Chapter 47: You broke my Laws

The massive, splintered hole in the palisade wall was a death sentence.

A mountain bear, its thick gray fur still sizzling with sticky pine sap, stepped heavily through the shattered logs. It let out a deafening roar that vibrated in the chests of every human standing in the village square. Behind it, three elite dire wolves and another massive bear were already climbing over the ruins of the wall, eager to pour into the breach.

The village militia broke. The sheer terror of facing an apex predator at close range overrode their discipline. Men dropped their spears and scrambled backward in the snow, slipping and falling over each other to get away from the massive jaws.

Up on the castle, Jack watched the line collapse. He knew he could not manually force the undead into a chaotic battle against beasts of that size without frying his own brain.

So, he didn’t. He relied on his general.

He pushed a concentrated spike of mana down the thin thread connected to the dark figure standing by the gatehouse.

“Kill them.”

Down in the village, Elias the Wanderer finally moved.

He threw off the traveler’s cloak Jack had given him, letting it fall into the snow. He did not draw his ancestral steel sword. Instead, he sprinted directly toward the breached wall.

His speed was terrifyingly fast. Because his muscles did not feel cold or fatigue, and because his preserved brain retained all the physical instincts of an elite royal guard, Elias moved with a fluid grace that a normal human simply could not match. He closed the distance in seconds.

“Wanderer, no! You have no spear!” Giles screamed from the firing platform, watching the lone man run entirely unarmed toward a ten-foot-tall bear.

Elias ignored him. He leaped directly into the path of the charging beast.

The bear raised a massive paw, intending to crush the small human into the dirt.

Elias planted his boots firmly in the snow. He raised both of his pale hands. Relying entirely on his own retained magical instincts, Elias pulled the mana Jack was feeding him and converted it instantly.

A brilliant, blinding flash of crimson and orange erupted in the dark village.

Elias did not cast a small fireball. He unleashed a sustained torrent of flame directly from his palms. The intense heat instantly vaporized the falling snow around him, turning it into a thick cloud of white steam.

The stream of fire slammed directly into the chest and face of the mountain bear.

The beast’s thick, grizzled fur, which had easily deflected boiling sap, instantly ignited. The bear let out a horrific shriek that sounded almost human. The fire was not normal; it was fueled by dense, concentrated mana. It clung to the beast, burning straight through the thick layers of winter fat and cooking the flesh beneath in seconds.

The massive bear thrashed violently, completely blinded and suffocating on the flames. It collapsed backward, crashing heavily into the splintered logs of the wall.

The entire village froze. The terrified militiamen stopped scrambling and stared in absolute shock.

“Magic,” Barnaby whispered from the watchtower, his grip slipping on the iron cranks of the ballista. “He is a Fire Mage.”

Elias did not stop to admire his work. The breach was still open.

One of the elite dire wolves, completely ignoring the burning bear, lunged through the gap. Its jaws snapped toward Elias’s throat.

Elias casually sidestepped the lethal bite with perfect martial footwork. As the wolf flew past him, Elias grabbed the fur on the back of the beast’s neck with his left hand. Without missing a beat, he drove his right palm directly into the wolf’s ribs and released a short, violent burst of fire.

The concussive force of the blast shattered the wolf’s ribcage and cooked its internal organs instantly. Elias dropped the dead beast into the snow and stepped firmly into the center of the broken wall, acting as a living, fiery shield for the village.

Up on the castle, Jack let out a long breath.

He felt his Iron Core draining steadily, but it was a smooth, manageable flow. It felt like opening a valve and letting the water run, rather than the chaotic struggle of trying to manually puppet a dozen separate limbs. Elias’s brain was handling all the complex calculations of dodging, aiming, and casting. Jack was merely supplying the fuel.

Down below, the sight of the “Wanderer” obliterating a mountain bear with his bare hands acted like a massive surge of adrenaline for the terrified humans.

“He is holding the breach!” Giles roared. He snatched a dropped boar spear from the snow. “Rally! Support the mage! Do not let them flank him!”

The militiamen grabbed their weapons and rushed forward, forming a tight defensive semicircle behind Elias. They thrust their spears through the gaps in the broken logs, keeping the smaller beasts away from the fire mage’s back.

“I have the tension!” Barnaby bellowed from the watchtower.

The stiff gears of the scrap-iron ballista finally locked into place. The three men helping him quickly stepped back. Barnaby grabbed a thick dire wolf bone that had been sharpened to a lethal point and slapped it into the firing groove.

He aimed directly at the second mountain bear, which was currently trying to push its way past Elias.

Barnaby yanked the release lever.

THWACK.

Because the target was less than forty yards away, the bone bolt hit with devastating, point-blank force. The dense bone shattered the bear’s thick skull upon impact, dropping the massive predator instantly.

“Wind it back!” Barnaby yelled, already grabbing the cranks again.

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The defense transformed into a perfectly synchronized slaughter.

Up on the gatehouse roof, the older children dragged the last two iron kettles to the edge. They tipped them forward, pouring a massive waterfall of boiling pine sap directly down onto the giant boars that were thrashing wildly in the moat below, unable to climb the slippery, packed bodies.

Up on the castle, Jack turned his personal artillery into a rapid-fire execution line.

“Pull.”

Grim clamped its jaws and yanked the heavy crank back.

“Load.”

Bones dropped a fresh bolt into the groove.

Jack fired, aiming for the massive boars and wolves that were still trying to cross the flesh-bridge over the trench. The bolts rained down from the sky, pinning the massive beasts to the ground.

The horde was caught in a lethal, inescapable crossfire. They were being burned alive at the breach, crushed by artillery from above, and boiled in the trench below.

For forty minutes, the valley echoed with the sounds of snapping wood, roaring fire, and the shrieks of dying monsters.

Then, the morale of the horde finally broke.