Chapter 876

Evenson had been planning to seize the Dreadscar Rift for a long time.

That meant he knew exactly what stood between him and victory.

Hailermondas.

The Abyssal Lord was the single greatest obstacle in the entire operation.

This mission had been designed around a surprise decapitation strike. The longer the battle dragged on, the greater the chance that something unexpected would happen. The Burning Legion was simply too powerful for Evenson to gamble on a prolonged engagement.

And with the Eredar twins unable to participate for certain special reasons, the entire operation ultimately came down to one question:

Could they kill Hailermondas quickly?

Evenson had prepared for exactly that.

He’d acquired two briefcase-sized nuclear weapons from Berikov, a Russian arms dealer.

And he hadn’t paid for them.

The two little monsters had been sitting in storage for almost a year.

Finally, they were getting some use.

They weren’t remotely comparable to full-sized nuclear warheads. Their yield was only a few hundred tons.

But a few hundred tons was still plenty.

If Hailermondas somehow survived a direct hit, he’d be severely wounded.

That was all Evenson needed.

"Ha!"

Inside one of the Soul Engines, G’anos stood at the center of the enormous machine, gently running his hand across its cold, dormant core.

"My old friend. It’s finally time for us to work together again."

There were three Soul Engines in the Dreadscar Rift.

G’anos had personally overseen the construction of all three.

This particular engine was the largest and oldest of them.

He had built it himself, hammer stroke by hammer stroke.

It was practically his child.

Every inch of the machine represented years of work and sacrifice.

Then the Legion’s front line had moved.

The fuel supply had been cut.

And the new lord of the Rift, Hailermondas, had been too stupid to understand what he had inherited.

Not only had he allowed the engine to fall silent, he hadn’t even bothered maintaining it.

Watching his life’s work abandoned had nearly broken G’anos’s heart.

But today, at last, his creation would fulfill its original purpose.

A massive mushroom cloud rose in the distance.

G’anos’s eyes lit up.

He immediately opened the furnace chamber of the Soul Engine and pulled an ancient scroll from inside his robes.

Without hesitation, he tossed it into the furnace.

"My old friend. Enjoy a thousand sinful souls."

He smiled.

"Soon, we’ll never have to worry about fuel again."

He closed the furnace.

Then he picked up the Soul Engine’s ignition key—a massive Z-shaped metal bar.

He jammed it into a socket beneath the engine’s core.

Then he began turning it with both hands.

Once.

Twice.

The machine groaned.

Then—

BOOM.

The Soul Engine’s core suddenly erupted with green light.

One rune after another blazed to life.

The ancient fel-powered machine had awakened.

The souls being fed into the engine were rapidly consumed and converted into energy. Vast quantities of fel energy surged through the network of conduits buried throughout the Rift.

Across the fortress, abandoned fel cannons suddenly began humming.

Their barrels slowly rose.

Teams of three Gulgan demons had already been waiting beside each artillery piece.

At the squad leaders’ shouted commands, the demons immediately went to work.

They adjusted targeting mechanisms.

Cleared the barrels.

Loaded ammunition.

Then, regardless of where the cannons had been positioned, every single one of them rotated toward the interior of the Rift.

The weapons were ready.

"We’ve got the signal!"

Galia looked toward the mushroom cloud.

"Move!"

She immediately led the Heart Warriors toward the upper levels of the Rift.

Sif wasn’t about to let them get ahead of her.

"For the Queen Mother! For Asgard!"

The Valkyries charged after them.

Agatha opened her mouth.

"For the Burning Legi—"

She stopped.

"...Never mind."

She followed them without finishing the slogan.

As she ran, however, one thought kept nagging at her.

That little Warlock...

No.

She really couldn’t call him a little Warlock anymore.

Evenson’s strength had clearly grown considerably.

He’d somehow developed a destructive spell powerful enough to produce that kind of explosion.

Then again, she supposed that was normal for Warlocks.

A destruction spell with a three-kilometer blast radius and a one-kilometer casting range was hardly extraordinary for the profession.

Still...

Evenson hadn’t appeared after the explosion.

Could he have blown himself up along with Hailermondas?

"Everyone’s moving."

Half-hidden behind one of the stone pillars surrounding the portal through which Galia’s forces had arrived, Evenson cautiously peeked out.

He watched his army advance.

No resistance.

Good.

Only then did he step out.

Agatha had been worrying for nothing.

Evenson had teleported away before the nuclear weapons detonated.

His demonic magic circle had been left on the other side, so after sending the Eredar twins a quick message to confirm he was safe, he’d simply jumped back through the portal and caught up with the others.

The three hundred soldiers reached the uppermost level of the Rift surprisingly quickly.

They didn’t know the terrain, but that hardly mattered.

They had Agatha.

And the various checkpoints along their route had already been cleared by the female demons under her command.

The invasion force encountered virtually no resistance.

Then they reached their destination.

Everyone stopped.

The enormous platform where Hailermondas’s fortress had once stood had been reduced to a massive crater.

The grotesque fortress itself was gone.

Only piles of shattered rubble remained.

Even the surviving members of Hailermondas’s personal guard had disappeared.

"This isn’t right."

Agatha narrowed her eyes.

Something was wrong.

She quickly identified the problem.

Where was Hailermondas?

The explosion had been devastating, but surely it hadn’t completely vaporized an Abyssal Lord.

Yet there was no sign of him.

No body.

No corpse.

Nothing.

Galia frowned as well.

"It doesn’t make sense."

Of everyone present, she had the best understanding of nuclear weapons.

Evenson’s briefcase bombs had relatively low yields.

But they were still nuclear weapons.

She looked over the enormous crater.

"If the detonation occurred here..."

After their transformations, neither she nor the other Heart Warriors needed to worry about the heat or radiation left behind by the blast.

That wasn’t what concerned her.

It was the fortress.

The ruins shouldn’t have looked like this.

At ground zero, a structure caught in a nuclear blast should have been pulverized and scattered.

Instead, enormous sections of the fortress had collapsed into rubble.

That meant the building itself had possessed extraordinary defensive properties.

Galia immediately activated her spectral vision.

She scanned the wreckage.

Before she could determine what she was seeing, the ground shook.

Something enormous moved beneath the rubble.

Stone shifted.

Debris exploded outward.

A massive figure clawed its way from beneath the ruins.

Hailermondas.

He was alive.

Hailermondas might have been stupid.

But his instincts were sharp.

Perhaps his lack of intelligence had left him with the sort of animal instinct that more sophisticated minds sometimes lost.

Evenson had claimed to be bringing tribute.

Then he’d dropped two suspicious objects at Hailermondas’s feet and immediately teleported away.

Something about that had felt wrong.

Very wrong.

Fortunately, Abyssal Lords possessed some degree of magical ability.

It was almost unfair.

A mortal mage had to spend years studying linear geometry and arcane calculus just to cast a basic spell correctly.

Yet this enormous lump of muscle, who probably couldn’t handle simple arithmetic, could teleport.

Evenson was personally offended by the injustice.

The moment Hailermondas sensed danger, he teleported himself back inside his fortress.

That fortress had once belonged to the Eredar twins.

And Legion lord’s fortresses were not built to be fragile.

The original structure had been constructed by the twins themselves.

Anyone who knew their history—and their rather extreme dedication to staying alive—could understand what that meant.

The twins were very, very fond of survival.

Their fortress reflected that philosophy.

From the outside, it possessed the ornate architectural style favored by Eredar nobility.

But underneath all that decoration, it was essentially a series of low structures built partially underground.

Most of the important facilities were below the surface.

The outer walls alone were more than twenty meters thick, forged from fel-infused copper ore.

The twins had also layered the fortress with defensive enchantments and emergency teleportation routes.

The original fortress could very well have survived a small nuclear blast.

Unfortunately, Hailermondas had hated the Eredar aesthetic.

And the original structure hadn’t been large enough to accommodate his enormous body.

So he’d ordered extensive renovations.

Unauthorized renovations.

Massive renovations.

The fortress had become larger.

Its defensive integrity, however, had gone in the opposite direction.

It still possessed some protective magic, but it hadn’t lasted long under the nuclear blast.

The fortress collapsed.

And Hailermondas, relying on his absurdly durable body, had been buried underneath it.

"YOU DARE ATTACK MY DOMAIN?"

Hailermondas roared as he finally clawed his way free.

He took two steps forward.

Then staggered.

His enormous body nearly collapsed.

Abyssal Lords were infamous for their durability.

Their bodies were built to withstand punishment that would kill lesser demons instantly.

But surviving a nuclear detonation at point-blank range was another matter.

Hailermondas looked horrific.

His enormous wings were gone.

Half of his dragonlike tail had been blown away.

One eye was missing.

Hundreds of wounds covered his body.

Thick green blood poured from them.

"You..."

Hailermondas gasped.

A massive glob of blood spilled from his mouth.

Only then did he properly examine the invaders with his remaining eye.

The Valkyries led by Sif told him little.

But then he saw Galia’s Heart Warriors.

His remaining eye widened.

"THE ILLIDARI!"

The Dreadscar Rift might have been deep behind Legion territory, but reports from the front still reached the fortress.

Hailermondas knew about the suicidal maniacs—no, demon hunters—who had been conducting relentless raids against Legion strongholds.

And now they had come here.

They had chosen his domain as their next target.

That had to be it.

The demon hunters had joined forces with their little Warlock pet and launched an assault on the Dreadscar Rift.

"Hahahaha!"

Hailermondas laughed.

Despite his condition, his voice thundered across the ruined platform.

"I’ve been waiting for this!"

His remaining eye burned with excitement.

"I never expected you to come to me willingly."

He raised his massive weapon.

"Come! Give me the battle I’ve been waiting for!"

Sif and Galia exchanged stunned looks.

He was waiting for us?

He knew about us?

Their worst suspicions seemed to be confirmed.

The Legion really had been watching their world.

These demons had known they were coming.

The enemy had been preparing for them.

"Then—"

Hailermondas suddenly screamed.

"AAARGH!"

Blood sprayed from his mouth.

His body tilted violently to one side.

He barely managed to catch himself with his enormous spear.

The injuries were simply too severe.

Evenson finally decided to speak.

"You’re not exactly in fighting condition."

Hailermondas’s eye shifted toward the voice.

"Why don’t you stop resisting?"

Evenson’s tone was almost sympathetic.

"I can give you a quick and dignified death."

Hailermondas looked around.

For several seconds, he couldn’t find the speaker.

Then he finally spotted him.

Evenson was crouched behind one of the heavily armored female warriors.

Hailermondas stared.

You’re kidding me.

If you’re going to say something like that, shouldn’t you be standing at the front?

Why are you hiding all the way back there?

Then Hailermondas noticed Agatha approaching.

His expression immediately brightened.

"My loyal deputy!"

He extended his remaining hand.

"These people are all enemies! Help me!"

Agatha stopped.

She tilted her head.

"Oh?"

Her expression became exaggeratedly confused.

"Did I hear that correctly?"

She placed a hand against her chest.

"Great Lord Hailermondas is asking for help from a lowly Doomguard?"

"How strange."

Hailermondas finally heard the venom beneath her words.

And the phrase lowly Doomguard was one he’d used against Agatha countless times.

He lowered his voice.

For perhaps the first time in his life, he sounded almost pleading.

"Help me out here."

He extended his hand farther.

"For the Legion."

Agatha smiled.

"Heh."

Then she drew her curved blade.

The weapon flashed.

Hailermondas barely had time to react.

His outstretched hand hit the ground.

Agatha had severed it at the wrist.

"Don’t touch me."

Her voice was cold.

"You filthy, pathetic, stupid Abyssal demon."

"You dare betray the Legion?!"

Hailermondas’s fury overwhelmed his pain.

He forced himself upright.

"I am Hailermondas, Abyssal Lord!"

"This is my domain!"

"I will not die so easily!"

His voice shook the ruined fortress.

"My loyal forces will come!"

"And when they arrive, you’ll be the ones lying dead here!"

He wasn’t entirely wrong.

A nuclear explosion that large was impossible to miss.

The mushroom cloud had risen high above the Rift.

Every demon in the region had noticed it.

The demons Agatha had already recruited simply continued carrying out their assignments after the initial shock.

But the demons who remained loyal to Hailermondas froze.

They didn’t immediately assume an enemy attack.

The Dreadscar Rift hadn’t seen a real war in thousands of years.

Peace had made its defenders complacent.

Their heads were full of explosives and empty of anything resembling battlefield awareness.

So when they saw the mushroom cloud rising from their lord’s fortress, their first thought wasn’t:

We’re under attack.

It was:

Holy shit. The boss finally killed himself.

And considering Hailermondas’s personality, that seemed entirely plausible.

Of course an Abyssal Lord would go out with a bang.

Then a furious roar suddenly echoed through their minds.

"ENEMIES HAVE INVADED MY DOMAIN! DESTROY THEM!"

The demons exploded into action.

At last.

After thousands of years of boredom, there was finally a war.

The demon guards and enraged warriors scrambled into motion.

Those stationed within the main structure of the Rift immediately began charging upward on foot.

The units stationed on the outer floating islands activated their teleportation devices.

One after another, they rushed through.

The first demon emerged from the portal—

And immediately felt the ground disappear beneath his feet.

"AAAAAAAH!"

He plummeted.

"WHO THE HELL PUT THE TELEPORTER ON THE EDGE OF A CLIFF?!"

He disappeared into the abyss.

And the invasion of the Dreadscar Rift had officially begun.