Flying high above the moon branch Silvia was looking towards the wilderness. She could see thousands of beasts running in their direction when she made eye contact with a particular beast that seemed to look back at her. It seemed that even among the fleeing beast was an immortal beast.
Down below the hundreds of disciples were outside the barrier ready to protect the branch and the ordinarily mortals who lived here.
Since cultivators were not soldiers nor trained to be as the one in charge here Silvia organize all the disciples in groups of 5 to 15 and placed them around the branch with the objective of defending their area. The areas would also overlap with at least 1 other group could also help each other as needed. A couple of the more powerful groups such as Vera's was not given an area to stick too. Instead they were to move at their discretion as the battle changed.
Her goal was not necessarily to save as many disciples as possible of course she hoped they would all survive. It was more to nurture strong and capable disciples for the sect otherwise she could just let them attack from inside the barrier.
Once Silvia had finished making her arrangements she let Alara and Vera as the highest ranking disciples do as they saw fit since they were naturally the greatest targets for nurturing.
With that being case since the previous day Alara had grabbed a bunch of formation path disciples and had them set traps around the area they would be coming from. While she did that Vera as an alchemist grabbed the other alchemist and ensured all the disciples were prepared with healing pills and Vitality pills for a long battle. Most disciples were only given tier 1 versions of these pills while the stronger disciples were given the stronger tier 2 versions. Only Vera had tier 3 pills on her as they were the peak of what a mortal could handle. Alara could have had some but she rejected the use of all pills although no one knew why.
With their preparations done the only thing left to do was wait and the tensions were high among the disciples especially the lower core disciples.
Soon the sounds the stomping of thousands of beasts could be heard as the disciples felt the ground beneath them begin to shake. The stampede grew louder and louder as they finally became visible to the eyes of the disciples. Seeing this scene of thousands of beasts approaching along with the feeling of the ground shaking shook many disciples to their core.
It was at this point a voice echoed across the area as the beast continued to approach, "Prepare yourselves! These are mere wild beasts running in fear! They are stupid, untrained and uncoordinated so fight! Work with your comrades and we will emerge VICTORIOUS!!" Vera short speech inspired all the disciples. as the sounds of explosions began to ring out.
Looking down at Vera, Silvia felt satisfied if not for her timely arrival she would have had to ask for reinforcements from the sect.
Soon the sounds of explosions began to ring out as the formation traps began to activate when the beasts began running over them. Alara had instructed the formation path disciples to set various traps but the two most common were a fire and poison traps. Even in the snowy winter the fires still began spreading across the beasts and those that were immune to it were being weakened or killed by the poison spreading through the air.
Despite the traps being effective and taking out 10% of the incoming beasts they were still limited by the strength of the disciples creating them and the stronger Sen beasts simply bulldozed their way through. This was greatest advantage Sen beasts had over humans their innate physiques.
Ignoring the weak beasts that died that rest continued their charge and it was at that moment the Star Sect disciples began making their moves. Those who pursued defensive paths such as the earth, or body path went forward first. Behind them was those pursued paths such as the sword or light paths to either provide direct support or damage. The last ones left were the disciples who pursued paths capable of long ranged attacks. These were paths such as the fire or air paths.
As the first group of disciples charged forward the last set of traps Alara had designated activated and the ground underneath the beasts vanished leaving massive pitfalls across the land. This was done to stop the beasts charge because otherwise with the number difference they would have ended up overwhelmed.
Another 10% of the beasts ended up falling into these pitfalls but except for the ones that fell first and got crushed most of the others lived and would slowly make their way out over time.
At this point in time Silvia made her own move and while she as an immortal could not attack the mortal beasts she could still do something about the immortal beast hiding among them.
Appearing around her were hundreds of tiny red lights appeared around her. After a moment all the red lights began growing brightly and out from them hundreds of beams of plasma fired towards one point where the immortal beast was hiding. As the attack was about to hit the appearance of the changed from an ordinary ice wolf to a rat as it dodged the attack. Although Silvia's attack missed none of the other beasts were hurt by it as only the single point the beam hit was damaged.
"I wish you had let me play around a little longer." The rat said suddenly appearing in the sky across from Silvia. It was much larger than an ordinary rat being around three feet long with a pitch black body.
"An immortal phantom rat? Return from where you came and I will spare you." Silvia said to it.
"Unfortunately that will be impossible that monster is destroying everything in the region to get its hands on the divine beast." The monster it was referring to was naturally the poison overlord. "Besides you humans have plenty of empty land why not share it?"
"Share? Do you take me for a fool your nature is to devour that is how you beasts grow stronger. Coexistent is impossible so if you won't leave I will just have to kill you."
"Keke some humans are dumb enough to fall for it." The rat said with a laugh.
While the two were having a conversation in the sky the battle down below was progressing.
Alrin had naturally been the first to charge forward with no fear of death. Behind him was Edward and Rex while Alara and Vera would for now stay in the back and used long range attacks to bombard the beasts.
"Fuck fuck fuck, I knew we should have left." Rex complained but he still followed.
"Relax getting eaten alive does not hurt as much as you would think." Alrin joked as he swung his great sword cutting down beasts trying to escape the pitfalls.
"I don't even want to know if that's true." Edward said also slicing through beasts.
"You're becoming more like Alara…" He said sending his a fire script above causing blasts of fire to rain down.
While they were still relaxed enough to casually converse many of the other disciples were fairing worse. Some were getting first hand experience of the pain of being eaten alive. Of course this was only a small portion of the disciples who were either over confident and pushed forward than they should have or disciples who looked actual battle experience and could not handle all the carnage.
As for the rest of the disciples although they struggling they were performing quite well because to be a cultivator meant you had to be a warrior. Unless you were Alara you would have to fight, for survival, for resources, to discover their paths that is why a cultivator must be a warrior or they would stagnate and eventually fall.