Boundless Family Upgrades For The Deadbeat Lord

By late afternoon, the northern half of Althoff had become a graveyard of Magic Beasts. Raymond’s strategy had worked far better than anyone had expected.

The defenders repeatedly allowed manageable portions of the tide into the abandoned districts, sealed the streets behind them, and destroyed each isolated group before opening another route.

Hundreds of carcasses now clogged the roads, blood had turned entire stretches of snow into dark slush, and several streets could no longer be used because the bodies were piled too high to move quickly through them.

Yet the important parts of Althoff remained intact. The granaries had not been breached. The livestock shelters were secure. The castle district still housed the children, elderly, and injured without interruption.

Even the number of deaths remained astonishingly low considering what had attacked them.

Raymond stood with Boris on the roof of a three-story stone merchant house near the inner district, far enough from the active kill zones that runners could reach them safely but high enough to overlook most of the northern town.

His throat felt raw, his shoulders hurt, and there was dried blood on his trousers that belonged to someone he couldn’t remember, but for the first time since the outer wall collapsed, the pressure across the battlefield appeared to be easing.

Boris had been staring through a brass viewing tube for nearly a minute before lowering it.

"They’re thinning," he said, sounding reluctant to trust his own observation after everything that had happened. "The western approach is almost empty, and the main northern route has broken into smaller groups. Jonathan’s people are clearing the last large concentration near the old cooper’s street. If there isn’t another major herd behind this one, we may have reached the end."

Raymond rested his forearms against the low stone parapet and looked north, where small groups of beasts could still be seen moving between the ruined wall and the outer houses. "Don’t say that too loudly. The universe has been listening whenever someone says something optimistic today."

Boris snorted tiredly and started to reply, but an unfamiliar roar rolled across the district before he could open his mouth. It wasn’t particularly loud at first.

What made Raymond straighten was the reaction it caused. Frostfang Wolves that had been fighting near the ruined gate immediately stopped attacking. Several turned and fled through the side streets.

A wounded Ironhorn Elk tried to climb over a pile of carcasses rather than remain where it was. Even one Silver-class Razorback Bear that had been battling two Bronze Knights suddenly abandoned the fight and ran east with such urgency that neither Knight bothered pursuing it.

Raymond slowly turned toward Boris. "That doesn’t look good."

"No," Boris replied, raising the viewing tube again. "It really doesn’t."

A second roar came from beyond the ruined northern wall, followed by a pulse that Raymond felt through the building beneath his boots. Snow slid from nearby roofs.

Loose stones along the parapet trembled.

Farther north, one of the remaining wooden watch platforms suddenly leaned to one side despite nothing visibly touching it.

Jonathan appeared atop a roof almost two hundred meters away, turned toward the northern breach, and remained perfectly still. That reaction concerned Raymond more than anything else.

Jonathan rarely hesitated. The original Silver Knight had fought everything from Razorback Bears to charging armored beasts without showing more than mild concentration, but now he was simply watching the breach with one hand resting on his sword.

A black shape passed through the opening in the wall.

At first Raymond thought it was another bear.

Then it stepped completely into view.

The creature was enormous, standing nearly fifteen feet at the shoulder even while moving on four legs. Thick black fur covered most of its body, but broad plates of dark stone-like armor protected its skull, shoulders, spine, and forelimbs. Its paws were large enough to cover a man’s entire torso, each ending in pale curved claws longer than short swords.

Two short horns swept backward from the upper part of its skull, and faint golden light pulsed intermittently between the cracks of its natural armor.

The strangest part was what happened beneath its feet. Every step compressed the earth far more than its weight should have allowed. Frosted paving stones cracked when it crossed them. Snow around its paws sank suddenly as though invisible pressure was pressing down on everything within several feet.

One of Boris’s scouts came sprinting up the rear stairway moments later, breathless and pale. "Captain, the hunters identified it. Blackstone Ursar. Gold Rank. They say nobody from the northern villages normally sees them outside the deep valleys."

Raymond turned toward Jonathan’s distant position again. "Can our Silver Knights kill one?"

Boris didn’t answer because the question wasn’t meant for him. A runner carried it down, and Jonathan’s response returned less than a minute later.

"He says yes," Boris read from the hastily delivered note, then looked at Raymond. "But not one-on-one."

Before Raymond could respond, the Blackstone Ursar lowered its head and charged.

The first building disappeared. There was no better word for it.

The abandoned timber house directly ahead of the beast simply came apart when the Ursar struck it. Support beams snapped, the front wall burst inward, and half the roof lifted before collapsing behind the creature in a cloud of dust, snow, and splintered wood.

The beast didn’t slow down. It emerged through the opposite wall covered in debris, shook itself once, and continued toward the next street.

Raymond stared and immediately gave the command. "All civilians out of the northern inner quarter."

"Not just the frontline crews. Everyone. Archers too. Bronze Knights clear the surrounding beasts and stay away from the Gold Rank unless a Silver commander specifically calls them in."

Boris was already shouting toward the messengers. "And move the medical teams farther south! Tell Marianne the merchant square station is being abandoned. Anyone who can’t walk gets carried."

The first Silver Knights reachedthe Ursar before the evacuation order finished spreading.

Jonathan entered from the beast’s left.

Garret came from the right.

Tristan dropped from a roof behind it.

Raymond expected to see the battle clearly.

He didn’t.

Jonathan disappeared.

There was no gradual acceleration, no obvious sequence of steps. One moment he stood near a broken wagon and the next a burst of snow erupted beside the Ursar’s shoulder as steel struck black armor.

Raymond’s eyes moved toward the impact just as Garret appeared somewhere else entirely.

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