The silence before the storm was shattered by a single command.
“Everyone, fall back behind me!”
Lin En’s voice wasn’t loud, yet it cut through the roaring Beast Tide and reached everyone’s ears clearly.
Fiona and the others instinctively obeyed, swiftly contracting the defensive line and retreating behind him.
Barret and several soldiers raised their shields and battle aura, forming the final, fragile barrier.
As one of the most outstanding graduates in the history of the Kingdom War Academy, Fiona’s mind was running tactical simulations at an astonishing speed.
She knew well that in the face of this all-encompassing Beast Tide—land and air, overwhelming in number—any conventional tactics were meaningless.
Concentrated defense would be drowned, splitting forces to break through would be devoured.
The only path of survival might be… to sacrifice some, letting the strongest carve out an escape for a few.
But the cost was too great, and the chances of success were minuscule.
She stared at Lin En’s back, her heart filled with a complex mix of despair and curiosity.
She wanted to see how one would face a true torrent of war, something that individual valor could not oppose.
But Lin En’s next actions began to unravel the tactical principles she was so proud of, inch by inch.
Lin En floated upward, supported by the Lightwind Technique, overlooking the Beast Tide surging like black waves.
There was none of the heavy tension a mage usually displayed before overwhelming odds.
He reached out, as if touching invisible strings in the air.
“Air is also a medium, with its own pressure and balance.”
He muttered softly, as if lecturing himself.
“All it takes is the right disturbance to shatter that balance instantly.”
Master Elaine pricked up his ears, full of confusion.
“What’s he saying? Medium? That’s alchemic terminology…”
Lin En floated in midair.
In front of his left hand, a vast swath of air instantly condensed into fine ice crystals, becoming intensely cold.
Before his right hand, another space grew scorching hot, the air twisting like a desert mirage.
“He’s… separating temperature?”
Master Elaine whispered, as if in a dream.
“First, create ultimate order—absolute thermal imbalance.”
Lin En’s voice rang clear in everyone’s ears.
“Then…”
His gaze sharpened.
“…let it return to chaos.”
He instantly withdrew the Mental Barrier that maintained the boundary.
[Critical Point Collapse–Thermal Pressure Conversion]!
In that moment, the laws of physics took over!
The collision and annihilation of two extreme zones converted all energy into a forward-propagating physical phenomenon—an invisible, tsunami-like [Subsonic High-Pressure Air Pulse]!
The atmospheric scar swept silently across the Beast Tide.
After a heartbeat of dead silence, chaos erupted in the sky!
“Look! The Corrupted Winged Birds!”
A young guard pointed upward, his voice distorted by fear.
Ella instinctively followed his gaze, nearly dropping her notebook.
As a learned scholar, she was intimately familiar with the habits of various magical beasts, but the scene before her defied all understanding.
Her voice trembled as she muttered, as if recording live observations for herself.
“They… they’re convulsing in the air! Their wings have gone rigid, losing all control, as if an invisible hand has strangled their throats—they’re rolling unpredictably!”
“Oh no, look at that one—its head is lashing wildly, its balance system completely destroyed! They’re all spiraling down!”
Master Elaine’s expression grew grim.
“It’s not just birds!”
He pointed with a shaking hand at the giant flying beetles.
“Those giant beetles… their shells… are rupturing!”
Everyone stared in shock.
They saw the flying demon insects, clad in heavy carapaces, burst open like overinflated bladders—hard shells splitting with cracks as dark green fluids and fragments of tissue were squeezed out by an invisible force, spraying through the air!
“And those little things like bats!”
Barret added, his voice filled with disgust and terror.
“They… they exploded into blood mist right in the air!”
In an instant, swarms of flying monsters lost balance, colliding midair, flapping helplessly, and finally plummeting like rain—only to be trampled into pulp by the rampaging Beast Tide below.
“God!”
Ella gasped, snapping back to her senses and scribbling furiously on her parchment.
“Cause unknown! With a single unknown spell, Master Lynn caused a mass crash of enemy aerial units—seems related to the collision of the two cold and hot magics cast by Master Lynn!”
A charging Giant Wild Boar was struck on the back by a spiraling Corrupted Winged Bird corpse, howling in pain as the impact drove it to its knees.
But the Beast Tide knew no pity and no pause.
It hadn’t even had time to struggle before it was smashed by those behind and then trampled by countless claws and iron hooves.
In less than three seconds, only a heap of unrecognizable flesh and broken bones mixed with mud remained.
The aftermath of the aerial strike thus became the first obstacle for the ground forces.
Hundreds of flying beast corpses crashed into the surging herd, like massive boulders hurled into a raging river.
The vanguard’s momentum was instantly disrupted—some monsters were struck senseless, losing all direction, staggering wildly.
More fell under the descending rain of death, stumbling and then being crushed by the unstoppable tide behind them.
Everyone was stunned to see that this unprecedented, massive Beast Tide… had already fallen into chaos and suffered casualties even before clashing with them.
Lin En didn’t spare a second’s glance at the devastation.
Fiona stared at it all.
An unfathomable spell.
An inexplicable attack.
With just a single strike, it had inflicted immense losses upon the overwhelming Beast Tide.
And the mastermind behind it, Lin En, calmly shifted his gaze from the sky to the ground, fixing on the chaos among the enemy ranks caused by their own falling allies.
Sweeping the skies was merely the first card.
Disrupting the vanguard was the second.
Lin En did not stop—his eyes were already locked on the roaring flood below.
After neutralizing the aerial threat, he immediately withdrew and moved to the next step: battlefield division.
He didn’t choose a head-on clash, but instead used the Beast Tide’s sheer scale and charging inertia to create its own grave.
“Anything can be a weapon—even the land itself.”
Lin En descended to the earth before the Beast Tide, pressing both hands to the ground.
A torrent of Spirit Power surged forth—not to condense into stone walls or spikes, but to flow deep into the forest soil ahead as a gentle yet unyielding wave.
He moved like a master engineer, beginning large-scale terrain modification within a radius of several kilometers.
[Terrain Reshaping – Maze Corridor]!