Raymond glanced toward the alley entrance to make certain nobody had seen them. "Up. No ceremony. Listen carefully. Leavethrough the southern service lane, circle around the next block, and approach the battlefield from the southwest. Do not arrive together in formation. Space yourselves out enough that anyone watching assumes you were already deployed somewhere else."
The Knights stood immediately.
Raymond pointed north. "There’s a Gold Rank Blackstone Ursar in the central district. Jonathan has field command. The moment you reach him, follow his orders. Your priority is the Gold Beast."
"Understood, Sire."
The first Knight left. Then the second. Within seconds all five had disappeared into separate side streets.
Raymond waited another half minute before returning upstairs.Boris never looked away from the fight. "You took four minutes."
"I’m efficient." Raymond grinned at him.
Neither said anything more. A minute later the first new Silver Knight appeared near the battlefield from a southwestern street and joined Jonathan’s group.
Then another arrived from a different route.
Then two more.
Boris frowned. "Where the hell did they come from?"
Raymond kept his face completely neutral. "Reinforcements."
"I can see that."
"Then why did you ask?"
Boris slowly turned his head toward him.
Raymond remained deeply interested in the battlefield.
The fifth Knight arrived.
Boris stared for another several seconds before apparently deciding that surviving the Gold Beast was more important than investigating his lord’s increasingly suspicious supply of elite warriors.
The effect of the fresh reinforcements was immediate.
Raymond still couldn’t follow most of the battle, but the pattern changed. Jonathan stopped forcing exhausted Knights to maintain constant pressure and began rotating them.
Five fresh Silver warriors attacked while older fighters disengaged for seconds at a time. Tristan remained dedicated to the creature’s head and eyes.
Garret and two defensive specialists stayed near the front, redirecting charges instead of trying to stop them completely. Bronze Knights moved around the outer streets clearing smaller beasts so none could interfere.
The Blackstone Ursar became more violent as its wounds accumulated.One fresh Silver Knight struck the damaged foreleg.
The Ursar pivoted.
Raymond saw nothing except a golden blur.
Then the Knight crashed through the roof of a two-story house.
The entire upper floor collapsed behind him.
Before the creature could follow, three Silver Knights hit its flank almost simultaneously. One blade found the gap between armor plates. Another struck the same place. A third drove deeper.
The beast roared and reared onto its hind legs.
Its forepaws came down. The intersection vanished beneath an explosion of stone.
Chunks of paving flew high enough to strike nearby roofs. A section of wall collapsed. A stone larger than Raymond’s head crossed nearly fifty meters and buried itself in the side of another building.
Boris ducked instinctively despite being nowhere near it.
Raymond stared at the devastation. "Remind me never to become arrogant just because the System says I’m Bronze."
"I was planning to remind you after the bull nearly turned you into decoration."
"Appreciated."
Jonathan’s strategy changed.
Raymond realized it only after watching the Silver Knights gradually lure the Ursar toward the abandoned dye warehouse near the old central square. The building was one of the largest remaining structures in that district, built with thick stone lower walls and a heavy timber upper frame.
Boris noticed too. "They’re moving it."
Raymond’s eyes narrowed.
Then he immediately understood. "The warehouse."
The Ursar charged Tristan.
Tristan vanished sideways. The beast smashed through the main entrance, half the doorway collapsed around it.
Jonathan appeared at the rear.
Two Silver Knights struck the creature’s hindquarters.
The Ursar turned deeper into the structure.
Raymond leaned over the parapet. "Tell the archers nearby to withdraw. Everybody clears that block."
Boris immediately signaled a runner.
The Knights continued attacking from alternating sides, never giving the Gold Beast a stable target. The Ursar destroyed interior supports as it turned, each movement damaging the building further.Then Jonathan and every Silver Knight withdrew at once.
Raymond’s eyes widened. "Get down."
Boris didn’t ask why.
Both men crouched behind the rooftop parapet.
A second later, the warehouse collapsed.
BOOOM!
The sound rolled across Althoff. Hundreds of tons of timber, stone, roof tile, stored barrels, and old machinery came downover the Blackstone Ursar. Dust swallowed the entire intersection and spread outward through the surrounding streets.
For several seconds nothing moved.
Raymond slowly stood. "Did that kill it?"
The rubble exploded. The Blackstone Ursar emerged through the collapsed wall.
One horn was broken. Blood covered nearly its entire face, several armor plates had cracked. Its left foreleg dragged slightly but it was alive.
Raymond stared in disbelief. "You have got to be kidding me."The Ursar roared.
Then all eighteen Silver Knights moved.
Raymond lost them completely.
There were too many and too fast.
The ruined intersection became a storm of impacts he could barely interpret. Steel flashed. Stone shattered.
The Ursar twisted toward one attacker and three others appeared at its exposed side. It swung and missed; another building lost part of its façade. Jonathanstruck the wounded foreleg. Two fresh Knights followed the same target. Bone finally broke with a sound loud enough to carry across the district.
The beast collapsed onto one knee.
Garret charged. His ruined shield slammed into the Ursar’s damaged face and forced its head sideways.
Tristan appeared above it.His sword entered the already wounded left eye.
The Ursar reared violently and nearly caught him.
Jonathan was suddenly beneath its throat.
Raymond saw his sword rise.
Then five other Silver Knights attacked the same area.
The first blade opened the hide. The second deepened it.The third struck muscle.
The fourth reached farther.
The fifth tore the wound wider.
Blood poured down the creature’s chest.
The Ursar went berserk.
Its final attack shook the district.
Golden mana surged across its body and the ground around it fractured in every direction. Stone rose in broken slabs. Two Silver Knights were hurled away. Garret disappeared behind a collapsing wall. Jonathan was forced backward. Every nearby window shattered at once.
Then the golden light flickered.
Just once.
Jonathan moved.Raymond didn’t see the strike.
He saw where Jonathan was before it.
Then where he stood afterward.
Behind the Ursar.
Sword covered in blood.
The Gold Beast remained upright for several seconds.Its body swayed.
One enormous foreleg attempted to move but failed. The Blackstone Ursar collapsed onto its side.
The impact shook loose snow from everyroof in the surrounding district.
Nobody celebrated immediately. The creature didn’t move. Jonathan approached cautiously and drove his sword deep through the ruined eye into the skull.
Still nothing. Only then did he raise one blood-coveredarm.
The signal spread across the surviving defensive positions.
The Gold Rank beast was dead.
Raymond’s shoulders finally dropped.
Boris gripped the rooftop parapet and released a long breath. "I never want to see another one of those things."
Raymond looked across the ruined district where the creature had fought. Three buildings had collapsed completely. Severalmore were partially destroyed. The road had been split apart by repeated impacts, barricades had been pulverized, and an entire warehouse now existed only as rubble around the dead beast.
"Agreed."
The death of the Blackstone Ursar changed the remaining tide almost immediately. Whatever pressure its presence had exerted over the weaker creatures disappeared, and the already disorganized groups outside Althoff fractured completely. Some herbivores fled west.
Others ran east toward the open wasteland. Frostfang Wolves stopped advancing and scattered after easier prey. The last armored beasts near the northern breach turned away rather than continue through streets filled with the scent of blood and dead predators.
No organized wave followed them, no larger silhouette appeared beyond the ridge.
The trembling beneath Althoff gradually faded. For the first time since the battle began, the northern horizon stopped moving.
Raymond remained on the rooftop beside Boris, looking over the ruined walls, shattered streets, exhausted soldiers, and countlessbodies covering the snow.
Althoff had been broken in places, bloodied everywhere, and pushed far closer to destruction than Raymond ever intended to admit.
But it was still standing.
The Beast Tide wasn’t.
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