CHAPTER 169: CHAPTER 168: BLOOD FOR THE COILS

For a time, they held the line, barely. Blades clashed and war cries echoed, steel and bone colliding in a brutal rhythm. The captains fought with grit, their cultivated bodies enduring what would’ve broken lesser warriors.

But slowly, inevitably, they were being pushed back.

They weren’t killing, only crippling or knocking out their foes, preserving the bodies so Lumberling could land the final blow and absorb the essence. It was tactically sound, but in practice, unsustainable.

"Change tactics. Prepare to engage!" Lumberling finally shouted, voice sharp and decisive.

"I’ve been waiting for that," Grokk bellowed, his grin savage. He yanked the twin axes from his back and charged forward like a battering ram, cleaving through lizardmen with reckless force.

It was a loss in essence, but their lives mattered more. They could no longer afford to stay on the defensive, and Lumberling simply couldn’t kill fast enough to keep up.

The battlefield ignited.

As Grokk charged forward, the air thickened, humid and stinking of sulfur and blood. Cracks webbed across the ceiling above, dust sifting down like ash from a crumbling sky.

Aren moved like a windstorm, spear spinning in blurs. He danced between enemies, piercing necks and thighs, sending blood spraying like paint across stone. Every thrust was a blur of speed and grace.

Gobo1 fought with calculated aggression, his sword gleaming red. He ducked low, severed an ankle, then followed up with a slash across a lizardman’s chest. "Come on then, scaly scum!"

Krivex stood further back, arrows loosed in rapid succession. His fingers bled from the strain, but he never stopped. One arrow to the eye, another through a gaping jaw.

"Keep your heads down!" he yelled, nocking another shot.

Gobo2 braced against a charging lizardman, shield raised high. The blow cracked the rim, but he held firm.

"I’m not breaking!" he growled, bashing forward with his shield, then thrusting his sword into the enemy’s exposed belly.

Takkar, Skarn, and Vakk moved like a single beast with six arms and twin axes. Their formation flowed with terrifying precision, Skarn crashed forward, brute force splitting shields and bones, while Vakk weaved through the gaps he left, his blades severing tendons and throats with surgical grace.

Takkar anchored the center, intercepting flankers and cleaving down those who slipped past. Limbs flew, blood sprayed, and with every step, the trio left a trail of broken bodies in their wake, unstoppable, merciless, and perfectly in sync.

"Push left!" Skarn barked.

"Takkar, on me!" Vakk shouted.

Takkar answered with a guttural snarl, sweeping both axes outward and catching two enemies at the neck.

Among the vice-captains, fury burned just as bright.

Gorrak roared as his war hammer struck the ground, sending a shockwave that threw enemies back. He laughed through blood and smoke, spinning the hammer above his head before crushing a skull underfoot.

Vrak moved with a predator’s grace, his sword flashing in tight arcs. He disarmed one enemy, then stabbed through another’s spine in one fluid motion.

Rogar fought alongside them, his spear sweeping low to trip, then high to finish. His focus was absolute. "We hold here or die here!" he barked, blood splattering his cheek.

The kobolds surged next.

The kobold vice-captains moved with ruthless efficiency. Karnark loosed arrows with deadly precision, three in a breath, each finding a mark: a throat, a knee, an eye. "More are coming," he growled, already drawing again.

Zarn wove through the chaos like a blade given life, slashing tendons and opening arteries with each flick of his sword.

At the front, Tarnix and Izzek stood like a living barricade. Shields braced, they absorbed the charge of the lizardmen, then answered with crushing hammer blows that shattered bones and scattered bodies. Together, the four fought like a disciplined war machine, swift, relentless, and devastating.

Even the cave seemed to cry out, dust spilling from cracks above, the stone groaning like it, too, was wounded by the war waged within it. Blood pooled at their feet, sizzling against the heat of battle.

Lumberling watched them fight, relentless, brutal, unstoppable. A tide of steel and fire. They were changing. Some would no doubt evolve before the blood even dried.

The ground was slick with blood, the corpses of over a hundred lizardmen already littered across the battlefield, but they still came. From some unseen burrow, the horde replenished itself with a hunger that bordered on madness.

But then, a sudden wave of pressure rippled through the battlefield, a sharp, suffocating aura that made even the fiercest fighters falter. It pressed down like an unseen weight, causing goblins and kobolds alike to glance up, weapons tightening in their grips.

Then came the voice, cold, resonant, laced with contempt.

"Impudence. How dare you lay your feet upon our sacred ground."

The speaker stepped forth at last.

From the far end of the battlefield emerged a towering figure cloaked in dark crimson robes, a hood obscuring most of his serpentine features. Twin curved blades hung across his back, glinting with runic etchings. Scales shimmered with an unnatural sheen, pulsing faintly with power.

The Lizardman High Priest, a fourth evolution. A Knight One Stage Level.

He radiated menace. Every step seemed to pulse with spiritual energy, causing the very ground to quake beneath him.

"Took him long enough," Krivex muttered, wiping blood from his cheek.

Lumberling didn’t even look away from the new threat. "Classic. Why is it always the boss who shows up after half their army’s already dead?"

Aren chuckled beside him. "It works to our favor, my Lord. Let’s not complain."

They could still joke, which meant morale was high, and that mattered.

Then Skitz stepped forward, grinning through bloodied tusks. His blades dripped with lizardman ichor, and several of his recent opponents twitched lifelessly behind him. "My Lord," he said, licking his fangs, "shall I take this one? Or would you prefer to handle him yourself?"

Lumberling’s eyes never left the robed figure. "Focus on your own fight. I’ll handle him, join me once you’re done."

"Be careful, my Lord," Skitz said, eyes narrowing. "That aura... it’s like mine. But twisted. Like something half-awake, waiting to bite."

Lumberling gave a silent nod, then let his bow fall gently to his side. He reached down and gripped his spear, its haft still warm from earlier bloodshed.

The energy around the High Priest crackled like a storm barely contained, chaotic, wild, and dangerous in a way more erratic and unhinged than Skitz’s.

This would not be a simple fight.