Chapter 433 - 421: Raging Tide
The fire command, transmitted via the Allen Network, reached every fire-support unit along the Aiselan Kingdom’s sprawling coastline in 0.01 seconds.
The next instant, the sky was torn apart.
Tens of thousands of crimson contrails streaked across the night sky—the Red Lotus-II guided missiles launched from their deployments in the ten legion positions.
They carved deadly arcs at an altitude of ten thousand meters, guided in real time by the Celestial Net’s Demon Eye V system. Like a precise meteor shower, they smashed down upon the endless carpet of flesh and blood.
On the second line of defense north of Golden Stone City, King William and the kingdom’s generals witnessed the miraculous scene through a live feed from the front lines.
Dozens of kilometers away on the surface of the sea, a continuous line of firelight resembled a chain of suns appearing from nowhere, illuminating the night as bright as day. Plumes of white steam shot skyward, as if the ocean itself had been instantly brought to a boil.
[First round of saturation strike complete.]
Jarvis’s voice echoed in the Cybertron Main Control Room.
[Confirmed enemy units killed: approximately 113,700.]
[Ammunition Consumption Rate: 13.7%.]
Two hundred thousand Heart Eaters in just three short minutes.
They were physically erased from the world before they could even touch the continent’s shores.
However, in the depths of Allen’s eyes, the sea of red that represented the million-strong Beast Tide had only thinned by the slightest layer.
"ROAR—!!!"
As if in response to this "greeting" from the civilized world, a roar echoed from the depths of the sea.
The surviving Heart Eater tide, far from retreating, grew even more frenzied.
Trampling over the corpses of their own and floes of molten flesh, they forced their advance onto the shallows.
The battle continued.
"Phase two bombardment." Allen’s command was unhesitating.
The thousands of "Purgatory" projection platforms deployed along the coastline, now reloaded with Magic Missiles, resumed firing at full capacity.
The Steel Legion, composed of Spider Slayers and Peacekeepers, fired tens of thousands of high-energy Magic Beams, weaving a dense, seamless web of death before their positions.
Any Heart Eater that tried to rush the beach was instantly sliced, seared, and vaporized.
In the sky, Storm Falcon formations screamed low over the sea’s surface, dropping one "Final Say" high-explosive bomb after another, which bloomed into orange-red "flowers" in the densest parts of the Beast Tide.
The Hive mothership released its sky-blotting swarm of "Berserker" drones, which, like metallic locusts, hunted down any stragglers attempting to infiltrate the flanks.
BOOM—BOOM—BOOM!
The ceaseless explosions merged into a long, rolling thunder.
The entire ten-kilometer zone along the coastline was engulfed in incandescent white light and crimson flames.
Seawater flash-vaporized, and tens of millions of tons of superheated steam, mixed with the flesh and blood of the Heart Eaters, formed a blood-red wall of fog hundreds of meters high that rolled inland toward the continent.
But the number of Heart Eaters seemed endless.
[Defense Sector 3, Defense Sector 5, Defense Sector 7, pressure overload. Requesting air support!]
[Warning. Peacekeeper Unit 734 focused-fired by elite Heart Eaters. Shield broken. Core destroyed.]
[Warning... Ranged attackers have appeared among the enemy. Storm Falcon 075 has been shot down!]
The flood of real-time battlefield alerts grew increasingly urgent, and Allen adjusted the Golems’ firepower, positioning, and support in response.
The vanguard of the Beast Tide had already broken through the Light Beam Array’s blockade in scattered places, engaging the Golem Legion in close-quarters combat.
"Cyclops Unit 3, attack at full power." Allen’s gaze locked onto Defense Sector 3, the point of greatest pressure.
Lacking ranged capabilities, Cyclops Unit 3 had been on standby for some time. Now, the three Earth Core Furnaces on its chest instantly glowed crimson, switching from idle to active.
Facing the incoming Beast Tide, the forty-eight-meter-tall, dark-red giant simply raised the Earth-Splitting Hammer in its hand.
’Gravity... amplified a hundredfold!’
In a two-kilometer radius centered on the hammer’s point of impact, gravity instantly spiked a hundredfold!
In that instant, tens of thousands of Heart Eaters within the area, along with the very sand and rock beneath them, were crushed into fine powder by an unseen, titanic force.
A perfect, circular crater appeared on the coastline, as if a god had simply pressed a finger into the earth.
A single blow cleared two kilometers of the coastline.
However, this terrifying strike was also like a beacon in the night, instantly drawing the attention of the terrifying entities lurking in the deep sea.
"ROAR!"
A massive black shadow, over thirty meters long, burst from the water and lunged straight for Cyclops Unit 3.
The first King of Heart-eaters had entered the battlefield!
At almost the same moment, on the Celestial Net’s magical imaging display, ten other red dots—each representing a King Level threat—began closing in on the various defense sectors at astonishing speed.
They were done waiting; all of them were making their move at once.
"[King-Hunter Squadron, activate]," Allen said, his voice still calm.
Ten thousand meters up in the sky, three Gabriel Unit-3s, which had been cloaked, revealed themselves simultaneously.
The "Chanting Hubs" of the three Gabriels achieved perfect, parallel casting through the Allen Network.
Three thick beams of light converged and merged in mid-air, their color shifting from incandescent white to a fearsome, pulsating gold.
The beam’s diameter rapidly swelled—twenty meters, thirty meters!
"Angel’s Chant—Combined Strike!"
The golden beam of destruction, now over fifty meters in diameter, shot forth like a spear of judgment hurled by a god, tearing through the air straight toward a King of Heart-eaters that had just breached the surface!
The King beast clearly sensed the mortal danger. It let out a furious roar, condensing a layered, aquamarine shield several meters thick around its body.
The golden beam and the blue shield collided with a thunderous impact!
A sun-like radiance erupted. The shield, like paper, shattered and vaporized layer by layer.
The golden beam pierced the shield, tore through the King’s body, and vaporized a huge swath of the sea behind it—water, Heart Eaters, and even the bedrock of the ocean floor.
The nail that sticks out gets hammered down. The first King to reveal itself was instantly annihilated by the focused, overwhelming firepower.
[Defense Sector 2: King Level unit eliminated. King-Hunter Squadron: three Gabriel units at 71% energy. ’Chanting Hubs’ entering cooldown. Unable to perform another combined strike for 3 minutes.]
But before the kingdom’s soldiers on the second line of defense could cheer, two, then three—a total of five—Kings of Heart-eaters burst from the water simultaneously from different directions, roaring as they charged the line.
The war had entered its bloodiest, meat-grinder phase.
Time ticked by, second by second.
The fifth hour... The twelfth hour...
Allen sat quietly on his throne, his Spiritual Power blanketing the entire battlefield. He processed hundreds of thousands of data streams simultaneously, issuing tens of thousands of commands.
The loss of every Golem, the expenditure of every round of ammunition—it all unfolded with perfect clarity in his mind.
He was playing chess with all his pieces against a crimson sea named "Despair"!
Cyclops Unit 1 and Unit 2 fought three Kings of Heart-eaters at once, their battle shaking the very earth.
After their cooldown, the Gabriel squadron struck again, heavily wounding two more Kings with precision strikes.
But the price was steep: the main body of the Beast Tide had completely smashed through the ranged fire blockade and was now locked in close combat with the Steel Legion.
Fourteen hours and forty-two minutes in.
[Commander.]
[...Conventional ammunition stockpile... has reached zero.]
That voice was like a switch. The deafening roar of explosions that had thundered across the battlefield for fourteen straight hours began to taper off.
Without the suppressing fire from a distance, the density of firepower at the front line plummeted.
All that remained was the hiss of Magic Beams slicing through the air and the sickening thuds of Steel Giants crashing against flesh and blood.
"ROAR—!"
Sensing the decrease in human firepower, the Beast Tide let out a fanatical shriek.
Like a bursting dam, they instantly flooded the several-hundred-meter buffer zone along the coast.
"All ground units, switch to melee mode," Allen swiftly commanded.
[Warning, Golem Legion attrition rate is climbing!]
[Warning! Defense Sector 9 Golem energy shields averaging below 30%!]
[Warning! Cyclops Unit 2’s Earth Vein Anchor damaged! Power output down 15%!]
Red alerts flooded the screen in front of Allen like a blizzard.
Just then, a particularly jarring alert flashed in the center of the display.
[ALERT! Defense Sector 5, first steel defense line... has been breached!]
On the holographic projection, a heavily wounded King of Heart-eaters, half of its body blown apart, used its last ounce of strength to smash aside the Cyclops it was battling.
The gap it created was instantly flooded by tens of thousands of lesser Heart Eaters.
For the first time, they surged past the blockade forged of steel and flame and charged toward the last line of defense behind them—the final line of the Aiselan Kingdom, the one made of flesh and blood.