He paused, letting the gravity of the collapse settle over the hall, before continuing.
"It is not that Ragguard is frail... but that they face a most malevolent foe. They are currently beset by hundreds of Crawlers, spearheaded by a legion of a million undead!"
Dant stepped aside, granting the contenders an unobstructed view of the nightmare they were destined to confront. The observation crystal flickered, manifesting the grainy, terrifying silhouette of a specific undead breed: the Crawler.
The Crawler was a demonic beast birthed from the evolution of the undead lineage. Yet, it had not ascended toward the higher ranks of sentient demons; instead, its evolution had buckled and regressed, warping into a primal, bestial state. This devolution had forged them into the ultimate biological engines of war.
In outward form, the Crawler retained a haunting resemblance to the human undead, a grim reminder of the men they had been in a forgotten age. Now, they stood stripped of all raiment, their behaviour indistinguishable from that of a rabid, blood-starved beast.
The Crawlers prowl on all fours, their flesh a slick, mucous grey reminiscent of a carrion reptile. Their frames are gaunt—skeletal as a desiccated mummy—yet their musculature possesses the tensile strength of tempered steel. When they rear up on their hind limbs, they loom at a height of two and a half metres or more. Their talons are formidable enough to hoist a grown man aloft and crush a human cranium as effortlessly as a ripened melon.
The fangs of these demonic beasts are as jagged as serrated razors, backed by jaws capable of splintering thick bone like dry biscuits. A foul, dull-green ichor drips incessantly from their maws, and a ridge of bone-spurs erupts from the crown of their skulls down to the base of the spine, sharp as raven needles.
A Crawler possesses the primal hunting instincts of a prehistoric predator, its potency far eclipsing that of the common undead. A single specimen wields the raw physical power of a hundred—perhaps two hundred—standard undead; and that reflects merely its base physical threshold, even before accounting for any esoteric capabilities.
Yet, the true horror of the Crawler lies in its lineage. If the creature was sired from a human warrior, it retains the absolute martial instincts of its former life. To face them is to engage a beast that fights with the refined techniques of a man. For the Ragguard Fortress to be besieged by hundreds of such entities is nothing short of a living nightmare.
As the projection of the Crawler flickered across the massive observation crystal, gasps of terror and frantic outcries rippled through the nine hundred and fourteen survivors.
Isolated, a single Crawler is not an insurmountable foe; a disciplined circle of ten demon hunters, employing a well-orchestrated trap, might feasibly bring one down. However, the arithmetic of the battlefield rarely favours the few.
While the Crawlers boast the raw, savage instincts of the beast, they are devoid of human sapience or higher cognition; they remain susceptible to the cunning snares of men, provided the hunters maintain their nerve.
Yet, should more than two or three of these aberrations converge upon a single theatre, the hunt dissolves into a waking nightmare. The Crawlers communicate through guttural, rhythmic howls—not unlike a wolf pack—to orchestrate their slaughter. When they hunt in vast, coordinated prides, reminiscent of hyenas or lions, they ascend to the absolute apex of the predatory hierarchy.
Ordinarily, Crawlers are solitary or lead small clutches, their individual potency far outstripping the demons of the Demon Legion. A single Crawler acting as a vanguard for an undead swarm elevates the threat from a mere nuisance to a lethal catastrophe.
However, this season of the Bloody Hunting has birthed an anomaly: hundreds of Crawlers have formed a unified legion to siege the Ragguard Fortress. As the contenders beheld the anatomical horrors and lethal traits of these apex killers shimmering upon the observation crystal, a wave of sickening nostalgia struck them; they would have traded their souls to return to the briar domes of the Raffblooms rather than face this pack of butchers.
A cacophony of panicked outcries erupted, filling the Great Hall with a jagged, desperate noise. Panic flared like a contagion. Several contenders actually stumbled backward, their eyes darting toward the exits as they prepared to desert the mission. The assembly teetered on the brink of a total riot—
"SILENCE!!" Captain Mordant bellowed.
His roar hung in the air for several agonising seconds, vibrating through the bulkheads until the echoes finally died in the stifling quiet of the hall.
The hall fell into a stilled, absolute silence. Every contender bit their tongue, held in check by a lingering shred of respect for Mordant and the Arkflame military—yet that reverence did not extend to a willingness to throw their lives away. They remained mute, awaiting his next word, but they were no conscripts bound by an oath of fealty. They were individuals, and their loyalty was a brittle thing.
Dant pressed on, ignoring the restless energy of men who looked ready to bolt from the chamber at a moment's notice.
"Two days ago... reconnaissance units confirmed that the briar-walls of the demon lands near the Northwest fortress have split open once more—"
A low murmur rippled through the ranks of the demon hunters. They began to whisper amongst themselves, their private councils drowning out the man on the dais. Mordant raised his voice, refusing to grant them the luxury of an interruption.
"The scouts report that hundreds of Crawlers have clawed their way out from the ancient battlefields near the frontier... We lack a definitive tally, but our projections suggest no fewer than five hundred! And they spearhead an undead legion numbering in the millions..."
The moment the figure 'five hundred' escaped Dant's lips, the atmosphere within the Great Hall turned sepulchral. The temperature seemed to plummet; a sudden, icy weight settling in the marrow of every man present.
Each contender had intuited their objective the moment the Crawler's silhouette shimmered onto the observation crystal, but Dant's verbal confirmation was the final nail in their collective coffin.
Had this been a month prior, when ten thousand hunters stood whole, they would have been brimming with arrogance, perhaps even brawling for the 'honour' of reaping such a pack. But now, with fewer than a thousand remaining, their numbers were a pittance. To cast such a small force against an army of apex killers was not war—it was an execution.
Faces paled as cold sweat slicked the brows of many; an involuntary response to the creeping dread. Several staggered backward, their boots scuffing the metal floor, while a few were already calculating the grim cost of desertion.
The murmur of the assembly swelled into a frantic tide of voices, ignoring Mordant entirely as they traded fragments of horror:
"They run on all fours like rabid curs!"
"They scale vertical walls as if they were level ground..."
"They skitter across ceilings like monstrous spiders!"
"They possess a wit equal to any man in this room!"
"They are more savage than any demon or beast we have ever faced—!"
The hall teetered on the edge of a riot. Mordant remained silent, no longer attempting to shout over the chaos. Instead, he waited for a fracture in the noise to strike—a sentence that hit the chamber like the blow of a sledgehammer.