Chapter 1308 — Surprise

For the past seven centuries, the Sentinel Tower had been an existence that the monsters wandering the wasteland avoided at all costs. Even mindless aberrations and wandering spirits born from abandoned magical energy instinctively kept away from these dangerous facilities, which brimmed with immense energy and could release purification beams outward at any moment. Rarely did monsters gather near the Sentinel Tower in groups, and an active assault was unprecedented.

Yet today, most of the Sentinel Tower's defensive functions had gone offline. The ancient warning devices remaining around the tower could no longer contend with the assembled legion of aberrations, and orders from the higher command node had dispelled the instinctive resistance lodged in the monsters' chaotic minds. Under a single command, tens of thousands of aberrations and mana spirits began to turn across the wasteland, pointing their dreaded spearheads toward the grand tower standing on the wasteland plateau.

Meanwhile, vast numbers of aberrations continued pouring endlessly from the depths of the wasteland, replenishing the war zone along the barrier's edge and maintaining constant pressure on the human army at the defense line, leaving these stubborn mortals powerless to stop the aberrations' movements.

Seen from high above, the entire wasteland border was already filled with countless overlapping foul tides. The nearly infinite aberrations, trapped within the Grand Wall for seven centuries, were continuously drawn by the "command signal" and fed endlessly into the legions assaulting the border. The high wall that had once blocked them was going dark section by section, and ever-larger breaches kept appearing in the faintly glowing energy barrier. The mortal army fought desperately before those breaches, striving to plug the holes in the defense line, yet the breaches only grew larger, gradually becoming a situation beyond control.

A half-human, half-tree monster stood on what had once been the northern border of Gondor, overlooking the distant scene from a high hill. The army surged like a tide, striking the breach at the end of the barrier and also striking the distant grand Sentinel Tower that still floated in midair. He saw one spearhead of the aberration legion finally approach the tower's base. Giant mutated individuals, nearly the size of city gates, halted on the plain before the base. Surrounded by countless cannon fodder, those giant "beasts" with foul flesh surging over their bodies bent down and fixed themselves to the ground with deformed hands and feet, while the bone spurs growing in parallel from their backs pointed far toward the tower floating in the air.

Bright electric light filled the space between the bone spurs on the "beasts'" backs. Highly compressed magical energy set off sharp whistling in the air. After a moment of charging, attacks like beam cannons tore through the air and violently bombarded the spectacular tower.

Ripples quickly spread across the tower's surface. The tower's own energy shield blocked the high-energy beams released by the giant aberrations. Only then did some of the magical mechanisms set in the tower's base begin a sporadic counterattack. Arcane missiles and electric arcs swept across the wilderness. This remaining automated defensive fire killed some aberrations that had come too close, but more "beasts" gathered on the plain, and successive high-energy beams began pounding the upper structure of the Sentinel Tower.

The roar of artillery from afar shook the earth. The increasingly pungent smell in the air grated on the soldiers' nerves. The ground beneath their feet trembled, the clouds in the sky burned, and yet in the eyes of the young communications commander, only one thing in the whole world mattered: the signal relay hub that had stopped working in a half-buried bunker not far away.

Fendil Wilder led his four remaining soldiers through the toxic wasteland strewn with jagged rocks and drifting pungent dust. Air currents stirred up by the collapse of the Grand Wall swept in without pause, blowing his short silver hair into disarray. His once-neat uniform was now covered in dirt and tears, and bleeding wounds could be seen through the split sleeves. He climbed over a low natural stone wall, and the unresponsive communications relay bunker appeared several hundred meters away. Its half-buried concrete vault looked more or less intact.

"No sign of an attack. Perhaps the energy released when the Grand Wall went out of control damaged some structure of the relay. A blessing in misfortune."

Fendil made the judgment swiftly in his mind. Even as he secretly breathed a sigh of relief and stepped forward, a soldier who had always followed behind him suddenly pointed at the sky not far away and shouted, "Sir! Look over there!"

"There's..." Fendil blurted instinctively, but when he looked up in the direction the soldier was pointing, the rest of the sentence was swallowed back down his throat.

He saw bright arcs of electricity blooming again and again across the surface of the Sentinel Tower floating in midair. Orbs of foul red energy struck the tower's midsection one after another. The remaining energy at the top of the Sentinel Tower had already been growing weaker, and under that relentless assault, the light curtains barely extending from the tower's two sides began to collapse faster. The ever-thinner energy barrier tottered like a candle flickering in the wind.

"Those monsters want to destroy the tower completely!" another soldier shouted in terror. "Once that tower is completely destroyed, even if the elves restart the barrier, this breach on our side will never be sealed!"

Fendil stared wide-eyed. The startled cries of his soldiers echoed in his ears, and the flashes on the distant tower kept flickering in his eyes. Yet as a communications captain with only a few soldiers under his command, as a low-ranking officer caught in a vast battlefield, he suddenly found that he was utterly powerless to stop any of it.

But the next second, his gaze fell on the communications relay point not far away. The howling cold wind on the wilderness cleared his head. Ignoring the meaningless personal sentiment in his mind, he took his remaining soldiers and charged toward the bunker.

The exterior of the bunker had not been destroyed. Fendil quickly led his soldiers into the half-buried fortification. At first glance, he saw the extinguished Magic Web terminal at the center of the artificial pit, and two Cecil soldiers lying dead near the terminal.

There were no signs of enemy attack around the fallen soldiers, but near their chests were shocking burns and penetrating wounds. On the ground beside the Magic Web terminal were traces of scorching from high heat, and the energy amplification array and backup mana storage crystals that should have been set up nearby had all been reduced to charred fragments of debris.

During the Grand Wall's loss of control, it had randomly released energy pulses into the surroundings. One of those pulses had likely swept right across this communications outpost, causing key equipment to overload and fail. The soldiers stationed here had perhaps tried to save the most important Magic Web terminal. They had lunged toward the equipment at the center of the fortification and were then killed by the suddenly detonating energy device. That would explain why their fatal wounds were in their chests.

Fendil's gaze swept quickly over the dead. He had roughly deduced what had happened here, but there was no time now to bury his comrades. He ordered his soldiers to move the bodies aside first. Once space for repairing the equipment was cleared, he immediately crouched beside the Magic Web terminal and began replacing the components inside that had been burned out by the overload.