As he gripped his longsword and charged at the grotesque, sinister creature, Wayne's heart held no tension, no hesitation, and no fear. If he felt anything at all, it was perhaps just a faint sense of surreality and disbelief.
He still clearly rembered the instant his plane had gone down.
He still clearly rembered those hundred-so thousand years suspended high above this world.
He still hadn't properly adjusted to the identity of Gwayne Seawright, which had dropped on him from the sky.
And yet here he was, in this very mont, gripping an ancient family longsword and lunging at so bizarre creature that was either a demon or an undead.
CLANG!
A trendous impact traveled through the blade, and every stray thought in his mind vanished in an instant.
Dodging the monster's sweeping claws with near-instinctive reflexes, Wayne twisted his upper body in a half-turn. The arcing blade traced a streak of light through the air and slashed viciously toward the creature's shoulder. As the sword ca down, he strained to draw on the power stored within this body, channeling it into the longsword in his hands.
The faint crimson glow near the base of the blade flared into brilliant red light under the stimulation of that power, racing along the edge like wildfire. The searing heat was intense enough to distort the air around it.
The three-ter-tall monster sensed the threat from the superheated blade and lurched backward with an agility that completely belied its massive fra. Wayne's slash missed by a hair.
Releasing this kind of supernatural, almost magical power with his own hands for the first ti, Wayne couldn't help but feel a flash of excitent, and it was probably that montary thrill that threw off the rhythm of his first attack. But he quickly adjusted his mindset and poured power into the longsword once more.
The combat skills from Gwayne Seawright's mories could indeed be called upon, and this body hadn't deteriorated to the point of being completely useless. He didn't know what percentage of its forr strength he could bring to bear, but Wayne's confidence had surged enormously.
He began to lose himself in the fight, working to convert the battle experience in his mind, experience that didn't belong to him, into usable power as quickly as possible.
On the other side, Byron had already been drawn into a hard fight.
This knight was one of the top fighters in Seawright territory, and his career before pledging loyalty to House Seawright had given him exceptional combat experience. But he had already expended too much energy during the monsters' earlier assault on the castle, and the insidious magic corruption from the creatures had worsened his internal injuries, further reducing his combat effectiveness. At best, he could muster four or five tenths of his full strength.
Now, facing the monster's relentless onslaught, all he could do was grip his sword tight and hold the line, conserving his stamina as much as possible while searching for an opening.
Rebecca gathered her magic, and a head-sized blazing fireball shot from the tip of her staff, colliding violently in midair with a shadow bolt from the casting monster in the distance. The resulting explosion was thunderous. She caught her breath, then imdiately noticed the dangerous situation on Byron's side and shouted to the territorial soldiers beside her.
"You three, go help Byron!"
One soldier hesitated. "But my lady..."
Rebecca was already forming another fireball. "We're fine over here for now, but if Byron goes down, it's over! I command you as your lord, go!"
The three soldiers obeyed, joining Ser Byron against the terrible creature.
Wayne sank deeper into the battle. The mories and experience that weren't his own were rapidly becoming his, improving his command of this new body with every passing second. The process filled him with a profound sense of accomplishnt, and by the ti he erged slightly from that imrsed state, he realized he had already gained the upper hand against the monster before him.
Those Others with their flowing "sludge" weren't impervious, they bled when cut, and they died when cut enough. Despite their enormous strength and size advantage, as long as you knew how to fight them, a human body could destroy them all the sa.
That was experience from seven hundred years ago.
The monster's claws swept over his head. Wayne ducked, reversed his grip, and drove his longsword into the creature's thigh. It finally let out a turbid roar, its body lurching uncontrollably to one side. Seizing the opportunity, Wayne shouted to Byron.
"Focus your attacks on the abdon and lower limbs! Ignore the chest, these things don't have hearts!"
Then, as his opponent lost its balance, he twisted around to its flank and rear, thrusting the longsword into the monster's lower back.
"Besides the abdon, their other weak point is in the back! The lower back!"
Hearing guidance from House Seawright's ancestor, Byron's spirits surged. With the three soldiers coordinating, he quickly pinned down the monster's movents, then, at the cost of a claw punching through his shoulder armor, dove under the creature and struck a vital point with a backhand thrust.
One second before Byron finished his enemy, the monster in front of Wayne also crashed heavily to the ground.
With their opponents dealt with, Wayne imdiately looked up toward the distant monster that had been trading shadow bolts with Rebecca's fireballs. But just as he was about to charge over for a head-on confrontation, the creature suddenly let out a piercing shriek, convulsed violently, and collapsed.
Amber's figure appeared behind it, twirling a poisoned steel dagger in each hand. "I'm good at this, you know."
Rebecca lowered her staff, her cheeks slightly flushed from continuous spellcasting. She took two breaths to steady herself, then corrected with great seriousness. "The Great Ancestor said the weak point is the lower back."
Amber spun the daggers twice with a flourish, and they vanished to so unknown hiding place on her person. She stepped over the monster's corpse and strolled back with a dismissive pout. "Tch. No sense of humor at all."
Once dead, the monsters began to disintegrate rapidly. The mud-like substance that had been constantly flowing across their bodies stopped moving first, then gradually dried out and hardened, developing countless fine cracks. As this aberrant "flesh" decayed and sloughed away, the corpses quickly beca nothing more than massive, twisted, blood-red skeletons.
Wayne stood beside the one he had killed, looking down at this process, and murmured as if to himself. "So these are the things that attacked Seawright territory..."
Hestia watched him curiously. "Great Ancestor, you know where these monsters co from?"
During the fight, Wayne had already demonstrated deep knowledge of these creatures, even coaching Byron on how to combat them, so there was no hiding it, and he hadn't intended to.
"We might run into more if we stay here. Let's get into the hidden passage first, there are things inside that suppress these creatures, so they won't enter easily," Wayne said as he strode forward. "I can explain the details on the way."
After entering the ancient underground tunnel and advancing so distance, Wayne finally broke the silence. "I did fight these things back in the day, in fact, they were mainly what we were fighting. You're familiar with the collapse of the Gondor Imperium and the history of the Second Expansion, right?"
"Of course," Rebecca nodded imdiately. This history was practically required study for her as a noble child.
"Over seven hundred years ago, there was only one human nation on this continent of Lorath, the Gondor Imperium, located at the center of the continent. Historical records say it was the mightiest empire of its ti; even the Silver Dominion built by the elves in the south didn't dare openly oppose it. But then the Ether Sea surrounding this world beca turbulent, triggering a catastrophe on Lorath known as the 'Dark Tide.' The epicenter was deep in Gondor's heartland, practically overnight, the Gondor Imperium's capital and a third of its territory were swallowed by the Tide and dissolved by raging elental forces..."
"It wasn't overnight. The process actually took close to a month, the Gondor court mages didn't just sit idly by in the face of the Tide," Wayne interjected briefly, then gestured for her to continue. "But in terms of the end result, close enough. Go on."
"Oh... right," Rebecca blushed slightly, growing more careful in her recitation as though a parent were checking her howork. "After that, the Tide in Gondor's heartland continued spreading in all directions, ultimately destroying the entire nation. That was the Collapse of Gondor. Afterward, as the Ether Sea gradually cald, the Tide's power began to wane. The surviving Gondor refugees started to rebuild civilization. Since the continent's center had been reduced to a wasteland unfit for human habitation, they followed a group of pioneers away from the ruined empire, expanding in all four cardinal directions. This is known in history as the Second Expansion. Great Ancestor, you were one of the most famous pioneer knights of that era."
"Mm, not bad, you know your history well," Wayne offered a casual complint. "Then you should also have heard that even after the Tide subsided, vast numbers of monsters born from it still lurked in the Gondor Imperium's ruins. Those monsters were one of the greatest threats humanity faced during the Second Expansion."
Hestia's eyes widened. "You an..."
"That's right. The things we fought back then were exactly these," Wayne sighed. "These beings called the ‘Others’ were born from the Tide. They had vaguely humanoid silhouettes, but they were absolutely not human. After Gondor collapsed, massive numbers of them poured out of the ruined heartland, spreading in every direction, hunting down survivors. So the first half of the Second Expansion was less of a pioneering journey and more of a flight for survival. And even after we left the imperial wasteland and established new nations on the continent's edges, those creatures didn't stop. They kept surging out from the direction of the ruins, constantly battering the defenses of the civilized world... In the first ten years after Andraste's founding, I was dealing with them practically every day."
Rebecca's eyes were wide, clearly captivated by these ancient, legendary tales. "Oh! So after the first ten years of Andraste's founding, those monsters stopped appearing?"
Wayne smiled, reached out to pat the girl's head, and gave her the kind of look one reserves for a naive young deer. "Silly child, after that, your ancestor died..."
Rebecca: "..."
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