Chapter 585: Multitudinous Jaws

  Of course Kai didn't sprint off from the dinner the instant he had an objective. Throwing ideas at one another was actually commonplace for them, from Zae Zin Nim giving suggestions about everyone's cultivation to Inafay and Orotaisin offering Omilaena perspective on souls unified around a single theme to all-around discussion of Physique.

  Eventually, however, they had to part. When they established that they'd be fighting on different fronts, there were many embraces, more than he had expected. They'd be seeing one another during the incursion, most likely, and soon after if not, but it still felt like a significant parting.

  With that done, Kai found himself impatient with the rest of their tour. When Kai contacted the elites, he had only a single question:

  "Are there any monstrous piranhas on Deadwaste?"

  While they conferred, Kai joined his wives visiting another city to prepare them for the incursion. Fortunately, they didn't make him wait long, and they reported that there was actually a strong possibility in the mountains of the Wind Union. There he would allegedly find a mountain pool where an aggressive type of piranha monster had been trapped by some past flood. They were isolated enough that they were no threat, and before this point even Kai hadn't had any use for some random monsters.

  After everything else he'd done, the Wind Union didn't even discuss compensation, and if anything they seemed to think it was an honor for him to hunt monsters in their realm. All he needed to do was spend a little time there, encouraging the local hunters while they checked their records and arranged transportation. Exactly what he was doing anyway, so he graciously accepted their terms.

  Kai shifted as he waited in a random Wind Union village, wishing he could just fly there himself. He'd definitely be faster than their ship, but he needed their expertise to find the exact pool, and it would be rude if he flew off so soon after meeting with the local leaders. Instead he tried to tell himself that they were saving him lots of time by bringing him straight to monsters he couldn't have afforded to hunt on his own.

  While he waited, Kai noticed that a young man was staring at him. That alone wasn't too unusual, but this one wasn't Windborn, had a determined expression, and was vaguely familiar. The young man eventually forced himself forward to greet Kai. Nothing about the lean young man was ringing any particular bells...

  "Do... do you remember me?" he asked. "A couple years ago..."

  "The Hundred Zephyr Rings." Kai snapped as the memories connected: he'd participated in a local competition to get elite attention, and in the process he'd helped a kid who had been striving against the odds. "How did that ring work out for you?"

  "I got more than I deserve. Once I realized who you were, I realized you must have let me..." The boy lowered his head. "Thank you. My name is Aniogun, and I can never repay you."

  "Don't worry about that. I'll consider myself repaid if you make something of yourself... I'm guessing the elemental test didn't work out for you? Me neither."

  Aniogun explained about how he had used the resources he won to train his Physique, earn some money, and try to purchase chakra from overseas. The result had gotten him to around 70 Power, which wasn't much to Kai, but he recognized that was an accomplishment. After Kai's little nudge, he hadn't gotten anyone to help him, not like Kai's students or even a Gunjin.

  "Listen," Kai said during a break in the conversation, "I need to hunt something now, but fight the incursion as best you can. If you survive, talk to the elites and mention my name. They might see the potential that your elders couldn't."

  That prompted a huge flood of gratitude, enough to make Kai a little uncomfortable, so he was grateful when the Wind Union officials finally showed up. After saying farewell to Aniogun, since the meeting meant a lot more to the boy, Kai headed off to hunt these piranhas.

  For a while they simply soared over mountain ranges, which were beautiful but inhospitable. Kai reflected that it might be nice to live in an austere environment far from everyone like this. They could build a house atop one of the mountains and they'd have whole valleys to themselves. Of course, that sounded like a dream of retirement, and he wasn't likely to be able to retire soon if ever.

  The pool was eventually found on an obscure peak in the west, but once Kai got in range, he could smell the monsters. He jumped over the side of the ship, not even using Thunderbird's Wings, just dropped straight toward his destination.

  From the air he couldn't spot the actual monsters, but the shape of their souls resolved for him in familiar characters. Nice to have a monster that was easily understood by spiritual sense for once.

  <

  Monster: Deadwaste Piranha

  Threat: Delta (IV)

  >

  Only delta-ranked threats... he was going to need to eat a lot of them.

  When he plunged into the water, his impact alone sent many of the piranha blasting out, dying against the rocks. But those who survived by chance immediately rushed at him: they might not be able to starve to death, but their hunger grew while isolated until they were desperate for human flesh.

  As the piranhas futilely bit at his skin, Kai snapped them up whole with Isulfr's Bite. He had to admit that Inafay had a point - even with all his speed, even with experience, he couldn't bite as quickly as the swarm did. If they had actually been able to pierce his skin, that might have been a problem.

  In the end Kai needed to leave the pool and consume the dead monsters as well in order to build up enough essence, but he managed to resolve a new coherent ability in his soul.

  <

  Deadwaste Piranha - IV (delta)

  >

  The new biting ability wasn't particularly strong, but it was a perfect match for the essence he'd absorbed from piranha swarms on Rosemount and Cloudspire. They all used roughly the same tactic of numerous small bites, they just did it in slightly different ways, having manifested in completely different environments.

  <

  Deadwaste Piranha - IV (delta)

  Rosemount Piranha - IV (delta)

  Cloudspire Piranha - IV (delta)

  >

  Merging them was more of a strategic question than a challenge. Kai seriously considered trying a super-merger that would incorporate Isulfr's Bite, since he hadn't gotten much use from it lately. But the more he contemplated the exact essence, the more that felt wrong: Isulfr's Bite was an intense piercing ability that had saved his life on occasion, so he should find a way to upgrade it eventually, not feed it into a secondary ability.

  So in the end he merely fed all the piranhas to one another, creating a swarm in his soul that easily cohered into a single ability.

  <

  Legion Bite - II (beta)

  >

  When he tested out the new "Legion Bite" ability on the mountainside, dozens of small holes were gouged from it instantly. What surprised him was that he still got the taste of stone, even from a distance, and his body processed it all into his monstrous self. Eating stone was immensely unsatisfying and he wanted to test the bite on living flesh.

  This one was going to be tricky to experiment with, because it would be downright torturous on people. He guessed that for someone like Zae Zin Nim, the miniature bites would glance right off her defenses, but they should take chunks out of monsters.

  With his new ability in tow, Kai thanked the Wind Union officials and teleported back to the Frontier to polish his new essence. Truthfully, however, he didn't spend much time with it, because he became preoccupied with several new developments.

  First and most importantly, all of his training with the elites had made Behemoth's Heart finally raise a level. It wasn't capable of regenerating phased damage instantly, but such injuries no longer hindered him the way they once had. With this done, plus his increasing phase mastery, there was less reason to train with the elites and he focused on final developments of his own.

  When Kai broke through to B-4, he decided to temporarily delay Physique training in order to maximize cultivation time. Ever since his breakthrough on Cloudspire, he had been dutifully building his dantian through the Nascent Foundation stage. Sometimes it had seemed pointless, the cliff between cultivation stages too high to be relevant, but he'd kept at it.

  Now he had somehow reached 80% of the way, and Zae Zin Nim became convinced that if the incursion kept being delayed, he could make it. She had techniques for intensive cultivation, pushing him along with unparalleled speed. If he did manage to make it, the next stage was Earth Soul, which would give him a huge boost in Power and a lot more monstrous potential to work with, so he dedicated himself to it.

  Then, one night he raced on a thousand feet, tasting blood in his mouth, swelling with the throb of an eldritch heartbeat.

  He woke up covered in sweat, his mouth full of monstrous teeth and his hands transformed into claws. All he'd done with those claws was clutch Zae Zin Nim and Omilaena, pulling them close with almost violent force. They were concerned at first, then as they made eye contact, they knew.

  "It's happening?" Omilaena asked.

  "I felt it," Kai said, still feeling the resonance with the abyss at the heart of the Frontier. "The incursion is beginning."

  Chapter 586: Hordes Upon Hordes

  Technically, Kai should have been much less nervous going into his second incursion.

  He was overwhelmingly more powerful than he had been the first time, stronger than all the normal monsters and potentially even the worst destroyers. Instead of precious few friends, he had strong alliances across the continent. In the intervening years he had fought against demons, patriarchs, and countless other foes.

  And yet, as he felt the world itself trembling before the incursion, uncertainty welled up within him.

  "I'll do my job in Irun," Omilaena was saying, "but I'm going to keep an eye on all my experiments. I really don't want all my work getting eaten by stupid random monsters."

  "I will likely be very mobile in Krysal," Zae Zin Nim warned, "so it would be difficult to contact me. Use the elites' scroll if there's a disaster."

  Kai should have been talking with his wives, but he only stood nearby, his mind in the abyss. There had been no actual loss of control over the past few days, yet he kept getting flashes of sensation as the monsters poured forth, continuing even now. It wasn't his monstrous nature that made him distant, just his preoccupation.

  "I'll see you both soon," Kai forced himself to say, smiling as if everything was fine. He kissed both Omilaena and Zae Zin Nim, and they kissed one another, then they parted to step into separate portals.

  And, contrary to all logic, Kai had the overwhelming feeling that he'd never see them again.

  On the other side of his portal, he stepped into an empty portion of wasteland, deep in the Frontier in between the abyss and the wall. This was his position, the swath of territory he needed to defend, one link in the chain of elites. Currently there were no monsters visible, but he could sense them over the horizon.

  In the very early days, as his premonitions got stronger, there had been real fear that the god-like fighters would return and all his preparations would be useless. He and the other elites had waited on the Frontier wall, their only possible defense, and searched for unexplained arrivals. But now that there were monsters in the wasteland and no gods had shown up, it seemed they were just dealing with a normal monstrous apocalypse, so his wives should be in no danger at all.

  Ugh, his head was throbbing. If he couldn't get answers about the battle, he wanted to at least fly to the abyss and see what might lie within. Last time, he had seen nothing, but the being who called himself Koleiman the Magnificent had been convinced there was something, and he seemed to know a lot more than Kai.

  But he couldn't go to the center, not yet. At this early stage in the incursion, uncoordinated attacks could easily lead to unbalanced monster hordes, or worse, trigger even more of them. When phased monsters started coming out, that was when the elites had the greatest risk of dying.

  So he would wait. Even though it was a grim comfort, the outpouring was likely to last most of a day and the consequences would last for much longer, so he would have time.

  Pushing aside all such thoughts, Kai instead focused on his own soul.

  <

  Name: Kai Clanless

  Total Power: 1174

  Monstrous Hunger - XV (omicron)

  Cultivation: Nascent Foundation 83% (267)

  Savage Heart: 29 (291)

  Physique Level: B-4 (520)

  Beggar King's Robes: +3 (15)

  Soul Level: 9 (81)

  Behemoth's Heart - XII (mu)

  Thunderbird's Wings - XI (lambda)

  Tyrant's Claw - XIII (nu)

  Manticore's Spine - VI (zeta)

  Baleful Breath - VIII (theta)

  Void Gaze - IX (iota)

  Legion Bite - III (gamma)

  -

  Direboar's Strength - XV (omicron)

  Famished World - VI (zeta)

  Mutefang's Stealth - XV (omicron)

  Isulfr's Bite - X (kappa)

  Sahagin's Soul - XII (mu)

  Monstrous Tail - III (gamma)

  Wallcrawler's Feet - V (epsilon)

  Abominalgum - II (beta)

  Bloodtrap - III (gamma)

  Slime's Immortality - II (beta)

  Silver Demon - II (beta)

  Voidmaw's Bite - II (beta)

  Great Cetae - III (gamma)

  Bloodtail's Armor - III (gamma)

  >

  The incursion hadn't been gracious enough to wait for him to reach a cultivation breakthrough, so Kai was entering the battle with 1174 Power. He didn't think his monstrous powers had fully grown to match that yet, but he was more interested in flexibility anyway.

  He needed Behemoth's Heart for stamina and Thunderbird's Wings for mobility, so that left him with only five slots. Ultimately the choice wasn't too difficult: he didn't need specialized skills here, and the monsters weren't likely to have any powers that would require Famished World. So he picked Tyrant's Claw and Manticore's Spine as his bread and butter, with Void Gaze and Baleful Breath for crowd control, then his new Legion Bite for efficiency.

  Hopefully. As much as Kai had trained and prepared, he hadn't actually used any of these abilities in an incursion, and the role he was going to play was nothing like seven years ago.

  When the monsters started to pour over the horizon, Kai had to admit that he took a breath. They weren't individually strong, but they rolled forward in a wave, carpeting the landscape, a wall of teeth and claws that scraped the land dry. This was the raw concentration of monstrous power that threatened a continent, that required such an elaborate system for people to possibly survive.

  And now he was taking it on directly. Kai exhaled and raised his hand.

  His first Tyrant's Claw, extended to the largest size he could, tore a swath through the horde. It killed hundreds of monsters, creating a hole in the mass and hurling their bodies into the others. A massive portion of the incoming horde flinched back from the raw impact, but the monsters knew no fear and more poured into the empty space over the bodies of the dead.

  The blow had been effective, but even with his strength the claw energy couldn't cut through bodies forever, plus he thought the angle from the ground was ineffective. Intending to conserve strength, Kai didn't start flying, he just used muscle to leap into the air and get an aerial view.

  From above, he could see the rush of monsters even more clearly. Toward the horizon they were a solid wall of monstrous flesh tumbling over itself, only beginning to separate into a distinguishable horde at his distance from the center. The elites had, through years of careful analysis, determined that this radius was the best place to try to thin out the monsters, so he would trust their judgment.

  Kai formed another Tyrant's Claw and hurled it downward into a different part of the horde. When his power impacted, for a moment he saw three claw marks of bloody chaos torn into the horde. After that, the cascade of bodies slammed into the others nearby, turning the claw marks into an impressionistic smear. Hundreds more were dead... but the monstrous hordes crawled onward.

  Looking to either direction, he saw nothing but more monsters as far as his eyes could see, though the next nearest elites could be sensed just beyond his visual range. It would take hundreds of claw attacks like this to stamp out the current wave, and there were more beyond.

  Seeing this, he understood on a different level how the basic power he had gained from training Physique as a young man would never have been enough to fight here.

  But he wasn't that man anymore, and Kai was just testing his limits against the mass of monsters at this point. He threw himself back down, directly into the monstrous hordes, to see just how much he could distract them.

  The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  When he landed his legs crushed the monsters beneath him, and the echo of power from Thunderbird's Wings flattened more. But it was only a second before monsters charged in from all sides and he was swarmed by tooth and claw. They couldn't break his skin, and the Beggar King's Robes regenerated easily, but for a moment he was completely buried in a hill of monstrous flesh, unable to even see the sky as the monsters massed around him.

  Which was the intent, of course. Kai let his body shift to a monstrous form and began swinging, mauling monsters in all directions. The impacts and tumbling bodies drew even more, and even though they dissolved in a windmill of death when they reached him, that didn't stop the others from charging in.

  How long could he fight like this? With Behemoth's Heart regenerating his stamina, Kai thought that he might be able to keep up low level combat almost forever. The problem was that he was only distracting a portion of the monster horde - he wasn't sure how much - and he would need to be more mobile to handle the others. So Kai dropped to one knee and began utilizing Legion Bite.

  Instantly bite marks began disappearing from the monsters around him, heads and hearts vanishing into the void. Kai didn't need to move to use the technique, yet he found his jaws opening and his teeth growing sharper as he extended the effect.

  At first he had tried to control it precisely, targeting hundreds of individual bites, but that had proved unwieldy. Now Kai just opened the potential, as if he had dozens of invisible mouths questing from his body. They could choose targets on their own, or rather, he thought that the technique was a raw expression of the hunger within him, which aimed to consume everything.

  Encountering a point of resistance made the monsters come in even greater numbers, tumbling over one another in waves higher than he was tall, but Legion Bite kept up with the incoming masses. Kai could feel the essences filling him and being burned to fuel more bites, leaving nothing but the taste of blood. No matter how many monsters massed together like this, so long as they were weak, he could keep consuming them.

  But was it enough? After enough time had passed, Kai burst off the ground to get a view from above.

  From there, he could see that a large portion of the monster hordes had turned toward him, a horde that could have consumed a city on its own. But to the east and west, more monsters continued pouring outward, ignoring him and stampeding toward the Frontier wall.

  Just this alone wasn't pulling his weight, not when the elites had trusted him to cover so much space. Kai burst west first, sweeping in front of the hordes and exhaling Baleful Breath as densely as he could.

  His breath annihilated a whole swath of the monsters and more importantly, the wall of flame and darkness lingered. Some of the monsters tumbled directly into it and were annihilated, and more pushed from behind, wiping out part of the horde before it managed to slow down and part, trying to circle around the wall of Baleful Breath.

  Kai was already bursting in the other direction to handle the east as well. Here he tried something different: flying just above the ground, keeping Legion Bite active around him. He discovered that he could bite a bloody swath through the horde, but if he moved at top speed, Legion Bite couldn't keep up with consuming every single monster he passed, so there was a limit to how fast he could consume the edge of the horde.

  Ahead, Kai finally saw the next elite to the east: an Earthborn man who was raising great walls of spiked stone, which the monstrous hordes impaled themselves against before more collided with the bodies and began to tumble over. It looked as though the man had already fallen back several times, letting the monsters collapse on one another before he raised a new wall of spikes.

  That was actually better than average: the whole point of this step was a fighting retreat to thin out the monsters' sheer numbers. Kai hurled out a Tyrant's Claw, tearing through the mass of monsters, just to give the man a break. The elite - who must have a speed phase - turned to glance at Kai, and they exchanged a brief nod before Kai reversed back in the other direction.

  As he returned to his central position, Kai exhaled another wall of Baleful Breath, longer this time. He created a long wall of flame that would seriously slow the monsters, but his throat burned by the end. Behemoth's Heart couldn't sustain such a powerful technique forever, so he would need to pace himself.

  Still, when he soared skyward to get a better view, Kai thought that he had done well. He hadn't given that much ground while killing thousands of monsters in the process, defending all the leagues of the circle that were his responsibility. Both east and west, he could sense that the monster hordes had progressed much further than the section he'd defended.

  Monsters were funneling down to the space in between his two walls of Baleful Breath, so Kai smashed down into the group, crushing them with raw physical force. He plunged into the gap, tearing through the hordes, and then began making his way west.

  Along the way, he experimented with running while using Legion Bite, which let him carve a line through the horde. That only took out a portion of them, but it also drew them inward to try to kill him, pulling back the lines of encroaching monsters. This was good enough for moving between two points.

  When he arrived, Kai saw that Sheiri Kagskan was the elite to his west. She held a raised point, lashing out with a whip of Irunian steel that extended to great lengths, scything through hundreds of monsters with each swing. This easily kept the horde at bay, so the only problem was that limited mobility meant she couldn't stop the monsters beginning to circle around her.

  Kai blew in on a wave of monster bodies and landed beside her, grinning despite himself. The momentum sent a cascade of monstrous bodies tumbling past them, wiping out a swath from the point where he'd stopped. It was a mark of her experience that Sheiri didn't shudder at the sight, just nodded.

  "How does this compare to normal?" Kai asked.

  "About average," Sheiri said as she lashed out with her whip on the other side. It didn't sound like she was joking. "The real question is how much it intensifies."

  "So how much ground do we give?" Kai moved to her back, handling the east with Tyrant's Claws while Sheiri whipped further west.

  "We have to give some. People who aren't you need to conserve their stamina for the fight at the wall, then the nation destroyers or the hordes that get past."

  Kai had more questions, but at that moment their easy slaughter of the monsters was interrupted. Sheiri's whip had been slicing through the monsters like butter until abruptly one of them survived. It was built like an armored bug, covered in armor that managed to deflect the Irunian steel. That threw Sheiri off, and worse, the monster unfolded, revealing a maw filled with venom...

  A Manticore's Spine went through its head and the monster fell. Sheiri gave him an appreciative nod, but she looked grim.

  "The stronger ones are coming," she said. "That's what really determines how much trouble we have."

  Readying his claws and forming more spines, Kai turned to face the rushing hordes.

  Chapter 587: Venom Against the Hordes

  Though Omilaena had fought during the main waves, that had been the most boring part of the battle for her, because the calculations were so simple. By far her most efficient method of killing monsters was exhaling clouds of poison, so that was what she had done, over and over, filling the eastern side of the Frontier with endless poison.

  When monsters started to appear that could survive or resist her poison, it simply wasn't energy-efficient to come up with unique methods of killing them. Instead, she conserved her strength as the elites managed a retreat to the Frontier wall, which was where the next stand would take place.

  Even though they had wiped out a large percentage of the monsters and thinned the hordes, simple mathematics meant that they had thinned themselves as well: the hundred or so elites were now spread out across leagues and leagues of circumference. That was where their other allies got to take a role, and where Omilaena could switch to a more interesting modality.

  She stalked along the top of the wall, watching her Irunian experiments fight the hordes. This was the strongest phase of Deadwaste's defenses, because the monsters couldn't generally damage the wall, forcing them to climb up the side. That gave more than enough opportunity for the Irunians atop the walls to use various weapons to take them out, though they had a serious attrition problem. At this stage, while the monsters were still manageably weak, they primarily used rocks that had been carted to the top of the wall in preparation. With gravity, a generic soldier could launch lethal attacks with little effort.

  Mostly lethal. Omilaena spotted a cluster of spider-like monsters that were making their way up the side, shrugging off the rocks, and so she leapt into action.

  In a flash she raced to that section of the wall and vaulted over the heads of the Irunians, catching herself with one hand on the edge. From there, it was a simple matter to hurl a set of needles, each piercing directly through the head of one of the spiders. In seconds she had taken out the resistant monsters and pulled herself back up again.

  The Irunians all gave her a saluting bow. That felt a bit weird, but they were cooperative subjects, so Omilaena returned a casual salute and moved on.

  Most of the horde, the Irunians could handle on their own: monsters that did reach the top were immediately met by their steel, which was very dangerous thanks to her. Some of the monsters were more distorted and resisted other weapons, but Irunian steel, with its strong Essence properties, could still pierce them. The issue was preventing all their strongest from getting tied up.

  Ahead, Omilaena saw that there was a section of the wall being overrun, the Irunians holding their own with their heavy armor, but failing to stop other monsters from pouring over. A sailing leap took Omilaena toward the brawl, which looked rather fun.

  Still in mid-air, she hurled a needle through the head of a fast scythe-like monster. She landed atop a humanoid giant, stabbing needles directly into its eyes. Others targeted her, but she flipped off its back and let them strike each other. Her heel came down, piercing the head of a weaker monster, and she blew a cloud of poison over the side of the wall, holding off the others.

  She'd taken out the majority of the tougher ones, but the Irunians were still battering away at a heavily armored monster. That one might actually resist her needles, so Omilaena jumped up to its head. When it opened its maw to bite her, she lashed out with her fingernails, stabbing into the vulnerable parts around the eyes and delivering enough poison to finish it off.

  "More got past!" one of the Irunians gasped, pointing past the wall.

  "I noticed." Omilaena absentmindedly threw a needle at another monster while examining the stream tumbling down the other side and moving into Irun. "They can survive a horde like that. All of you focus on keeping more from getting over."

  "Yes ma'am!" More salutes, but they quickly got back to work.

  That was actually the strategy, as Omilaena understood it - a clever way of working with limited resources. The elites thinned out the monster hordes, then made sure they didn't penetrate in large groups that could sweep away cities. In smaller concentrations, the monsters could be absorbed by all the cities, which were heavily defended for that very purpose.

  The next section of wall actually looked to be in good shape, easily staying on top of the defenses, and Omilaena understood why: they had Tusquo with them. At range, he could swing his sword and unleash arcs of mana thanks to his Class, and when any monsters got close, his steel easily punched through their defenses.

  When he saw her, though, he looked unsettled. She leapt over to figure out what was going on.

  "There's a worse one out there," he said, kicking a monster corpse off his sword. "We need you on this."

  "Hmm, that big armored one?" Omilaena shielded her eyes with her hand to get a better look. It looked kind of like a big spiky armadillo, so they probably called it a Dire Armadillo or something. "I can handle it."

  "No, that one is just a city destroyer." Tusquo used his sword to point further north. "There's a nation destroyer out there, one that forced elites to retreat. Worse, it's headed for the damaged wall."

  "On it." Omilaena left the Dire Armadillo to him and headed north, only hurling an occasional needle when the opportunity arose.

  Interesting that one of the most dangerous monsters yet was moving directly toward the weakest point, where the Frontier wall had been repaired with inferior materials. As far as she knew, the incursion was a mindless event, but it did show... reactive tendencies, perhaps. If it could generate more monsters in response to a direct attack, it might also be able to target weak points, so Tusquo was right to send Omilaena to handle it.

  She had to get there first, though. Amid all her priorities, Omilaena still didn't have a proper flight skill, which was mildly annoying at times like these. Normally she could be carried by Kai, or tease Zin Nim into doing it, but now she had to use a flying sword or something. Part of her hoped that her Physique would give her natural flight, like some elemental users or angel-class monks, but it probably wasn't good to count on that.

  After a sprint that left her a little short of breath, Omilaena spotted it... and understood the problem.

  The monster was enormous, the size of a three story building, yet oddly squat and round. Its front end was almost entirely taken up by a circular mouth, filled with rings of rotating teeth. Despite being sluggish, its size meant it moved at decent speed and some monsters in its way tumbled into the mouth, getting turned into bloody slurry.

  Worse, there were Irunians throwing elemental or mana techniques at it, and they were accomplishing nothing. The mouth seemed nearly invulnerable, and they were smart enough to focus on the squat leathery body around it, but most attacks snuffed out. Only Irunian arrows stuck and drew some blood, and they were tiny pinpricks on the massive beast.

  This really was a country-destroyer, the sort of monster that the elites usually had to team up together to beat. It might actually be a threat to Omilaena, so she stopped playing around.

  First, as she leapt toward the damaged wall, she hurled a set of poisoned needles into the flesh above the mouth. She'd aimed for the beady row of eyes, but the beast shifted too much. Her needles penetrated, and she knew that she'd properly phased the poison, but would that be enough?

  Apparently not. The enormous monster trundled on, getting closer to the wall.

  Time to slow it down, then. Omilaena took a moment to summon her full strength, letting poison and ice run down her arms separately. First, she summoned the best qi she could and then hurled a spike of ice that pierced directly through the monster's flipper-like foot.

  It pierced and her ice qi immediately burst out, freezing the monster's leg and slowing its advance. Omilaena then focused on her other arm, finishing an extremely potent paralytic. She could hurl phased poison easily now, but that was just the bar: a monster like this needed the strongest poison she could manage.

  Even though it didn't take long, in that time the monster managed to break free of her ice and limped forward on the damaged flipper. It wasn't slowed down as much as she liked, and it was getting uncomfortably close. The Irunians nearby were retreating and she didn't blame them.

  As soon as her poison needle was fully concentrated - the steel a bright purple - Omilaena spun around and hurled it with her full might.

  She targeted the throbbing muscle at the center of all the rings of teeth, and thankfully her poison pierced the monster's defenses. Its entire body trembled as her chakra had an impact... but it wasn't enough. The monster still lurched forward.

  It wasn't immune to poison, she was fairly sure, it was just too large for even her best poisons to kill it quickly. Omilaena cursed under her breath as she prepared another pair of attacks. First she made another ice spike, taking out another flipper and slowing the monster down a little more. But it was close enough now that she didn't have time for another, and she guessed those teeth would chew right through.

  In her other hand, she'd prepared a new trick: a bottle of hyper-concentrated poison gas, which had a few mana boosts taken from Juray. Omilaena hurled it into the beast's central maw and saw the cloud explode, definitely saturating the beast's flesh with a lot more poison.

  For a moment she thought it was enough: the monster slowed and sagged, its body-width mouth actually closing a little. But then its eyes gleamed and, draining its stamina, the beast charged directly toward the wall.

  Well, time to do something stupid.

  Omilaena leapt off the wall, directly into the path of the monster's charge. It ignored her arrival, intending to trample her so that its rings of teeth could hit the stone itself. That allowed Omilaena duck in low, set her feet, phase her power, and then swing both fists upward in the strongest blow she could manage.

  The impact flattened her to the ground and knocked the wind from her lungs. From that position, though she was a bit dazed, Omilaena had an excellent view of the monster being knocked skyward, its bulk sailing over the wall.

  "Good," Omilaena muttered to herself as she pushed back up to her feet. It was counter-intuitive, but the wall's defenses were more important than one monster getting over it. And maybe having bought more time, the poisons could finally take it down.

  When she got back to the wall, Omilaena saw she had no such luck. The monster had to thrash its flippers and a spiked tail to get back to its feet so that absurdly large mouth could be used against anything. Some of the Irunians were hurling attacks at it, mostly ineffectually, and it still wasn't dying from her poison yet. The paralytic might have slowed it, but brute force had been more effective.

  Worse, once it got up, the monster seemed to shift uncertainly. Torn between attacking the people on the wall or moving in to eat defenseless people, she guessed. If it had been completely focused on returning to the damaged wall, it might have been able to destroy it, but the creature didn't seem quite that smart.

  Annoyed by the thing's endurance, Omilaena waited and summoned more poison until it started to move toward the wall from the opposite side. Maybe a more concentrated dose right at the source would be enough to take it out.

  She leapt off the wall, intending to land on the thing's eyes and drive her poison needle directly into them. But while she was in mid-air, the monster stopped ignoring her, moving with phase-dangerous speed to tilt back and open that maw toward her.

  Omilaena helplessly plunged in and the teeth closed around her from all sides.

  Chapter 588: Hordes of Exhaustion

  Kai won, over and over again, and he had no idea whether or not they were losing.

  Any given location he arrived at, he could easily annihilate the monsters in his path. Now that they had spread out somewhat, by distance as well as the work of the elites, he could decisively win a battle. The problem was, there were hundreds of potential fronts, eventually becoming thousands, and he couldn't see the overall picture.

  The danger had actually increased, somewhat: some of the more powerful monsters were emerging, including some as strong as the behemoth he'd fought so many years ago. They weren't real threats anymore, but they actually required concentrated focus from him in order to kill, or made him go to some effort to block or dodge while eliminating them. And that meant attrition.

  He screamed along over the ground, actually using the full speed of Thunderbird's Wings and letting shockwaves pulse out from him. The shockwaves themselves crushed some monsters, but the greater effect was on morale. Kai could just see the Frontier wall to his right, its defenders beginning to face the monstrous hordes. When he flashed past, he cut a swath through their enemies and reminded them that they had support from the elites.

  Sometimes he got cheers, but he was moving too fast to hear them.

  Actually moving at full speed would drain him eventually, so he needed to be intelligent about how he used it - the problem was that he was wasting time here. Yes, he was killing a large chunk of monsters, but now that he had blunted as many in the initial rush as he could, this was a poor use of his strength. He needed to be fighting the monsters that could kill all the normal defenders, and they seemed to be scarce on this part of the battlefield.

  A portal of green mana ahead caught his attention, as it was no doubt intended to. It dropped someone to the wall, someone he couldn't see at first, but recognized as he got an entire second closer. Kai changed course and stopped causing shockwaves so that he could land on the wall beside his old mentor.

  "You've done enough here," Gunjin Granfian told him.

  "Where to next?" Kai was taking some deep breaths now, but he wasn't really tired yet. To his surprise, the old man waved a hand vaguely and didn't create another portal.

  "Take a moment first. We should discuss the overall state of the incursion first."

  It felt wrong to be standing there, merely talking, while monsters assaulted the wall and the defenders were fighting for their lives. But the truth was that no large-scale conflict involved just smashing power together, so judicious actions could have a greater effect. Gunjin's teleportation abilities were a far greater force multiplier than fighting on his own, and Kai had just been thinking about how he was wasting time looking for greater threats.

  "So how does it look?" Kai asked. "Does the incursion match your predictions?"

  "I won't know until later when we have all the data." Gunjin folded his arms as he looked over the field of monsters. "But so far... the dangerous monsters haven't appeared in as large of numbers as some years, but some truly dangerous ones have come out early. They say there's a nation-destroyer out by Irun."

  "What?" Kai turned instinctively east, as if he could see it. "Is that where you're sending me?"

  "Perhaps, but we lost track of it on the other side of the wall. It would take a while to pin down."

  That was frustrating, but Kai had no choice except to hope that the others could handle the problem. If his presence wasn't immediately needed, Kai's gaze instead shifted inward. "What about the center? Is this a good time to check on the abyss?"

  "Absolutely not." Gunjin jerked out of his reverie to shake his head. "There are still monsters pouring out, though less densely. Any attack on the pit now risks inciting more. The outpouring usually lasts a full day, and I'd be more comfortable waiting longer."

  "If we wait until the end, it will be too late. But fine, we still need to get things under control. Do you want to find that dangerous one?"

  "Perhaps, but..." Gunjin trailed off as he pulled a scroll from his robes and frowned at it. His eyes only widened slightly, but to Kai it looked like shock. His mentor began to summon another portal, being slow and careful with this one.

  "What is it?"

  "We have a second nation-destroyer in the south. It was spotted toward the center and apparently burrowed, and since then it's moved faster than information about it. We can't assemble elites in time without teleportation, and our resources are limited there. This one might be able to destroy the wall."

  "Then send me." Kai glanced back to the battlefield and accepted that he wouldn't see it again. "That's the obvious solution, isn't it?"

  "Without question, the problem is locating it..." Gunjin grimaced. "I'm going to make a bet that it will target the damaged portion of the Goralian wall. If that bet is wrong, we'll need more time."

  His portal became fully formed then, so Kai plunged directly into the mana. He emerged on a different portion of the wall, one that seemed to have the horde well under control: there were monsters visible on the wall distantly to the east, but the defenders in this part were resting and bandaging wounds. It seemed almost as if Gunjin, who stepped out of the portal after him, had made a mistake.

  "It made a visible burrow at first," Gunjin said, "but then it dove deeper and disappeared. That was how it escaped our people earlier. Can you check if it's underground?"

  "Huh. I can try to smell for it." Kai bent down and placed one hand on the wall, trying to attune all his senses. He was smelling, yes, but what he really needed was his monstrous hunger. The small horde to the east gave him a faint whiff of meat, and the air was filled with the feel of monsters, but beyond that...

  Then Kai sensed it: something powerful moving deep underground. He expected to see the ground shaking, or a line of dust where it moved, but when he opened his eyes he saw nothing. The monster was plunging south, to go under the wall... or smash through it. They weren't far away from the portion that had been damaged and the repairs were still visible on the back.

  Waiting could be a terrible mistake. Kai leapt into the air and fully armored his body, since he'd have to do this with force. Wings extended from his back as his subconscious prepared to use Thunderbird's Wings. As soon as he pinpointed the monster, he shot down.

  Directly into the rock. His body smashed through, driving deep to intercept the burrowing monster.

  His plan had been to slash into its side, hopefully taking it out before it realized that anything could attack it underground. But as Kai sensed something moving through the rock, it moved violently, flesh pulsating and striking him.

  An instant later, Kai found himself back in the sky, tumbling end over end. How long had it been since he'd been hit that hard? The monster had sensed his arrival and struck back, knocking him into the air hard enough to stun him for a while.

  It was emerging, though, having sensed something worth eating. He caught sight of a body much larger than him, dragging itself to the surface with dozens of skeletal arms that clattered over its nightmarish body.

  Kai oriented himself, his wings spread further, and he hurtled downward.

  .

  ..

  .

  In the early stages of the incursion, Zae Zin Nim had taken to the air and showed Deadwaste what a cultivator could really be.

  She had, admittedly, gained more respect for the elites and other warriors of the continent than she had once imagined possible. They could cause destruction of their own, and their strategies for the incursion were well-developed. But they had never seen the raw power of a cultivator fighting on their side, and so they had not been prepared for her to take action.

  There was no need to use the Coldfire Palm, not against rabble like this. Zae Zin Nim raised one hand and unleashed pure qi in a simple but refined attack, raining death down on the countryside. Monster after monster perished, their very beings incinerated in her power.

  Yet the horde of monsters rushed on, heedless. Seeing it as a challenge to her efficiency, Zae Zin Nim released a more concentrated rain of thinner qi bolts that simply punctured through the monsters. Instead of being incinerated, their bodies hit the ground, forming piles that became hills. For all the thousands that rushed toward her, they had yet to take a single pace of ground.

  The monsters rushed up the corpses of their comrades, some even leaping at the top, trying to reach her.

  Zae Zin Nim frowned and pulled backward, further out of their reach. These monsters were still pathetic, and could not harm her even if they arrived, so the only real concern was to watch for the more powerful ones that would emerge. Yet the fact that she was slaughtering so many of them without actually stemming the tide gave her pause.

  As the battle stretched for hours, she ceased to feel triumphant. She was only doing her part - more than would be expected of any of the elites, yes, but simply the role she was expected to play. All her might could weaken the incursion, but she couldn't stop it, not alone.

  It was strange to realize, but Zae Zin Nim admitted to herself that even one of the great sects of Cloudspire would be unable to defeat the incursion. Oh, they would have no chance of being destroyed, as Earth Souls and Sky Souls would crush even the stronger monsters. They would survive easily... but as they flew away on their swords, they would forsake their peasants and their lands. Their ability to rule was too dependent on fear and opponents that could be overwhelmed.

  Monsters couldn't. For all that she was slaughtering them, she was seeing the limits of slaughter.

  Eventually she felt a grim limit: her own reserves of qi were beginning to ebb. She had obliterated all the monsters rushing toward her location, but she could not fight like this forever. In order to do this, for her spouses and all the others, she needed to change her tactics.

  And so Zae Zin Nim descended to the earth, prepared her reserves, and let the horde rush at her.