Chapter 90: Beast Tides (2)

The knights dwelling in the city were herding civilians towards the opposite side of the city, the northeastern section.

Meanwhile, the city’s adventurers and mercenaries were gathering near the main gate in a formation that showed they had been drilled for this.

Bells rang from the watchtowers along the wall, and horns answered from the northeastern section, where the first groups of civilians were already crowding into the streets.

Beast tides were not common, but they did happen sometimes. The city was close to the Dry Swamp, which had been left untouched for quite a long while before the city decided to do something about it. It was a haven for wild beasts.

Everyone in the city knew the drill. The guards on the wall counted the horns, and the soldiers took their positions, but even that did not stop the chaos that had already ensued.

Atop the roof, Mikael and Kadre leaped in the opposite direction of the retreating crowds. Anyone whose eyes happened to catch them, not visibly armed, concluded one of two things: brave adventurers or stupid brats. Most concluded the latter.

A few people shouted at them to get down from the roof. Neither of them stopped.

From the high ground, they could see the city’s main gates almost fully closed, while on the ground below, the Guild Master stood with close to a few hundred adventurers. The Captain, Behemoth, was there too.

Smoke was already rising from somewhere beyond the wall, and the ground shook faintly with every step of whatever was coming.

“Mikael,” Kadre said, turning towards the western side of the city. “My brother is still there.”

“In that building?”

“He might have left, though…”

“Then we should leave as quickly as we can.”

Kadre turned instantly, glaring daggers at him.

“We should leave?! C’mon, you brat. My hometown is about to get attacked, and my family is still out here! And I should just leave?” She shook her head. “Are you even human?”

Mikael did not answer. He was looking towards the gate.

But what she saw before she could take a single step killed all thought.

Guild Master Konja and Captain Behemoth chuckled nervously as they heard the screeching sound and the flap of wings droning in from above. The creature’s throat slowly lit up a clear orange, and the color spilled out of its mouth and onto the massive gates.

A stream of fiery-hot flames.

It was a dragon, an S-Class Ravager.

It circled once over the gate, huge and dark against the sky, and its wings pushed down a wind that bent the flames towards the city.

The boom came instantly, throwing shards of wood and metal for miles around. Even the fighters gathered below were not spared. In less than a minute, there were corpses charred beyond recognition!

The smell reached the roof a moment later, burning wood and burning flesh together.

Mages who were fast enough had cast large-area defensive spells, covering those fortunate enough to be beside them.

“The gates have been compromised. We defend—”

The speaker ended up as a splatter of blood and flesh. The culprit was a bulky, seven-foot troll with a massive sledgehammer. It raised the hammer, and its roar was answered by the roars of other beasts!

Konja and Behemoth were already on it, and its two halves slid to the ground in seconds.

Behind it, more trolls and lizard-like creatures poured through the broken gate, climbing over the wreckage and over each other.

“Men, women! Defend your city! Kill them all!”

“Aaaaaaaa!”

The charge began: humans against Ravagers.

“Shall we go handle the fire-breather, Captain?” the Guild Master asked, cracking his knuckles.

Behemoth tied his sword to his hand, giving no further reply.

“I love me some men of action,” Konja laughed.

Behemoth said nothing and moved first, and Konja followed half a step behind him.

They jumped into the air, their Sage and Grandmaster auras flaring.

The dragon turned its head towards them and roared, and the roof tiles rattled under Kadre’s boots.

“I am going to go get my family,” Kadre stated firmly, with a resolute look in her eyes. “It was nice meeting you, brat.”

She took off the ring and offered it back to Mikael, who just stared at her and at the city being lit by what the humans called a dragon.

Her hands were not quite steady. She held the ring out at arm’s length so he would take it before she changed her mind.

There was a reason he did not want to join this battle. He had no celestial essence to spare; the only essence remaining was what made up his soul. The mana here was also not dense enough for Ragnarok to absorb and use. No one went into a battle they had no interest in, knowing they would most probably die.

He went through the options again, and each of them ended the same way: he would spend something he did not have.

Or maybe I do have an interest. I did hire her, since they said she’s the best.

Mikael sighed.

Now, there might be others, but time was the one element he could not afford to waste.

“Keep it,” he said, turning away. He did not look at the ring again.

“You won’t fight? Help protect the city?” The shock of being told to keep her payment was there, but Kadre was not averse to him leaving. She felt a bit relieved.

“Don’t misunderstand, child. I am no hero.”

The look in Mikael’s now dark-red eyes shut down her convictions, and dread crawled up her skin. She took a step back without meaning to.

“I have no interest in whatever happens to the humans in this city. Why should I risk it all?”

He started walking towards the edge of the roof, in the opposite direction.

“You, on the other hand, have an interest here, but you are still weak and could die for nothing.”

“What’s your point, Mikael?” Her emotions were running high: anger, annoyance.

Mikael glanced at the dragon, which was currently facing two people, probably the Sage and Captain Behemoth.

Two small figures were already in the air, facing it, and the heat from its breath reached even the rooftops. The dragon itself was a massive ball of mana, and Ragnarok pulsed with a faint hunger.

Unfortunately, the risk was too high.

“Try not to die until I find you, Kadre. I won’t be pleased if you do.”

“What—?!”

He had already leaped off the roof.

“What a strange guy!”

Kadre stared at the place where he had been standing. The ring was still in her hand.

Mikael’s destination was outside the city, towards the source of the beasts: the Dry Swamp.

Many of these Ravagers were tiny balls of mana, minimal as it was, but they were still something. The forest, however, was strangely filled with more mana than he had felt before.

By now, he was grateful he had physically enhanced his body when he had reconnected to the Cosmic Gate.

He chopped necks and sliced many a beast in half mid-sprint, a streak of black and white that left carnage behind.

He came upon a pack of trolls, five in number, which slowed him down a bit. The trolls’ skin was a bit harder, and while Ragnarok’s blade could cut through anything in this mortal world, it had no source of energy to do so. That meant he had to substitute with his physical strength.

He threw the scythe in a straight line with such force that it sliced through the group, dividing their bodies in half. As soon as the weapon left his hand, he sprinted towards another. In his hand was the sledgehammer of one of its kind. The unlucky beast, before it could blink twice, got its face smashed into its skull, and its skull into the rest of its body.

The next hit landed on the knees of another, and when it fell, the hammer came up and connected, disconnecting its jaw so violently that it pushed the brains out in the opposite direction.

The pieces fell in different directions, and the ground around him turned dark and slick.

For the last one, now running away, Mikael repeated his first attack. He swung the hammer hard, building up its momentum before letting it fly.

“Argh!”

The troll roared as a large hole appeared in its chest and blood dripped down.

It staggered three more steps and dropped face-first into the mud.

“Now, where did that scythe fling itself to?”

The trolls relied mostly on physical strength, with very little mana, which did not interest Mikael. Feeling the scythe’s presence, he continued his sprint towards its location.

It was a few hundred feet away, buried in the chest of some two-legged lizard.

The scythe’s runes were dull, but they still glowed faintly, and the lizard’s body was already going cold around the blade.

“I really need to put some kind of ‘come back to me’ code into this ring,” he said, and pulled it out.

A fist came out of nowhere, and the sound reached his mind late. Very late. Or rather, not at all.

Because as soon as he touched Ragnarok, something strange happened.

He froze suddenly on the frontline, among mindless monsters. Around him, the beasts did not slow down. They saw a man standing still, and they came.

And so the fist connected and slammed him ten feet through the air.

Pain registered a moment later, spreading through his ribs and across his back.

“Huh?”

He could think, but his body could not move an inch.

What was happening?

See y’all tomorrow.