CLANG!
Steel smashed against steel.
SHRRK!
A spearhead tore through flesh, the wet sound almost drowned out by the roar of clashing armies.
THUNK!
Shields splintered.
CRUNCH!
Bone cracked.
"HELP—!" a soldier's cry cut sharply through the chaos. But before the plea could echo again, it was snuffed out in a single, wet gurgle.
Ashen's steps dragged like lead.
His arms trembled with every thrust and parry. His mind screamed at him to move, to fight, to live, but his body was betraying him, breaking piece by piece.
All around, the tide of Narkals surged.
Ugly, twisted faces sneered from beneath crude helmets with jagged teeth bared in laughter as they hacked and tore. They weren't just killing; they were reveling in it. Every kill was savored; even if they lost ten of them for it, they celebrated, and some even had the gall to eat the corpses even as the war went on.
Thud.
Ashen staggered as a jagged saber finally found his side. It sank deep into his flesh. He tore it free and skewered the Narkal's brain with the wing of his spear, but his breath came in ragged bursts.
He truly felt as if his body was truly done moving a single inch more; his muscles no longer obeyed as they should.
'Any second now... I'll drop. I'll stop moving, and that'll be it... I'll di—'
His body suddenly jolted in dread, as if it processed that doom was arriving even before his brain could.
And with that realization, it did the only thing it could do to save itself: Keep going.
{Activated Path Skill: Trance}
As if all shackles had abruptly fallen, he moved. The crippling exhaustion suddenly vanished, and everything became crystal clear in his vision.
Ashen, in his half-conscious state, wouldn't appreciate such bodily comfort, but this didn't matter, as what he truly wanted most right now was one thing only: Survival.
The previous hunched-over posture disappeared in favor of a more relaxed one.
He didn't waste time, went back into the fray, but there were no explosive strikes or bursts of movement. It was all about efficiency and energy preservation
If he found a weak spot, he struck. A distracted Narkal? He would appear like a ghost and finish it off.
He always stuck close to the other soldiers. He used the shield barriers to hide after striking, and caught the diverted monsters when they went for others.
He became akin to a ghost on the battlefield.
What allowed this wasn't only his state that let him move past his body's limits, nor was it the complete and constant focus he maintained.
It was the eyes.
His eyes had somehow sharpened further, increasing his perception of his surroundings and allowing him to be in the best place, at the best time, to either strike or evade.
He had noticed that his vision had gotten a lot sharper since he received the Whisp's gift, but this was even beyond that.
Whenever he entered a trance, all his five senses were sharpened to their limits to accomplish the task he set out to do, and it seemed that after that plant's baptism, his vision's limits weren't the same anymore.
CLANG!
The monsters didn't stop. The line of Narkals pressing against the Bloodwall seemed endless, their howls carrying above the battlefield. Even with hundreds falling, more came on, climbing over corpses, driven by the simple, sick desire to destroy everything before them.
⛧
Dawn arrived, and the sparse dozen Narkals that survived finally wiped away the cruel smirks and dispersed to the horizon.
No one had the energy to give chase and finish them off, and giving chase could as well end up in an ambush, since thinking these Narkals were the last ones was akin to thinking that your next breath would pull the last of the air out of the atmosphere.
That army was but a drop in the ocean. Having another one double its size arrive by tomorrow to finish the job wouldn't be a surprise.
There was a reason why the human army was given titles such as defenders, guardians, and 'the Bloodwall', but never raiders, conquerors, or spearheads, despite their repeated victories and the killing of hundreds of thousands of their kind every month.
It was simply because they never had the chance to counter-attack. Barely defending from the endless surge of Narkal tribes was already pushing it.
The battered army was finally allowed to return to the camp. Ashen wasn't pulled out of his trance state until he was healed and finally rested in his tent.
That was when his body judged that its 'survival' task was truly accomplished
He didn't even get to form half a thought before sleep came and yanked him away from the waking world.
⛧
It was barely noon when Ashen was woken up with an order to help with cleaning up the battlefield and packing up.
It seemed that after last night's slaughter, this area was temporarily free of Narkals, so the army's higher-ups decided to relocate.
The march this time was surprisingly free from ambushes for the first two days, so Ashen could only ward off boredom by either repeating his training drills during breaks or by observing the other soldiers.
One thing he noticed long ago was that every soldier was still at their 7th step. A lot of them looked past their thirties, also. So it wasn't like they'd just advanced.
Even the officers were only one step further at the 6th, with the general being merely a 5th step, despite being a leader of a thousand men.
This made Ashen change his perspective on how hard it actually was to advance.
'Seems Seraphine's advancement in less than half a year really screwed with my perception...' He smiled bitterly. 'I wonder how she's doing, anyway... I hope it's better than me, at least.'
He wasn't overly worried about her since they were still linked by Ecstatic Bond, her newly awakened path skill.
The skill transferred physical sensations when they passed a certain threshold, and Ashen never felt something out of place.
'I can't say the same about her, though.' He thought guiltily.
He had been in constant pain for the past weeks, and he was sure it had passed whatever threshold the skill had, so Seraphine must've felt whatever pain he felt.
'She didn't sever the bond, even after that. How stubborn is she going to get...?' He shook his head at the absurdity, but a fond smile found its way to his lips as he kept imagining her adamant face saying that she'd never break the bond.
'Well, since she's the only one who can break it, there's no use thinking about it now. The only thing I can do to help is get hit less often, I guess...' He concluded.
With his thoughts about Seraphine taking the backseat, the things he figured out in the past days from observing hundreds of soldiers from different pathways reemerged.
He discovered many facts, but chief among them was: '...My path skills are insanely broken compared to everyone else.'
Every soldier he asked or overheard talking about their skills always turned out to have something mundane, like passives that gave boosts in physical stats or something niche like pain tolerance.
'There was even this guy from the gluttony path who got a skill that allowed him to digest food better...'
Not to mention that the one who had pain tolerance was a fellow Sloth pathway walker. The same as him, and the man was even happy that he got the skill, saying that it allowed him to better ignore the pangs of pain when sleeping.
Ashen could never, even jokingly, compare Trance to that garbage.
Despite triggering only twice since he got it, it saved his life on both counts. Not even counting the synergy that allowed his already sharp vision to evolve further.
He had already repeatedly tested during his private training, and his eyes didn't dull after exiting the trance state. That meant the mutation was permanent.
And even though it would require a bit of work getting used to and turning it into an asset, it was still a massive boon for his current situation.
And this is without even putting Lucid dreamweaving into the equation. 'That skill definitely has no business being a 7th step skill…' He thought amusgnly.
So after thinking about it for a while, he found that the main difference between him and the others, the one that could allow such things to happen, was... 'My compatibility, huh.'
That was the answer he came to after also considering Seraphine's example.
'Well, it kinda makes sense if I think about it. The more compatible you are with something, the more you will get out of it.'
Ashen carelessly shrugged, feeling somewhat smug and conveniently forgetting the penalties of higher compatibility.