Chapter 1310 — The Setting Sun

At the edge of the belt-like plain south of the Dark Mountains, on the Grand Wall front held by the Cecilians, before the vast breach left by the destruction of Sentinel Tower No. 98, a new barrier—less lofty than the Grand Wall but no less breathtaking—had already risen from the ground.

It was a living forest, transformed from masses of vines and roots that had burst up from underground.

Now towering trees, sturdy and tall, endowed with predatory power, had formed a solid rampart at the wasteland's edge. They had withstood the fiercest first wave of the aberrations and the various mutated monsters, and their coverage stretched from the Cecilian defense line all the way to the breach facing the Typhonians. Some of the "predation zones" had even reached the Typhon positions; those dreadful giant vines and the fissures yawning open across the earth made the soldiers on the line tremble with fear and even caused minor chaos in some sectors. But however that might be, these "combat plants" that had burrowed out of the soil had saved the tottering defense line.

The barrier breach, flung fully open by the destruction of Sentinel Tower No. 98, had been plugged. A considerable portion of the surging monster tide had become food for the living forest; the rest, thrown into panic by this sudden blow, fled in all directions, and the limited "discipline" they had displayed earlier dissolved once more into chaos. An Luo did not know whether this was because monsters, too, could feel fear, or because the command nodes behind them had died or fled the battlefield. She knew only one thing—

Stripped of the restraint of discipline, the fleeing, chaotic aberrations had returned to the ranks of "monsters"—and monsters... were fit only to be hunted and slaughtered by armies.

On a nameless ridge slanting out into the wasteland, the legion-level casting ground hastily established by the Typhon mage corps began to operate. Mana hummed in the air; vast energy lit up the entire mountain body. Beneath the dim, chaotic sky, layer upon layer of magic halos and intricate rune structures rose and linked above one casting platform after another. The Typhon mages' specialty—massed casting—was displayed to the fullest at this moment.

A torrential rain of fire came crashing down, interspersed with lightning and ice spikes that kept leaping across the earth. Thick arcane energy rays shot out again and again from the mountain summit, precisely sniping the giant aberrant monsters—huge, conspicuous, mixed in among the monster horde (the Cecilians called them "giant-forms," while some soldiers simply called them "behemoths"). Bursting waves of magical impact shook the entire mountain range, and the peculiar smell of air being decomposed by mana hung everywhere.

Having lost their command, those monsters no longer knew how to coordinate. They neither covered their fire units nor sought cover or dispersed. Bombarding such "enemies" from high ground with magic... was as simple for the Typhon mage corps as burning ants on the ground.

An Luo Wendell let out a soft breath, but even as she relaxed, she did not let herself lose her judgment.

The improvement was only local; the overall situation on this battlefield remained grim. The first wave of monsters was about to be wiped out, but the damage they had caused had already torn a huge gap in the Typhon positions. Many brave and precious knights had lost their lives in the earlier assault while shielding the casting grounds, and the battlefield's communication lines had been severely damaged. More importantly... the "malfunction" of the Grand Wall itself had still not been restored.

Beneath the magical radiance that kept rising from the ridge, An Luo's gaze was drawn involuntarily to Sentinel Tower No. 99 on the other side of the ridge, and farther still to Sentinel Tower No. 100. These two towers had not been destroyed like No. 98, which had been made a target of the aberrations' attack, yet their condition was in no way reassuring. A low, mournful whistling kept coming from between the towers' bases and main bodies—the groan of shield-projection mechanisms overburdened after the energy system failed. Dim streams of light had largely vanished from the towers' main surfaces, and around both towers the projected shields had grown as thin as paper.

The main force of the aberration army had begun to retreat from the entire defense line, but a great many uncontrolled chaos monsters were still driven by instinct toward the gradually extinguishing Grand Wall. Those chaos monsters were duller and blinder than the aberrations; their shallow intelligence barely possessed even the notions of "fear" and "survival," yet their destructive power remained formidable and terrifying. Now the Grand Wall was riddled with breaches everywhere, and the Winter Wolf Legion's current strength could not possibly stop every monster that passed through the barrier.

Worse still, the region where the Typhon Empire bordered the Gondor wasteland was not limited to this single northern defense line. Along the frontier stretching southwest of the empire... the garrison there was far weaker than at this "forward fortress," and the defenders there could never have imagined that the Grand Wall would collapse before their eyes.

An Luo believed that no matter which stretch of the empire's long border it was, the local soldiers would bravely defend the people and homes behind them. The aberrant monsters pouring out of the wasteland would meet stubborn resistance along every frontier, and once Aldernan received the frontline reports, it too would respond at once; the National Knights, the Royal Mages, and even the Obsidian Guard left in the rear would be dispatched to the front to hold back the enemy. But before that, before the onslaught of those uncontrolled monsters was truly checked... how much Typhon blood would be drained, how many cities and villages would be utterly destroyed?

An Luo tightened her grip on her knight's sword. For a moment she dared not imagine the terrible scenes that would soon unfold in her homeland as the Grand Wall went fully dark. She only stared wide-eyed at the distant Sentinel Towers, still glimmering faintly—and then suddenly noticed... that the chaotic streams of light on the towers' surfaces seemed to be recovering their former order bit by bit, and that the energy barriers around the towers, which had been steadily thinning, had abruptly halted their extinguishing and were beginning to grow solid again.

"General! General!" A subordinate's voice suddenly came from not far away. The young man with slightly dark skin came stumbling along the rubble-strewn mountain path, running toward An Luo and shouting at the top of his voice, "General! The Sentinel Towers have restarted! Our southern barrier is slowly repairing itself! The monsters... the monsters are being held back!"

"I see it," An Luo said at once, her steady tone calming the panting young officer. Her gaze was fixed on the distant Sentinel Towers as she went on in a low voice, "It looks like the silver elves have finally stabilized the situation over there... What on earth happened in the south of the continent? Can we contact the Silver Empire or the Highland Kingdom's allied forces now?"

"Not yet, General," the young officer froze for a moment, then shook his head at once. "The Grand Wall hasn't fully recovered, and our communications are badly disrupted. We still can't hear any signal from the southern continent..."