Chapter 30: Onward the match begins
{mass released}
The number of Awakened were slowly thinning out, each of them limiting their abilities to the smallest scale they could in hopes of saving up energy until they finished off the horde.
But even after minutes of relentless battling, the horde still seemed endless. For as far as the eyes could see, there was nothing else but monsters racing forward to kill them.
Soon, bodies piled up in hills before the cohort—both of humans and the gruesome army of monsters.
Drake had dismissed Kyvern soon after, leaving the cohort in an obvious disadvantage. Unlike Luna, who was able to sacrifice her energy to help someone, Drake was nothing like that.
The reason he had kept his summon out that long was to protect Luna, which was one thing Drake considered as paying her back for helping him while she gathered up some of her mana.
Kyvern had done a well enough job understanding its master’s thoughts, even taking blows from monsters in order to protect Luna. Even so, the battle had been far too devastating for the mighty dragon to bear.
"Get up and fight!" Drake yelled at Luna, who was still on the floor, reeling from the fact that her bodyguard had just suddenly disappeared.
However, it didn’t take long before she got back into action—disappearing from where she sat and appearing right beside Drake to help with the increasing numbers before him.
With the absence of Kyvern, the number of enemies coming at Drake had literally doubled, and with the exhaustion clearly evident in his movements, that was more than what he could handle.
"Take care of this, I’ll be back!" Drake’s words hit her sharply, cutting through her tough demeanor and making her hesitate for a second.
But before she could give a remark, Drake had already broken from the spot he was in, racing into the cohort’s formation without a second look back at Luna.
Now, she was left alone to face the great numbers.
At first, Luna looked terrified. However, after her eyes caught sight of Tessa beside her handling numbers far more than she could defend against, her fear instantly disappeared—morphing into a horrid battle cry.
"FUCKYAAAAAAHHH!" she screamed.
If she was going to die here, it was going to be while taking down as many of these bastards as she could.
Meanwhile—
Drake hurried past the lines of Awakened until he finally reached his target—Kresha, who was currently resting at the middle of the cohort with a few others.
Reaching his supposed leader, he stopped right before him and stared through the mask at him.
It didn’t take long before Kresha noticed the masked, demonic man standing before him, seeking his attention.
Kresha, who had been hunched over and breathing heavily, straightened his stance. "Unknown, right?"
Drake nodded slowly and waited for any other remark from Kresha. Definitely, nothing came but an awkward look of worry.
"..."
Surely their leader was a dumbskull.
"I have a theory," Unknown said in a low tone, "there might actually be a way out of all—this."
Kresha’s eyes flickered in desperation—not hope. He wanted to believe the masked man, although, looking around the entire battlefield, hope was instantly crushed by what he saw.
"I don’t have time for games. We’ll stick to my plan—"
Drake sparked at this, throwing his hand out and grabbing Kresha by the shirt strongly.
This action did not go unnoticed by the other Awakened resting in the middle alongside Kresha, and they instinctively pulled out their weapons, ready to do away with the scum betraying their leader.
An older Awakened walked up to the two. "This is no time to fight among ourselves! Let’s save strength for the—"
"Shut the hell up!" Drake snarled without even turning to the older Awakened. Then he stared at Kresha, filled with disgust. "While you rest in the midst of safety, your subordinates are dying one after the other. Your plan is to interchange with each other and rest, killing the numbers and hoping they would stop. How pathetic."
"Hey, let go of the Captain or—"
Another Awakened spoke, but before he could finish, the menacing figure of Kyvern arose from the ground close to Drake. He had summoned him out of instinct, and this made all of them fall silent.
"Look around you, bastard. Do you think this will end?"
"It’s pathetic to wait and hope for help to arrive or for the problem to pass away! If we don’t do our best to get out, then why don’t we just drive our swords down our throats!"
With that, he shoved Kresha back disrespectfully, the arrogant man staggering before regaining his composure.
There was no remark from him. He knew what Drake spoke was true, and hearing it aloud had placed him in a state of utter uselessness.
’Am I...’ Kresha raised his hands up to his eyes and saw them shaking. His ears were filled with the tremors of the screams of his men dying—their battle cries rising out of fury and getting quenched every now and then. He could hear the shrills of the monsters, sounding almost like mocking laughter at him.
’Am I... scared?’ Feeling lightheaded, his legs buckled, and he fell to his knees, unable to comprehend any thoughts but that of death.
The other Awakened were now visibly shaking. No matter how experienced or powerful they were, they were all simply humans—terrified of death, of how it came, and of seeing it come.
But Drake had made up his mind. He wasn’t going to die here. Turning to the Awakened, he yelled at the top of his lungs, "When we appeared here, before the monsters, I saw a path where the horde was thinnest!"
That was enough to catch the attention of the cohort. Even those who were fighting and struggling to avoid fatal hits turned their ears to listen—holding on to their lives just a little longer.
"I don’t know if it’s the way out, but that’s the only path I know! And I can’t make it out alone. I’ll need the entire help of this cohort to move alongside me—for all of us to live!" Drake continued, yelling for all to hear.
He didn’t receive a single response at first, aside from the blank silence from the cohort as they all fell into deep thought about what to do.
"Fuck it!" one of them shouted.
"I’m with you, bastard!" another man screamed at the top of his voice, using all of his strength to attack the monsters before him.
"Me too!"
"Lead the way!"
"Yes!"
One after another, screams, yells, and cries from the cohort erupted all around as they exuded a new strength to fight—thanks to Drake’s words.
Drake gritted his teeth, raising his sword high overhead before pointing it toward the direction he had in mind. Then he screamed with all his might at the cohort:
"Onward! Cut through those bastards like it’s your last!"
And with that, the march began.