Kaito pointed toward the burning forest beyond the bridge. "Artillery mage. Griffin. Probably a thousand infantry with enchanted bayonets."
The wheel spun. Connection unstable. Retry? Above, the mana storm growled. On the horizon, the Ruined Cathedral waited—three days of siege, a thousand enemies, and only a handful of misfits to hold the line.
"Where are the enemy?" Miko-chan asked, head tilting at an unnatural angle.
"Took you long enough," Lyra grinned, pulling a coil of detonation cord from her pack. "Now listen. Bridge Seven is the only way to retreat our main force. If we lose it, the entire southern army gets surrounded. You've got the Summoner's Mark —I saw it flash when you arrived. That means you can call in units from the gacha." ISEKAI FRONTLINE v1.3.4
"That's just a scripted affection line," Kaito said tiredly.
Stone, steel, and screaming soldiers tumbled into the mana river below. The far side collapsed into rubble. The surviving enemy forces howled in frustration but could not cross.
Lyra whistled. "Not bad for a first pull. Could've been a slime." Kaito pointed toward the burning forest beyond the bridge
An explosion tore through the night a hundred meters to their left. The shockwave knocked Kaito against a sandbag wall. When his vision cleared, he saw a creature that should not exist: a griffin with jet-black feathers and a saddle-mounted mana cannon, dive-bombing a trench full of soldiers.
"You know," Lyra said, not looking up from her work, "most commanders would've fed her to the mage as bait."
He triggered it anyway.
She didn't run—she flowed , a blur of white and cyan, her blade singing through the air. Each strike wasn't a cut; it was a judgment . The first three wolf-helms collapsed in pieces, their armor sheared clean through. Her passive triggered: a soft ring of healing light spread outward, mending the shallow cuts on Kaito's arms. "More incoming," she reported. "Also, my left foot is stuck in a corpse."
Kaito did the only thing a former gacha addict would think of.
"And the Artillery Mage?"