as he dodged claws aimed at his neck and used Dawn's Ballad to snatch the life from a Fallen Devil that thought itself cleverer than it actually was.
Arthur's reaction was because, within the group of Corrupted Nightmare Creatures, he still couldn't detect the Terror.
Using the combination of his Aether sense and his vision to see cores, he identified all the creatures' ranks, and none of them reached Terror.
The wave consisted of approximately one hundred and fifty Corrupted-rank creatures. Regarding their classes, more than seventy percent of them were Demon or below, while the remaining were all Devils—with one exception that belonged to the Tyrant class.
This last part surprised him, because it was precisely this Tyrant that was commanding the horde…
'…What?'
It should have been the Corrupted Terror leading the minions, but no—not only was it nowhere to be found, but now a Tyrant had taken command.
Arthur, dodging and continuing to kill Awakened and Fallen creatures at an accelerated pace to prevent both hordes from combining and making things more difficult for them, began to consider the reasons behind this.
Fortunately, Sylvie also noticed the situation, but through different means. She couldn't see the creatures' cores, but using her enhanced senses—thanks to Beast God's blessing—there was almost nothing that could escape her detection.
'Art! The Terror! It's not here!' she warned him mentally, her voice agitated from fighting for so long.
Arthur didn't respond immediately, trying to eliminate as many lower-ranked creatures as possible before the next horde arrived.
Multiple theories passed through his mind in that time.
Theories like the Terror deciding to abandon its minions and go elsewhere.
Theories like the Tyrant defeating the Terror and taking command of the minions.
Theories like another group of irregulars dealing with the Terror but being unable to notify them because the Tyrant killed them…
All were rejected because there was something Arthur and the others hadn't taken into account during all this time.
He used Godstep to appear behind one of the remaining Fallen Devils and ended its life with Dawn's Ballad—a diagonal cut across the spine. The creature let out a sharp screech as the upper half of its body separated from the lower, its organs and blood spilling onto the snowy mountain ground.
What they hadn't paid attention to—mainly because it wasn't their mission—was what happened after the citizens left the city during the evacuation process.
That was Davis's task and his irregular cohort's.
He was a government Master with ample experience and skill to back it up, which was why the government had entrusted him with the mission of accompanying the evacuation trucks almost halfway to the next capital cities.
The rest of the journey was the mission of another irregular cohort—Randall's.
But this created a gap where the convoys of trucks and vehicles transporting thousands and thousands of civilians had no protection—a problem with no existing solution.
With that in mind, Arthur developed a theory as to why this particularly stupid attack happened today.
Nightmare Creatures have a nature of wanting to kill and consume anything not corrupted, so they act madly, throwing themselves into situations with a rage that exceeds logic, causing most of them to die.
This attack was one of those cases, but he could identify a reason behind this madness. And it was related to him.
Arthur had been able to sense the Corrupted Terror multiple times while defending the walls, and whenever he tried to attack it, something bizarre happened that prevented him from getting close.
Situations like a Corrupted Devil breaking formation and attacking the soldiers in strange ways, or just when he was about to use Godstep to approach the Terror, he would be called to withdraw or yield his position to someone else.
Now, thinking about it in a matter of seconds, there were too many coincidences that prevented him from getting close enough to eliminate it—but these were clearly calculated by the Terror.
The creature would approach to use itself as bait to see how he reacted, and when Arthur was about to act to eliminate it, it would control another creature to break Arthur's attention. And this always happened when he was about to change shifts.
The Corrupted Terror was definitely not a normal creature—it was extremely intelligent for its class. If it weren't for the fact that Arthur had seen its six cores, he might even doubt it wasn't a Corrupted Titan.
And if the creature was smart enough to plan this, surely it had realized that the number of souls in the city was decreasing at a rapid pace, and using this same method, it identified the moment when Arthur would be away from the city.
When the strongest soul in the city left for reasons the Terror didn't care about, it decided to set its plan in motion.
Relinquishing control to the Tyrant of the minions to create a distraction while it headed south of the city to attack the civilians being evacuated…
The moment Arthur reached that conclusion, he felt as if a light had turned on in his mind, and at the same time, he couldn't stop his body from being consumed by rage.
He had never imagined the Terror could be intelligent enough to devise such a plan.
Even so, he didn't let his emotions interfere with what needed to be done. So rationally, he told Sylvie the theory and the plan he developed on the spot.
In a matter of seconds, everything was ready, and the new wave was less than a kilometer away from reaching the battlefield.
Fights against other Nightmare Creatures were still happening, but there weren't as many anymore.
Arthur, on his own, must have killed nearly a hundred creatures in the time he had been fighting, not counting those Regis must have killed. On the other hand, Sylvie—who had been there from the beginning—had defeated the most, nearly reaching three hundred, while Jet had a similar kill count. Seishan, along with Owen and Hale, also had a considerable count.
However, none of them had done it without help. The city had many Awakened defenders, and these government soldiers had not stopped giving their lives to do so.
With the work of both sides, casualties had been reduced—but that didn't mean there were none.
Several Awakened lay dead on the blood-soaked ground of the snowy mountains.. Many were missing body parts—some lacked arms, legs, or even heads. All torn off with teeth marks or sharp claws.
Even so, the number of casualties was low. The living should have been rejoicing at having endured such an attack and kept their flames of life burning in their bodies. But when they looked up, all they saw was another wave of Nightmare Creatures—and this one was worse.
Sylvie, Seishan, Jet, Regis, and Arthur decided to gather at the center of attention to show the soldiers that there was still hope.
Soon, upon seeing such figures before them, their hearts grew more determined, and instinctively, their grip on their weapons tightened.
Once gathered, Arthur quickly explained the plan for the next horde…