Overwhelming Firepower

Night came, but the battlefield remained lit. Dozens of mana lamps lay scattered across the front, their steady glow pooling over the torn ground.

Above them, spheres of light drifted slowly through the air, lighting spells maintained by exhausted mages, hovering just high enough to illuminate the advancing tide.

They had been fighting for hours now. Lucen no longer needed to be told how long it had been; his body knew.

His shoulders burned with a dull, constant ache, and his fingers felt stiff each time he tried to pull the trigger.

Despite his aching body, he still had a lot of mana, and his aura mantle remained ready. He did this since he expected a long battle, but not in this way.

Under the hovering lights, the battlefield told a bleak story. Corpses carpeted the ground, monsters mixed with corrupted animals, yet the distance they had gained was negligible.

Wolves with darkened veins ran forward without hesitation. Boars charged even after bullets shattered bone. Elk lowered their antlers and ran until momentum failed them.

Even though they had gotten more supplies, everyone was already feeling tired as not only did they need to fight continously they needed to resist the corruption as well.

A few of them had already needed to be taken far away from the battlefield to recover from the corruption.

***

Lucen, who had changed positions, fired his rifle again. The rifle kicked into his shoulder, clean and familiar. The shot took a corrupted bear through the skull. It collapsed, slid several meters, and stopped. Another shape filled the gap almost immediately.

’Damn, is it really never-ending? If this were still a game, this would be solved by somebody coming to save us through a cut scene.’ Lucen sighed while no one was looking, as a subtle smile appeared on his face.

’What am I even thinking? Even if this were still a gam,e such a thing would only happen for the hero of the story, the protagonist.’ A mocking smile appeared on his face.

’Is this as far as I go? I trained, I prepared, I created a lot of weapons, but even with all this firepower, I still couldn’t do it... In the end, I guess this wasn’t enough firepower... Is it about to happen... Will that nightmare come true?’

Lucen looked around, and even now, he saw the people who followed him here not giving up, thinking that he would guide them towards victory.

”Heh, this is no time for some self-wallowing. They all believe in me, to lead them to victory, then I must respond in kind. I, too, need to believe that victory is still within hand.”

Lucen started talking under his breath as a confident smile once again appeared on his face, and he chuckled a little.

Didn’t this look like he was either the protagonist about to make a breakthrough, or a secondary one about to make the ultimate sacrifice? Either way, he found it really amusing, despite the dire situation.

It was at that moment that the ring he was wearing started to glow brighter than ever as it lit up the night sky for a second.

The people had no time to look at Lucen as they focused on the monsters. They can only believe that Lucen was doing something that would change the tide.

After the ring glowed bright, Lucen started hearing voices, many voices. A few were recognizable; they were the warriors who had the ring in the past.

”Say the oath.”

”Say what’s in your heart.”

The voices were telling him to say an oath, but what oath was there to say? Didn’t he already try, but it doesn’t work.

”It must be your own oath.”

”The one burning within your heart.”

The spirits, or whatever they were, answered him.

”It might be incomplete now.”

”But we will help.”

”Now light the path.”

”Say the oath.”

The battlefield noise seemed to dull, as if the world itself was holding its breath. Gunfire continued in the distance, shouts and roars still present, yet they felt far away, muted beneath the pressure building around his hand.

He understood that these people whispering in his mind were the ones who had used the ring.

Didn’t they also say their own oaths, and their endings, despite being cool and glorious, still ended in death?

A warrior standing alone against a tide of monsters, armor cracked and molten, refusing to fall.

A man in rags dragging himself forward long after his body should have failed, collapsing only when will finally gave out.

A knight in ceremonial armor, shackled, bloodied, yet standing tall even as blades pierced him again and again. They had all believed, and they had all died.

Seeing as they can pretty much read his mind, the voices answered before he could even say something.

”Though incomplete, it will grant you the power you need.”

”How your fate will end is for you to decide.”

Hearing what the voices were saying, Lucen smiled. Yeah, what was he hesitating about? His situation was not good either way, so why not take a gamble?

’So I just need to speak the oath. An oath different from theirs. One that is for me, the one they say is burning within my heart.’

Lucen closed his eyes as he placed the rifle near his chest and tried to feel the words as the voices said. Lucen breathed in slowly.

He stopped thinking too deeply. He allowed the words to form from deep within him. He then felt the words he needed to say at this moment. For those who believe in him, and the path forward.

”I will stand firm on my beliefs.” Lucen’s voice, despite speaking softly, echoed through the noisy battlefield. ”I will survive, bend fate, and grasp victory in my hands.”

The second he finished saying those words, the ring on his finger felt hotter than ever before. He could see a few runes engraved on it, glowing. It was so small you could barely notice it.

It was at that moment that Lucen could feel an unknown strength surging within him. It was like when he uses RELEASE, but this one was less painful, and the power he was receiving felt far greater than the technique.

Not only did he feel endless strength surging within, but he also felt like his courage was increasing as well. He was feeling more confident, like nothing could go wrong.

He knew that it was likely a psychological thing since he gained so much power quickly. He needed to calm his mind. He mustn’t let this power consume him. Instead, he needed to be the one in control of the power, not the other way around.

’Focus.’ Lucen breathed in and out as his breathing became a steady rhythm.

The confidence remained, but he pressed down on it, shaping it instead of indulging it. The strength didn’t vanish. It settled, coiling within him, dense and responsive, waiting for direction.

Once he stabilized himself, Lucen decided to make a big move to encourage the others. Lucen activated RELEASE, making his heart beat faster like an engine roaring, his body started to burn a little as his aura and mana increased in quantity and quality.

Lucen then created dual pistols and used elemental bullets imbued with fire elements to fly upward into the sky.

Lucen then landed near the massive wave of monsters. He changed the dual pistols into a trench gun, a Winchester Model 1897.

The people who saw what Lucen was doing started helping him with support fire. They wouldn’t allow any monster to get near their leader.

They didn’t know what Lucen was planning; all they knew was that they just needed to trust in Lucen and follow his lead.

Lucen then activated his current strongest attacking skill, [Explosive Bullet]. His mana and aura gathered into a singular bullet.

This skill consumes seventy percent of his mana and fifty percent of his aura. This was his first true nuke skill.

Because he was in front of the monster wave, most of their hostility was aimed at him, which activated another skill [Killing Zone].

Lucen then showed a confident smile as the enemies charged at him. Lucen fired, and the second he did so, something incredible happened.

The trench gun roared, not with a single sound, but with a thunderous, overlapping boom, as if several shots had been fired at once.

From the muzzle burst a fan of blazing pellets, each one glowing white-hot, dragged forward by the sheer density of mana and aura compressed within them.

The pellets flew a few meters ahead of Lucen before the gathered power could no longer be contained.

The air in front of him collapsed inward, followed by an eruption so violent it drowned out every other sound on the battlefield.

A cone-shaped explosion tore forward, not expanding wildly in all directions, but surging ahead like a roaring wave.

Fire and pressure fused into a single advancing mass, a blazing torrent that carved through the monster horde as if the world itself had been scooped away.

The ground shattered beneath it, soil and stone pulverized into glowing fragments that were swallowed by the advancing blast. Monsters caught at the front didn’t scream; they simply vanished.

All the monsters, the corrupted animals, everything in the range of Lucen’s strongest attack were crushed, incinerated, and hurled backward in a cascading chain of destruction. The blast tunneled through the horde, leaving behind a scorched corridor of glassed earth and drifting embers.

Mana lamps along the front line flickered violently, some shattering outright as the shockwave rolled past.

Lucen, who had unleashed such an attack, was also slid away by the powerful shockwave. He had expected something like that to happen and braced for impact. If he weren’t in his RELEASE state, he would’ve been blown away by his own attack.

The people behind him, especially Robert and the mages, were momentarily stunned by the sight.

Lucen, a young man who was just at the second circle, was able to release a powerful attack that would rival a sixth-circle spell.

Robert could also produce a similar attack, but the output would be weaker, and he would have exhausted his entire mana supply. He was in the fourth circle, and his mana supply was much greater than that of his peers.

Robert couldn’t help but show a manic smile at the pure destructive power Lucen unleashed, but what caught his interest was that he noticed that before the attack was unleashed, Lucen was able to combine his mana and his aura mantle into one devastating attack.

Also, the way the mana and aura imploded gave Robert a few ideas. ’Heh, as expected of the one who walks with me towards the future. You always give me one surprise after another.’

***

When the smoke cleared after Lucen’s attack, for the first time since the start of the battle, the monster wave looked like it had decreased.

Lucen, who felt his knees about to give out due to his exhaustion and the use of most of his mana and a lot of his aura, stopped himself from falling and used his willpower to stand up straight.

He cannot show the others a weak side at this moment. He then enhanced his voice with aura and gave out a command.

”Aura users wearing the new armor advance and fire! Those assigned to the land-mounted Gatling guns switch to rifles and cover the advance! Dwarves continue to bombard with the Thunderspears. Mages unleash area spells, and warriors of the Tribes charge forward!”

Barrels screamed in unison as the aura-armored line advanced, the modified Gatlings braced against their frames and chewed through the night.

Streaks of something similar to tracer-fire because of the aura stitched long, luminous threads across the dark, each one finding purchase in fur and hide a dozen, twenty, a score of paces away.

Where a moment before there had been a mass, now there were scattered shapes of corrupted animals, monsters, and great beasts staggering as whole swathes of their flank were sheared away.

Riflemen sliding into the gaps fired single, brutal shots that finished the wounded.

With each step the armored line took, it advanced the wall of steel a few meters; every few meters, the monster tide thinned.

The Thunderspears in the back continued their bombardment as the dwarves calculated where to aim. The rune-engraved metal balls exploded with fire and ice as they decimated the monster wave.

The Mages also started bombarding the enemy with field area spells. Different kinds of spells flew towards the monster wave as the mages advanced alongside the others.

The warriors from the Barbarian Tribes roared as their spirit tattoos glowed in the night. They were ecstatic that they were finally able to move freely. They charged forward with no fear, wanting to tear apart the nearest monsters.

With but a single move, Lucen was able to change the course of the battle. Without the power of the ring, the attack he made wouldn’t be as effective.

As he was trying to stabilize his breathing, a smile appeared on his face. ’Heh, as expected, if a problem isn’t solved by firepower, it just means I didn’t use enough firepower.’