The Sinful Young Master

Chapter 469: Battle against the horde of monsters – 1

The first wave hit like a breaking dam.

Thousands of nynthralls compressed into a charging mass created a pressure that preceded their physical arrival by seconds — the collective displacement of air, the ground vibrating under coordinated corrupted footfall and the malice energy radiating from that many bodies moving in the same direction combining into something that felt like weather rather than combat.

Jolthar stood in the path of it and let Horgath read them.

The chaobane energy extended outward from the blade in threads too fine to see but perceptible to anything carrying significant accumulated power — and every nynthrall in the horde carried significant accumulated power, malice being the substance of their existence rather than simply an attribute.

The threads found purchase immediately, mapping fault lines in corrupted structure the way water finds cracks in stone, identifying the specific frequencies at which each creature’s coherence was most vulnerable.

Then the first wave arrived, and Jolthar moved.

Not the controlled movements of his Knashii work or the raw committed force of his telekinesis at full extension — Horgath demanded a different quality of movement, flowing rather than striking, finding the angles where chaobane energy could enter rather than forcing entry through impact.

His swordsmanship when wielding Horgath was completely different from his usual ways, and it was more complicated too. The wielder of Chaosbane had to adjust his strength and the vast amount of energy it sucks in too. Jolthar who has abundant energy, was the only one capable of doing so.

It was also one of the reasons why Caelum let Jolthar take their ancestor’s sword. He knew that not everyone was capable of holding the sword. And right now, he let Jolthar take care of that nyphorite too, because he believed Jolthar was strong enough.

He moved through the leading edge of the horde like something that had decided the concept of being surrounded didn’t apply to it; the blade traced arcs that looked almost gentle until the chaobane found the fault lines it had mapped, and the nynthralls it touched simply came apart from the inside.

A creature the size of a horse hit the chaobane energy, and its own malice turned against it; the accumulated corruption that had given it density and strength suddenly worked at cross purposes with the structure holding it together. It collapsed mid-stride, the pieces of it falling in directions that suggested the internal architecture had forgotten what order it was supposed to maintain.

Three more behind it received the same treatment before they noticed that the one ahead had stopped moving.

Jolthar was already elsewhere.

The chaobane’s efficiency was immediately apparent in how it felt to use compared to his other weapons — where Knashii drew from reserves and Vorthak required active channeling of chaos energy, Horgath was almost collaborative, the blade doing the diagnostic work and asking only that Jolthar provide the angles and the movement. The cost per kill was dramatically high, and the results per motion were dramatically higher.

Which was fortunate, because the numbers required it.

He carved a channel through the horde’s left flank, the chaobane disruption spreading beyond direct contact as creatures near the blade’s path had their own malice destabilized by proximity to the frequency Horgath was broadcasting.

A nynthrall didn’t need to be touched to be affected — if it was close enough and carrying enough accumulated corruption, the chaobane energy could find purchase through the air between them, the disruption propagating through the malice field the way vibration propagates through connected material.

This created a zone of effect around Jolthar that extended perhaps ten feet beyond the blade’s physical reach, a radius within which nynthralls began experiencing internal contradiction between their malice and their structure before the blade arrived to complete what the ambient chaobane had started.

The giant variants required more direct engagement.

One reached him from the right, its massive form having pushed through the smaller creatures with complete indifference to what it was stepping on, and swung a limb that would have taken a building’s corner off if it had connected with one.

Jolthar’s telekinesis intercepted it — not stopping the movement, which would have been expensive, but redirecting the trajectory by fifteen degrees, enough to send the strike past him rather than through him.

Horgath came up into the giant’s exposed underarm as the swing carried it past, the chaobane finding the concentration of malice where the limb connected to the torso and introducing the specific disruption frequency that made that concentration try to occupy two contradictory states simultaneously.

The giant nynthrall’s arm separated from its body not because the blade cut through it but because the malice binding the arm to the torso stopped being able to maintain the connection under chaobane interference.

The creature stumbled, its spatial understanding disrupted by suddenly having one fewer limb than its movement was calibrated for, and Jolthar’s follow-up strike to the central mass completed the engagement before it recovered.

Another giant from the left.

Then two simultaneously from ahead.

Telekinesis handled one, throwing it laterally into its companion with enough force to disrupt both their approaches and buy the split second Horgath needed to address each in turn.

The chaobane energy was warming now, the blade having processed enough corrupted material that its diagnostic threads were running faster, finding fault lines more quickly, the efficiency compounding with each engagement.

Behind Jolthar, the Kaezhlar and Naemarys forces had engaged the horde’s flanking elements.

Caelum moved through the left flank with the devastating force of a Tier 10 cultivator who had chosen not to use his maximum output because maximum output wasn’t necessary and conserving reserves was a sensible strategy. Each strike he landed created a void in the horde’s formation that required dozens of creatures to fill, and his aura’s passive suppression of malice energy was visibly degrading the combat effectiveness of nynthralls within its radius — creatures that should have been charging instead milling with reduced directionality, their malice-driven purpose partially overwhelmed by proximity to something that simply outweighed their nature.

The Kaezhlar senior cultivators worked in coordinated patterns that reflected genuine tactical refinement — not the improvised cooperation of people thrown together but the result of months fighting side by side in an environment that punished mistakes immediately and permanently. Their techniques complemented each other, defensive cultivators creating windows for offensive ones, support members maintaining the barriers that kept the camp itself from being overrun by creatures bypassing the forward engagement.