Chapter 218: Rain of Fire

The siren went off before Holden reached the gate.

WAAAH. WAAAH. WAAAH.

Holden was already running.

Cora and Sera followed close behind, their fatigue from the artillery mission forgotten the moment the alarm sounded. They rushed through the fortress compound, passing soldiers scrambling toward their positions, medics dragging the wounded toward the bunkers, and cannon crews turning their weapons toward the northern wall.

The northern gate.

Holden’s 10,000x processor was already pulling information from the fortress communication channel.

"Contact north! Thousands of contacts!"

"Gate is holding, but the pressure is... I can’t, they’re everywhere!"

"Where are the gargoyles coming from? The sky is FULL of them!"

He reached the wall and took the steps three at a time, his Rank 3, 6-Star body carrying him to the battlement in four strides. Stepping onto the wall, Holden looked north.

The horizon was moving.

The entire northern approach, from the tree line to the fortress wall, a distance of three hundred meters, was covered in a living carpet of bodies. Monsters. Thousands of them. Tens of thousands. Rank 1 fodder filled the front, a wall of chittering flesh stretching from one side of the valley to the other. Behind them came Rank 2 brutes, taller and bulkier, pushing the smaller monsters forward. Farther back were the silhouettes of even larger creatures. Siege beasts. Commanders.

Ten thousand. Minimum.

The wave had already reached the wall. The first rank of fodder clawed at the wall, tearing into the masonry while their bodies piled on top of each other to form living ladders. Cannon crews fired into the mass, each shot ripping a hole through the swarm that filled again within seconds.

BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!

"Holden!" Emric’s voice cut through the chaos.

Emric stood on the left flank of the wall, his shield planted firmly as he faced the northern approach.

"Brace the left flank! Cannons, keep your fire rhythm! Infantry, shields at thirty degrees! Do not let them reach the top!"

A Siege Beast charged the left flank. Twenty tons of armored flesh came rushing forward at full speed, aimed directly at the section of wall where Emric stood.

The soldiers scattered.

Emric didn’t move.

His 10x cognitive buff ran the calculation in an instant, measuring the beast’s mass, speed, trajectory, and the force that would hit the wall. All those numbers narrowed down to one clear answer.

He planted his shield and angled it seventeen degrees. The position was enough to redirect most of the impact sideways, away from the wall and into the open ground.

The beast hit.

BOOM!

Twenty tons of Rank 3 muscle slammed into a Rank 2 shield at seventeen degrees. Instead of crashing straight into the wall, the force slid across the shield. The beast’s own momentum carried it sideways, its feet losing traction as its massive body skidded along the base of the wall.

It stumbled and crashed into the mud twenty feet away, its legs tangled beneath it. The creature roared and struggled to rise, but its momentum was gone.

"Renna! Downed beast!" Emric shouted.

"On it!"

Renna was stationed on the right flank. She had already given up on individual targets. The sky was packed with gargoyles, dozens of them diving toward the wall in screaming runs that forced soldiers behind their shields. She fired into the sky instead, targeting groups rather than single creatures. Her storm arrows burst among the formations like flak shells, sending bolts of electricity through clusters of gargoyles as they tumbled from the sky.

Bzzt. Bzzt. Bzzt.

Emric’s call brought her attention back to the ground. She turned, drew, and fired in one smooth motion. Three storm-wrapped arrows flew toward the downed Beast, all aimed at the exposed knee joint.

Thwack. Thwack. Thwack.

The arrows punched through the gap in the beast’s iron plating. Lightning surged through the joint, locking the muscles in place. The creature roared and tried to stand, but its leg gave out beneath it.

"Now! Cannons, fire!"

BOOM! BOOM!

Two cannon shots struck the beast at point-blank range. Its iron armor shattered, and the massive body split apart, dissolving before they hit the ground.

The soldiers on the left flank cheered.

"Hold the line!" Emric shouted. "They’re still coming!"

They were. The ten thousand hadn’t slowed. Cannon fire, arrows, and shield work were slowing the swarm, but nothing was stopping it. The fodder kept coming. The brutes kept pushing. Bodies were piling up at the base of the wall, creating a ramp of corpses for the monsters behind them to climb.

And above them, the gargoyles kept diving.

Lyra stood at the center of the wall, directly above the northern gate. Her spear was planted into the ground, both hands gripping the shaft as frost energy poured from her palms into the weapon, through the weapon, and down into the wall.

Ice spread across the ground. A thick blue-white sheet covered the ground and extended six feet from the base. The monsters reaching the wall couldn’t grip the frozen surface. Their claws scraped uselessly against the ice while their feet slipped beneath them, causing the living ladders to collapse before they could reach the top.

Crack. Crack. Crack.

But the ice was melting. The sheer heat from thousands of monsters pressing against the wall was warming the stone, while Lyra’s energy was slowly running out. She poured everything she had into the frost array, but the ice was losing ground. It thinned, retreated, then spread again in another desperate attempt to hold the line.

"Holden!" Lyra shouted without looking away from the wall. Her spear hummed as the frost fought against the heat. "The gate! They’re at the gate!"

Holden turned.

The northern gate was the weakest point. A heavy iron door reinforced with wards, built to withstand a siege. But those wards were failing. Thousands of bodies were pressing against it, draining the enchantments, and through the cracks, Holden could see what was doing the real damage.

Centipedes.

Rank 3 Armored Centipedes, each twenty feet long, crawled over the gate. Their bodies were covered in iron plates that steamed under the rain. Their mandibles were the size of swords, and they were chewing through the iron.

Each bite tore another piece from the gate. The wards sparked, flared, and died one after another. Through the widening gaps, Holden could see dozens of centipedes packed together, their armored bodies twisting over one another as they tore at the gate from both sides.

The gate was going to fall.

"Holden! We need backup at the gate!" Lyra shouted. Her voice was fierce, but there was desperation underneath it.

Holden found a shadow.

The shadow cast by the gatehouse arch stretched across the top of the gate beneath the wall-mounted searchlights.

He focused and stepped.

Shhp.

Holden appeared above the gate, standing on the iron lintel and looking down at the swarm below. Forty of them. Maybe fifty. They were packed so tightly that their armored bodies overlapped as they chewed through the gate.

None of them noticed him. Their attention was fixed on the fortress.

Holden raised his sword.

The Solar-Forged Sword appeared in his hand, its steel igniting as Hellfire Cleave gathered along the blade. He pushed the ability to maximum output and pointed the sword straight down.

FWOOOOOSH!

The fire didn’t erupt from the blade. It came down from above. A pillar of white-hot flame, ten feet wide, shot from the gate lintel and slammed into the centipede swarm like a fist from the sky.

The effect was absolute.

The centipedes’ Rank 3 iron armor didn’t melt. It evaporated. The corrupted flesh underneath didn’t burn. It simply ceased to exist.

Tsssssssss.

Fifty centipedes vanished in a single blast. The gate was clear. The hole in the iron remained, but the creatures that had been tearing it apart were gone.

The soldiers on the wall saw the destruction.

Then they saw Holden standing on the gate lintel, his sword blazing as the rain evaporated around him and turned into a cloud of steam.

The cheer that followed was different. It was a roar, loud enough to shake the wall, coming from every soldier who had watched the fire fall from the sky and erase the threat.

"HOLDEN! HOLDEN! HOLDEN!"

The chant spread across the wall. From the left flank where Emric stood. From the right where Renna continued firing. From the center where Lyra fought to maintain the frost array.

Holden dropped from the gate lintel and landed beside Lyra.

The flames disappeared as he dismissed the sword. The steam cleared, and the rain began falling over him again, running down his face and neck.

Lyra stared at him. Her spear was still pumping frost into the wall, but her attention was completely on Holden. Her eyes were wide, bright, and sharper than ever beneath the blue glow of her frost energy.

Holden gave her a small smile.

"Sorry I’m late," he said. "Traffic was terrible."

Lyra stared at him for a moment.

"You," she said, shaking her head. "You are impossible."

"I’ve been told."

A faint smile touched her lips before she turned back toward the battlefield. The wall was still under siege. Ten thousand monsters were still pressing against it, and the war was nowhere near over.

But the gate was still standing. The wall was holding. And Team Soup was still fighting.

The System tallied the battle in the background, counting every kill and every beast that fell beneath the fortress’s defense.

[Massive Horde Defense Complete!]

[Total Enemies Defeated: 1,247]

[KP Earned: +75,000]

[2x KP Booster Active! KP Doubled!]

[+150,000 KP!]

The battle had been brutal. The defense had been desperate. The gate had almost fallen, but Team Soup had held the line. The wall had held.

And Holden had dropped from the sky like a meteor and erased fifty Rank 3 centipedes with a single blast.

The war wasn’t over.

But as long as they stood on that wall, it wouldn’t break.