“YOU!” Drake was furious. He summoned his dozen daggers and charged towards Jin Tong. Jin Tong deflected many of those daggers easily with his own, but some still hit their mark, stabbing deep into his body. However, it was useless, they didn’t even slow him down. Jin Tong kept walking towards Drake like a terminator.

Drake attacked him with his sword. Jin Tong expertly used his daggers to block and deflect Drake’s attacks, while also deflecting as many of the daggers as he could. They exchanged numerous blows. Jin Tong’s speed was severely reduced, but he was much stronger than Drake and, unlike Drake, wasn’t tired. Hence, Drake couldn’t get the upper hand.

Drake kicked him across the waist and Jin Tong flew across the battlefield. But he got up in a few seconds. Drake thought he would approach, but Jin Tong slowly looked at Drake, then at Elwin and then at himself. Finally, he turned around and walked backwards.

He’s retreating? Drake was surprised. He wanted to give chase, but Elwin was in horrible condition and he was too tired. So, he gave up and ran towards Elwin instead.

“HELP!” Drake cried. He was carrying Elwin’s unconscious body and arrived at the main camp. Several medics immediately approached and helped him to a bed.

“Can you save him?” Drake asked worriedly.

The doctor quickly examined him and replied, “General Elwin’s wounds are severe. However luckily none of his internal organs are hurt. Given his high martial arts cultivation, with sufficient treatment, he should be fine.”

“Thank goodness…” sighed Drake. This was too close.

Few hours later.

All the soldiers had their wounds treated and recovered their stamina. Drake also completely recovered. He was not very injured in the battle, and just had to recover his mana and stamina.

Elwin was all stitched and bandaged up. Drake healed all the wounds he could with his magic, and all the deeper ones were handled by the doctors.

It was getting late, and Drake wanted to leave before nightfall so he asked the doctors if he could move Elwin.

“Should be fine. But he’s lost a lot of blood so it will take up some time for him to wake up. It will take him a couple of days to make a full recovery, so he should avoid fighting until then,” the doctor informed him.

“That’s okay, thank you very much doctor,” Drake said politely.

Then, placing Elwin on a horse, he took the remaining soldiers he came with and started to return.

Drake was at the lead, and he had Elwin tied to him on the same horse. Next to him were George and the female swordswoman.

“I wanted to say, you were really amazing today master Drake,” the swordswoman said with a smile.

“Oh, thank you, you fought very well too,” Drake said in response. “What’s your name?”

“I’m Helen,” she replied enthusiastically.

After some time, they suddenly started feeling large vibrations.

“What the hell?” someone exclaimed.

Drake looked around wondering what was going on, then his pupils shrunk.

A huge demon tide was approaching from the west.

There were thousands of them! Including warrior class demons!

“RUN!” screamed Drake, and the group whipped their horses into a sprint. But the demon tide was huge and stretched wide.

Drake’s mind started working rapidly. They were halfway in their journey, so they were directly in between the mines to the north, and the village to the south. To return to the village they had to continue going south. However, the demon tide approaching from the west was wide. If they kept running south, they would get surrounded and slaughtered before they could reach the village. By the same logic, they couldn’t run back north either. So, they had to run east? But there were no villages or army encampments in that direction. So, they would just have to keep running before the demon tide caught up, at which point the exhausted group would just be a meal for them.

So, what could they do?

“Call for reinforcements!” Drake instructed, and a few soldiers immediately pulled out a messenger pigeon and sent them off to the village.

However, it would take time for them to arrive.

Drake looked around him. The original two hundred soldiers had reduced to one hundred and fifty. Some of them were still recovering from injuries.

Drake came up with a crazy idea.

“Listen up! We are going to charge south-west into the demon horde!”

Everyone became silent.

“WHAT!?”

“Master Drake, are you sure about this?” Helen asked.

Drake looked at her with determination. “Yes.”

Saying so, he immediately changed directions and started charging south-west, into the demon horde. The soldiers hesitated for a moment. Whatever direction they went in, they were probably going to die anyway. And without Drake’s help, they would only die sooner.

Maybe if it was before, they would have thought Drake was insane, but he had proven himself in battle. So, one by one, they started following behind him.

Just before he collided with the horde, Drake summoned four large rectangular shields to push against the demons on the front and the sides. Then, he summoned four iron boomerangs again and started slicing up all the nearby demons. He cut open a path directly through the monster horde that the rest of his soldiers could follow in.

“YEAH!” The soldiers cheered, rushing their horses to keep up with Drake.

Still, it wasn’t easy. There were a lot of soldiers, and the demons started attacking the rear and the sides which Drake couldn’t defend. The soldiers had no interest in fighting head on. They often just pushed them away, or wounded them enough to make them temporarily retreat, before dashing past. However, many of them still died.

“Master Drake where are we going?” Helen asked.

“Almost there!” Drake yelled, slicing through another few demons. Surrounded by demons on all sides, the soldiers could not see where they were going at all. They just put their faith on Drake and stuck as close to him as possible.

“Argh!” Drake yelled, slashing a demon that got close to him with his sword. But now they were very close to his destination.

A few kilometres in front was a tall, narrow canyon. Drake remembered the canyon from some of the maps he had memorised. It would connect to the Beast Woods on the other side so they couldn’t cross it, but if they make it there, it would be an easy place to defend.

Once they entered, the demons would only be able to follow through a narrow opening. Hence, no more than half a dozen demons could attack them at once, completely removing their advantage of numbers.

The other soldiers also spotted the canyon and understood Drake’s plan. They were elated and started fighting and running more ferociously to penetrate through.

Upon reaching the entrance of the canyon, Drake turned his horse a full 180 and came to a stop.

“All of you enter!”

The soldiers were moved and started pouring into the canyon one after another. Drake used his boomerangs and shields to keep the demons at bay while the soldiers rushed in. After the last demon entered, Drake followed behind.

The demons did not stop their attacks, but now no more than five or six of them could attack at a time, and Drake was able to hold them back with his boomerangs. A few martial artists formed a defence line to kill off any demons that got through the boomerangs.

‘Phew’ Drake sighed.

They had made it but… at what cost? Looking around, their number had almost halved. If Elwin woke up, how would he react?

He had no time to think about that now. All his attention was on holding the demons back. They didn’t know how long it would take for this demon horde to pass, or for reinforcements to arrive. But he hoped they could hold on until then.

Night fall.

The demons were attacking as ferociously as ever. They had fought several onis in this time too. While Drake was engaging an orthrus, a hell hound managed to sneak in and started wreaking havoc inside. But the soldiers surrounded it when it became visible and killed it quickly. They were also attacked by two orcs and a minotaur at the same time.

Only sixty-five soldiers remained.

Sunrise.

Forty soldiers left, and they were all exhausted.

At this point Elwin had woken up too. He learnt of the situation and was dismayed. He wanted to fight but was still very weak. Drake told him to rest and that he’d take care of it.

Despite his reassurance, Drake had already consumed all the mana recovery pills he had brought and was now on his last pool. Not to mention, going without sleep for a whole day made him mentally exhausted, which made it much more difficult to control his boomerangs. He could only control two now, and he could only control one of them effectively.

This put more pressure on the soldiers holding the front line. However, a pile of demon dead bodies had built up, which formed a barricade that made it difficult for new demons to pass through. This did relieve some pressure. Additionally, the soldiers who could survive this far were all highly skilled and experienced, so fought very well. Still, everyone was exhausted and were performing well below their peak.

“Master Drake, we can’t hold on any longer!” cried Helen.

The demon tide still did not show any signs of subsiding.

“Just a bit more, reinforcements should be here anytime now,” Drake comforted.

But suddenly, a demon wolf rushed and bit into the shoulder of a soldier in the front line. He cried in pain and fell back, creating an opening. Another soldier tried to fill it, but the wolf jumped on him afterwards. More and more demons started pouring in through the gap. Drake was already engaging two demon cranes that were attacking from the sky, so he didn’t have the time to help them.

‘Was this the end?’ thought Drake seeing the precious few men who were left being cut down mercilessly.

Suddenly, he heard something.

Whoosh! An arrow shot the demon wolf down.

Then more arrows started shooting down the remaining demons.

Drake looked up, his vision blurry from exhaustion.

Standing on the edge of the canyon was his father, and on the other side was Myra Wan. Behind them were hundreds of soldiers.

“They’re here!” Drake screamed.

“YES!” everyone cheered. The demons were getting shot down one after another by the skilled archers of the elves. The remaining soldiers started descending the canyon and fighting the demon horde one on one. They were unstoppable and created a huge opening in the horde.

Drake’s soldiers started exiting the canyon and retreating through the opening as the new soldiers brought up the rear. They climbed up the canyon and finally reached the top.

“Dad!” screamed Drake and ran to hug Holt. Elwin followed closely.

“Thank goodness you’re safe!” Holt sighed, hugging him.

Holt released him soon and was about to welcome Elwin but was interrupted.

“Well, well, well, what a lovely reunion!” laughed a voice. It was loud and echoed across the canyon, and the entire battlefield.

Holt’s eyes narrowed and he immediately pushed Drake behind him and drew his sword.

“Who are you?” he demanded.

The voice came from a man standing on the branch of tree several dozen meters away. He was dressed in all black and gave off a dangerous aura. On a branch underneath him was another man who was dressed identically. They both had one hand casually resting against a tree as if they weren’t in the middle of demon tide at all.

“We are…” the man said contemplatively, while pointing a finger towards Holt, “…your end!” a huge amount of mana gathered at his fingertips and transformed into black lights. Over a dozen of them, which all turned into bats. Huge menacing, vampire bats, about half the size of a human. They bared their fangs, and thick, corrosive poison was dripping down.

Grand mages