Chapter 406 - 395: The Tide of Iron and Fire
Dawn.
Over the Endless Sea, the first light of day had yet to fully tear through the veil of night.
A black line appeared on the surface of the sea.
It stretched from east to west, as if stitching the entire horizon together.
At first, it was just a faint silhouette, but after a mere twenty minutes, the black line rapidly thickened and rose.
It was a living tide, a wall of countless dark green bodies, slick with scales and slime, piled one on top of another.
They surged toward the continent.
The sound arrived before the sight.
On the defense line, tens of kilometers away, the soldiers of the Royal Army heard the bloodcurdling noise.
Hundreds of thousands of bodies thrashed, kicked, and crushed against each other in the water, merging into a low, chaotic roar, as if the entire sea were screaming in agony.
Inside Cybertron’s control center.
Allen sat on a high-backed chair, his chin propped on one hand.
The twelve ethereal blue light screens floating in mid-air cast a cold, stern light on his face.
[Commander, targets have entered the phase-one strike range.]
"Fire," Allen said, his lips barely moving.
The moment the command was given, ten legion positions behind the coastline erupted with a blinding light.
Hundreds of dark red streams of light, trailing long fiery tails, soared from the launch matrices of the Purgatory Platforms. The Red Lotus-II guided missiles carved deadly parabolas through the air. Under the precise guidance of the Demon Eye V-type systems at an altitude of ten thousand meters, they plunged toward the sea tens of kilometers away like a meteor shower.
The first wave of Heart Eaters had just surfaced several kilometers from the coast, their underdeveloped brains not yet comprehending what the falling lights in the sky were.
The next second, the surface of the sea boiled.
"BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!"
The ceaseless explosions shattered the sea breeze.
Violent flames shot into the sky, illuminating the dawn sky as if it were dusk.
The intense heat instantly vaporized the seawater, sending up massive mushroom clouds of white steam.
Within the blast radius of the Red Lotus-II, both ordinary Heart Eaters and their slightly larger variants were torn to shreds by the shockwaves and shrapnel. They were annihilated in droves, turning into bloody froth on the sea’s surface before even catching a glimpse of the land.
But there were too many of them.
The Heart Eaters at the rear showed no fear. They trampled over the limbs and corpses of their own kind, pushing through the boiling seawater, and continued to surge forward.
Golden Stone City, on the city wall.
Prince William pressed both hands on the stone parapet.
Even from a safe distance of tens of kilometers, he could still clearly see the continuous, blinding flashes at the edge of the horizon.
The dull explosions, like the heartbeat of an ancient behemoth, traveled across the vast distance, causing the stone bricks of the city wall beneath his feet to tremble slightly.
Behind him, the Knight Captain, Leon, swallowed hard, his voice dry and unsteady. "Your Highness... those explosions... are those the Wizard’s weapons? They’re attacking from that far away?"
In the common knowledge of warfare in the Aiselan Kingdom, an archer’s maximum range was merely a few hundred meters, and a Spirit Mage’s attack could reach a few kilometers at best.
But launching a strike from tens of kilometers away? It was completely unimaginable.
William nodded, his Adam’s apple bobbing. "Lord Weisren said his legion can attack from a distance where the enemy is completely invisible to the naked eye."
He took a deep breath and uttered the term that filled him with awe.
"This is what he called... ’over-the-horizon combat’."
The battle entered the landing phase.
Although the over-the-horizon saturation bombardment had already vaporized over fifty thousand Heart Eaters, the remaining Beast Tide, relying on its sheer numbers, pushed through the bombing and stormed the shallows.
"Targets entering phase-two strike range. Second fire echelon, activated," Jarvis reported.
The Purgatory Platforms quickly adjusted their firing angles, switching from area-denial bombardment to precision strikes.
On the coastline, the formations of Spider Slayers and Peacekeepers took a uniform step forward.
The palms of their hands and their heads simultaneously lit up with a dazzling blue light.
The next moment, hundreds of scorching Magic Beams fired at once!
TSSSH—TSSSH—TSSSH!
There were no earth-shattering explosions, only the sharp whistle of air being burned through by extreme heat.
On the beach, the dense Magic Beams instantly wove a massive, inescapable web of death.
The Heart Eaters at the very front had their bodies instantly pierced and vaporized, turning to charred husks before they could even utter a cry.
In the sky, a squadron of Storm Falcons whistled as they dived.
Aerial-version "Final Interpretation" high-explosive bombs fell precisely into the densest clusters of Heart Eaters.
The earth trembled violently as severed limbs and sand were blasted tens of meters into the air.
The bay doors of the Hive mothership opened, and thousands of Mad Bee Drones swarmed out.
Like a buzzing black cloud of steel, they descended upon the fringes of the Beast Tide, precisely picking off the stragglers that tried to flank from the sides.
It was a one-sided slaughter with no suspense.
The Heart Eater ranks were carved with searing trenches by the beams.
The front rank fell, and the one behind took its place; that rank fell, and the next one took its place.
In just half an hour, the corpses on the coastline had piled up into a two-meter-high wall.
Those that came after could only tread on the slick bodies of their own kind to continue this pointless charge.
Inside the Cybertron command center, data refreshed on the screens like a waterfall.
[Defense Sector 3 kill rate: 87%. Defense Sector 8 kill rate: 91%.]
[These two sectors have the highest number of landing Heart Eaters. Pressure on other fronts is minimal. All defensive positions across the line are stable.]
[Current ammunition expenditure: 7.2%.]
Flesh and blood were worthless before shells of steel.
Allen watched the constantly updating numbers on the screen and nodded slightly.
’Everything is under control.’
Defense Sector 5.
The encampment of the Royal Army’s Second Legion.
Commander Carl stood behind the designated second line of defense, surrounded by fully armed Royal Army soldiers, ready for battle.
But at this moment, everyone stood rooted to the spot like wooden statues, staring dumbfounded at the coastline ahead.
They had prepared their entire lives for a fight to the death and had even written their last wills.
Yet now, this bloody battle to protect their home and country had turned into a one-sided spectacle.
The offensive Spirit Art light that the Spirit Mages had long since gathered in their hands flared up and died down, over and over. But they were never able to unleash it.
Because they weren’t in range.
Not a single Heart Eater could break through the deathly blockade erected by the Steel Legion and enter their attack range alive.
A young, newly enlisted soldier, clutching his spear tightly, looked at Carl with trembling lips. "Sir... does this mean... we don’t have to fight?"
"Don’t celebrate too soon," Carl said, withdrawing his gaze, his voice low and hoarse. "These are just cannon fodder sent to die. The real trouble... hasn’t arrived yet."
「Six hours later.」
The sun was high in the sky.
The charge of the minion tide had finally ceased. The mountain of corpses on the coastline emitted a nauseating, scorched stench.
The battlefield fell into a brief silence.
It was an unnatural silence. The waves lapped against the reefs, and even the wind seemed to have stopped.
"BEEP—"
A piercing alarm suddenly blared over all defense sectors. It was a top-level warning issued to the entire front by the Celestial Net system.
Inside the Cybertron command center, red warning lights began to flash.
[Warning.]
Jarvis’s voice also carried a hint of urgency.
[Two super-large Magic Sources flagged by the Celestial Net are rapidly ascending from the deep sea. Energy level assessment: Threshold of a Second-level Wizard has been reached.]
[Both have appeared simultaneously in the sea off the designated landing points of Sectors 3 and 8. A large number of elite-class Heart Eaters have also been detected regrouping.]
On the beach, the few remaining Heart Eaters seemed to have received some kind of command; they stopped their charge and retreated back into the sea.
They were welcoming the arrival of their king.
"Elites are gathering..." Allen murmured, watching the image on the screen, his eyes narrowing slightly.
"So, they’re coming?"
He stared at the two massive, ever-brightening red dots on the screen. His tone was still calm, yet it carried a chilling coldness that could make one’s heart palpitate.
"Two of them landing at the same time, exactly as predicted."
Allen looked up, his gaze seeming to pierce through the dome of Cybertron, toward the two crimson titans standing tall on the coastline.
"Cyclops."
"Prepare for engagement."
On the coastline, the single, massive eyes on the foreheads of two forty-eight-meter-tall giant Mechas suddenly erupted with a blinding scarlet light. The furnaces in their chests let out a deafening roar.