A battlefield is a fight between order and chaos. Disciplined warriors representing order become a bulwark to overthrow disorder—chaos. If all things are equal, the warriors with the best discipline become conquerors.

~Lugh, God of Battle and Craft

Otto summoned the throwing ax he got from the Six Dragon Gods. Its real name was Lightning Decapitator, but he couldn’t spit that out without stuttering. So Crow convinced him to change it to something else and even gave him some ideas. In the end, he settled on Bearclaw. Mainly because the backside of the ax had a metal piece with three points that Otto thought looked a little like a claw. Technically, the ‘claw’ was supposed to be a lightning bolt and used to balance the throwing ax, but even Crow had to admit, the crude design looked like a claw. No matter what, it shouldn’t be underestimated in Otto’s giant hands.

Otto carried a coffin lid in his offhand—a gift from a soldier he’d saved from the undead horde. The giant was practically a one-man army when he went out during field offensives to clear up the dead. It was during one of those times that he’d saved the soldier and consequently broke his fifth shield since the undead arrived.

In his hands, even the stoutest shield couldn’t last. The soldier remembered he had looted the lid from an empty tomb because it seemed impervious to damage. Still, everyone seemed to think it was worthless.

The front of the lid had a glossy surface that could have been polished stone or wood. Even Crow wasn’t sure what the material was. A symbol was etched into that otherwise smooth surface, and the golden filigree stood out on the top half of the lid. A few bars of the same material supported the backside’s concave interior that Otto used as handles.

Crow and the others could hear his booming laughter as he threw Bearclaw and then smashed through the undead with his ‘shield.’ Soldiers were behind him, mostly cleaning up those that Otto didn’t kill and protecting the cultivators burning the corpses to ash.

Impressively, his thrown ax killed swathes of the dead and opened paths through them twelve meters long by one meter wide. It helped lessen the pressure on the other fighters with him. After the ax lost momentum and fell to the ground, he summoned it back and repeated the process. Otto may not have had the capacity to formulate strategy, but on the battlefield, he was like a war god that people instinctively followed.

Crow used people he trusted could use a bow and supported the soldiers below. If they lacked talent with a bow, he made them fire out into the mass of dead. It was hard to miss. Using this method, he could support the soldiers on the ground and ensure more of them returned alive. Crow targeted as many as he could around Otto and his group, and Song Xue did the same.

“Eat with us,” Crow told Mara, finally looking at the dinner boxes she gave them.

“Can’t, and I already ate. Need to get this food to the others. Speaking of, where the hell did Acco go?”

“He’s Drock’s errand boy,” Faelan chuckled, and her words would have probably made that kid cry.

“Doing what?”

“Underground shelters,” Crow explained. “That sonar mapping thing is convenient at mapping out underground caves. They built this city on an amazingly complex cave system. The loch flooded most of the tunnels, but they created an underground city in the dry areas—maybe a refugee camp is more accurate. A massive cavern at the edge of an underground lake connects to dozens of smaller caverns. Right now, the only way down there is with Acco, and they started evacuating people there already. Be careful. Now that you can teleport like him, you might get conscripted,” Crow explained while digging into the food. It was some sort of bird meat with potatoes cooked in a way he’d never tasted before. It had an earthy flavor, and he assumed that was the medicinal herbs.

“How can you eat with that stench below?” Mara grimaced.

“I’ve used mana to block my sense of smell long ago.”

“Hey, you don’t think those caves are the same ones connected to the Vana Manor, do you?” Mara asked, worried they were opening the back door to their place.

“Acco said it did if they delved deep enough and cleared the water out of the submerged tunnels. However, the effort to do all that was monumental and might even require them to drain the loch. Not to mention it’s practically a maze. In the future, it might benefit us to connect to their shelter and hide those passes using formations. We’ll worry about it later if Rosdoe survives this calamity.”

Mara frowned but didn’t discredit what Crow said. Looking out at the horde the city was facing, she felt it was only a matter of time before the walls were overrun. It was probably not worth worrying about since they may need to give up on this town soon.

“Alright, I’m off.” Mara kissed Crow on the cheek and stuck her tongue out at Faelan before saying, “See you tonight, so you better save some energy.”

She disappeared, but the other people on the wall heard her and chuckled. Mara was very outspoken and fought fiercely, so the others respected her just as they did Faelan. More than a few of them were envious of the women around Crow because they were all outstanding. Even Nin, who was burning corpses while following Otto at the moment, was extraordinary.

Crow finished his meal, picked up his bow, and released arrow after arrow. His routine was to fire a hundred regular arrows before launching a screamer followed by a boomer. Those weren’t the name of the actual arrows, but that’s what the other soldiers called them. The screamers would attract the dead toward a location, and the Boomer would take out dozens of them all at once.

Those arrows weren’t easy to make, so that’s why he paced them this way. It made him an effective killing machine. It was about the time he worked himself into a killing trance that he felt the ground shake. At first, he ignored it, but the shaking became worse.

Looking up toward the tree line, he saw the tops of them swaying before something knocked the trees over. Faelan stepped up beside Crow and Mara, and Acco appeared moments later. All of them were staring at the tree line, and the uneasiness they’d been feeling all day was finally revealing itself.

The massive beings that had just arrived stood at the edge of the treeline and surveyed the battlefield in front of them. Crow could only see their heads at the moment and started laughing.

“What is it?” Mara asked, sensing Crow’s mood. However, when they turned and allowed him to see their faces, his laughter stopped.

“Fuck, that shouldn’t be possible…” Crow muttered as several horns and flares started going off from one end of the wall to the other.