Cowardice and bravery are entwined with our fight-or-flight instinct. Sometimes even our bravery is a mockery because we cannot flee, so we fight. Cowardice is selfishness because cowards choose to survive through abandonment. They rarely realize that they aren’t abandoning pride or the people relying on them. They are abandoning themselves.

~Belenus the Sun God

“RELEASE!” Drock’s voice bellowed the moment the treant was in range. Flaming arrows carpeted the sky, but Crow could only groan in annoyance. They didn’t even really target the big bastard so much as blanketed the entire area.

“Aim for the wooden parts, you damned fools!” Crow growled under his breath. Cultivators near him heard every word, but they, too, could only watch in silence. Out of all those arrows, only a dozen hit the treant’s wooden parts, which instantly caught fire. However, Crow underestimated the treant’s ability to respond to fire, and it did so without even slowing down.

Drock was waving toward some sort of slingshot contraption, and they all watched curiously as a dozen ceramic pots were launched at the treant with unerring accuracy. The fire distracted it, and it didn’t notice the projectiles until too late. Waving its arm to swat the pots away, they shattered and the liquid contents covered the treant head to foot. Another volley of flaming arrows flew out with minimal arc, which was definitely fired by expert archers this time as every arrow struck the weakest points.

Thump. Thump. Thump. WHOOMP!

Arrows striking the wooden legs and arms could be heard across the battlefield, which had gone strangely quiet, followed by a massive explosion. The treant went up in flames. Its screams shook the eardrums of everyone on the wall as it thrashed around on the ground. It killed hundreds of the dead while it thrashed about, even doing them the courtesy of burning them to ash.

Every soul watching barely breathed until the treant stopped moving and continued to smolder like a dying campfire. Cheers echoed from up and down the wall, but Crow and his people were frowning. It was good that it died, but that was a lot of effort to take down one of those things, and it still came within a hundred meters of the wall. Looking toward the tree line, they could see hundreds of those things.

“This is bad,” Mara whispered.

“It won’t be as bad as you are thinking. That was the most mundane way of taking one of those down. Don’t forget, there are quite a few fire-based cultivators around, Nin and I included. The question is whether we can take them down before they rip out a section of the wall.” Crow analyzed the situation and gave her his analysis.

After all, he already declared that Mara was his little general. She had a knack for strategy and command. He didn’t know where she gained this talent or ability, but Crow wasn’t want to question things like that. It was a mistake to ignore his people’s strengths.

“The problem is we can’t take the initiative because they are out of range, and there is an army of dead between them and us. We are in a passive defensive position, so we can only wait until they attack. That puts us in a precarious situation, even with those people helping. If they group up and attack one section of the wall, we cannot stop them. The other problem is why have they stopped moving forward? Unlike the other dead, they don’t seem mindless, or perhaps they are under the sway of something else. Either way, it doesn’t bode well.”

Crow nodded and felt she wasn’t wrong. However, those things were out of reach of his people. He had Mara and Acco, so he could arrive near them and wreak havoc. If they could get behind them—no, that was too dangerous. There was no telling what else hid in those woods.

This time, when the ground shook, Crow sighed. The worst-case scenario happened, and the big bastards attacked all at once. They charged in groups of three, and their coordination made them a pain the ass to deal with. Drock had the ceramic pots delivered down the line, but using the previous strategy only caused the threesomes to split to avoid all of them getting hit.

However, Crow had Acco and Mara, so he handed all the ceramic pots to them. The treants couldn’t respond as those two smashed the pots down on their heads from directly above them. Before the treants could react, Crow’s friends were already back on the wall. If Song Xue or Crow missed a target that large, it would shame everyone that knew them.

Although their attack was successful, there weren’t enough pots to damage their numbers. They killed two of the treants before that method was a bust. Crow looked at Mara, and she just nodded and took control.

“Mages, to the wall!” Mara roared to the people standing in the makeshift courtyard where the reserves were. Mage was a generalized term for anyone focusing heavily on spell-casting. It was implied she needed people with an affinity toward fire. They were best for lobbing spells over the wall because most lacked martial abilities. However, for this, precision was necessary, so she needed them on the wall. “Prepare your best fire spells and wait for my command!”

At that moment, the entire wall shook, and they turned toward the central tower to see that a treant had rammed itself against the wall between them and the tower. Thankfully, the wall didn’t break, but everyone in that area was knocked from the wall. Treant’s swipe killed most people on the wall before they even reacted. Drock, a heaven’s blessed saint for this low-level city, responded fast, and before it could attack again, it was already on fire.

“Eyes front or this mommy will castrate you, you damned motherless whores!” Mara roared, and Crow felt his mouth drop open in shock. Even Nin could stop herself from laughing out loud, but it was the wake-up call they all needed. A treant trio was almost on them.

“I’m a lady!” A mage shouted from nearby.

“Debatable,” Mara growled back, and laughter echoed down the line. “Release your spells, and if you miss those fucking targets from here, I’ll toss you over the wall myself.”

Crow held back before launching the second version of his fireball at the treants coming up behind the closest three. As far as he was concerned, those guys were as good as dead. What he hadn’t expected was that his spell had really transformed. During his experimenting, he’d mainly focused on wood-based spells because of the thorn wall spell, so he hadn’t experimented with the half-assed fireball spell he made.

Instead of a fiery ball of destruction, a black, plasma-like fire beam spurt out from his hand like a stream of water. The treant Crow had targeted couldn’t even react before the beam struck his brambly beard and drilled a hole through its chest the size of a fist.

Even Mara turned to look at Crow, dumbfounded by what he’d just done. The treant stumbled a few more steps before its boiling blood essentially melted the treant from the inside out. More than a few people gagged at the site, but she saw Crow’s pale face and waved Song Lin over to help him.

“You okay, you fool?” Song Lin asked, helping Crow step back from the fighting.

“I’m fine, just drained most of my mana. Just need a little time to recover,” Crow told her, and it was within her expectation. That spell was extremely domineering and intense, but she could also see his surprised face when he cast it. “It turned into a channeling spell, and it took too much before I could cut it off. Rookie mistake, don’t cast a spell you haven’t tested before.”

“Especially in the middle of a battle, idiot,” Mara growled at him but continued giving orders in his stead. Crow didn’t leave the wall but moved back and sat down to cultivate. Working hard to refill his drained Source.