Chapter 1308 — Surprise

After he had begun working, a soldier assisting nearby suddenly frowned and said in an uneasy whisper, "Sir, do you feel... the ground beneath us has been shaking?"

"The entire belt plain is shaking," Fendil said without looking up. "That's the artillery in the distance, and those monsters attacking the Sentinel Tower. Cut the chatter. If we waste too much time here, what you'll face won't be just this shaking!"

"Yes, sir," the soldier answered loudly, quickly chastened, but after a moment he could not help muttering under his breath, "It seems the shaking is getting stronger... as if something is approaching..."

Fendil ignored his subordinate's muttering. He only swiftly installed the new components into the empty slots of the communications device, and directly used his own magic to inscribe the thoroughly melted rune substrate on certain structures inside the terminal. Busy with the work, he also quickly raised his head and looked with concern toward the narrow window in the fortification facing the Gondor Wasteland. Through the narrow vent, he saw the shield on the surface of the Sentinel Tower floating in midair flickering, the entire tower already shaking violently, and an extremely unsettling harsh whistling coming continuously from the direction of the plain, unsettling everyone's mind.

Just then, a low humming sound suddenly came from the base of the Magic Web terminal before him. The extinguished, damaged device had finally come back to life in his hands, and communications with the distance were connected as well.

The focusing crystal barely lit up, projecting blurry phantoms. Fendil could not spare time to continue adjusting the system. Suppressing his racing heartbeat, he switched the device to emergency relay mode and began calling all the terminals he could reach from here: "This is Cecil communications officer Fendil Wilder. Emergency! Aberrations are attacking Sentinel Tower No. 98! Aberrations are attacking Sentinel Tower No. 98! I can see their assembly direction from here. The main attacking force is roughly southwest of the Black Hills..."

A thunderous roar erupted at that moment, cutting off Fendil's continuous calls and broadcasts, and cutting off the movements of every soldier in the communications bunker. For a moment it even cut off the whistling artillery fire on the battlefield, and the chaotic wind swirling back and forth between monsters and humans.

Then came a second roar, followed by a series of harsh whistles and rumbles.

The last radiance of the shield on the distant Sentinel Tower went out amid the whistling. A powerful beam cannon destroyed one of the main energy conduits inside the tower. The roar came from high above, and sympathetic detonations began inside the tower. Cracks filled with flame instantly spread across the tower, and then the uncontrolled energy produced a fatal resonance between the tower's base and the anti-gravity mechanisms in its body.

The Sentinel Tower, which had guarded this section of the defense line for seven hundred years, began to suffer countless chain explosions across its surface. The tough ancient alloy frame kept the tower's main body from being completely blown apart in those explosions, but all of the tower's functions were irreversibly coming to an end. After a moment of swaying, a swaying that was more like the final struggle of a dying giant, the giant tower floating in the sky descended. It first crushed its own base, then crushed the hill below, and finally fell in a slow but terrifying posture toward the hills to the southeast.

The energy barrier extending from the tower's two flanks finally went out completely. A part of the Grand Wall's structure had at last vanished forever at this moment, becoming a terrible breach stretching from the southern border of Cecil all the way to the northern defense line of Typhon.

Inside the communications bunker, a soldier stared dumbfounded at the terrifying scene in the distance, at the barrier that had stood on the border of the civilized world for hundreds of years and had seemed as "natural" as some phenomenon of nature, now going out and disappearing before his eyes. The immense shock even overwhelmed all his tension and fear. Like the other soldiers, he simply stared blankly in that direction, and only after a long while did he squeeze a voice out of his throat: "Sir... the wall has fallen..."

"I saw it," Fendil said through gritted teeth. Only in this way could he barely maintain his composure. Although he himself was a "non-commissioned officer graduate" who had only recently stepped onto the battlefield, he had to maintain a calm attitude before the soldiers under his command. "We move at once to confirm the backup lines. The energy shock just now very likely damaged our communications with Typhon again. The Magic Web terminal is full of noise now..."

As he spoke quickly, Fendil strode out of the bunker. He felt he had been calm enough, yet he still nearly tripped over a green vine that had pushed out of the nearby soil. He staggered forward two steps and only just caught hold of a support post to keep from falling in disgrace. He stood at the exit of the fortification, gazing in the direction of the Gondor Wasteland in the rough, biting cold wind, his mind momentarily dazed.

But in the next second, as if something suddenly clicked, he jerked his head around to look in the direction he had just come from, at the thing that had almost tripped him.

...

The Sentinel Tower had fallen, and the barrier that had sealed the wasteland for seven hundred years, the symbol of mortal foolishness and stubbornness, had finally been torn open with a permanent breach.

The Druid Hierophant in charge of attacking the northern defense line left his high ground. Surrounded by his guard troops, he readjusted the main spearhead of the aberration legion and began concentrating the offensive pressure toward the newly opened breach. A surge of exhilaration filled his already mutated nervous system, dispelling the frustration and anger that had accumulated in his heart since the start of the war.

His anger had its reasons. Since the war began, every branch of the legion had been sending back reports of smooth advances. Almost every unit pushing outward had crushed the resistance forces assembled by that ridiculous "alliance" like dry weeds. The great army pouring out of the wasteland had enjoyed every advantage of surprise attack and overwhelming numbers, and victories had been reported on all fronts. Only his front was the exception.

The stubborn resistance of the Cecil people and their utterly unreasonable, almost neurotically piled-up firepower had made the aberration legion attacking the northern defense line suffer bitterly.

That damn firepower that blasted the whole land over and over was not something humans could produce! Even the neural signals the monsters sent back made them feel that those humans on the other side were the real monsters!

But now everything was getting better. The humiliation of the officer's failed offensive had been redeemed the moment that Sentinel Tower fell.

No matter how stubborn the Cecil people's will was, no matter how powerful their firepower, they could not seal a breach wide enough to tear the Dark Mountains apart.

They could only watch helplessly as the tide of aberrations crossed their defense line, rushed into their homeland, and tore apart their kith and kin.

"Give them a huge surprise!"

Gaoluodao, the dark druid whose form resembled some hideous fusion of a snarling tree and a deformed human, drove the mutants with his will into a black tide that surged roaring toward the mountain pass on the eastern side of the Dark Mountains.

Then he felt a tremor from deep within the earth—

At first he took it for the thunder of distant artillery, then for his own vast army shaking this scorched land.

But later he realized it was neither; the tremor came from deeper, from farther away.