Chapter 302 - 295: Army at the Gates
Chapter 302: Chapter 295: Army at the Gates
「One day earlier.」
The southern front, less than 50 kilometers from Forged Fire Fortress.
Here, the sky was no longer the characteristic scorched yellow of the Molten Iron Mountain Range.
Drifting volcanic ash was stained by a nauseating, blackish-purple aura. The heavy clouds, like rotting viscera, pressed down from the sky.
On the ground, a black tide submerged everything.
It was a horde of hundreds of thousands of deeply mutated Magical Beasts.
They moved on all fours, their pupils crimson, and a black, highly acidic liquid drooled from the corners of their mouths, leaving a trail of devastation in their wake.
At the center of the Beast Tide was a gigantic demonic worm over a thousand meters long.
It resembled a centipede with over a thousand jointed legs, and each segment of its carapace was covered in wailing, tormented human faces.
A Morning Star Level Magical Beast—the Thousand-Faced Abyss Demon.
It made no attempt to hide its aura. Its Magic Power fluctuations exceeded fifteen thousand, and its massive body crushed small mountains as it charged straight for Forged Fire Fortress.
Fortress Command Hall.
Mercer Iron Star stood before a window, his crystalline, deep blue eyes betraying not a hint of emotion.
"The southern defensive line has completely collapsed."
His adjutant, Gordon, reported from the side, "The Thousand-Faced Abyss Demon is ten minutes away from the fortress. Magical Beasts from other directions are continuously joining the Beast Tide and mutating. The Golem Legion won’t be able to hold them back for much longer."
"Have the remaining Golems of the Second Legion pull back," Mercer said, his voice cold and hard.
"What?" Gordon was stunned.
"Let them come," Mercer said, raising his right hand. His long, slender fingers slowly clenched into a fist in the empty air.
BOOM!
The moment he spoke, a roar erupted from the entirety of Forged Fire Fortress, powerful enough to shatter the clouds.
Outside the fortress.
The massive complex of metal strongholds, a network of countless pipes, gears, and smokestacks, suddenly ceased all activity.
Immediately after, the edges of the black city walls, which stretched for over a hundred kilometers around the fortress’s perimeter, began to blur and sharpen intermittently, as if there were a problem with the image resolution.
Beyond that overlapping space, another scene seemed to exist. It wasn’t the void; one could faintly glimpse a vast world made entirely of steel, forges, and assembly lines.
"Workshop, deploy."
Mercer’s voice, amplified by Magic Power resonance, echoed for hundreds of kilometers in every direction.
A spectacle unfolded.
The fortress walls began to expand wildly, like building blocks being stacked at an impossible speed.
The boundary between the real and the illusory was shattered. Countless intricate metal constructs materialized from the void, as if being 3D-printed by light, pushing inch by inch into the physical Material Realm and causing the walls to "grow" and "strengthen."
That wasn’t a city wall at all, but the outer defensive line of an ultimate war machine slumbering within a half-plane!
In just ten seconds.
The fortress walls, originally fifty meters high, shot up to a height of three hundred meters. Across their surface, countless armored plates slid aside, revealing the menacing truth within.
There were over ten thousand beam emitter towers, thousands of magnetic burst coils exceeding ten meters in diameter, and three thousand heavy Magic Energy railguns that drew power directly from the Earth Vein Magic Power.
The sky over the entire southern front was instantly illuminated by the blue light radiating from the weapon arrays.
The Thousand-Faced Abyss Demon let out an earth-shattering roar from afar. Its massive body actually took flight, shrouded in an overwhelming black fog from the Abyss, and hurtled toward the fortress like a black meteorite.
"Fire."
Over ten thousand beam towers lit up simultaneously.
All sound vanished between heaven and earth.
Extremely high-energy rays crisscrossed in mid-air, forming an inescapable net of light that completely enveloped the Thousand-Faced Abyss Demon’s colossal body.
Immediately after, thousands of magnetic burst coils unleashed violent electrical arcs and electromagnetic pulses.
The moment the black fog from the Abyss made contact with the attack, it was like snow meeting boiling water, letting out a piercing SIZZLE as it dissolved over a vast area.
"ROAR—!" The faces on the Thousand-Faced Abyss Demon’s carapace let out shrill screams as its skin began to carbonize and crack.
But this Morning Star Magical Beast’s life force was incredibly tenacious. It powered through the attack, continuing its charge.
Just then, the three thousand heavy Magic Energy railguns finished charging.
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
Three thousand blinding, crimson beams of light shot out with overwhelming force.
They converged in mid-air into a single, thick line of light that slammed squarely into the Thousand-Faced Abyss Demon.
The Thousand-Faced Abyss Demon didn’t even have time to scream before its body was vaporized in the terrifying explosion.
A single blow.
Just one volley.
A Morning Star Level Magical Beast with Magic Power fluctuations of fifteen thousand had fallen on the spot.
This was the true home ground of a Morning Star Level Alchemy Wizard—the invincible firepower of a fully deployed Half-plane Workshop.
The entire battlefield fell deathly silent.
Under this world-destroying might, the charging Beast Tide instinctively halted, the compulsion of the Abyssal aura unable to suppress the fear etched into their very genes.
But at that moment, a strange transformation occurred.
From the charred, bisected remains of the Thousand-Faced Abyss Demon, a large amount of thick, black fog suddenly surged forth.
The fog did not dissipate. Instead, as if it had a life of its own, it rapidly converged and intertwined.
Tens of thousands of Low-Tier Magical Beasts in the vicinity suddenly froze, then their bodies exploded one after another, turning into a rain of blood.
Flesh and blood merged with the black fog, rapidly piling up and reshaping upon the demon’s remains. In the blink of an eye, it formed a hundred-meter-tall throne of flesh.
Upon the throne sat a figure completely shrouded in black fog.
"Brilliant. A truly brilliant display of firepower."
A low, hoarse voice, tinged with a neurotic laugh, emerged from the gray fog.
The voice ignored the din of the battlefield, reaching the ears of every Wizard in the fortress with perfect clarity.
The black fog slowly dissipated.
The person stood up, took a step forward, and was fully revealed in the fortress’s searchlight beams.
Inside the Command Hall, Adjutant Gordon’s mouth slowly fell open.
Long silver hair, a flawless face, and even the style of his robes was somewhat similar.
But what was most unsettling were the eyes he opened—
They were also crystalline, but not the deep blue of Mercer’s. They were a crimson red that seemed as if it could drip blood.
The Son of the Abyss.
He had a face that was almost identical to Mercer Iron Star’s.
"What’s wrong? You see me and you forget your manners? Not even a hello?" A fanatical smile crept onto the Son of the Abyss’s lips, his crimson crystal eyes locked on the top of the fortress.
Space rippled.
Mercer’s figure appeared out of thin air atop the fortress’s highest spire.
Deep blue and crimson clashed across dozens of kilometers of empty space.
Two immense, Morning Star Level Spiritual Powers clashed in mid-air. The air was torn apart, creating visible black fissures, while swaths of the Beast Tide below were crushed into pulp by the spiritual shockwaves.
"Lysander," Mercer said coldly, uttering a name long buried in the past.
"Shut up! You have no right to say that name!"
The smile on the Son of the Abyss’s face vanished instantly, his features twisting slightly with rage.
He violently raised his hand, his five fingers like hooks, and plunged them viciously into his own chest.
SQUELCH.
Blood splattered. He had actually ripped a still-beating black heart, radiating a dense Abyssal aura, straight from his chest cavity.
"My dear brother."
He clutched the heart, his crimson eyes filled with malice and madness. "You took all of his inheritance back then, paving your own grand road to Morning Star. Did you ever stop to think that the little brother you left to die in the wastelands would one day survive by begging the Abyss, struggling to live, and eventually stand at the same height as you?"
He raised the heart high, and the power of the Abyss cascaded down like a waterfall, causing the surrounding space to tremble violently.
"Your precious reason, your truth, your fortress!"
The Son of the Abyss broke into a maniacal laugh. "Today, I will tear it all apart, piece by piece! I’m going to make you taste what it’s like to struggle in the mud!"
...
「Meanwhile.」
High in the sky, one hundred and ten kilometers from Forged Fire Fortress.
A "Demon Eye IV" had just reached its designated airspace.
Its composite optical lens precisely captured the scene on the throne of flesh.
Inside the workshop in Zone 18, Allen froze for a full three seconds.
On the light screen, a live feed was playing the scene of the Son of the Abyss ripping out his heart and shouting "My dear brother" toward the fortress.
It even captured a split-screen comparison: the Son of the Abyss’s contorted expression on one side, and Master Mercer’s perpetually stoic face on the other.
The control room was so quiet you could hear a pin drop.
Only Jarvis was dutifully reporting:
[WARNING: Morning Star Level Magic Power fluctuation detected.]
[Data recording complete. Audio analysis complete.]
[Commander, store this video data in the ’Top Secret’ archive?]
Allen sat rigidly in his chair. He blinked, looking at the red-eyed psycho on the left side of the screen, then at the blue-eyed ice block on the right.
’Master’s... younger brother?’
’A fight over inheritance?’
’A rich family’s feud? Brothers at war?’
’The vengeful return from the Abyss?’
’What kind of third-rate, trashy family drama script is this?!’
Allen felt like his brain was short-circuiting.
He just wanted to watch some gods fight up close and learn some high-level techniques. How did he end up stumbling upon such earth-shattering gossip?
A thought uncontrollably surfaced in his mind.
’In the Wizarding World, knowing a High-tier Wizard’s dark past rarely ends well for you.’
’Is Master Mercer going to silence me later to keep this a secret?’