Chapter 403 - 400: Almost There!

Chapter 403: Chapter 400: Almost There!

The battle was more difficult than the Great Faceless Ghost and many other Magic Creatures had imagined, inflicting heavy casualties on the Ghouls and low-level Demons at the front.

Even some of the Yin Spirits that tried to get close were often dissipated by the constant explosions.

Blast Incendiary Ammunition and Homemade Incendiary Bullets were thrown from the human lines without pause, and the muzzle flashes never ceased.

"RAT-TAT-TAT-TAT-TAT..."

The heavy machine gun’s barrel was already glowing red-hot. Aside from a few advanced firearms, the army was using many old weapons from around the World War II era. This Old Marking Machine Gun was still doing its part.

"The barrel’s overheating! Water!"

"TSSSSSSSS~~"

A few scoops of water were splashed onto the barrel, a crude method of physical cooling. A moment later, the machine gun was spitting fire again.

"AAH!!"

Several Soldiers were suddenly flung into the air from the defensive line, torn to pieces in mid-flight.

"WHOOSH—BOOM!"

Another giant boulder smashed directly into a bunker, crushing the three Soldiers inside.

The gunfire from thousands of Soldiers began to weaken, while the tide of monsters surged relentlessly forward.

This was especially true for some enormous, crustacean-like monsters over ten meters tall. Unless they were hit directly by heavy artillery or raked with continuous machine-gun fire, a few rifle bullets or even standard mortar shells couldn’t deal them a fatal blow.

The Nippon Army was short on even man-portable rocket launchers, to say nothing of personal missile systems.

"Die! Just die! I’ll take as many of you as I can!!!" BANG! BANG! BANG!

A transparent shadow flashed. The Soldier immediately felt a tearing pain wrack his body, and a sense of weightlessness told him he had been snatched away by something unseen.

’Bastard... Is it one of those ghost-like things?’

With his last ounce of strength, he used his left hand—the only part of him that could still move—to pull the pin on his final grenade. With a BOOM, the Yin Spirit was vaporized into ash along with him before it could even scream.

Yin Spirits bypassing the front to appear within the ranks was a fatal blow. At the same time, some of the larger monsters used their size and momentum to charge recklessly, tearing open other sections of the defensive line.

In just over twenty minutes, the gunfire grew sparse. Although artillery still boomed sporadically from the rear, it was clearly faltering.

A sludge of dark red, grayish-white, and filthy black ichor stained a vast, fan-shaped swathe of land before Tansen City.

"RAT-TAT-TAT-TAT-TAT..." "BANG! BANG! BANG!"

Two helicopters, having exhausted their machine gun ammunition, circled in the air, their crews continuously firing at targets with rifles.

"WHOOSH~" "BOOM~"

A barrage of giant boulders flew through the air, and one of the helicopters finally exploded.

A Magic Creature watched the remaining helicopter flying in an S-pattern as it rained down fire, and finally decided to act.

On Kaslopa, every drop of Magic Power was precious, a habit that was hard to break even after arriving on Earth. But now, they had seen that the iron box in the sky was all bark and no bite, and they no longer wanted the eyesore hanging around.

Gray mist materialized above a giant hand, quickly forming into twisting chains that shot toward the sky. The helicopter dodged several, but in its attempt to evade a giant boulder, it was finally snared by one of the chains.

"HSSS~~" "HSSS~~"

The chain instantly transformed into bizarre snakes that coiled around the crew, dismembering them. The helicopter spiraled out of the sky.

With a deafening CRASH, it burst into flames inside the city.

By the battle’s end, the number of monsters killed by the Tansen City garrison seemed enormous. In reality, it wasn’t even a fraction of the entire Demon Tide.

When the last and only Evolver Officer fell in battle, the gunfire ceased completely, and the roars of the monsters grew ever louder.

In less than half an hour, how far could people—encumbered by their families and relying on their own two feet—possibly run? The answer: not outside the reach of death.

The ground trembled ceaselessly. A black, oppressive mass of monsters quickly overtook the fleeing refugees, and the air filled with hysterical crying and screaming.

The Great Faceless Ghost and several other Magic Creatures were now at daggers drawn, fighting frantically over the Evolver Officer’s corpse. Even though his soul, which had not yet fully dissipated, had already been devoured in the struggle, his body remained immensely tempting.

The unique, stimulating scent alone was enough to drive them into a frenzy. In the end, his body was torn to shreds and divided among them.

...

The path Amira had pointed out wasn’t very precise; they could only rely on a general sense of direction, heading northeast.

The hundreds of thousands of civilians outside Tansen City ultimately failed to escape their doom.

Such an abundance of flesh and souls drove the Demon Tide into a frenzy. To these Otherworldly Demons, this was a grand feast meant for them alone.

Humanity’s capacity for resistance had surprised many of the Magic Creatures and intelligent Demons. The incursion points where they had emerged had never faced an attack by a large human army. Naturally, they had no idea that in the major incursion zones of Earth’s great powers, the ground had been soaked red with Demon blood time and time again.

However, even though humanity wasn’t entirely defenseless, the impact they made was still negligible. The losses inflicted on the Demon Tide were nothing compared to the replenishment gained from all the flesh and souls.

The Great Faceless Ghost swallowed the souls of a dozen people impaled on its tentacles, then tossed their bodies to the surrounding Ghouls. Roars and snarls of fighting mingled with the splattering of blood and flesh.

Amira and her two companions were trembling, their bodies shaking uncontrollably. They had no idea how many people had died.

There were screams everywhere and blood everywhere... but not a single corpse remained.

"Well done, little humans... I can promise not to kill you now. Let’s get back on the road. There are more ahead, aren’t there?"

"Hee hee hee... Now, even I am reluctant to eat them!"

The surrounding Magic Creatures used Magic Resonance to broadcast their arrogant taunts.

...

The ubiquitous, towering forests concealed numerous human settlements and threw off Amira’s group’s sense of direction. Although Amira desperately wanted to steer them around the cities, tens of thousands of people still met a grisly end.

Some towns were already deserted. Others were in the middle of fighting off other Demons and were caught completely off guard by the sudden appearance of the Demon Tide.

The entire standing army of Nippon Country numbered only fifty to sixty thousand. Even after expanding its ranks and including the police force, a severe shortage of weapons and equipment meant their total strength was still under two hundred thousand.

These troops had already suffered losses during the initial incursions and were scattered on garrison duty across the country. Already spread thin and lacking a unified command, most could do little more than cause a ripple when faced with the Demon Tide.

Furthermore, the tide was constantly swelled by other low-level Demons and Magic Creatures they encountered along the way. Some of these lower-level beings also reproduced with terrifying speed. A low-level Ghoul, for instance, only needed a fresh corpse to mature in a matter of days.

The slaughter of humans provided the flesh and souls to nurture new life, and new Demons joined the ranks constantly...

The scale of the Demon Tide expanded to an even more terrifying degree.

Bendibul City, Gonbul City...

Some received word in advance and evacuated. Some knew nothing at all. And some wanted to flee but ran out of time.

After days on a path of bloody slaughter, the tide finally crashed against Kathmandu.

This city, a symbol of Nippon Country’s glory and dignity, had garrisoned tens of thousands of troops to fight a constant battle against a nearby major incursion zone.

But this time, having received advance warning of the massive Demon Tide’s approach, the Nippon Army had no choice but to abandon the Capital. They led the civilians in a fighting retreat, fleeing in other directions.

Over a million humans, along with more than a hundred thousand livestock, soldiers, and vehicles... The chaotic trail left by their retreat was as conspicuous as a lighthouse in the night.

After being reinforced by even more Demons from the area, the Demon Tide halted at a location just outside Kathmandu.

It wasn’t just the Demon Tide; the number of Magic Creatures was also growing. Even having witnessed the strength of the Nippon Army, the Magic Creatures believed that just a few charges from the Demon Tide would be enough to shatter the human resistance, after which the feast would begin.

Amira and her two companions, surrounded in the center of the horde, were on the verge of fainting.

The Great Faceless Ghost remained as cold and emotionless as ever.

"Are you certain it’s that direction?"

Amira and her companions pointed resolutely to the northeast. Meanwhile, the tracks left by the Nippon Country’s army and civilians as they evacuated the Capital clearly led to the west.

The trail left by millions of fleeing creatures was incredibly tempting, making the Demon Tide want to give chase immediately.

"Y-Yes! It’s the direction I’m pointing! There are more people that way! Far more! If you go after the ones who fled the city, the people in the direction I’m pointing might get even farther away!"

"Besides, there are definitely other beings from the Otherworld over there! If you waste time playing games here, someone else will beat you to it!"

Amira gritted her teeth, forcing herself to speak clearly to the very end.

After a soul-freezing wait, the Demon Tide finally advanced, heading northeast.

...

Several more days passed. Aside from the over one hundred thousand people in Gelang City who became newly departed souls, the Demon Tide encountered no other large human settlements.

Forest, forest, and more forest... Besides trees and shrubs, even wild animals were scarce, as if everything was actively avoiding them.

Amira and her companions’ nerves were stretched taut. The monsters were growing impatient; if the Great Faceless Ghost hadn’t been holding them back, at least one of the three humans would already be dead.

"WHOOSH~~~" "WHOOSH~~~"

Two white contrails streaked across the clouds as a pair of reconnaissance jets on a supersonic patrol swept through the upper atmosphere.

The Great Faceless Ghost instinctively looked up, but the objects were too high and too fast. Even with its current Magic Power, it couldn’t perceive what they were.

For the past two days, these things had been flying overhead at intervals ranging from a few minutes to over ten.

"How much farther is it?"

One of the Great Faceless Ghost’s Yin Spirit tentacles brushed across the top of Amira’s head. She had seen many people have their souls ripped out by a single touch from such a tendril.

"Soon... Very soon. The forest has thrown off my sense of distance, but I promise... it’s very soon! The more of those birds we see in the sky, the closer we are..."

In the depths of three pairs of numb eyes, hatred flickered. They had long since lost the will to live.

’Soon! Very soon!’

P.S. Friday’s second Chapter.