Re: Tales of the Rune-Tech Sage

Chapter 408: Carnage

CH408 Carnage

***

With Alex’s order, the expedition party—seemingly defying all common sense—charged straight at the regrouped fortress troops.

Zora was the first to act.

Recycling the lingering frost from her earlier Ice Boulder spell, she wove another chant—this time, an offensive one.

[Icicle Shower]!

The frost that had diffused across the courtyard suddenly recoalesced, forming dozens of razor-sharp ice bolts that rained down upon the assembled troops.

Her goal wasn’t mass slaughter.

More than anything, she aimed to scatter them, preventing the fortress soldiers from forming the disciplined combat formations that would allow their superior numbers to overwhelm the twenty-two invaders.

Zora’s role was, after all, battlefield crowd control.

The others would handle the killing.

As the spell landed, many among the hyped fortress troops attempted to simply tank the icicles, emboldened by the divine warmth of Juror’s [Pious Devotion].

But reality proved harsher.

No ordinary troop could casually withstand a spell crafted by a monster Ice Mage like Zora. The divine spell restored their earlier injuries and lent them strength—but its defensive boost was minimal.

The moment the ice bolts struck, Alex noted the discrepancy.

”The divine spell is boosting their attacks, not their defences. They’ll get a lot more aggressive when striking—don’t let them catch you head-on.” Alex warned through comms.

”Don’t worry, leader. We just need to kill them before they can hit us!” Kavakan laughed thunderously as he barreled toward the enemy lines.

Yet the first to make contact wasn’t the lycanthrope—but Havel.

Moving with eerie stillness, the Ronin glided across the battlefield. Not through invisibility or stealth technique, but through sheer lethality.

Wherever he passed, his blade would slip from its sheath for the briefest instant—shing!—and by the time it returned, fortress soldiers crumpled wordlessly to the ground.

Even though he moved openly after Zora’s spell revealed all players on the field, no enemy shouted a warning.

There simply weren’t any left alive near him to speak.

A squad of a dozen fortress troops rushed toward him to reinforce the section he had appeared in. Upon seeing Havel standing alone, they froze, unnerved by the lack of warnings from the men who should have been guarding that sector.

But training kicked in, and weapons were hastily drawn.

Havel clicked his teeth—an expression of mild irritation.

He was going to have to put in a bit more effort this time.

Havel loosened his stance, one hand settling lightly on the sword at his waist.

His unusual weapon and unorthodox posture sowed confusion among the fortress troops—but bolstered by their numbers and the priest’s divine buff, they steeled themselves and charged.

Havel inhaled—a small, steady breath.

The world slowed.

Then... he struck.

[Quick Draw: Flash Slash]!

Havel blurred forward. His blade rose in a left-to-right diagonal arc, cleaving cleanly through the leading soldier—and the two immediately behind him.

The four bisected bodies staggered several steps before collapsing around him. Havel remained frozen in the pose of his strike: bowed, half-crouched, katana raised, with eight halves of men scattered across the ground.

Thump!

Two nearby soldiers fell on their rear ends, pale with terror. They had been standing barely outside the reach of his sword light.

Havel’s blade snapped back into its sheath.

Then—it flashed again.

[Quick Draw: Flash Sweep]!

The horizontal arc bisected three more men who still clung to the idea of resisting.

This time, instead of resheathing the blade, Havel shifted his grip, raising the sword overhead.

[Falling Sickle]!

A crescent of blade energy carved outward, slicing through another four soldiers as though reaping stalks of grain.

He sheathed the sword once more.

Around him lay ten cleanly bisected corpses—and two trembling soldiers who sat frozen on the ground, all will to fight drained from their souls.

Havel walked past them as if they were already dead.

Only when they felt a flicker of relief did their vision suddenly tilt. They watched their own headless bodies slump forward.

’Ah... so he killed us after all.’

That was their final thought before darkness claimed them.

Wherever Havel moved, his path was marked by bodies cut so smoothly and cleanly that the scene bordered on unnervingly beautiful—elegant swordsmanship painted in gore.

Kavakan, however, was the complete opposite.

Unleashed by Alex, the weretiger hurled himself into the fortress soldiers with wild, brutal abandon. His predatory aura exploded outward. Twin axes spun and hacked without pause, carving a path of carnage.

There was no elegance in his style—only raw, feral savagery and overwhelming physical might.

Every swing was meant to kill.

Every step was a hunt.

His sole aim, to slaughter as many enemies as possible.

Surrounding the brute did nothing but make his work easier.

The sheer force behind Kavakan’s swings was so tremendous that he not only cleaved through his immediate target in a strike or two, but the shock of each blow shoved back anyone attempting to flank him from the sides—or even from behind.

Messy as his style was, Kavakan was even more effective at culling the rabble among the fortress soldiers than Havel.

”Come on! My axes are hungry!” he bellowed.

His axes—and his whole body—were drenched in blood. The scent only further inflamed his predatory instincts.

His mind was a single roaring blaze of kill.

Well, there was one small, rational ember repeating Alex’s command.

’Ignore the officers. Cut down the weak first.’

Whenever an officer stepped toward him—even a mere Bronze rank—Kavakan veered away without hesitation. Ranked warriors were easy to spot on Verdantis thanks to their glowing aura; dodging them was trivial.

As much as he craved stronger prey, the intoxicating freedom of slaughtering the masses far outweighed that desire.

His right axe crashed down on an elite soldier. The man raised a wooden shield, but the axe tore straight through, only stopping when it met the iron of his helmet. Relief had just flickered across the man’s face when Kavakan’s left axe followed immediately after, splitting the shield—and the soldier’s head—clean in two.

[Whirlwind]!

A group of soldiers attempted to exploit the moment his axes were trapped in the ruined shield.

Bu that was a bad idea.

Kavakan ripped his axes free with brute strength, then spun in a savage circle. Steel and fur blurred—another handful of soldiers split apart before they could even scream.

The resulting gale scattered those still standing, buying him space to breathe.

Kavakan scanned the battlefield—and leapt.

Smash!

He crashed into the densest cluster of soldiers like a falling boulder. One man burst into pulp beneath him; others were hurled into their comrades, toppling row after row in a messy heap.

Kavakan did not waste the opening. He pounced on the sprawled men, hacking them apart one after another.

’Leader... you really gave me the perfect role!’ he thought, grinning wildly as he buried a blade in another soldier.

If this were a game, his favourability meter toward Alex would have shot up by a thousand points.

He wasn’t the only one thrilled.

Mogal, too, found bliss in the chaos.

Every officer who tried to intercept Kavakan—and stop the carnage—was intercepted first by Mogal.

The barbarian erupted into battle like a force of nature, turning the officers’ attempts into opportunities for him to unleash his own brand of brutal fury.

***