Chapter 49: Mixed Species

Roland had seen a great many things since arriving in this world that had no right to exist. He had made his peace with most of them.

This was not one of those times.

The creature was the approximate size of a small building. Two wolf heads hung from a neck thick as a barrel, both sets of eyes glassy and forward-facing in the incurious way of something that didn’t need to look because it already knew where it was going. Six legs, stocky as rhinoceros columns, each foot the size of a grown man’s torso. And covering it from crown to hindquarters: a shell. Dark brown, encrusted with something that looked like algae, curved over the body like a cathedral dome scaled down and made obscene.

Frankenstein, Roland thought, had taste compared to whatever designed this thing.

“Hybrid species,” Iron Axe said, his voice carrying a steadiness that Roland found both reassuring and slightly alarming. “The smaller beasts earlier — they were under its control. That’s why the mixed grouping. That’s why they fought each other and then stopped.”

So. A commander-type. Roland filed it and looked at the creature’s pace — slow, methodical, utterly without hurry.

“Archers first,” he said. “Try the heads.”

The wind was wrong for it. Two of Iron Axe’s best climbed the watchtower, read the gust patterns, adjusted their angle, and released.

The arrows caught the creature across the shell’s leading edge and skipped away with a sound like struck metal. Ricochet, Roland thought. That answered one question.

The hunters loaded again and aimed higher — this time, accounting for the angle, they caught the leading head at the crown and the second at the neck.

The creature paused.

Then it tucked both heads into the shell and kept walking.

The entire militia went silent.

“Guns,” Roland ordered.

Carter and Iron Axe moved to the parapet edge, rested their barrels on the lip, and fired. Four shots. The smoke drifted north on the wind. Roland watched closely: the lead balls punched small craters in the shell, one opened a visible hole — but the creature absorbed it all without changing speed or direction. The shell’s material was biological carbon layered over bone, structurally closer to a geological formation than flesh. Lead balls deformed on impact. They were the wrong tool.

“Explosives,” Roland said. “Now.”

Iron Axe was already signaling his deputy.

The creature reached the wall.

It didn’t ram it the way the bison had — it pressed itself against the stone and began to vibrate, a high-frequency rhythmic impact that Roland felt in his teeth before he heard it as sound. Stone chips flew from the mortar lines. Cracks ran along the seams between blocks, branching outward the way ice cracked on a pond.

Stone walls resisted compression well. They resisted shear and vibration almost not at all. Roland had known this as an engineer. He understood it now as a man standing on top of a wall that was beginning to come apart beneath his feet.

The militia on the compromised section ran. The correct decision.

Something caught Roland around the waist — a grip from nothing, firm and sudden — and then he was off the parapet and descending rapidly, boots hitting cobblestone a breath later. Nightingale materialized beside him, expression unchanged.

“The wall,” Roland said.

“I know,” she said.

Above them, a section the width of a house folded outward and the creature stepped through it, shell scraping both sides of the breach, and continued into Border Town at the same measured pace it had maintained since the treeline.

Van’er could feel his own pulse in his fingertips.

The explosive kit was heavier than it looked. A wooden box, mine debris packed around the charge to direct the blast downward, copper ignition wire on the outside. He’d trained with an earlier version. He’d been told this one was improved.

“Light it and place it under the creature!” Iron Axe’s voice, from somewhere behind him.

The creature was eight yards ahead. It filled the street. Its shadow covered him.

Van’er tore the oilcloth, found the copper wire, and pulled.

Sizzling. White smoke from the seams of the box.

Ten breaths.

He walked forward. The creature had not noticed him — or had noticed him and considered him beneath notice, which amounted to the same thing. Its shell was close enough that he could see the individual scales, could smell it now: something like river mud and old iron.

Seven.

He was at its feet. He crouched and slid the box under the leading edge of the carapace, into the gap between shell and frozen ground. His hands had stopped shaking somewhere in the last thirty steps. He wasn’t sure when.

Five.

He stood.

Three.

He ran.

Two.

One—

The sound came up through his feet before it hit his ears — a compressed, concussive thump that he felt in his chest and the backs of his eyes. The shockwave knocked him forward a step. Then the snow column rose: a white flower, blooming straight up from under the shell, impossibly clean against the grey sky, and the creature made a sound for the first and last time — something between a crack and a groan — and collapsed.

Black blood spread outward in a slow ring across the frozen ground.

The cheering started from the wall and moved through the street in a wave.

Van’er sat down where he stood. His coat was soaked through with sweat he hadn’t noticed producing. His hands were shaking again, now that there was time for it.

He looked at the ruined creature and thought that he would very much like to go inside and sit by a fire for an extended period of time.

Then the horn sounded again.

Long. Two short.

We cannot handle this alone.

Van’er closed his eyes for one breath. Then he picked up his pike and stood.

Chapter 49 Mixed Species

Roland rubbed his eyes in disbelief, what the hell was this? Was this still within the scope of the biological variability of a demonic beast? What he saw was hard to describe with words, even monsters in horror films were not this absurd.

From afar, it looked like a giant turtle with two heads, but from close up, it was actually two wolf heads.

Roland thought, was this a test specimen from Dr. Frankenstein? It was almost as tall as the city walls, its body was 7 yards long, and it had a total of six legs which were stumpy and shaped like a rhinoceros’ legs. However, one foot was the size of at least one adult torso. The head … unlike the two- headed monsters in various monster films, they weren’t yelling at each other, biting each other, or trying to show who was the boss. Instead, they were just hanging down, and their eyes had a wooden glaze . It was like a zombie which was brainlessly moving forward.

However, the demonic beast’s most striking feature was the shell on its back. The shell’s surface was dark-brown and covered with algae, and it had a special hardness. It was just like a turtle shell, covering the turtle from the front to the back. If this monster could also shrink back into its shell like a turtle, it would be really hard to get rid of it.

However, Roland didn’t worry, a demonic beast this big had to be slow, so it was destined to be a target. Even if the firearms couldn’t penetrate its shell, it was still possible to shoot the heads that were sticking out. If it intended to hide in its shell, then they would have to turn it upside down with explosives.

“Your Highness, this is a hybrid species,” Iron Axe nervously leaned over and explained, “Now I can understand why the demonic beasts of different

species work together. They seem to be under the control of the hybrid demonic beast.”

So it was like a lion which commanded sheep? Roland nodded. “So this is a completely different beast than the one you met last time?”

“It is also my first time seeing this kind of hybrid species. Although it looks bizzare, you can’t get careless. As long as it’s a mixed species, it will always be hard to deal with it.”

“It will soon enter the range of our archers, so try to first kill it with bows and crossbows.” ordered Roland.

At this moment, since it was still lightly snowing and a strong wind was blowing from the North, the weather wasn’t suitable for archery. However, two hunters of Iron Axe’s personal squad were still confident that they could kill the beast.

They climbed up the watchtower, tested the wind and then fired their arrows into the air.

The two arrows seemed like they had grown eyes. They rose to the highest point and then, under the influence of wind and gravity, fell at an almost vertical angle onto their target.

Just as envisioned, the arrows bounced off the shell. In Roland’s brain it even sounded like a ricochet.

Seeing this, the hunters hurriedly inserted their next arrow on their strings, and let loose a second wave.

Finally, this volley received a result. This time, the impact area was in the front part of the monster, so one arrow precisely entered into the head of a wolf while the other arrow was entered the neck of the other head.

However, the demonic beasts didn’t roar in anger or speed up its charge, it just stopped for a short pause, tucked its head into its shell and then continued to slowly move forward.

This change left everyone stunned.

With this the demonic beasts just looked like a tank, its body was as low as possible above the ground so that even a better shooter wouldn’t be able to land an arrow.

“Take your guns,” Roland ordered.

Now, the target was only fifty feet away from the wall. Even if the guns weren’t carved rifled flintlocks, he didn’t worry that they would miss.

Carter and Iron Axe immediately went near the edge of the wall, laid the barrels of their guns on the horizontal frame of the wall, aimed, and fired.

While a burst of white smoke was drifting away from the rifles, Roland could clearly see the bullet hitting the shell and splitting away some debris, even opening a small hole within the shell. However, the mixed species seemed to be unaffected, as it continued to maintain its original speed.

It seemed that this layer of armor belonged to the strength category of biological carbon’s intensity, thought Roland. Unfortunately, the lead balls were still too soft, so they were easily deformed and were not suitable to penetrate thick armor. So, those four rifles alone to break the mixed species’ armor was quite unrealistic, so the only option left was to use explosives.

Iron Axe agreed with the Prince’s judgement, he immediately ordered his deputy to get the explosives as fast as possible, because the demonic beast had already reached the walls. They didn’t feel the earth tremble like it did when the demonic beast stomped toward the wall.. Instead, it unexpectedly began to smash its shell against the wall again and again, just like a high- frequency rotary hammer. Suddenly, stone chips began to fly everywhere and a number of cracks spread along the bound cement at a rapid speed.

Rough walls were highly resistant to compression, but the tensile and shear resistance performance of the walls were very poor. That meant that the wall’s ability to withstand the shock of vibration was almost zero. The people standing on the walls could feel a strong vibration, and soon, a shrill sound of friction was delivered to the ears of all the people standing on the

wall. With this, the wall had begun to give up under the mixed species’ attack.

However, its impact hadn’t stopped. Instead, it started to move again, and soon the whole front half of the beast’s body was embedded into the walls.

The militia standing on the part of the wall with the cracks had already fled, and the invisible Nightingale grabbed Roland by his waist and jumped down with him from the top of the wall – if at this moment someone was staring at the prince, he would see the prince’s feet hanging above the floor, just like a ghost.

When Van’er arrived carefully carrying a package of explosives, he was surprised to see that there was already a nine foot-wide hole within the wall, and the demonic beast had already stepped through the wall but was still maintaining its previous speed of slowly moving forwards.

“Hurry!” Iron Axe shouted, “light it and put it at the foot of the demonic beast!”

Although Van’er’s hand were shaking, his mind unexpectedly became clear and every detail of his training with the explosives emerged within his mind. It was a different version of explosives than used during the training. To reduce costs, the explosive was now placed inside a wooden box filled with debris from the mine. At the same time, the ignition design was also optimized, it used a flint and copper wire type ignition. If this failed, the kit also contained normal ignition leads. He hurried to tear away the oilcloth and opened the bag, where he then got to see a copper string. When he exhausted all of his body’s strength to pull the string, he could hear a sizzling sound coming out from the box and white smoke began to rise up – this was the sign of a successful ignition.

To slow down the burning time, the lead wire was soaked in salt, only needing the time of 10 breaths to explode. When Van’er saw white smoke rising up from the box, his world turned quiet around him. He had already witnessed the power of this thing, if it exploded in his hands, he was afraid that not even any pieces of his own body would be left.

Nine breaths.

Van’er could hear his own heartbeat, as if it wanted to give him a countdown. Step by step, he went in front of the demonic beast, placing explosives under the beast.

Five breaths.

Now that it had built up so much pressure, nothing could stop the explosion now.

Three breaths.

Van’er turned and ran.

Two breaths.

Once breaths – he could only hear a muffled sound. Van’er felt the shockwave and the world became noisy again.

He turned around and could see a lot of white blasted up from under the shell – that was the snow shot into the air from the explosives, at first glance it looked like a diffused misty flower. The demonic beast finally stopped, but before it fell, it crashed into the ground, as if it couldn’t afford to hold up its heavy carapace any longer. Then, black blood surged out from under the carapace, soaking the ground around it.

“Oh oh oh -!”

Seeing this, the crowd suddenly burst out in cheers.

Van’er fell down to the ground, only now discovering that his clothes were soaked with sweat.

It was finally over.

When everyone thought this, the sound of the horn resounded throughout Border Town again.

Once more, a horde of demonic beasts was marching toward Border Town, trying to destroy it.