Chapter 527 - 513: Steel and Flesh
Chapter 527: Chapter 513: Steel and Flesh
Above the ruins of the Azure Sky Fortress, that ghastly green pillar of Evil Energy stubbornly pierced the clouds.
Baroque’s massive body hovered in midair. Spreading his arms wide, he reveled in his newfound power and let out a deafening burst of maniacal laughter. Below, an army of two hundred thousand Demons roared in response. The wicked soundwaves nearly tore the sky apart. Inside the cross-realm passage, even more Demons were still packed like sardines, desperately shoving their way out.
Inside the bridge of the Ten Thousand Miles of Sunshine.
Allen sat in the command chair, watching Baroque’s unbridled display.
"Too much nonsense," Allen said. "Jarvis, fire the main cannon of the Celestial Throne. Dongfeng position, ten-round volley."
Ten thousand meters in the air.
The Celestial Throne, which had maintained its invisibility all this time, deactivated its optical camouflage. At the bottom of the massive elliptical platform, a menacing cannon barrel with a six-meter caliber began to slowly rotate, locking onto the coordinates on the ground. Three Magic Engines instantly entered an overloaded state! The Energy Storage Rings lit up sequentially along the barrel, sending a blinding white light all the way to the muzzle. The radiance intensified layer by layer until it shone as brightly as the sun.
In the next instant, a beam of pure white light, condensed to the absolute limit, ruthlessly pierced through heaven and earth like a divine scourge!
On the ground, Baroque’s maniacal smile hadn’t even fully faded before the Light of Judgment descended.
There was no warning, nor was there any sense of fair play. The altar, activated by two hundred thousand souls, exploded the very moment the white light touched it. Swaths of Evil Energy patterns extinguished instantly, leaving the cross-realm passage teetering on the verge of collapse.
Baroque bellowed in rage, raising his Flaming Battle Blade high with both hands in an attempt to block the strike.
"Defend the sky!" he roared.
Dozens of massive High-tier Demons took to the air in response, hastily deploying layers of Evil Energy Shields. However, the moment the shields formed, a second and third Light of Judgment followed close behind. The white light instantly swallowed them whole, leaving not even a single speck of ash behind.
Meanwhile, thousands of miles away at the temporary Cybertron base.
At the position of the long-range strike legion, ten specially modified Purgatory Golems—resembling iron Giant Beasts with heavily reinforced chassis—simultaneously raised the launch racks on their backs. With a loud CLACK, their thick, hydraulic stabilizing limbs pierced deep into the bedrock. The elevation angle of their launch tubes was calibrated precisely to seventy-three degrees.
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
The earth trembled violently as if it were being continuously pounded by a giant hammer. Ten Dongfeng Type I Magic Missiles burst from their tubes, trailing long tails of flame. Their first-stage thrusters roared as they propelled the payloads ten thousand meters into the sky. The outer shells detached, and the Hephaestus Type I engines ignited in a seamless relay! Ten blazing streaks of light tore through the Sky Vault, tracing ten beautiful, yet deadly, arcs through the atmosphere that were completely visible to the naked eye.
They carried no expensive crystallized warheads. For this strike, there was no need to create a forbidden zone; they only needed to dump a sufficient amount of "truth" into the exact same coordinates at the exact same time!
The distance of sixteen hundred kilometers was covered in the blink of an eye.
Baroque had just struggled to survive the Celestial Throne’s three-round volley. Before he could even catch his breath, he looked up in horror to see ten rapidly expanding points of deadly light in the sky!
"Despicable Wiza—"
His curse was completely swallowed by the sound of the explosions. The first Dongfeng landed. It was immediately followed by the second, the third...
Ten Magic Missiles detonated in sequence according to the perfect trajectory calculated by Jarvis. The terrifying shockwaves overlapped and resonated, instantly tearing the fragile bedrock apart! Indescribable heat swept through the ruins of the fortress. Massive swaths of rock were directly vaporized and melted. A mushroom cloud larger than a mountain, mixed with blinding white light and orange-red flames, shot up into the sky and violently engulfed that ghastly green pillar of Evil Energy.
The Azure Sky Fortress—this once-majestic city—was nearly wiped completely off the map of Ionia.
The cross-realm passage connecting to Purgatory twisted violently under the continuous bombardment, its spatial structure completely collapsing. On the other end of the passage, the Demons still shoving their way forward were roaring one second, only for the leading thousands to be sliced in half by spatial rifts the next. The military formations in the rear were sucked into the chaotic, out-of-control spatial currents. Their flesh, bones, and souls were ground down together into the most primal energy. The passage eventually shrank into a thin line, flickered twice, and then completely snapped and vanished.
Baroque’s smile vanished along with half of his body. He was sent flying like a torn sack by the blast wave, plunging headfirst into the newly formed magma lake.
[Energy reaction in the target area has dropped sharply. Cross-realm node confirmed destroyed.]
Inside the bridge, the Demon Eye relayed the battle results.
[Initial statistics confirm the elimination of over 67,400 Demon units.]
[Estimated number of enemy forces remaining in this Plane: between 193,000 and 210,000.]
Allen tapped his fingers twice against his armrest and scoffed coldly.
"Trying to sneak a portal into my backyard right under my nose?" he thought. "Did you even ask my delivery troops first?"
But then...
[High-energy target detected.]
The crimson magma lake suddenly parted to the sides. A charred hand, stripped down to nothing but bone, violently gripped the ground at the edge of the molten rock. Baroque actually rose from the magma once again, step by step! The left side of his body had completely vanished, but Evil Energy poured out from the stump like a waterfall. New bones rapidly generated, and dark red muscle fibers followed, wrapping and knitting over them. In just a few short seconds, he had achieved a complete Resurrection!
However, this wasn’t what concerned Allen the most.
Baroque’s aura was still rising. His Magic Power readings spiked wildly like a runaway dog, instantaneously smashing past the upper limit of a Second-level Wizard, and yet... there was no sign of it stopping!
[Warning! Target’s energy level has broken through the Morning Star threshold!]
Allen stopped tapping his fingers against the armrest. He more or less understood what was happening. Baroque hadn’t just undergone a simple Resurrection; he must have received some kind of enhancement as well. This Abyssal Commander had exchanged a single death for a promotion, intending to use himself as an anchor to help the Burning Legion secure a beachhead.
Allen pulled up the global map of the combat zone. Densely packed red dots had already begun spreading outwards from the Azure Sky Fortress like a plague. One hundred and ninety thousand Demons—having lost their command but driven by pure instinct—were fanning out toward the surrounding towns. If they were allowed to enter densely populated areas, it wouldn’t be long before another sacrifice took place.
Baroque was completely charred, his body covered in terrifying cracks, yet an even more powerful Evil Energy surged within his frame. His aura was more than just one tier stronger than before. He was now a genuine, bona fide Dawn Star Level Demon.
"Very well," Allen said, his gaze finally turning serious as he watched the demonic Military Governor who had survived the core of the explosion on the screen. "Jarvis, order all formed legions of Cybertron to launch a full-scale assault."
[Command confirmed.]
Six faint blue Space Gates, each a hundred meters in diameter, unfolded out of thin air over the battlefield of the Azure Sky Fortress.
In the next moment, a torrent of steel descended from the heavens.
The first to pass through the Space Gates were sixty Hive Mother Ships. Their massive, inverted pyramid-shaped hulls blotted out the sun, cutting off all light above the battlefield like a moving black continent. On the surface of the hulls, one thousand two hundred hexagonal deployment bays simultaneously lit up with a faint blue glow.
[Entire fleet’s Mad Bee Drones—release!]
Countless Mad Bee Drones poured out in full force. Black streaks of light cascaded simultaneously from the bellies of the sixty Hive Mother Ships like a burst dam, instantly blanketing the entire sky. They automatically organized themselves into hundreds of hunting formations and, under the unified dispatch of the mother ships’ main control cores, dive-bombed the scattered hordes of fleeing Demons on the ground.
Seventy thousand Magic Beams fired simultaneously. Looking down from high above, it looked as if a blue rainstorm had descended upon the earth. The dense beams wove a net of death on the ground that covered dozens of square kilometers. Low-tier Demons didn’t even have time to react before they were riddled with holes like sieves. Some Mad Bees didn’t even bother firing; they simply adjusted their angles and rammed right into their targets at several times the speed of sound!
Self-destruct!
Clusters of orange-red fireballs detonated one after another in the densest Demon formations, blasting groups of low-tier units into the air and tearing them apart along with the very earth.
Following closely behind the Hive Mother Ships, the main force of twenty fully-formed Golem Legions passed through the Space Gates. Over one hundred and twenty thousand standard Golems descended upon the battlefield, bringing with them the coldness and order unique to metal.
Tens of thousands of Spider-Killer Type IIs surged out from the gaps in the defensive line. Their six metallic limbs alternately clicked against the ground, moving as fast as a black flood as they silently pounced on the massive elite Demons.
Six thousand Peacekeeper PX-3s formed into heavy phalanxes, continuously unleashing beam attacks as they steadily advanced. Their fifteen-meter-tall armored bodies acted like moving walls, forcefully crushing the Demons’ frontal charges and pushing them back step by step.
Thousands of Purgatory Series Magic Missile attack Golems landed, their heavy metal feet slamming into the earth. Marching in uniform lockstep, they established a launch position on the outskirts of the battlefield. The missile launch pods on their backs opened their covers, and the Red Lotus II Missiles stood tall, ready to fire.
Thousands of Storm Falcon fighter jets roared into the scene, crisscrossing the sky. They dumped their aerial bombs like unloaded cargo, raining them down like a waterfall to blast wave after wave of fiery seas through the Demon formations.
Yet, amidst this torrent of steel, what truly caught the eye...
Were the figures of several colossal iron Giant Beasts, slowly revealing themselves from within the Space Gates.