The hard clay floor of the trench suddenly vibrated violently. Within seconds, our footing mutated into a living, viscous mud swamp. My iron boots were immediately sucked downward. The same happened to Virelith and Selena's footing.
The black, foul-smelling mud water rose incredibly fast. The filthy liquid passed our ankles. Its surface continued to creep upward, reaching our knees in less than ten seconds.
A cold and heavy sensation instantly choked the movement of my legs.
Virelith struck the mud surface with her magic staff. The girl's face was deathly pale. She struggled hard to maintain her balance so she wouldn't fall face-first into the thick liquid.
"Kael! There are more than three Upper Class mages up there deploying this magic!" shouted Virelith with ragged breath.
Panic truly dominated her voice. The engineer girl stared at me with eyes widened in horror behind her cracked glasses.
"If I fight them with my mana to harden this ground back, we will all die! I will surely die of exhaustion in two minutes!" shrieked Virelith in despair.
Selena lifted the hem of her already dirty skirt. "This is a very inelegant way to die, Draven. I do not like getting dirty."
Logical panic began to take over Virelith's common sense. However, I was completely unaffected by the horror of this quicksand. My brain was already accustomed to processing death in various forms.
I patted Virelith's shoulder with my left hand. I looked at her with a face as cold as eternal ice. In my past life, I had seen far too many arrogant knights try to drown my defensive trenches with lowly tactics like this.
"Calm down, Engineer," I said with a heavy and calm baritone voice. "Never fight their magic with your magic. That is a waste of energy."
Virelith blinked in confusion amidst her panic. "Then what do we fight it with, Kael?! We are going to drown!"
"Fight it with basic physics," I answered flatly, staring at the mud puddle. "Water always seeks the lowest point. Make a five-meter deep drainage hole right beneath our feet. Do it right now!"
Virelith's genius brain instantly grasped the meaning of my tactical command. Her panic vanished immediately, replaced by absolute focus.
She slammed the tip of her staff into the muddy bottom. A yellow mana glow flared from her body.
"Earth Grinder!" chanted Virelith with a loud voice that pierced the silence of the trench.
The solid ground far beneath the quicksand was instantly hollowed out by her magic. A giant drainage channel was created in the blink of an eye deep within the earth.
All the mud liquid that had threatened to drown us was instantly sucked down into the hole. The sound was incredibly loud, like a giant sink whose plug was forcibly pulled.
We landed back on the bottom of the trench. The place was now dry, albeit slightly slippery from the remaining mud.
Virelith exhaled a tremendously long sigh of relief. She supported her body against the trench wall while clutching her racing heart.
Selena smiled thinly, wiping the remaining dirt from her arm gracefully. "A very brilliant idea, Commander. Highly practical."
However, Virelith's relief lasted for only two seconds.
From above the lip of the trench came an incredibly heavy thudding sound. It was the sound of dozens of steel boots landing simultaneously inside our defensive trench.
The Nightbane elite troops had apparently jumped down. They thought we were busy drowning and dying, swallowing filthy mud.
Now they pincered the rest of the narrow trench corridor from two opposite directions. Our way out, both in front and behind, was totally blocked.
From behind our formation came a very familiar and annoying laugh. Darius Greyvein stepped forward, leading the remaining knights under his command.
His expensive silk clothes were dirty, full of mud splatters. His helmet was slightly dented on the side. But his aristocratic face radiated a very crazy and bloodthirsty euphoria of victory.
Meanwhile, from our front, there was a far deadlier threat. The Knight with the Lightning Spear stood silently blocking the path. His steel helmet covered his face incredibly tightly without a gap.
I stared at the figure with the lightning spear carefully. My eyes narrowed sharply, piercing the darkness of the trench corridor.
I noticed his style of holding the lightning spear. It was a very rare hybrid grip in this academy. A specific fighting style that combined solid defense and lightning-fast attacks in a single short breath.
My veteran instinct rippled strangely upon seeing that posture. I felt very familiar with his combat stance. It felt as if I had seen this man firsthand swinging the same spear in the border defense trenches ten years in the future.
Who exactly are you? Did we ever drink the blood of the same enemy in my previous life? Or were you the one trying to drown me in a sea of corpses?
I threw those confusing thoughts far away as Darius stepped closer from behind. Both ends of the trench were now filled with fully armed knights.
They slowly narrowed their pincer distance. Their spears and swords were pointed straight at the three of us.
Virelith, Selena, and I were forced to close ranks. We gathered tightly in the middle of the clay trench with no way out.
"Hahaha! Where are you going to run now, street dog?!" Darius's laughter exploded with a shrill, insulting tone that made my ears hurt. "Sucking mud is below you. And the tips of our swords are on both your sides!"
Darius pointed his gleaming longsword at my face. His eyes radiated an incredibly thick and dark malice.
"It is just you and these two whores, Draven!" insulted Darius without any mercy whatsoever. "Surrender right now. Drop your weapons and kneel in this mud. I promise I will only chop you up slowly so you can enjoy the pain!"
Virelith ground her teeth, holding back her anger upon hearing that lowly insult. The engineer girl gripped her staff tightly, ready to cast her final spell.
Selena, on the other hand, tilted her head. The sociopathic girl only smiled wider hearing Darius's threat, as if she were listening to a clown's joke.
From the opposite side, the knight tapped the tip of his lightning spear against the hard ground. His voice sounded very calm yet full of upper-class arrogance that could not be hidden.
"The architecture of this trench is a very genius defensive tactic, Draven," he praised with a very cold tone. "You successfully made elite troops waste a lot of energy and mana tonight. I must admit your military intelligence."
The Lancer tilted his head slightly, staring at me from behind the slits of his steel helmet.
"But in the end, even the strongest fortress will surely fall if besieged from two directions in a narrow space," continued the Knight with the absolute tone of a judge. "Surrender now. Do not make me cut both your necks by force here."
Faced with a dozen deadly swords and spears locking my life from two directions, I showed absolutely no panic on my face. I did not struggle or beg for mercy like cadets in general.
Instead, I lowered my Blood-Iron sword. I let the tip of the incredibly heavy black steel touch the muddy ground with a soft clinking sound.
My shoulders shook softly. I bowed my head slightly. I chuckled in silence.
That laugh slowly grew from my throat. A laugh that was very heavy, very dark, and vibrated the trench walls around us. It was the pure laugh of a demon watching its prey just enter and lock its own cage door from the inside.
My laughter made the smile of victory on Darius's face fade instantly. The Upper Class Cadets around him looked at each other with anxious and uncomfortable expressions.
I stopped my laughter. I looked at Darius and Henry alternately with red eyes glowing very savagely amidst the darkness of the night.
"You nobles always suffer from the same genetic disease since birth," I said with a highly mocking tone that sharply cut the silence. "In any situation on the battlefield, you always feel that you are the hunters. You are always confident that you hold control over other people's lives."
I gave a deadly smirk, displaying my row of teeth.
"Do you think I dug this narrow and long trench just to hide like a dirty rat?" I asked, challenging Henry directly. "No! Not at all."
I lifted my greatsword slowly, then rested it casually on my right shoulder. The Troll muscle in my right arm throbbed, demanding blood.
"I dug this dirty trench to line you all up in one very tight straight line," I hissed, full of a threat promising death. "I designed this deadly hole so that you have not a shred of room to dodge sideways."
Darius furrowed his brow, failing to understand my logic. Henry tensed in his place as if just realizing something highly fatal.
"Dodge what?!" asked Darius dismissively with a high pitch. "You have run out of energy, Draven! You do not even have explosion magic to sweep us away!"
"Not dodging me, Viscount," I said while smiling incredibly wide. "But dodging when my main executioner arrives tonight to clean up trash like you."
Darius snorted roughly. He spat onto the muddy ground right near my boots.
"Your main executioner? You have truly gone mad, Draven!" cursed Darius with bulging neck veins. "There are only the three of you in this hole! No sane person would come to help a bunch of trash from the Basic Class!"
However, Darius's arrogant sneer was brutally cut short.
The clay walls around us suddenly vibrated very violently. Small rocks and root remnants fell from the lip of the trench, hitting the knights' helmets.
This vibration was different from the mud magic earlier. This was absolutely not a vibration from an earth magic spell. This was a physical vibration from hundreds of incredibly heavy and massive footsteps.
The rumbling sound of footsteps and terrifying savage howls were heard tearing through the night fog. The sound of that chaos came with extraordinary speed from behind Darius's troops.
Darius and the Nightbane knights reflexively looked back with faces of extreme confusion mixed with panic.
At the dimly lit far edge of the trench lip, a giant silhouette leaped, cleaving the thick fog. The silhouette landed with a very loud thud right inside the trench corridor.
It was Ragnar Holt.
The wild man from the north who, since the beginning of the exam, had never once come down to be inside the defensive trench with us. The man whose existence had been completely forgotten by the enemy because they were too blinded by vengeance to chase me.
Ragnar ran at full speed toward the rear line of Darius's troops. The giant-bodied man shouldered his greatsword with one hand and laughed savagely like a madman who had just broken off his chains.
"Make way!" roared Ragnar with his raspy voice booming to all corners of the forest of death. "These starving pigs behind me need a proper dinner tonight!"
Behind Ragnar's heels, the true horror finally revealed its original form.
Dozens of giant Grave Hound monsters, skinless dogs, and extremely starved wild beasts plunged headlong into the narrow trench crevice. The monsters flooded in like a black deluge filled with sharp fangs, toxic saliva, and claws ready to tear flesh.
Ragnar had apparently been roaming the forest in silence during the battle. He lured them all from the remnants of the explosion ruins above. He acted as live bait and herded that deadly pack right into the trench channel I had designed exactly for this purpose.
Darius's face instantly turned deathly pale, resembling a rotting walking corpse. The noble's mouth hung wide open, unable to believe what his own two eyes were seeing.
"Retreat! Form a shield formation!" shouted Darius hysterically with a shrill voice full of fear. "Hold those monsters back! Do not let them get close!"
However, Darius's warning was far too late. The corridor was too narrow to form an ideal shield formation.
At the other end, Henry tensed rigidly in his position. The Knight with the Lightning Spear finally realized the true horror of the dirty war architecture I had built tonight.
It was not me, Virelith, and Selena who were trapped inside this trench. It was they who were trapped inside this meat-pincering hole.
The Nightbane elite troops were now fatally squeezed in a narrow corridor that absolutely lacked room to maneuver backward or dodge sideways. In front of them stood my greatsword, incredibly thirsty for blood. And behind them surged a wave of starving wild monsters that knew no the word mercy or fear.
"This is an absolute kill zone," whispered Virelith with an awestruck tone, watching the sea of monsters rolling savagely from behind our enemy's line.
Selena laughed melodiously, full of happiness. Her laughter blended perfectly with the horrified screams of the noble knights who were beginning to be bitten, chewed, and torn alive by the front line of the Grave Hounds.
My smirk widened in the darkness of the night. The Troll muscle in my right arm throbbed hard, demanding its share of the slaughter.
The Veteran's trap had finally closed flawlessly. Now, there was no more airspace for them to escape. The true slaughter in the Aethelgard Death Zone had just begun.