Vol 3. Chapter 85: A Brutal Slaughter
“AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHH!!”
“Mon... Monsters!!”
“What the hell is wrong with these monsters?! Why are there more?!”
“H-Help!”
“Left! On the left! They’re attacking from the left!”
...
...
Across the scorched earth,
the Abyss Demon horde had completely surrounded the human army. The two sides became entangled in a brutal, bloody battle, with blood and chunks of flesh flying through the air.
Shrill screams, violent eruptions of magical power, and the sounds of blades striking armor erupted throughout the battlefield. Piles of mutilated corpses were hideous and horrifying, while the overwhelming stench of blood and aura of Shadow of Silence Power made it almost impossible to breathe.
At this moment,
amid the Abyss Demons’ encirclement and slaughter, the fifty-thousand-strong army Toma had originally led out of the city to eliminate the Abyss Demon horde had been reduced to less than half its number in only a few short minutes. The scorched earth itself had been dyed crimson with blood.
The moment the fighting began, every Royal Knight immediately realized a despairing fact.
These Abyss Demons charging toward them were not merely larger in size—the difference between their strength and that of the previous Abyss Demon horde was like heaven and earth.
Even against an ordinary Abyss Demon, they had to attack with everything they had, hacking at it dozens of times before finally killing it. Against the Abyss Demons they had fought earlier, only a few strikes had been necessary.
And when faced with Abyss Demons covered in solid armor, the Royal Knights felt utterly powerless.
Because,
they simply couldn’t break through their defenses...
And that was without even mentioning the even larger and terrifyingly powerful Seventh-Tier Abyss Demons.
Those Abyss Demons merely needed to casually swing a limb, and dozens of Royal Knights or Imperial Guard soldiers would explode into chunks of flesh on the spot...
There was no doubt that this Abyss Demon horde was far stronger and far more terrifying than the previous wave.
However, after clearing the battlefield earlier, the Royal Knights under Toma’s command had already exhausted part of their stamina and were nowhere near their peak condition.
Combined with the unexpected assault of the Abyss Demon tide, fear had already begun taking root in the soldiers’ hearts.
Once fear took hold, an army’s combat effectiveness would plummet.
With one side growing stronger while the other weakened,
Sky Dome’s defenders, who had never possessed an advantage to begin with, inevitably fell into a hopeless situation.
As the battle continued, the situation became increasingly one-sided.
And so, beneath the horrified gazes of countless people, Sky Dome’s elite forces—the legions Xue Tianao-Valedin had been so proud of—were effortlessly smashed into complete disarray by the Abyss Demon tide.
They couldn’t even organize an effective counterattack...
“Rumble, rumble~!!”
Accompanied by pillars of flame soaring into the sky, the defensive line that the Royal Knights and Imperial Guards had painstakingly managed to establish was effortlessly torn apart beneath the relentless offensive of the Abyss Demon horde, proving completely useless.
Moreover, unlike the brutish Abyss Demons of the past that only knew how to charge forward mindlessly,
this group seemed to have gained intelligence.
With extremely clear objectives, they continuously destroyed the human army’s defensive lines. They even launched flanking attacks from multiple directions, forcing the human forces to fight enemies both in front and behind them, causing the situation to grow increasingly dire.
One soldier after another fell beneath the claws and fangs of the Abyss Demons.
In the eyes of those who fell, the faces of their families appeared first.
Then everything shattered into ashes.
All that remained was boundless darkness.
Most of the soldiers who were still swinging their weapons and desperately fighting the Abyss Demons to the bitter end were surrounded only by cries of despair and shattered dreams.
Not a trace of hope remained in their eyes.
A small portion of the troops positioned toward the rear, however, barely managed to break through the encirclement with the help of Toma’s formidable Seventh-Tier strength.
Toma’s gaze immediately locked onto the distant city gates.
Where was the high-spirited confidence he had possessed at the beginning?
Now, he looked like nothing more than a homeless dog, his hair disheveled and his entire appearance wretched as he desperately fled for his life.
Faced with such a ferocious and unimaginably powerful Abyss Demon horde, Toma was no longer thinking about how to annihilate the enemy.
He was thinking only about how to survive...
‘Damn it! What... What the hell is going on?! These Abyss Demons... actually know tactics?!’
Even someone as straightforward and brutish as Toma had now realized that the Abyss Demons that had fled earlier had deliberately lured his forces deeper into the battlefield.
Their goal had been to wipe out half of the Royal Knights and most of the Imperial Guards in a single decisive attack.
However, no matter how hard Toma racked his brain, he couldn’t understand why Abyss Demons, which had always been mindless creatures acting purely on instinct, would suddenly pull off something like this.
Could it be...
someone was commanding them?
...
Grinding his teeth as he thought, Toma unleashed every last bit of battle aura within his body, covering the retreat of the forces behind him as they fled toward Sky Dome’s gates.
With their commander himself choosing to retreat,
the remaining troops naturally lost all will to fight.
One after another, they fled in utter disarray, desperately driving their warhorses forward.
The magnificent golden armor that the Royal Knights had once worn was now nowhere to be seen. Having discarded helmets and armor in their flight, their bodies were covered in blood and filth.
As for whether that blood belonged to the Abyss Demons, their comrades, or themselves...
they could no longer tell.
The smell of blood mixed with the stench of corrosion, constantly pushing the human soldiers’ endurance toward its absolute limit...
Unconcealable terror covered the stained faces of knights and soldiers alike.
Their bloodshot eyes were filled with fear of defeat, terror of the Abyss Demons, and an overwhelming mixture of unwillingness and despair.
Driven by their desperate desire to survive, the soldiers used everything they had to attack the Abyss Demons behind them while urging their warhorses toward Sky Dome.
Unfortunately,
their hopes of survival were soon mercilessly shattered by reality.
The Crimsonhoof Warhorses beneath the knights were spirit beasts specialized in speed. Even ordinary Sixth-Tier Abyss Demons would normally have difficulty catching them.
And yet now, before they had managed to travel more than a short distance, thousands upon thousands of Fifth-Tier Abyss Demons had already rushed ahead of the knights, completely blocking every escape route available to the Royal Knights.
For a moment,
as they stared at the Abyss Demons surrounding them from the front, back, left, and right, indescribable terror and despair became like the claws of an abyss, tightly seizing their desire to survive before dragging it down into bottomless darkness...
The next instant,
the Abyss Demon horde simultaneously launched a charge toward the last several hundred knights...
—
Thanks to his formidable personal strength and fast flying speed, Toma managed to avoid being surrounded by the Abyss Demons again...
‘Guys...’
Watching his former companions being tackled to the ground and devoured by Abyss Demons one after another, Toma felt as though his heart were bleeding.
He wanted to save them.
But he had already exhausted far too much strength while repelling a Seventh-Tier Abyss Demon earlier.
He was now completely spent.
Charging back to save them would be no different from throwing his own life away...
Left with no choice, Toma gritted his teeth and accelerated toward Sky Dome alone.
Powerlessness and unwillingness filled his heart, causing the Commander of the Imperial Guards to clench his fists tightly and swear resolutely within his heart,
“Brothers... once I get back to Sky Dome... I’ll... I swear I’ll avenge you... Hmm?!!”
However,
the instant that thought crossed Toma’s mind, he suddenly felt an icy gaze locked onto him.
Cold sweat instantly poured from his forehead as an overwhelming sense of danger arose within his heart.
?!!
Relying purely on instinct, Toma abruptly turned his head and looked behind him, toward the direction that gaze had come from.
“That?!! What is that?! Shit!!”
The next instant,
Toma’s pupils abruptly contracted.
He hurriedly mobilized the tiny amount of battle aura remaining within his body, attempting to defend himself.
Unfortunately, it was already too late.
At the rear of the Abyss Demon horde, a bizarre Abyss Demon covered from head to toe in armor made of withered bones suddenly crawled out of the forest.
Its appearance resembled some twisted combination of a wolf and a dragon.
It opened its enormous, bloody maw.
The next instant, this Abyss Demon, possessing the terrifying strength of the Peak Seventh Tier, abruptly unleashed the power gathering within its mouth.
A violet Nihility Cannon resembling the endless abyss instantly blasted toward Toma with thunderous, unstoppable force!
In the blink of an eye,
it swallowed this highly valued subordinate of Xue Tianao-Valedin whole...
Toma desperately resisted, continuously mobilizing the remaining battle aura within his body to withstand the terrifying Nihility Cannon.
But after fighting through battle after battle, the power within his body was nearly exhausted.
There was simply no way he could withstand the full-powered attack of this Seventh-Tier Abyss Demon.
‘Forgive me... Your Majesty... I did everything I could...’
In the end,
filled with overwhelming unwillingness, Toma was completely corroded away beneath the Nihility Cannon’s attack...
And just as Toma dissolved into a nauseating puddle of liquid, the final Royal Knight had his head bitten apart by a serpentine Abyss Demon.
With that,
the magnificent, golden, awe-inspiring army from moments before had been completely buried beneath the boundless sea of Abyss Demons.
...
High in the sky,
the hundreds of griffin riders and the pilots aboard the steel airships couldn’t help revealing expressions of utter horror upon witnessing the gruesome scene below.
Who could possibly have imagined that the Royal Knights and Imperial Guards, who only moments earlier had been so imposing and celebrating their victory, would now have died so miserably beneath the claws and fangs of the Abyss Demons...
After their initial shock,
once they accepted the reality before them, unprecedented fury instantly erupted within their hearts.
They wanted revenge for their comrades!
And the method of taking revenge was simple.
Just like before, they would bombard them!
They would recreate the previous battle and once again send the countless Abyss Demons below into a blazing inferno!
However,
just as the pilots prepared to do exactly that, their movements abruptly froze...
Because,
at that very moment, they discovered in horror that the sky had changed color...
Black clouds were bearing down upon them.
But those black clouds were not clouds as they understood them.
They were countless, densely packed Abyss Demons!
The next instant,
the Abyss Demon swarm that blotted out the sky erupted with a horrifying, oppressive surge of Shadow of Silence Power. Releasing shrieks like the wailing of ghosts and howling of demons, they launched themselves toward the hundreds of griffin riders and the three enormous steel airships...
Without a doubt, they could barely protect themselves now.
In Dragon Dance Square,
upon witnessing this scene, Xue Tianao-Valedin’s handsome face twisted with shock.
He even lost his composure and staggered backward several steps.
‘What the hell is going on?! Why the fuck are there so many flying Abyss Demons?!’
As Xue Tianao-Valedin roared in disbelief within his heart, he accidentally misplaced his footing.
And under the watchful eyes of everyone present,
his foot slipped,
and he awkwardly tumbled straight off the ceremonial platform...