Chapter 879

Ganos’s idea of "humanitarian assistance" showed no sign of stopping.

The demon army had been cut cleanly in half. With thousands of demons packed into a narrow passage, there was nowhere for them to disperse, and Ganos’s artillery shells were landing almost directly on top of them. Every impact tore through a cluster of demons at once.

Most of the demons caught in the bombardment were already dead.

The survivors, however, showed no intention of breaking.

If anything, the sight of blood and fire—and the fact that their retreat had been completely cut off—only drove them into a greater frenzy.

The Felheart Warriors’ earlier pistol volley had done little more than add fuel to the fire. Their enemy was right in front of them, and nearly ten thousand years of suppressed bloodlust had finally been given an outlet.

Grenades exploded among their ranks.

They ignored them.

The Valkyries’ forest of spears pointed directly at them.

They ignored those, too.

The demons simply surged forward, packed so tightly together that they seemed willing to impale themselves just to reach the enemy.

And then they slammed into the Valkyrie formation.

The glorious melee the demons had imagined never came.

They simply couldn’t move.

Every demon in the front ranks wanted to get forward at once. The result was a mass of bodies compressed against the Valkyries’ shields, with the demons behind them continuing to shove forward.

The warriors at the very front were crushed so tightly that they couldn’t swing their weapons.

Some could barely raise their arms.

What should have been a brutal melee had become something closer to a traffic jam.

Both sides were simply pushing against each other, relying on raw strength to break the opposing formation.

"Sisters! Hold the line!"

Sif had joined the defensive formation herself, shouting through clenched teeth.

Not one Valkyrie voluntarily gave ground, but the sheer momentum of the demonic charge had driven the entire formation backward more than ten meters.

Only after the demons’ initial momentum finally bled away did the two sides settle into a brutal stalemate.

Even then, the Valkyries continued to slide backward.

Metal groaned against metal.

Armor creaked.

Bones protested beneath the crushing pressure.

The crowding was so severe that even breathing became difficult.

Sif knew exactly what would happen if their formation broke.

They were hopelessly outnumbered. Once the demons breached the line, they would pour through like a flood.

At that point, there would be no battle.

They would simply be trampled to death.

"Hold!"

Every Valkyrie understood the same thing, and they poured everything they had into maintaining the formation.

The first rank was already so tightly compressed that its members could barely move. The warriors behind them thrust their spears over their shoulders again and again.

It was moments like this that made the humble spear so valuable.

It lacked the dramatic sweep of a greatsword or the sheer brutality of a two-handed axe, but it needed very little room to kill.

Behind the Valkyries, the Felheart Warriors continued their promised covering fire.

Crack. Crack. Crack.

Their fel grenades were gone. All they could do now was fire their pistols through whatever gaps they could find, doing whatever they could to ease the pressure on the Valkyries.

Unfortunately, most of their shots were accomplishing very little.

The demons in the first few ranks were already dead.

Some had been skewered by Valkyrie spears. Others had been shot from behind.

But they didn’t fall.

There wasn’t enough room.

Their corpses remained upright, wedged between living demons and serving as macabre shields for the ranks behind them.

The pressure continued.

Even Asgardian-forged shields began to groan and deform.

The Valkyries’ bodies had limits, too.

The warriors bearing the greatest pressure in the front ranks felt their arm bones crack beneath the strain.

Not a clean break.

A slow one.

The bones splintered bit by bit as the crushing force continued.

The pain must have been unbearable.

Yet those Valkyries merely tucked their broken arms and battered shields against their chests and kept pushing.

Sif gritted her teeth and looked toward the upper level of the rift.

Evenson, are you done yet?

She had served in Asgard’s armies for years, but she had rarely fought a conventional battle.

When she had served directly under Thor, warfare had often felt more like adventuring. She had fought monsters, explored dangerous lands, and charged into battles that were as exhilarating as they were dangerous.

This was different.

Two armies locked together in a grinding battle of attrition.

A defensive engagement fought over every inch of ground.

There was nothing romantic about it.

And against an enemy like the demons of the Burning Legion, it was worse still.

Sif could feel the pressure mounting.

The Felheart Warriors eventually ran out of ammunition as well.

With nothing else to fire, they shifted into their demonic forms and joined the defensive line.

They had neither heavy armor nor shields, so they simply planted both hands against the backs of the Valkyries and pushed.

The female demons brought by Rody did the same.

They abandoned every trace of the elegance they normally prized and threw themselves into the most primitive task imaginable—pushing.

The battlefield was a strange place.

It could tear races apart.

It could also force completely different people to stand shoulder to shoulder.

At the beginning of the battle, Sif and her Valkyries had trusted these female demons about as far as they could throw them.

Now they were willingly putting their backs in those demons’ hands without a second thought.

It still wasn’t enough.

The formation continued to inch backward.

"Just a little farther..."

While everyone else strained with everything they had, Rody stood alone behind the formation.

She was taller than most of the demons around her, and she used that advantage to stare over the battlefield.

Her eyes tracked the distance between the defensive line and the terrain behind them.

"Just a little..."

Sweat ran down her face.

Then—

"That’s it."

A grin spread across her face.

She raised one hand and snapped her fingers.

The tiny sound disappeared beneath the roar of battle.

For several seconds, nothing happened.

Then a small stone trembled loose from the mountainside.

It rolled downward.

The stone struck a demon on the head.

The demon barely noticed.

After all, he’d already survived artillery, gunfire, and grenades.

A pebble hardly seemed worth mentioning.

Then another stone came loose.

Then another.

The trickle became a cascade.

Larger rocks began tumbling down.

The mountainside shuddered.

And then the entire slope collapsed.

A massive landslide thundered down the mountain.

The demon army never saw it coming.

They had nowhere to dodge.

The first wave disappeared beneath tons of stone. Those behind them were swept away before they could even understand what was happening.

The battlefield vanished beneath a roaring avalanche of earth and rock.

Rody finally exhaled.

She wiped the cold sweat from her forehead and looked toward the broken mountainside.

"Thanks, Mother Saggas."

A figure appeared among the shattered rock.

She was only slightly taller than a human, but her body was covered in brownish-yellow chitin. A row of curved, scythe-like wings protruded from her back.

The slight swell of her chest revealed that she was female, but nothing else about her appearance could be called attractive.

Especially her mouth.

Calling it a mouth was generous.

It was more like an insectoid feeding apparatus.

She was Saggas, the spider queen of Fel Scar Rift.

One of the few remaining high-ranking demons in the rift.

Unlike Agatha, Saggas had once been a legitimate contender for the position of rift lord after the Eredar twins departed.

She had lost that contest to Haelmundas.

And she had never forgiven him for it.

"Kill them all!"

Saggas’s voice echoed across the battlefield.

"Look, darling. I’m going to avenge you—and our children!"

Countless spider-like demons appeared around her.

Saggas herself opened her mouth and sprayed a torrent of thick green venom down the mountainside.

The demons still reeling from the landslide had no chance.

The venom splashed across them.

Their bodies dissolved beneath its corrosive power, flesh melting into steaming pools of sludge.

Saggas watched with savage satisfaction.

The fire of revenge burned in her eyes.

Haelmundas had never been good at forgetting a grudge.

Saggas had once challenged him for control of the rift. After taking power, he had gone out of his way to make her life miserable.

He exiled her and her people to the outskirts of the rift.

He burned down her original nest.

Perhaps it had been punishment.

Perhaps it had been intimidation.

Either way, the Burning Legion had always operated according to one simple principle:

The strong did whatever they wanted to the weak.

Saggas could have endured exile.

What she could not forgive was what had been inside that nest when Haelmundas burned it.

Her children.

Her newly laid eggs.

Then Haelmundas had murdered her mate.

From that day forward, the hatred inside Saggas had burned as fiercely as the flames that had consumed her home.

So when Agatha approached her and proposed joining forces to kill Haelmundas and restore the Eredar twins to power, Saggas had accepted without hesitation.

She didn’t care who ruled the rift.

Haelmundas simply had to die.

Several days earlier, she had secretly returned from her place of exile with a force of elite warriors.

They had hollowed out half the mountain.

All they had needed was a signal.

Now they had one.

"Rody, the rest is yours."

Saggas flexed her grotesque mouthparts.

"I’ve still got a blood debt to collect."

She turned and headed toward the upper levels of the rift.

The sudden attack had torn a massive hole in the demon advance.

For the Valkyries, the pressure immediately dropped.

The enemy would fill the gap soon enough.

But Sif didn’t intend to wait.

"Sisters! Advance!"

The Valkyries surged forward.

The first rank lifted their shields with everything they had.

Some could no longer use their arms, so they kicked.

Others simply drove their entire bodies into the enemy.

The demons were forced backward.

Then came the spears.

The Valkyries thrust.

Pulled back.

Lowered their shields.

Advanced.

Braced.

And thrust again.

With every repetition, they moved farther forward.

And with every kill, they became stronger.

The reason was their spears.

These Valkyries had been among the first to undergo Freyja’s blessing. They were the elite of the elite, and their weapons carried special enchantments similar to Sif’s.

Their spears drank the blood of their enemies.

That stolen vitality replenished their strength and healed their wounds.

The injuries they’d suffered while holding the line began disappearing.

Broken bones mended.

Exhaustion vanished.

Strength returned.

As long as the killing continued and their spears remained intact, the Valkyries could keep fighting.

They were, for all practical purposes, living engines of war.

The tide turned.

Demons were pushed backward.

Valkyries advanced.

The ground they had lost was reclaimed one brutal step at a time.

Then a shrill cry descended from the sky.

A vast swarm of giant felbats darkened the rift.

They dove from above, clawing at demons’ eyes, seizing them and carrying them into the air before dropping them from tremendous heights.

Kross wiped sweat from his forehead.

"Now this is more like it!"

The battlefield was finally turning in their favor.

The Valkyries were advancing.

The demons were losing ground.

And they had air support.

Kross spread his wings.

"Don’t stop me. I’m going out there to kill these bastards!"

Several of his soldiers immediately grabbed him.

"Sir, perhaps we should wait a little longer."

Kross struggled for a moment before reluctantly settling down.

Then the battlefield shook beneath a thunderous roar.

A huge figure descended from the sky.

Rody’s expression immediately hardened.

"Oh, him..."

The demon was more than five meters tall.

Brownish-yellow flesh stretched over a massive frame, a crimson tongue hung from his mouth, and enormous wings spread behind him.

"That would be the Doomguard Ziros."

Rody hesitated over the title.

Ziros had long been considered a candidate for ascension into a Doom Lord, but he had remained trapped on that threshold.

That did nothing to diminish his strength.

Kross looked at the enormous Doomguard.

Then he calmly folded his wings.

"On second thought, you make an excellent point. Let’s observe from the rear and wait for an opening."

His soldiers nodded approvingly.

Ziros landed.

He began walking toward the Valkyrie line with deliberate steps.

A dark-red sword rested in his hand.

Any demon unfortunate enough to stand in his path was simply smashed aside.

Sif immediately recognized the difference between him and the demons they’d been fighting.

"Sisters. Strong enemy. Defensive formation!"

The Valkyries raised their shields.

Ziros laughed.

Then stopped.

He stood just beyond the line.

A strange crack sounded.

His waist split open.

No—

It wasn’t a wound.

A mouth had opened across his torso.

A torrent of fire erupted from it.

"Ah!"

The front rank took the blast head-on.

Even behind their shields, their faces were badly burned. Their armor glowed red-hot, and several Valkyries nearly lost their grip.

The formation that had withstood the full force of the demon army was suddenly on the verge of collapse.

Ziros took a step forward.

Then another.

He was about to break through.

Suddenly, he froze.

His head snapped upward.

He stared toward the summit of the rift in disbelief.

"You’ve got to be kidding me!"

His voice echoed across the battlefield.

"I just got here!"

He stared upward for another moment.

"Couldn’t you hold out a little longer?"

The demons around him suddenly lost their fighting spirit as well.

Weapons lowered.

Shoulders slumped.

One demon sighed.

"Well... that’s that."

Another turned around.

"Let’s go."

The battlefield had gone from a desperate life-or-death struggle to something disturbingly similar to the end of a bar fight.

Some of the demons even turned around to shout at the Valkyries as they retreated.

Rody translated for Sif.

"Apparently they’re saying, ’You ladies fought pretty well. Maybe we’ll do this again sometime.’"

Sif stared after them.

She wasn’t sure whether to be offended or confused.

Then the answer became clear.

At the very summit of Fel Scar Rift, Haelmundas’s enormous body crashed to the ground.

The sound rolled through the entire rift.

The demon lord’s single remaining eye stared blankly into the distance.

There was no life left in it.

But the resentment in that eye was unmistakable.

Haelmundas was dead.