"I forgot how hard those things are to hit," Arin said as he clipped the wing of a corrupted bald eagle. The creature had been trying to climb higher into the air to escape the arrows raining down from the upper side of the valley, but Arin's arrow caught it just enough to disrupt its flight. The bird twisted awkwardly before regaining control, and Arin immediately prepared another arrow. Even with his incredible skill, hitting a moving creature in three-dimensional space was considerably harder than shooting something that stayed on the ground.
The valley itself made the situation somewhat easier for the defenders. It was relatively narrow, with steep walls rising on both sides, and the Sonnenbergs were positioned roughly three hundred meters away from the portal. They were also approximately sixty-three meters above the portal, giving them a considerable amount of time before the corrupted birds could climb high enough to escape their effective shooting range. That distance gave the archers a useful advantage, but it did not make the birds easy targets.
"Sure, but the people we brought with us are a lot more experienced now," Bill said from beside Arin. He had just fired at the same eagle and missed it completely, but his arrow had instead struck a small corrupted sparrow that had been climbing directly upward. Well, Arin would have liked to call it small, but the ugly creature was still roughly half a meter in diameter. In the normal world, something that size would have been enormous for a sparrow, but corrupted creatures had long since stopped caring about the normal rules of biology.
"That is true," Arin replied. He had already fired three more arrows into the air, though none of them were aimed directly at a specific creature. Instead, he was deliberately cutting off the ascent paths of several birds that were getting a little too close for comfort. The arrows forced the creatures to change direction, making it harder for them to climb directly out of the valley. Arin was not always trying to kill something with every shot; sometimes controlling where an enemy could move was more important.
Bill's observation was correct, because the roughly five hundred archers were maintaining an extremely rapid pace of fire. Their objective was not simply to kill the corrupted birds as quickly as possible but to prevent any of them from gaining enough altitude to escape. That was the most important lesson the Sonnenbergs had learned from their previous encounter with flying corrupted creatures. They had no intention of allowing the same weakness to remain a problem for another three years.
The family had spent the last three years practicing suppression fire specifically for situations like this. They had developed an entire practice book dedicated to handling flying enemies, escape routes, overlapping firing zones, and coordinated shooting patterns. The Sonnenbergs were not the kind of family that accepted an obvious weakness and simply hoped they would never encounter it again. They had even built entire contraptions on their archery range to simulate these situations and determine whether their training methods were actually working.
The lesson was relatively simple in theory, even if executing it required considerable skill. The archers were divided into groups of ten, with eight people responsible for cutting off escape routes while the remaining two concentrated on actually hitting the bird. That meant most of the arrows were not necessarily intended to strike the enemy directly. Their purpose was to make certain directions dangerous or impossible to use, forcing the target into predictable areas where the two dedicated shooters could take their shots.
The method was already proving effective. They had managed to shoot ten of the twenty corrupted birds out of the air, leaving only ten still flying around the valley. Unfortunately, those last ten were considerably more difficult to deal with than the first group. The air was three-dimensional space, after all, and that made movement considerably harder to predict. A bird could climb, dive, turn sideways, or change direction in ways that a ground-based opponent simply could not.
Meanwhile, the battle on the ground was progressing much more quickly. The corrupted creatures were being cut down at an impressive rate by the fifteen hundred people who had been brought into the valley. These were not ordinary soldiers who had received a few months of basic training before being handed a weapon. They had trained under the Weapon Families, and those families had absolutely not been gentle with their training. Every person sent into the valley had been prepared to fight.
In terms of raw strength, the difference between the corrupted creatures and many of the humans was almost like comparing a ten-year-old boy to a grown adult. That comparison, however, did not tell the whole story. These were not normal ten-year-old boys suddenly being asked to fight an adult. They were hardened masters who had trained extensively with their respective weapons and could fight competently against ten people at the same time.
The actual members of the Weapon Families were even more frightening. They were simply another breed of crazy when it came to combat. Their mastery of their chosen weapons made the difference in physical strength far less important than it would have been in a normal fight. The corrupted creatures might have been stronger, but strength did not help much when an experienced fighter knew exactly where to strike and could coordinate with hundreds of others.
And at the end of the day, being stabbed by ten spears was still not a pleasant experience. Even a powerful corrupted creature could only tolerate so much concentrated damage before its body began to fail. The humans did not need to overpower each creature individually when they could surround it, attack from multiple directions, and keep pressure on it until it finally collapsed. The overwhelming numbers and training turned the battlefield into something closer to an organized slaughter than a chaotic monster attack.
The corrupted creatures also had very few options for escape. The only real path available to them was through the enormous mudslide surrounding the portal. The mud had accumulated into a wall that was roughly ten meters high on the side where the slide had struck first, gradually decreasing in height as it extended toward the opposite side of the portal. It effectively created a natural barrier around much of the battlefield, limiting where the creatures could go once they were pushed away from the portal.
That made the trade families' job considerably easier. The corrupted creatures could not simply scatter in every direction and force the humans to chase them across the landscape. Their movement was constrained by the terrain, allowing the soldiers to focus their attacks and prevent the creatures from slipping through gaps in their formation. The mudslide had originally looked like another strange feature of the secret realm, but during the battle, it became an unexpected advantage.
After roughly five minutes of intense fighting, the battle was over. Thousands of arrows had been fired into the surrounding hillside, with countless projectiles burying themselves in dirt, stone, and vegetation without ever hitting anything. The battlefield was littered with evidence of just how much ammunition had been used, but the corrupted creatures themselves had been eliminated. The ground forces had dealt with their enemies while the archers had prevented the flying creatures from escaping.
"Not me," Arin said immediately.
He placed both hands against the sides of his head and looked thoroughly exhausted by the entire situation. He had fired more than enough arrows to make the battle successful, but that did not mean he was satisfied with his own performance. The fact that he had missed repeatedly was bothering him considerably more than the overall victory pleased him. For someone like Arin, successfully completing the mission was not always enough if he knew he could have performed better.
When the representatives of the various families finally gathered at the top of the valley where they had initially been teleported, the rest of the younger people followed Arin's example. They had no interest in managing the entire debacle themselves, especially after spending the previous few minutes fighting. Most of them were more than happy to let the representatives deal with the organizational side of things while they recovered and prepared for whatever came next.
"Well, it looks like I am the victim here," said Jordan Bing. He was the slowest of the representatives to put his hands on his head, copying Arin's gesture with a mixture of amusement and exhaustion. His reaction made it clear that he understood the situation without needing anyone to explain it. The battlefield had not exactly been a gentle introduction to working together.
"Okay, let's just get the obvious out of the way," Jordan continued. "I have met all of you here except you." He looked directly at Arin as he spoke. The Sonnenbergs had been relatively closed off for most of their history and had not had much interaction with the other Trade Families until the last few years. Their sudden involvement with the wider world had changed that, but many of the families still knew surprisingly little about them personally.
"Seeing what your family did, however, I have a pretty good idea of how to position everyone," Jordan said. He brushed his blond locks away from his face before adjusting his white lab coat so that it sat properly. The gesture made him look much more like a doctor or researcher than someone who belonged on a battlefield. Standing among armed fighters and surrounded by the aftermath of a monster attack, he looked almost comically out of place.
Fortunately for everyone present, Gaia had already delivered the supplies. That included an entire camp that was only slightly short of looking like a proper village. The camp was enclosed, and several chimneys were already smoking as the various facilities operated. There was essentially everything the gathered people needed to practice their respective professions, meaning they did not have to worry about establishing the basic infrastructure themselves before beginning their work.
"Now, may I ask you to take a few of your family members and scout the surroundings to see what the lay of the land is?" Jordan asked. His tone became slightly awkward as he looked at the young man standing in front of him. He still did not know the man's name, and the Sonnenberg's hood and cloak made Arin look considerably more imposing than Jordan expected. The fact that Arin was clearly uncomfortable being the center of attention did not make the situation any easier.
"The name is Arin," Arin finally said. He glanced toward the surrounding area before continuing. "And if I saw correctly, the Assassin Family's members are currently busy doing that." He was already aware that several people had slipped away from the main group earlier, and he had little doubt about what they were doing. "So I say let's wait an hour and see what they have to report."
Arin's voice was strained as he spoke. He was painfully aware that everyone was looking at him, and being the center of attention was almost the last thing he wanted. He would have preferred to remain somewhere in the background, quietly doing his job without having dozens of people staring at him. Unfortunately, being one of the Sonnenbergs and having personally participated in the battle made that rather difficult.
"Oh, they are also here? That is surprising," Jordan said, raising an eyebrow. His expression immediately changed from mild awkwardness to genuine excitement. The Assassin Family had a legendary reputation, and the realization that members of that family were already participating in the mission clearly caught his interest. For someone who spent much of his time surrounded by medical theories and professional knowledge, meeting one of the legendary families of the new age was apparently far more exciting than standing in the aftermath of a battlefield.