Chapter 577
The air and the earth trembled.
The deaths of the six Great Demons.
And the descent of the Demon King.
From this point on, the real East-West War was beginning.
- Stay sharp, everyone. This is where it really starts.
I sent that thought to everyone through telepathy.
At that, they all nodded and began focusing on the battle.
I did the same.
With Lucifer’s appearance, not only was the existing Demon King’s army surging forward, but even the top elite Demon King troops that had stayed hidden until the very end were finally beginning to emerge.
“Kiaaaaaah!!”
Flying monsters began appearing in huge numbers.
There were so many they packed the sky, but I did not have the luxury of worrying about them.
I immediately sent a telepathic message to Zeus and Cronos.
- I’m counting on you.
- Leave it to us.
- Have faith.
Land and sky.
If you had to take one or the other, of course it was easier on the mind to take the ground.
That was why I had brought all the Olympian gods.
At the very least, if it was them—and with Phaidiak 2 added on top—I would not have to worry about the aerial battle until the East-West War ended.
“Charge!”
“Waaaaaah!!”
The Demon King’s army crossed the final line I had in mind.
Once they crossed that line, the waterways greeted them, and once they crossed the waterways, the curved wall waiting like a drawn bow greeted them next.
Most of them could not get past either.
Which naturally drove them toward the gorge I had deliberately left open in the center.
Watching the Demon King’s army pour into the gorge, I said to Jack,
“It’s time. Start.”
- Okay.
Having heard his master’s command, Jack happily started drawing on my mana.
[ Umbra’s Shadow Legacy is activated. ]
[ Hollow Jack, King of the Shadow Divine Beasts, summons the Black Army. ]
The opening move was the Black Army.
And then—
[ Umbra’s Shadow Legacy is activated. ]
[ Hollow Jack, King of the Shadow Divine Beasts, summons the Black Shadow Dragon. ]
Jack summoned the Black Shadow Dragon right after that.
“Kiaaaaaah!!”
The summoned Black Shadow Dragon let out a high, piercing cry and soared into the sky.
Among all the soldiers I had, it was the only one that would take part in the aerial battle.
There was no reason to throw a creature specialized for air combat into a ground battle crawling with enemies like a swarm of ants.
Leihian jumped in surprise at the sudden appearance of the Black Army, but soon felt reassured.
He thought those countless soldiers would descend into the gorge and face the Demon King’s army there.
But the summoned army did not head below the gorge.
They took their positions atop the wall instead.
The Demon King’s army still kept pouring in.
The way they rushed in, all worked up, looked exactly like a horde of zombies.
Watching the Demon King’s soldiers start to push across the bridge, Leihian said urgently,
“Lord Avatar! Are you really not going to station anyone down there?! The Demon King’s army is crossing over!”
“I know.”
“Huh? Then why aren’t you sending the soldiers down below?”
“Why would I send them? Do you think collecting shadows is easy?”
“That’s not the important thing right now!”
“It is important. That’s why I left them on top of the wall. That way, they can fire arrows at the ones entering the gorge below. I’m the one going down there. So you just watch.”
“You’re going down personally, Lord Avatar? What about everyone else?”
“They’re not needed. I’m enough.”
After saying that, I leaped off the wall as if I were doing parkour.
Then I scraped down the wall like I was sliding on the soles of my shoes, and landed safely.
Standing about halfway into the gorge, I held the Blood Sword and drew a line on the ground.
It was a kind of vow that nothing would be allowed to cross beyond that line.
The sight of it was like Zhang Fei at Changban.
Around then, as the Demon King’s army began entering the gorge, Jack—who had been standing on the wall above with his arms folded in stern composure—swept one hand downward.
At once, the waiting Shadow Knights took up the bows that had been distributed to them and began raining down an enormous barrage of shadow arrows like a torrential downpour.
Fwoogoong! Fwoogoong!
A tremendous rain of arrows falling from the sky.
The sound they made was like a battery of hwachas firing at once.
And on top of that, because the arrows were made of shadow, they were pitch-black. Whether they struck their targets or not, each shadow arrow gouged out a deep, narrow hole and then vanished like a mirage.
“Kieeeeeek!!”
“Kaaaagh!!”
“Ughhhh!!”
“Shields! Raise your shields!”
“Attack above us!”
The Demon King’s army started dying in droves.
But they were not complete idiots, so the moment the rain of arrows began falling, they immediately raised shields and came up with countermeasures.
Of course, those countermeasures were not perfect.
The Shadow Knights were strong.
And the arrows they fired were even stronger.
So this time as well, Lucifer intervened.
[ Lucifer, Demon King of Pride, uses Dark Mist Aura. ]
The moment Dark Mist Aura was used, black fog began spreading across the battlefield.
It was a fog with physical force. The smog-like haze soon formed a roof over the Demon King’s army as they entered the gorge, blocking the rain of arrows.
- Oh? So that’s how you want to play it?
The one who reacted to Lucifer’s move was not me, but Jack.
Standing atop the wall like a strategist and watching the battlefield, Jack curled the corner of his mouth the instant he saw Lucifer’s Dark Mist Aura.
- Master, that side’s using an interesting move.
- You mean the black fog? Got a way around it?
- Of course I do. Just watch.
Jack shot his right hand high into the air.
Then some of the Shadow Knights who had been firing arrows stepped back and abruptly started pairing up and merging into one.
[ Umbra’s Shadow Legacy is activated. ]
[ Hollow Jack, King of the Shadow Divine Beasts, uses Shadow Fusion. ]
What he used was Shadow Fusion.
It simply fused two Shadow Knights into one.
The effect was the birth of a new Shadow Knight with the combined stats of two Shadow Knights.
In fact, it was one of the tactics Jack had used in the past, and he called this type of Shadow Knight a Double Knight.
That was just the nickname he gave them because their power had doubled.
But the power of a Shadow Knight that had become a Double Knight was different from the impact onward.
Because the size of the shadow bow in a Double Knight’s hands was completely different.
“Damn, look at the size of those bows.”
I couldn’t help admiring it.
What they had been carrying before were longbows.
What they held now were greatbows.
Naturally, the arrows they fired were larger and thicker as well.
The Double Knights raised their newly equipped bows and began pouring out arrows.
KWA-KWAK! KWAAAA-KWAK!! KWAAAAAA-KWAK!!
It worked.
Dark Mist Aura was a physically defensive fog, but that did not mean its defensive power was unlimited.
The wider the battlefield it tried to cover, the thinner the fog naturally became, and the more its defense dropped. So in the end, it was pierced by the arrows fired by the Double Knights.
And that was not all.
Once an area had been pierced, it took some time before it could restore itself.
In that gap, the arrows of the knights who had not fused kept pouring through, and the Demon King’s army had no choice but to suffer massive losses once again.
But even so, the Shadow Knights’ arrow attacks alone could not perfectly stop the entirety of the Demon King’s army.
I sent Jack a telepathic message.
- Hey, hey, a few of them keep slipping out over there. Aren’t you going to cover that properly?
- This is already holding up pretty well. How perfect do you want it to be? Sure, our side has numbers, but their numbers aren’t exactly small either, you know? You handle the rest yourself, Master.
- Oh, sure. What kind of summon dumps work on its summoner?
- Don’t you want to level up?
- ...Now that you put it like that, I can’t really argue.
I let out a small chuckle and drew my sword.
Then I began slaughtering the ones who had barely managed to break out of the arrow field, one after another.
It was a perfect tag-team match between Jack and me.
[ Your level has increased. ]
[ All stats have increased by 1. ]
[ You have acquired 1 bonus stat. ]
My level rose.
Wiping away sweat, I invested the bonus stat I had gained into mana.
The sight of it made me look like a diligent laborer wiping away the sweat of sacred work.
- You’re doing something amusing.
Lucifer, who had been watching the situation, raised his hand again.
Then a huge hole opened in midair, and something like a black hole formed there.
It immediately began exerting a tremendous pull, swallowing up the Demon King’s army that had been lined up and flooding forward to enter the gorge.
[ Lucifer, Demon King of Pride, summons the Golem of Despair. ]
What had started sucking in the Demon King’s army like a black hole was, astonishingly enough, the golem’s core.
Lucifer split off part of his own power and created a monster that even several units of top-tier elite Demon King troops could not hope to match.
“Aaaaargh!!”
“Help me!!”
“Noooo!!”
The soldiers of the Demon King’s army that were dragged in by the powerful suction merged together with the golem’s core.
But astonishingly, the fused army did not die.
Like some crawling chaos from myth, the Demon King’s army fused together while still alive, and at last was reborn as a gigantic monster called the Golem of Despair.
- Golem of Despair Lv.???
Even a nameplate appeared over it, completing it perfectly.
Thud! Thud!
The Golem of Despair began approaching the gorge, making the earth quake with every step.
Seeing it, Jack showed me the situation through shared vision and asked,
- What do you want to do?
- That’s something the strategist should decide.
- Then Master, push forward a bit. We let the Demon King’s army into the gorge on purpose to deal with them efficiently, but if that monster really starts advancing in earnest, arrows alone won’t be enough to cover it. So you need to move up and fight at the mouth of the gorge. If we concentrate our firepower there, defending the fortress will get a lot easier.
- What about the ones already inside the gorge?
- You’ll have to push through them yourself.
- You really make difficult things sound easy.
- Can’t do it?
- Can’t? I’ll show you what a difference in level looks like. So keep the arrows coming.
- What if you get hit by them?
- Me?
I sneered at Jack’s concern and kicked off the ground once.
At that, blood-red energy swirled up from the ground, and the familiar Blood Suit equipped itself onto me.
- No matter how impressive your Double Knights are, my suit’s tougher than that Dark Mist Aura or whatever it is.
- Yes, yes. Of course it is.
- Just make sure you collect the shadows properly. This is a rare resupply chance.
- Oh, absolutely. Would I ever forget?
The moment he said that, I plunged into the battlefield in earnest.
The arrows were still pouring down.
But whether it was a Shadow Knight or a Double Knight, the instant one of their arrows touched me—
Tidi-ding! Ting!
Astonishingly, they could not leave even a scratch the size of a fingernail on my Blood Suit.
- I told you, didn’t I?
- Yes, yes. Splendid as always, my lord and master.
I swung my sword and pressed forward.
The sight of it was like a bulldozer with no reverse gear. And by the time I had cut down countless soldiers of the Demon King’s army and advanced all the way to the mouth of the gorge, I came face-to-face with the Golem of Despair at exactly the right moment.
That was when it happened.
- Peekaboo.
Just as I was about to deal with the Golem of Despair, Lucifer suddenly appeared in front of me.
Caught off guard, I reflexively swung my sword at once.
Lucifer, in turn, swung his hand like a blade and blocked my sword barehanded.
After stopping my sword with his naked hand, Lucifer brought his face close to mine and said,
- So you’re the Avatar of the Eastern Demon King.
Then, wearing the most chilling smile in the world, he said,
- Let’s see just how impressive an Avatar that Eastern Demon King bastard managed to get his hands on.
The moment he finished speaking—
Shwooooo!
A huge void formed around Lucifer, and a tremendous force of attraction began swallowing everything in.