"They're almost here, young master."
Lily's soft whisper brushed against Hel's ear. Hel, who had been half-dozing from boredom, jolted awake immediately, her drowsiness vanishing like mist.
It had been half a day since the beastmen entered Heim territory. Only now, after all the defensive lines had strategically withdrawn, were they finally approaching. Their speed was… honestly, touching.
"They've finally arrived, huh."
Hel's eyes lit up as she stood and gazed into the distance. There, countless black dots appeared from behind a small hill and soon spread out, covering the entire slope. Like a dark tide, they surged toward Heim City.
And that was just one wave.
Hel swept her gaze across the horizon—from the Monster Forest to the Black Mountains—seeing countless such tides connecting into a single, encircling mass.
Outside Heim territory, the world had turned black beneath that writhing flood of bodies. Heim City stood like a lone boat struggling against a sea of darkness.
Soon, the distant shouting began—low at first, then growing louder and louder. The black tide surged closer until Hel could finally make out what it was.
They were strange creatures—beings that walked upright like men, clothed in animal hides and wielding bone blades, yet bore the heads of beasts. Rabbit heads, rat heads, sheep heads… even a few dog heads among them.
She wondered absently if there were any huskies in the mix.
There was an old saying: "When men gather by the tens of thousands, they blanket the mountains."
Hel had faced tens of thousands before—she'd once wiped out mechanical sentinels by the thousands with a single spell—but that had been a detached, effortless massacre. She'd never seen them like this, spreading before her like a living carpet.
This time was different. These enemies were arrayed in full view beneath her walls. And though not one among them radiated the aura of a transcendent being, the sheer number pressing down upon her still created a heavy, suffocating pressure.
"Young master, they're little beastmen," Lily said, leaning closer to whisper an explanation. "Little beastmen are the weaker races among the beastmen—rats, rabbits, sheep, and other small herbivorous types.
"They're not like the stronger tribes. The little beastmen are many in number and breed quickly, but their cultivation talent is poor. It's almost impossible for one to reach transcendence. So they're treated as the lowest of the low—slaves or cannon fodder.
"And because they reproduce so quickly, every year around this time, the beastmen send huge numbers of them to attack the Watchwall. It's both population control… and a way to bleed humans."
Hel's lips curled slightly. "Population control, huh. Judging from how many they've sent just to attack my tiny earldom, I'd say they've thrown a lot of little beastmen into the grinder this year."
"Yes, young master. But… there's another reason."
Lily's tone grew heavy as her eyes drifted toward the approaching tide.
"If they can wipe out even a few powerful human transcendents with nothing but these expendable troops, it's an enormous gain for them."
"So there's precedent, then," Hel said flatly.
"Yes, young master. Three hundred years ago, the third prince of the Brave Kingdom of Viler—a prodigy who became an Earth Knight at a young age—led a strike force of elite knights to raid the Aira Beast Court's rear lines, hoping to shake their morale at the Watchwall front.
"At that time, the Aira Beast Court had moved most of its fighting power to the Bloodstained Plains. Their rear guard was made up of the old, the weak, and the crippled. By all logic, the prince's plan should have succeeded easily."
"But it didn't."
Lily's voice lowered.
"According to survivors, once they entered the heart of the Beast Court's lands, they were met with endless waves of little beastmen launching suicide attacks.
"They fought their way forward, but before they could even reach the court's capital, half their number had fallen. Even the third prince died amidst the chaos.
"When the survivors finally retreated, only fewer than a hundred of the three hundred-strong elite remained alive. They said the slaughter lasted seven days and seven nights. The little beastmen never stopped coming—relentless, tireless. Many knights died not from wounds, but from exhaustion after their battle aura ran dry."
"I see…"
Hel nodded thoughtfully. Now she understood just how terrifying these "little beastmen" really were.
Still, mass assaults like these didn't worry her much. After all, she'd never heard of undead or puppets—the finest tireless laborers in existence—ever dying of exhaustion.
The real question was how to eliminate them efficiently without revealing too many of her trump cards.
Her gaze flicked upward, toward the distant sky.
There, a translucent, floating eye watched silently from above.
[Top-Tier War Spell: Eye of War]
—or, more precisely, [Top-Tier Divine War Spell: Eye of War].
It was a spell granted through faith to those who served the God of War under the Death Pantheon's main deity of calamity.
If the caster already possessed a war-related divinity, they could invoke it directly. Its base purpose was simple—scouting and relaying orders during large-scale conflicts.
But what made it a top-tier spell was its scale.
A single Eye of War could oversee communication and reconnaissance across an entire battlefront—spanning even a whole kingdom.
Only those at the rank of Crowned Mage or above could cast such a spell… except for anomalies like Hel, of course.
That meant whoever was controlling it was no ordinary mage.
Hel could only think of one possible connection: the War Witch.
And if this really was her magic, then the War Witch herself might be one of the commanders of this invasion.
But the woman had said she'd "find Hel sooner or later."
Hel doubted her confidence came from just this Eye of War.
No—this invasion might very well be a cover, a grand distraction to lure her out.
Perhaps the entire campaign had been cooked up by the War Witch herself—just for a chance to find her.
Still… even the War Witch wouldn't expect that the very person she was searching for was standing right here beneath her gaze.
For safety's sake, Hel couldn't afford to expose anything tied to the Death Witch now.
"Alright then," she murmured with a faint, mischievous smile.
"Let's win this war the ordinary way."