Warbeast vs Demon Battlefield, Kars Valley

Kars Valley—a border region usually filled only by dry winds and the creak of shifting stones—had metamorphosed into a cauldron of death. If hell existed on the surface of the earth, this was it. The sky above the valley was no longer blue; it was choked by a thick veil of dust, soot from mana explosions, and a crimson mist rising from soil that now resembled a blood-soaked marsh rather than solid ground.

In this valley, there was no room for elegance. No space for silk-robed Mages to chant spells from a safe distance, or for archers to rain arrows from afar. There were no high walls to weather the onslaught, nor deep trenches filled with traps to consume any who dared approach. Here, war had returned to its most primitive roots: flesh against flesh, fangs against steel, and will against savagery.

To the north, the Demon Legion moved like an endless black flood. They were no longer mere soldiers; they were the manifestation of eternal hunger. Low-tier mana demons crawled on all fours, corrosive saliva dripping from asymmetrical jaws, while stronger ones stood upright on two legs, their thick, spine-covered hides reflecting the dim red light of the sky. They knew no fear—only a primitive instinct that craved the mana-rich flesh of their enemies. They advanced with a single purpose: to consume every spark of life before them.

But to the south stood an immovable wall: the Warbeast ranks.

Unlike the rigid formations of humans, the Warbeasts stood in dynamic, small units. Their towering figures—a perfect fusion of human anatomy and raw animal power—cast intimidating silhouettes through the fog of war. The Bear Tribe held the front as living shields, the Wolf Tribe stood ready on the flanks, and the Great Cat Tribes prowled for openings with predatory focus.

Just before the collision, the atmosphere on the Warbeast side seemed to implode. The air around them vibrated softly. This was the beginning of what they called the "Flow of the Primal."

While Mages from the human race or other mana species gathered mana from the atmosphere to release it as fireballs or lightning bolts, the Warbeasts viewed such methods as wasteful and inefficient. To them, mana was a second bloodline. Mana was not to be expelled; it was to be tamed, compressed, and funneled into every biological circuit they possessed.

A Bear Tribe warrior at the front line took a deep breath. Within his chest, his Constellation spun at high speed. The mana stored within ignited, but it did not break through his skin. Instead, the energy was forced into his bloodstream, fusing with hemoglobin and pumped by a heart that thudded like a massive diesel engine.

This was Internalization.

Within seconds, physical changes took hold. Their already massive muscles swelled to twice their size, the fibers hardening to a density beyond human forged steel. Veins bulged across their skin like glowing circuits pulsing with thermal energy. Their body temperatures spiked, turning their sweat into a mist of white steam that wreathed the entire line.

"For the forest! For the ancestors!" A lone roar erupted, and in an instant, the living wall surged forward.

BOOM.

The collision of the two forces sounded like two mountains grinding together. There was no fine ring of clashing swords. There was only the sound of crushing armor, snapping bones, and tearing flesh.

A Wolf Tribe warrior leaped high into the air, lunging at a Demon as large as an elephant with claws like swords. The Demon swung a claw—a strike that should have cleaved a massive tree trunk in one go. But the Warbeast did not dodge. He simply raised a thick forearm.

Klang!

The steel-hard claw bounced off as if hitting a block of diamond. Thanks to the Flow of the Primal, the Warbeast’s skin was coated in a thin layer of mana compressed to extreme density—an absolute defense known as "Iron Hide." Without losing momentum, the Warbeast swung his own claws.

This was the pinnacle of their technique. At the tips of their fingers, the internal mana was released slightly through the pores but kept tethered to their nails. The result was a set of transparent light-claws vibrating at high frequency. These were not mere physical weapons; they were energy blades capable of severing the molecular structure of anything they touched. With a single swipe, the Demon’s obsidian-hard hide was split as if made of wet paper. Its head was separated from its shoulders before it even realized its defense had been breached.

The battle raged on without pause. Elsewhere, the Tiger Tribes moved with a speed the naked eye could barely track. The mana flowing through their nervous systems accelerated brain-to-muscle signals, boosting their reflexes to a level where the world appeared to move in slow motion. They danced through the enemy’s blades, delivering lethal, surgical thrusts to the vital points of the Mana Demons.

To the Warbeasts, their bodies were the perfect mana circuits. They needed no staves or complex incantations. Every breath was an energy pump. Every heartbeat was a war drum. They were biological killing machines perfected by evolution and reinforced by internal mana.

However, the Demons were no easy prey. They held the advantage of numbers. For every Demon that fell, three more crawled over the corpses of their kin. They employed "Grinding" tactics—waiting for the Warbeast warriors to exhaust themselves from the constant pumping of mana into their muscles.

The Flow of the Primal carried a grave risk: Overheating.

If a Warbeast maintained the internal flow for too long without pause, their blood vessels could burst from high pressure, or their internal organs could be "charred" by the heat of their own energy.

In the center of the valley, smoke began to rise—not from fire, but from the bodies of the Warbeasts reaching their thermal limits. A mist of blood-vapor shrouded the battlefield, a sight both horrific and majestic. These warriors knew they were standing on a razor’s edge. One mistake in regulating the flow, and they would explode from within. Yet, not a single one retreated.

For them, this front line was more than a border. It was proof of existence. It was their way of telling the world that mages didn’t just crawl in the shadows—they could stand tall against the storm with strength born of their own souls.

But even the strongest shield has cracks. No matter how powerful or agile the Warbeasts were, they were still flesh and bone. Against a seemingly endless demon army, casualties mounted. Furthermore, the Demons possessed a unique trait that gave them the edge in a war of attrition: they could consume the bodies of the fallen to grow stronger, regardless of whether it was a demon or a warbeast corpse.

If the battle continued this way, the mana demons would not weaken, but grow more powerful. The Warbeasts knew that if this turned into a war of attrition, they would lose. The only way to win was to kill more demons, faster.

As a result, the Warbeasts had to push the Flow of the Primal longer, and the threat of overheating grew dire. In every engagement, more than half of the Warbeast deaths were caused by internal overheating rather than the demons themselves.

Still, one thing was certain when these two forces met: it was an unstoppable force meeting an immovable object. Their struggle would continue until one side ran out of soldiers and was forced to break.

In the midst of the symphony of destruction ravaging Kars Valley, there was a point where the Warbeast defense line nearly fractured. A group of elite Mana Demons—the weakest among them possessing a Level 4 Core—had managed to punch through the Bear Tribe’s vanguard, creating a gaping hole that threatened to swallow the entire western flank. Just as desperation began to cloud the soldiers’ eyes, a visual phenomenon tore through the ashen sky.

It wasn’t a fireball, nor was it a bolt of lightning. It was a white shadow, moving with a velocity that transcended the limits of normal perception.

The shadow lunged from a jagged cliff on the valley side, crossing dozens of meters in a single, devastating kinetic leap. Brak! The figure slammed into the center of the Mana Demon cluster, creating a shockwave that kicked up a wall of dust and shattered the legs of any demons unfortunate enough to be near the impact point.

As the thin veil of smoke cleared, there she stood—Vara.

Vara was the living embodiment of the balance between a noble’s grace and an apex predator’s ferocity.

Standing at 180 centimeters, her physique was lean yet dense—a body sculpted specifically for explosive speed and extreme flexibility. Her golden-brown skin, bronzed by years of training under the sun, was adorned with thin black stripes winding from her shoulders to her wrists: the natural birthmarks of the White Tiger Tribe.

Her long silver hair was tied in a high ponytail, revealing a strong neck and a pair of tiger ears that twitched occasionally to the frequencies of the battlefield. She wore no heavy armor—only a black leather vest reinforced at vital points and loose combat trousers that cinched at the waist, allowing for absolute freedom of movement. Most striking, however, were the fingerless leather gloves that wrapped her arms up to the elbows.