Chapter 434 - 422: The Price
In the Fifth Defensive Sector, the breach torn through the first line of steel defenses was like a wound that would never heal.
Tens of thousands of Heart Eaters poured through, like ink dropped into clear water, instantly corrupting the entire region.
They swarmed over the embankments formed by the wreckage of Golems and, for the first time, set foot on the inland territories of the Aiselan Kingdom.
Awaiting them was the Royal Army’s second line of defense.
"For the King! For Aiselan!"
A Royal Army Commander raised his longsword high and roared the order to fire.
A web of firepower, composed of alchemical rifles, siege crossbows, and a handful of Construct Armors, instantly formed.
Compared to Allen’s Golem Legion, this line of defense seemed so primitive, so... fragile.
Lead shot and crossbow bolts struck the tough hides of the elite Heart Eaters, only to glance off with a few sparks. They couldn’t even make the creatures pause.
In less than ten minutes, the line was completely shattered.
An Alchemy Warrior, equipped with a first-generation light Construct Armor from the royal workshop, poured all his Spiritual Power into the High-Pressure Steam Hammer on his gauntlet and slammed it down hard on an elite Heart Eater’s head.
The hammer, powerful enough to smash through a city wall, only made the monster’s head tilt to the side.
The next second, the monster’s claws easily tore through the Alchemy Warrior’s chest plate. It ripped out the still-beating heart, Spirit Core and all, and stuffed it into its mouth.
In Golden Stone City, inside the royal palace’s command room, King William’s face was ashen as he watched the casualty numbers on the spirit-com screen skyrocket.
"Your Majesty, the fifth line is requesting a retreat! They can’t hold on!"
"Your Majesty, the flank of the Third Defensive Sector has been breached! More than three hundred Heart Eaters have entered the Hilton Plain!"
"Your Majesty..."
"Enough." William cut off all the reports.
He tore off his ornate royal robes, revealing the golden Spirit Magic Armor he already wore beneath.
"Relay my command! The Royal Guard Legion marches with me!" William’s voice was filled with unyielding resolve.
"Your Majesty, you mustn’t! You are the King!" an old minister wailed, falling to his knees.
William didn’t look at him. He simply drew his sword, Wind King’s Breath, from his side. The blade flared with a cyan light as he spoke words similar to those he had said upon first meeting Allen.
"My soldiers are bleeding. My people are being slaughtered. If a King can only watch this unfold from his throne, then I would rather not be King at all."
Half an hour later, a golden torrent of five hundred Level 4 Spirit Mages appeared at the weakest point of the fifth defensive line.
William led the charge. With a single slash of his sword, a hundred-meter-long cyan wind blade bisected a dozen elite Heart Eaters before him.
The King’s arrival greatly bolstered their crumbling morale.
However, faced with an endless Beast Tide, one man’s bravery was but a drop in the ocean.
In just one hour.
The Royal Army lost seven thousand soldiers.
William was drenched in blood, his ornate golden armor covered in claw marks and cracks. He had personally slain over thirty elite Heart Eaters, but even more monsters had already bypassed him, swarming toward the hinterlands like a plague of locusts.
They devoured all life in their path. Village after village, unable to evacuate in time, was reduced to a dead zone in moments.
...
「Cybertron, Main Control Room.」
Allen silently watched the holographic map. The red dots representing the Heart Eaters had already penetrated deep into the green territory that marked the kingdom.
Within the Allen Network, countless desperate cries and prayers merged into a cacophonous sea.
[Royal Army’s second defensive line projected to collapse completely in 17 minutes.]
[Extrapolating from the current infiltration speed, the first wave of Heart Eaters will reach the outskirts of Golden Stone City in 4 hours and 12 minutes.]
Jarvis stated the facts with cold detachment.
Allen’s face was expressionless, but his fluctuating Humanity Value indicated his inner turmoil.
He slowly raised a hand.
"Jarvis."
"Authorize use of the ’Crystallization’-series strategic weapons."
[Command confirmed.]
[Unlocking ’Crystallization’-Type III High-Energy Bombs. Inventory: 156.]
[Targets locked: Third, Fifth, and Ninth Defensive Sectors. Coordinates of King Level unit clusters.]
[Flight wing dispatched.]
...
High above the battlefield, dozens of circling Storm Falcon Fighters suddenly broke formation, diving at supersonic speeds toward the densest concentrations of the Beast Tide.
One by one, five-meter-long, spindle-shaped objects were silently released.
The bombs made no sound, nor did they emit any light.
But the instant one touched the ground, it was as if time itself had been paused.
An eerie light radiated outward from the point of impact.
A King of Heart-eaters, its cavernous maw opened wide to devour a soldier of the kingdom, froze in that exact moment.
Its roar, the soldier’s scream, the howl of the wind, the churning of the sea... all sound was "frozen."
What followed was a complete rewriting of matter itself.
The flesh and blood of a King of Heart-eaters, starting with its claws, rapidly transformed into a translucent crystal. Within seconds, it had become a colossal, lifelike sculpture.
This strange "plague" spread with terrifying speed.
Seawater, sand, Golems, Aiselans, Heart Eaters... all matter within a radius of several kilometers was forcibly converted into the same type of crystal in mere tenths of a second.
Dozens of enormous white crystal forests, like something out of myth, erupted from the coastline.
The branches of the crystal forests were fantastically shaped, refracting the sky’s light and exuding an eerie yet sacred beauty.
It was death, solidified.
This single strike completely cleared out several core warzones. The main force of the Beast Tide—over four hundred thousand Heart Eaters, along with three Kings of Heart-eaters—was permanently sealed within this beautiful tomb.
The tide of battle turned in an instant.
The remnants of the Beast Tide, having lost their unified command and numerical superiority, fell into total disarray.
"ROAR!"
The two remaining Kings of Heart-eaters let out roars of terror and fury.
But hunters, long lying in wait, were there to greet them.
Cyclops One and Cyclops Two advanced with heavy strides, wielding their Earth-Splitting Hammers and locking onto one King each.
Ten thousand meters high in the sky, the "Invocation Cores" of the three Gabriels finished cooling, and the golden light of destruction blazed once more.
A one-sided hunt began.
「Fifteen minutes later.」
After Cyclops One smashed half its body to pieces, the last King of Heart-eaters finally felt fear. It lost all will to fight, turning to drag its mangled body in a desperate flight toward the sea.
’As long as I can get back to the deep sea, back to the Hive Mother, I can survive!’
It could already smell the salty tang of the ocean; the water’s surface was less than five hundred meters away.
Just then, an immense, indescribable fear seized its heart.
It looked up instinctively.
High above, the sky, stained gray-black by the smoke of war, looked as if it had been torn open by a vast, invisible hand.
In the center of the clouds, the corner of a black, oval silhouette that blotted out the sun slowly came into view.
At the base of the silhouette, a single point of light ignited.
It was a point of light impossible to look at directly—pure, absolute, as if it condensed all the "Judgment" and "retribution" in the universe.
The Sky Throne. Main cannon. "Light of Judgment."
Charge: 100%.
A column of pure white light descended in utter silence.
It pierced the atmosphere and space itself, striking the fleeing King of Heart-eaters with perfect precision.
The instant the column of light touched its body, all matter in the area—the King of Heart-eaters’s flesh and blood, the sand beneath it, even the bedrock deep below—disintegrated into its most fundamental particles.
The column of light plunged, undiminished, deep into the earth, leaving a bottomless, circular chasm with mirror-smooth edges. For a hundred meters around the hole, the seawater was instantly vaporized, creating a momentary vacuum.
The battlefield fell completely silent.
There were no cheers, no celebrations.
The surviving soldiers of the kingdom, the blood-drenched King William—all of them simply knelt on the ground in a daze, staring up at the wound in the sky as it slowly vanished, and at the vast white crystal forest along the coast.
The air was thick with the smells of scorching, of blood, and a strange, pungent odor like ozone.
The coastline of the Aiselan Kingdom had been permanently altered.
...
「Dusk, the next day.」
The last wave of Heart Eaters that had scattered into the kingdom’s interior was annihilated by a Golem squad less than fifty kilometers from Golden Stone City.
「Cybertron, Main Control Room.」
Allen still sat upon his throne. He had maintained the Allen Network for a full thirty hours, and even he felt the exhaustion.
Jarvis’s voice echoed through the empty control room, delivering the post-battle report.
[Report to the Commander. The Beast Tide extermination operation is complete.]
[Total enemy units eliminated: approximately 1,130,000. This includes eleven King Level units, all confirmed eliminated.]
[Friendly losses: Spider Slayer series, 2,712 units destroyed. Peacekeeper series, 819 units destroyed. Storm Falcon Fighters, 11 crashed... Cyclops Two sustained moderate damage, Earth Vein Anchor overloaded, requires return for major overhaul...]
[Over 200,000 munitions of various types expended.]
[Calculated military cost, total: 81,300,000 Low-Level Magic Stones.]
[Aiselan Kingdom losses: Royal Army, 122,847 killed in action.]
[Civilian deaths, preliminary count: 474,300... This figure is still rising.]
Allen listened to the string of cold numbers in silence.
’Eighty million Magic Stones is nothing.’
’But... over half a million civilians.’
’This cost... it seems far heavier than my calculations predicted.’
He slowly closed his eyes. For the first time, a flicker of... exhaustion, almost imperceptible, crossed the face that his Mechanical Mind had always kept perfectly placid.