Wake to War

Erel hardly had time to brace himself before a thunderous explosion shook the entire expanse. All at once, it felt like the whole human army was shoved backward as one, and he stumbled into the soldiers behind him in their packed formation, almost getting knocked off his feet. He already knew what was happening, the front lines had finally made contact with the enemy. But what he hadn’t expected, on top of the rhythmic clanking of steel and the constant explosions, were the blood-curdling screams and the sickening sound of flesh being torn apart.
He could see it now, the commanders joining the fight and chaos taking over the field. More and more entities kept pouring through the front, massacring everything in their way. They were brutal, only leaving destruction and piles of bodies in their way, tearing apart the humans in front of them, some even stopping to feed on their remains. Despite their tight formation, they were helpless against their charge. It wasn’t long before some of them broke through to where Erel’s battalion was stationed.
The first creature that came their way was a thin, humanoid figure, almost like a scarecrow, but way taller than any human could ever be, with freakishly long limbs holding it up. Instead of a real face, it had white, marble-like skin with a deep, horizontal gash running right through the centre. Inside that gash, there wasn’t anything, just a patch of darkness that almost looked tangible.
It slaughtered its way forward, soldiers falling as they tried to attack it. Its arms whipped through the air, smashing bodies like balloons, just blowing them apart, and it just kept going, heading straight for Rena, the commander who had brought Erel here.
But before the thing could reach her, Rena finally unclasped her hands, and her face went steely. She reached back and pulled out a broadsword that had been buried in the ground behind her. Erel could feel it, the swirling, massive flux of imaginarium around her, way more than he could ever muster. Just by the scale of her attack, he could estimate it; she was a tier 2, an Adept.
With a roar, she swung her blade, and the sword glowed with a bluish hue, almost like flowing water. It was actually beautiful, the way her blade swept through the air, one clean strike; it was silent, but brutally precise. The attack was perfectly placed, right where the creature was heading. The entity sensed it and tried to dodge, barely avoiding the blade as it sliced past its thin torso, but what it didn’t expect was the shimmering blue arc that trailed behind the sword. It was like a slice of water solidified, cutting through the air and right through the monster, dissecting it into two neat halves before it even knew what happened.
But there was no time to react or celebrate, because even more entities were already on them, pouring through what was left of the front lines. Direwolves with blood-caked fangs and blotchy, dark fur lunged at soldiers. Bone imps tore through the chaos, gleefully ripping out limbs and spines. Human-sized dragonflies impaled people with their beaks, sucking them dry until all that was left was husk. Orc-like monsters, their green muscles bulging, stomped through the lines, crushing anyone who got in their way.
The humans kept falling back, dying to the onslaught. It wasn’t long before the fighting reached the middle ranks, right where Erel’s group was stationed.
“Give them hell!” Rena, the commander, roared as the horde crashed into their line. The battalion surged forward, screaming as they tried to hold their ground.
Erel was confused as hell. He never thought he’d be in a battle this massive, not in a trial like this. He didn’t have a clue what he was supposed to do to complete the trial because from the start, it was clear that winning was impossible.
‘If the trial expects me to actually win this, then I’m fucked.’
But right now, all he could do was react, take it one step at a time. For now, everything came down to survival as the monsters finally hit them.
He sent the ouroboros to coil around his weapon, just like he’d learned in the Piper plane, and took his stance. The blade shimmered with a sick, dark hue, gleaming in the darkness with a sharpness that looked like it could cut steel.
That’s when he saw them, a group of new entities crawling toward the line. They looked like human torsos with their legs ripped off, but instead of two hands, each one had six, using every limb to claw their mutilated bodies across the ground. Their faces were a mess of blood and razor-sharp teeth, and Erel saw up close what those teeth could do. One of them pounced on a soldier nearby.
The man tried to fight, keeping his spear out to hold the thing back, but the crawler moved impossibly fast. All six hands slammed into the dirt, launching it forward. Two of its front hands grabbed the man, pulling him down as he screamed, its claws digging deep into his legs. The monster tore into him, clawing and biting, dragging its face to rip open his guts and feast.
‘Holy fuck!’
Erel nearly puked at the sight, but he didn’t have time. Another crawler was already coming for him, sprinting low and fast, hands digging into the mud, teeth bared.
He raised his sword, knowing that fighting it head-on was suicide. That thing was too fast, too many limbs, too unpredictable. So, Erel backed off, circling to the side, trying to catch it at an angle.
It lunged at him, and he brought his sword down in a vertical strike, aiming to cut it in half. The thing tried to block with its arms, but his blade, sharper than anything he’d ever held, cut clean through, slicing the creature in two. It howled in agony, blood pouring out, but Erel didn’t wait, he stepped forward, twisted his wrist, and finished it with a quick slash through the middle. The shrieking finally stopped.
‘That’s one.’
Wiping the blood off his blade, Erel looked around and felt cold sweat run down his spine at the carnage around him. Chaos was everywhere. Human soldiers kept getting pushed back, and his own battalion was down to a handful. Most were already dead.
He caught sight of Torik, the timid boy from earlier. Torik was fighting a direwolf, his face set with grim determination. There was no trace of fear now, just a desperate will to survive as he dodged and parried, the wolf snapping at him.
But Erel couldn’t worry about him for long. More abominations were coming, cutting through the army, slaughtering everything in their path.
Taking a deep breath, Erel tried to steel himself. The serpent coiled around his blade seemed to pulse, almost like it could sense what was coming, and the sword rattled in his grip.
‘Fucking imps.’
Three of them locked eyes on him, charging forward with frenzied speed. They looked small and gnarly, not even up to his waist, but their hands gripped long, yellow bones like clubs. He’d seen what they could do, smashing skulls open, yanking bones out with their freakish teeth.
Erel didn’t hesitate. Instead of waiting, he charged them. The first imp raised its bone to parry, but it didn’t expect the sharpness of Erel’s sword. The blade cut straight through, splitting both the bone and the imp, leaving nothing but a headless stump.
The other two screeched, coming at him from both sides. One leaped from a pile of corpses, aiming to bash his skull, while the other came from the front, trying to catch him off guard.
He knew he couldn’t dodge the one on his head. So instead, Erel angled the tip of his sword up, right in the path of the attacking imp. It landed straight onto the blade, impaling itself, its blood pouring out and drenching Erel’s face. The warmth and the smell were almost enough to make him gag, and it blinded him for a second. That was all the time the last imp needed to bring its bone club down on Erel’s leg, knocking him to his knees. The impaled imp slid off his sword with a nasty squelch.
The last imp tried to finish him, raising its bone to smash his skull. But Erel, gritting his teeth through the burn in his leg, sent the serpent to coil around his left hand. He caught the weapon mid-swing, stopping it cold, his hand rattling, but the serpent helping him hold on against the pressure. The imp screeched, confused, but Erel yanked the club away and, with a clean thrust, drove his sword right through its face.
Wiping blood off his face, Erel staggered upright, using his sword for balance. He looked around and saw the slaughter was still going strong. Dead bodies everywhere. The fight had barely started.
He could see that most of his battalion was already gone. The only ones left standing were Torik, who was still fighting, somehow and Rena, the commander, who was carving a path of death through the monsters, leaving bodies in her wake. The other battalions weren’t doing much better. Some had been wiped out completely, especially those at the front, while others barely held on, more than half their numbers dead.
Erel tried to clear his head. He needed to figure out what the trial expected of him. Right now, the only thing he could do was survive. Luckily, so far his Cycle of Death had not triggered, or maybe it had, and all of this was just a vision; he didn’t know, yet he continued fighting.
More entities closed in. Erel let out a roar and jumped back into the fight. He stopped caring about perfect form or footwork, stopped pretending to be composed. He just fought, cutting and parrying, doing whatever he could to kill as many as possible as quickly as possible. His swordwork was all about efficiency now, one cut and one kill. If the sword got stuck, he used his legs or arms or even his shoulder to bash monsters away.
He lost track of time. It could have been minutes or an hour. The corpses piled up, blood smeared all over him, and not much of it was his own. He took some hits, some he saw coming, some he didn’t, but nothing fatal. Each kill made him better, every strike sharpening his instincts. Each entity he killed further improved his skills.
But no matter how hard he pushed, the monsters just kept coming. They didn’t stop, not even for a second. If anything, there were more now than before.
Erel could feel himself getting close to the edge. He’d never fought this hard before, never pushed himself so far. He was still getting used to real battle. It had barely been two months since he picked up the sword, yet he continued learning more with each swing, and he kept going, every kill making him a little stronger, a little faster.
Then he noticed it, beyond the piles of enemy corpses, his entire battalion was dead, apart from Rena, who was barely hanging on, and Torik, who was still miraculously alive, his sword still swinging.
And just when he thought things couldn’t get any worse, he felt it. The pulse, a shift in the imaginarium. He didn’t even need to think about it. He knew exactly what it meant.
Kins.
So far, they’d only been fighting irregulars. Tough, but beatable if you didn’t get swarmed. But now, he felt it, multiple kins heading their way. These were the real monsters, the ones that actually mattered, the leaders with whom fighting one-on-one was impossible. The truth hit him hard. In just a few more minutes, they were all going to die.

Chapter end