Chapter 311: Phase Two Starts Now!
The deafening chain-reaction detonations of thirty heavy mana cannons tore through the lower hull of The Unmovable Wall, sending jagged shards of scorched steel, melting brass plating, and blinding plumes of black smoke boiling up into the morning sky.
The heat radiating off the burning gun ports rippled across the open battlefield in suffocating waves, turning the damp soil of the basin into a smoking, glass-strewn wasteland.
High atop the stone battlements of the Blessed Land’s perimeter wall, line after line of archers and mages watched the fiery spectacle with wide gleaming eyes.
Below on the clearing, through the thick haze of floating ash, they could see Brida, Fenna, Gunnhild, Hilda, and Tasmin executing a synchronized high-speed tactical retreat.
The five forward operatives were sprinting back across the scorched earth with effortless grace, completely unharmed, leaving behind a trail of atomized troops, broken spell arrays, and ruined siege artillery.
In that exact second, every single woman stationed on the battlements, inside the courtyard, and along the front gates realized the exact same thing.
Phase One was officially complete.
Which meant it was time for Phase Two.
From a strategic standpoint, Silas’s overall blueprint for this entire territory war was hilariously straightforward.
There were no overly complex forty-step maneuvers, no convoluted naval signals, and no tedious multi-day sieges.
Silas had reduced the entire conflict down to two simple sweeping phases.
Phase One was the blunt force disruption... sending some of the Vanguard’s heaviest hitters out to crush Sky’s forward momentum, destroy his primary artillery, and test the limits of his territory’s defenses.
Phase Two was the real objective.
Across the entire battlefield... whether they were standing on the high obsidian walls, running across the muddy grass, or riding atop giant spirit beasts... every single girl in the Blessed Land thought the exact same thought at the exact same time.
’It’s time to aura farm as much as humanly possible.’
That was the core of Phase Two. That was their next big thing to do.
This wasn’t just a battle for territory line boundary markers or structural integrity points... this was a global broadcast being transmitted live to hundreds of millions of viewers across the Sovereign Realm and Earth.
Silas had explicitly ordered them to maximize every second of camera time, look unfathomably cool, radiate terrifying dominance, and farm endless engagement metrics for their territory’s official brand.
HEAVE... CREAK!
The colossal iron-reinforced front gates of the Blessed Land swung wide open with a deep echoing groan of iron hinges.
Instantly, row upon row of heavily armored Shieldmaidens, frontline sword-sworn warriors, and guards stepped through the threshold onto the field.
Their boots struck the earth in unison with their heavy iron greaves creating a rhythm that sounded like a approaching thunderstorm.
High above the gates, perched at the very peak of the Tier 2 Reinforced Watchtower, Kaelia stood flanked by elite longbow archers.
While the archers beside her maintained rigid, deadly military posture with their composite bows notched and ready, Kaelia was practically vibrating with unbridled, giddy excitement.
Her bright eyes sparkled as she looked down at the massive army deploying below, her long ears twitching at every explosion.
However, unlike the archers who carried sleek star-iron longbows or magical staves, Kaelia was holding... a heavy, soot-stained cast-iron frying pan.
She had gripped the handle with both hands, holding the heavy kitchen utensil firmly against her chest like a divine artifact of war.
’If anything tries to fly up here and attack my Watchtower...’ Kaelia thought to herself, her mind racing with dead-serious calculations, ’...if an enemy spell projectile or a rogue flying beast comes close, I’ll just use my pan to bat it straight back down! I’ll smack it right out of the sky!’
She paused, looking down at the flat, heavy bottom of the cast-iron pan, then blinked her eyes in quiet hopeful contemplation.
’I mean... it would work, right?’ Kaelia reassured herself inwardly, nodding firmly. ’Thora forged this pan out of heavy alloy. It’s practically an unbreakable shield! If a dragon shoots fire, I’ll just swat the fireball back like a tennis ball!’
The archers standing beside her on the Watchtower shot her quick, side-eye glances of utter confusion, they could tell what she was thinking about but nobody dared question her logic.
She looked far too confident...
Down below, the girls who had been stationed along the high obsidian perimeter wall made their grand entry.
They didn’t waste time taking the stone staircases down to the courtyard.
Instead, the women stepped up onto the stone crenellations and threw themselves directly off the fifty-foot wall into open air.
FWOOSH! FWOOSH! FWOOSH!
In mid-fall, the women spread their arms wide.
The special cloaks and enchanted robes forged by Rowenna and Thora flared outward instantly, expanding like sleek aerodynamic wings.
The runic fabric caught the rising thermal currents generated by the burning cannons below, allowing the entire deployment of female warriors to glide down from the sky with breathtaking weightless elegance.
They descended upon the battlefield like a flock of deadly, beautiful Valkyries with their dark cloaks fluttering against the morning sky!
They touched down onto the trampled grass in perfect synchronized alignment.
They didn’t stumble neither did they slide at all.
They landed naturally on their boots, instantly fanning out into a textbook three-tiered battle array.
The heavy Shieldmaidens locked their iron tower shields flat up front, forming an impenetrable metallic wall.
Directly behind them stood the mages, their staves glowing with elemental energy.
And forming the rear anchor was the longbow archers, their composite bows drawn back in perfect formation.
Commanding the center of this newly deployed army was Morwenna.
The Dread Queen was riding atop Titan... the hulking Alpha Blessed Wolf of the Umbral Basin.
Morwenna sat tall in the saddle with her dark pirate coat swaying over her pristine uniform, her hand resting gracefully on the hilt of her curved Corsair.
As Titan took slow intimidating strides forward, Morwenna’s mind drifted to the interior Keep behind them.
’Unbelievable...’ Morwenna thought inwardly, her thoughts filled with sharp affectionate irritation. ’That overgrown green weed is still sitting inside the Keep, lounging on a velvet couch and sipping mana-tea while the rest of us are out here doing physical labor on camera.’
Morwenna shook her head in her thoughts, mildly disgusted by Eluned’s total lack of urgency.
’How can a Nature Goddess be so unfathomably lazy?’ Morwenna scoffed internally. ’She has lived for thousands of years, yet her primary goal in life seems to be finding new creative ways to lay her head on Lord Silas’s lap and nap for twelve hours straight. What an Insufferable creature...’
Putting the lazy goddess out of her mind, Morwenna re-focused her attention on the burning clearing ahead.
She nudged Titan’s flanks, riding the wolf to the front of the Vanguard line, stopping fifty yards ahead of the Shieldmaidens.
Far across the smoke-choked field, Lord Sky stood on the elevated command deck of The Unmovable Wall, staring at the deployed Blessed Land army through his disguise helmet’s optical zoom lenses.
Behind his silver-and-black streaming mask, Sky’s black eyes narrowed into sharp calculating slits.
At first glance, the army standing before him was remarkably small. Compared to the hundreds of heavy infantry, mercenary guilds, and secondary shock-troopers The Unmovable Wall possessed, Blessed Land’s deployment numbered only 70 or so women.
...However, as a veteran Classic Lord who had fought through dozens of territory wars, Sky knew better than anyone that raw troop numbers didn’t mean shit in the Sovereign Realm.
Every single woman standing in that formation radiated a cold, disciplined, and utterly terrifying pressure.
They weren’t panicking.
They weren’t sweating.
They stood amidst the burning wreckage of his artillery with the composure of seasoned conquerors and the pirate woman riding the golden wolf up front felt like a walking natural disaster waiting to detonate.
Morwenna raised her chin, her piercing gaze locking directly onto Sky’s masked face across the distance.
She drew her Corsair halfway from its scabbard, letting the steel blade click sharply against the iron guard.
Her voice, amplified by her internal mana pathways, boomed across the entire basin like a clear, melodic war horn.
"Hear me, Lord of the Moving Wall! Everything that your pathetic territory has faced up until this very second... our forward skirmishers, our archers, and our frontline shields was nothing more than a mere prelude!"
Morwenna paused, letting her words sink into the minds of the five hundred million viewers watching the stream.
"Now..." Morwenna declared with chilling conviction, "...you shall face the true, unbridled power of the Blessed Land! Prepare to be utterly overwhelmed!"
...However, despite her fierce, legendary declaration, a light pink blush touched Morwenna’s cheeks.
Behind her, the entire Vanguard army remained dead silent.
Not a single woman cheered... Not a single shield was banged as the silence was almost deafening.
Under normal circumstances, the women loved nothing more than letting out boisterous bloodthirsty battle cries before a charge.
But today... they were exercising extreme verbal restraint.
Morwenna understood completely, which was why her cheeks were slightly pink.
They were waiting.
Every single girl in the army was rigidly sticking to the script that Silas had made them memorize this morning.
The dramatic silence was a engineered pause... a theatrical cliffhanger designed to force Lord Sky into asking the exact question they needed him to ask.
As long as Sky asked the question... Phase Two could officially progress to its grand climax.
Sky stood on his command deck, looking at the silent army, then looking up at the high stone Watchtower.
The silence was creeping under his skin. He raised his broad sword, pointing it toward Morwenna, his audio transmitter projecting his loud commanding voice across the field.
"A dramatic speech, Pirate Queen!" Sky called out, trying to reclaim control of the broadcast narrative. "But where is your master?! Where is Lord Vespera?! Since this is supposed to be an official high-stakes Lord War with both sides giving their absolute all, your Lord ought to be standing out here on the field leading her people... unless, of course... she’s afraid to show her face—"
ROOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOAR!
Before Sky could even finish the word ’afraid’—
An earth-shattering apocalyptic sound erupted from deep within the misty perimeter of the Blessed Land.
It was a roar unlike anything anyone on that battlefield had ever heard in their lives.
It was deafening and immense, yet carried a smooth frequency that commanded unquestionable authority over all living creation.
The soundwave was so massive that the lingering smoke clouds over the basin were instantly blown apart, and the solid ground beneath thousands of soldiers violently vibrated.
Sky’s breath caught in his throat behind his helmet.
His battle instincts flared in pure terror, yet his mind couldn’t pinpoint what kind of creature could possibly produce a roar of that magnitude.
Hearing the roar, Morwenna’s light pink blush faded, replaced by a sharp triumphant grin.
She raised her naval saber, pointing the gleaming blade straight up into the sky, executing the exact final line of her script.
"My Lord?" Morwenna called out. "She has already arr—"
Morwenna intentionally paused right there, leaving her sentence incomplete.
It was totally fine that she didn’t finish her words, because that dramatic pause was also a calculated part of the script she had memorized.
BOOM!
Out from the divine, translucent mist of the Blessed Land, a colossal shadow broke through the cloud line.
A massive, majestic Crimson Dragon took to the sky.
FWOOSH!
Its gigantic, thirty-foot wingspan swept through the air, generating a massive downforce of wind that flattened the grass for hundreds of yards below.
Its scales were a deep, iridescent ruby-crimson that glinted like polished gemstones under the morning sun, and its long, serpentine body radiated an ancient, terrifying heat that evaporated the damp mist in seconds.
Across the global network, over FIVE HUNDRED MILLION viewers watching the stream simultaneously gasped in mind-boggling shock.
In tavern halls, corporate boardrooms, guild sanctuaries, and imperial palaces across the Sovereign Realm and Earth, every single person watching the stream stood up from their chairs.
Even the executives of the biggest mega-corporations in the world who monitored Lord War broadcasts to evaluate territory investments were completely frozen in disbelief.
In the Sovereign Realm, obtaining a loyal dragon unit of any color or rank was considered an almost impossible mythical feat that required decades of luck, fortunes in high-tier taming catalysts, and legendary Hero contracts.
...But not only did Lord Vespera possess a fully grown, perfectly loyal Dragon...
Anyone with high-tier beast-identification skills could see it instantly... this was no standard fire dragon or elemental wyrm!
This was a thought-to-be-extinct Primordial Crimson Dragon...
An ancient apex predator whose bloodline predated the very founding of the Sovereign Realm.
SWISH!
At that exact moment, Tasmin, Brida, Fenna, Gunnhild, and Hilda arrived back at the formation, taking their places alongside Morwenna.
High above, Talira began her descent.
[Author’s Note]
Sorry for no updates yesterday, once I finished those Chapters, I got really sick and had to go to the hospital but I’m good now.