B2 Chapter 278: Freedom, pt. 1

It seemed that in the same stroke he had taken Cronte’s arm, Kaius had broken the compound’s spirit.

As he turned from the site of his duel to join his team in their dash for freedom, he saw a sea of white faces—full of fear. No one moved to stop him—focusing instead on securing their own lives in the face of an endless swarm of beasts.

Even that was flagging as the men fell to despondency. They fought with a frantic desperation that had been absent only moments ago—hurried blows and desperate parries leading to an ever increasing number of mistakes that saw Kaius watch men torn to shreds beneath the unnatural ire of the beasts.

He pushed their fates out of his mind. Regardless of the disquiet he felt at the screams of the dying, they were no innocents, and he had little sympathy in his heart for their plight.

As they rushed forwards, their captors all but fell out of their way.

Porkchop took the lead, bowling through the final remaining beasts that barred their path, and they finally reached the stairs.

Racing upwards two at a time, Kaius held the rear—ready to defend against anything that might try to halt them.

Up ahead, he watched as a stag charged straight down towards his brother—tines of its antlers glowing a sickening purple.

Porkchop simply roared, one oversized paw smashing the beast to the side—sending it tumbling over the unfenced edge of the stairs. It bleated, flailing wildly as it fell to the floor below.

Then the same thing happened again.

It seemed, with the guards leaving them to their fates, that the prospect of an isolated group became too much for the enraged creatures to bear. Every few moments, another would hurl themselves down the stairs, only to meet their fate shortly after as Porkchop’s unyielding advance sent them falling like rain to the guards below.

“Are they really just going to let us go?” Ianmus asked as he eyed the men at the top of the stairs pulling back step by step, giving them room—and kept Porkchop’s health topped off with a Ray of Tender Recovery.

“Seems like it,” Kaius replied with a frown. It felt…off. Not so much the guards’ reactions—losing their strongest fighters would kill any force’s morale—but in the actions of the second tiers themselves.

It felt wrong, that they had fled so easily. Even with the grevious wound he had dealt, the battle had been nowhere near finished.

“I don’t like it,” he continued. “It feels off. You’d think between losing the vault and us escaping, they’d be in enough trouble with their boss to push us a little harder.”

“Who cares!” Kenva replied, snapping off a shot to finish a beast that leapt straight at them from the battlements above. Its body hit the stairs next to Kaius, bones cracking. “We’re this close to freedom—we can think about it later.”

Kaius grunted, but let the conversation die at that. She was right—there would be time to plan and worry in the future.

Reaching the top of the stairs, Kaius almost slammed into Ianmus’s tall form when Porkchop skidded to a sudden halt at the front of the line. Stepping onto the battlements, he immediately saw what had frozen his brother solid.

Below them lay a legion of beasts. Thousands, milling up on every side of the wall he could see, with more racing in from the trees by the second. His gut clenched looking at the numbers, eyes roving as he drank in the sight.

They had some luck, of a sort. Most of the massing creatures streamed around the compound—either the illusory formation they had heard of was hiding its presence, or there was some grander reason that sent the creatures racing towards the south-west.

That, and from what he could see from Truesight, most of the beasts were weak—only a rare few breached level eighty.

The gathered forces were still enough to crush the compound a dozen times over. Conte had been right—this place was doomed.

As a groaning bellow sounded through the air, Kaius felt the wall shudder violently beneath his feet. He snapped his eyes to the source of the sound, cursing as he saw a behemoth of a creature hammering the wall.

Nearly the size of a drake, it almost looked like a cow—though covered in overly shaggy fur, lacking in hooves, and with a singular titanic horn at the end of its snout. A twin of the small snapshot he’d seen of the creature trying to batter down the compound’s gate.

Wooly Hrinean – Level 145

Beast, Vanguard

Kaius cursed as he saw the creature’s level. With that amount of mass and simple bodily might, the beast would be able to leverage an enormous amount of power with even meagre stats.

It was a shocking sight, one that left him momentarily rooted to the spot.

This wasn’t some unnatural swarm. It was a fucking army.

And it was one they would have to somehow bypass.

His mind raced. The numbers at the base of the wall were too many to fight through, but they were densely packed—milling in a growing savage fury as tensions grew high.

If they could create some distance, land near the edges where it was only the disparate movement of creatures racing ever forwards, they might have a chance.

“What now, Kaius?” Porkchop asked, a hard edge to his words.

Kaius flicked his eyes around quickly. They would have to abandon their original plan—the nearby left corner of the wall was aligned almost directly with the approaching beasts, trying to make a break for it would force them against the tide. It would be suicide.

However…if they cut north? They would be moving tangential to the flow. If they could create enough distance, it would be a lot easier to escape the crush.

That didn’t mean it would be easy. Looking up to the treeline, he could see the constant rustle of moving branches and flashing blurs of fur and scales. Beasts, all the way up the hillside. Less concentrated, perhaps, but still there.

He grit his teeth, delaying his answer to Porkchop’s question.

It was an impossible choice. Their chances of breaking free with no injuries, or worse, losses, was slim to none. They had little other option. Staying here, surrounded by anxious enemies, where the current of beasts ran strongest, would leave them with even worse odds.

He made up his mind.

This book’s true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.

“This way,” he called, tightening his grip on his sword as he led their charge along the wall.

Open and exposed, more than one creature took a swipe at him—furious howls spilling across the air as they leapt in with claws and fangs outstretched.

A Father’s Gift danced in his hand—leaving monsters bloody and broken in his wake. Even with the reprieve from his earlier battle, Kaius could still feel the latent heat of Corporus building within him.

He attuned himself to its resonance—pushing himself to trim the fat, and learn from every engagement. With every improvement, more chimes of his skills leveling joined the chorus that had sounded in his mind since the start of the battle.

The guards, for all he hated them, made no move to stop him—pallid faces watching with wide eyes and forced scowls as squads hurriedly backed up as much as they were able, happy to let them deal with the beasts that harried them.

Approaching the edge of the wall where they planned to jump, Kaius turned his attention to his team.