The outskirts of the Skyfield Forest had been transformed into a literal slaughterhouse. For two agonizing hours, the air had been a thick, choking soup of metallic ozone, the copper-tang of fresh blood, and the high-pitched, desperate shrieks of dying Mutated Beasts. The ground, once covered in the lush greenery of the northern border, was now hidden beneath a carpet of cooling carcasses. Thousands of creatures—from the common Steel-Fang Tigers to the more exotic, venom-spitting Mandala Snakes—lay in twisted heaps, their bodies broken by gunpowder or erased by spiritual fire.
The human counter-offensive, led by the unmistakable violet glare of Leo Shaw, had been nothing short of a tactical miracle. The soldiers of the West Martial Military District, initially resigned to their own deaths
