The Extra is a Genius!?-Chapter 608 - 607: Against the Horde [I]

The first volley bought them distance, not victory.

Across the outer lines of Thorne Territory, the impact of the opening barrage still burned through the field in scattered pockets of fire, shattered stone, and torn earth, but the monstrous host kept moving through it. A dragon with one wing scorched black from lightning still stayed airborne long enough to release a violent gust that threw men from the ridge below. One of the ogre-like beasts lost an arm to a combined strike of water and earth, only to keep charging until three spears and a second barrage finally brought it down.

Shadow wolves burst through thinning sheets of flame with their fur still smoking, fast enough that several soldiers barely had time to raise shields before the first bodies hit the ground.

The lines held, but not cleanly.

Barrier circles shimmered under repeated impacts and began to crack at the edges where too much force had been pushed through too quickly. Mages stopped recasting offense just to stabilize the shields long enough for the next section of soldiers to rotate forward. A skeletal war-beast dragged itself through a tangle of nature magic with half its body torn open before a second vine-binding spell pinned it long enough for a hammer squad to shatter its spine.

This was no easy purge. Even the lesser creatures needed effort. The stronger ones needed timing, coordination, and often two or three elements striking together before they finally dropped.

From the middle command platform, Daemar kept the field from collapsing into noise. "Reinforce the eastern barrier."

"Pull the second line back three steps and let the dwarf unit advance."

"Do not waste ranged magic on the drakes unless they descend." His voice carried through runners, signal flares, and relayed commands with practiced precision.

He managed, redirected, repaired. When one section bent too far, he moved people before it became a break.

The order reached Marcus’s unit just as the western flank began to bend. A runner shouted over the noise, pointed toward the break in the line, and kept moving before the words had fully settled.

Marcus saw the problem immediately. A deformed ogre had crashed through the first defensive stakes and was forcing its way toward the second line while a cluster of shadow wolves slipped through the gaps around it, low and fast enough to turn the whole section into a collapse if they reached the mages behind.

He drew his sword and moved first. "Garron, the big one. Laziel, slow the wolves."

Garron cracked his neck once and surged forward without another word, mana flooding into his muscles until the stone beneath his boots fractured under the force of his first step. He met the ogre head-on, shoulder lowered, and the impact sounded less like flesh hitting flesh and more like a siege ram slamming into a gate. The monster staggered but did not fall. It swung one swollen arm downward, and Garron caught it with both forearms, boots digging trenches into the earth as raw force met raw force.

Laziel had already lifted one hand. "Permafrost Halo." A ring of cold exploded outward in a pale blue circle, frosting the ground beneath the charging shadow wolves and dragging their speed down just enough to ruin the timing of their rush. "Vine Fang." A root-lance shot from the earth and pierced clean through the chest of the nearest wolf, throwing the body sideways into another.

Marcus didn’t waste the opening. "Stoneburst." The ground beneath two more wolves erupted into jagged rock, breaking one apart and launching the other high enough for him to cut it out of the air. He landed and turned immediately toward the skeletal war-beast charging through the broken flank behind them.

A shield of bone and rusted metal slammed toward him. "Stoneguard." Rock surged up just in time to take the impact. The shield shattered. So did most of the stone wall. Marcus stepped through the fragments and drove his blade across the war-beast’s exposed ribs, then snapped his free hand toward the ground.

"Blazing Pillar." 𝘧𝓇ℯℯ𝑤ℯ𝘣𝓃ℴ𝓋𝑒𝑙.𝑐𝘰𝑚

Blue fire erupted beneath it in a vertical burst, punching straight through the spine and launching the upper half of the skeleton backward in smoking pieces.

To his left, Garron finally won the struggle of mass and leverage. He twisted his body, tore the ogre’s arm off balance, and drove an elbow into its throat hard enough to make the thing choke on its own roar. Then he grabbed it by the head and smashed it face-first into the broken stakes once, twice, three times, until the skull split and the body sagged.

Laziel was breathing harder now, but he didn’t retreat. "Containment Ring!" A glowing circle formed under the last pair of shadow wolves that had slipped wider than the others. The cage snapped shut for only a few seconds, but that was enough. Marcus crossed the distance in two strides and finished both before the spell collapsed.

For one brief moment, the line stabilized. Marcus exhaled through clenched teeth and looked over the blood, broken bone, ice, roots, and burning blue fire scattered across the ground.

The pressure reached the support lines far sooner than anyone wanted.

Wounded soldiers were already being dragged back in clusters, some bleeding through armor, others barely conscious, others shaking from mana burns and impact trauma. Charlotte and the healers of the Holy Capital received them one after another without rest. She moved between them with blood on her sleeves and daggers still at her waist, kneeling only long enough to clasp her hands and whisper a brief prayer before a soft blessing settled over torn flesh and failing breath. She used as little as possible each time, just enough to close what could be closed and pull people back from the edge without draining herself too early.

That restraint became harder to maintain when part of the line broke too close to them. A warped skeletal beast forced its way through the thinning defense and charged toward the rear with enough momentum to scatter two wounded men aside. Charlotte rose immediately. One dagger flashed low and severed the thing’s leg joint just enough to ruin its balance, and by the time it lurched sideways she had already stepped around it and driven the second blade up through the base of its jaw. A nearby soldier finished it with a spear through the spine. Charlotte didn’t stay standing after that. The moment it collapsed, she was back on one knee beside the wounded, lips moving in prayer again.

Farther forward, Elena was fighting where the pressure was worst. When a wolf broke through a gap in the line, roots burst upward beneath it as "Snare Bloom" caught its legs and locked them in place just long enough for the soldier beside her to kill it. She turned before the body even hit the ground, and a spinning veil of leaves rose around her as "Flourish Veil" deflected a spray of bone shards rushing in from the side. A breath later she was already moving through the opening with "Sylvan Step," crossing the distance in a sharp burst and cutting across another beast before catching a collapsing fighter by the arm and forcing him back toward the healers.

Through all of it, Elyra held the shape of the battlefield together. Lines of light spread beneath allied positions as "Mana Grid" stabilized nearby casting formations and kept strained spells from collapsing at the wrong moment. When a weakened section came under heavy projectile pressure, "Aegis Plate" formed in layered floating shields just long enough to intercept the worst of it before scattering into light. Elsewhere, when the ground itself began to crack under repeated impacts, "Reinforced Ground" hardened the terrain before the soldiers there lost their footing completely.

And this was only the beginning.

The battle had barely opened its jaws, and already the field was drowning in noise, blood, collapsing lines, and monsters forcing pressure into every weak point they could find. Fire still burned in scattered trenches. Broken bodies lay where the first impacts had landed. Mages were already tiring. Healers were already overwhelmed. Barriers were cracking faster than they could be rebuilt.

Nothing about it felt controlled anymore.

And that was the worst part. If this was what the war looked like in its opening minutes, then whatever came next would be worse than anything they had prepared themselves to endure.