Chapter 1316 — A Lone Army Fights On...?

Smoke and dust blotted out sight. The sounds of metal and rock breaking came now and then from nearby old structures or from deep within the artificial ground, and with those cracking noises came tremors rising ceaselessly from beneath their feet. Though this astonishing fortress had already crashed upon the earth, like the death of a colossal beast, its bloated and unwieldy body would still need a long time to collapse into some stable state; before that, the death throes of this vast carcass might last for days, even months.

Berentia and Elaine left the utterly collapsed central palace. They trekked across ground that was tilted and broken, climbing over smoking ruins of buildings and the wreckage of magical weapons. Several times they clashed with wandering aberrations, but they no longer encountered enemies capable of discipline and coordination. The situation was perhaps exactly as Berentia had surmised: the immense energy shock released when the Sunvault Palace crashed had destroyed the "psychic link" among the aberration legions in this region, turning those enemies who understood formation warfare back into mindless monsters. That was unquestionably good news.

Of course, Berentia had not failed to consider another, even more pleasing possibility: perhaps the enemy's supreme commander in this region had been unfortunate enough to be right inside the crash zone of the Palace, and had now become a smear of filth in the deepest part of these ruins...

But she also knew this was most likely just a pleasant fancy. The commanders behind these monsters were clearly cunning and cherished their own lives. If they could direct frontline legions across such an vast battlefield, there was no need for them to charge forward alongside such cannon fodder. And in the earlier fighting, the soldiers who met the enemy head-on had never seen anyone resembling an "officer" among the tide of monsters pouring forth. So the controllers of these monsters were most likely still hiding deep in the wasteland, plotting their next assault.

She truly wanted to know what expressions had appeared on their faces when they saw the Sunvault Palace descending from the sky.

Berentia shook her head and set such irrelevant fancies aside for the moment. She heard an abnormal rumbling from deep beneath her feet, and then a facility not far ahead suddenly collapsed. The ground nearby split open with a creaking groan, and a series of flashes and explosion smoke rose from the fissure.

She knew this was the "beast" beneath her feet still convulsing after death, like the trembling of muscles after flesh has died. Although the Palace's master system had been completely shut down, many structures in its deepest, ancient, and labyrinthine chambers were still carrying out their final operations. She simply did not know how long this process would ultimately last.

A low, confused roar and murmuring emerged from deep within a mass of thick smoke in the distance. It interrupted the faint melancholy rising in Berentia's heart and made both her and Elaine slow their steps at the same time.

They quickly hid themselves behind a nearby boulder and watched warily the billowing smoke pouring from some ventilation duct. Several heavy footsteps sounded from within the smoke, and that ceaseless low roaring and confused murmuring drew closer and closer.

Berentia carefully counted her heartbeats. On the twelfth beat, she saw those tall, twisted figures. Monsters whose bodies streamed with mud and flesh staggered out from the smoke, swaying their purposeless, ugly heads from side to side as they shambled forward, as though sniffing for the scent of living humans that had just been there.

Berentia swiftly exchanged a glance with her personal maid. Without a word, they had already settled on a battle plan. The next second, a figure bearing twin swords rushed out from behind their hiding place. Lightning flashed in midair, and two sharp arcs suddenly blazed along the path of Elaine's charge. The foremost aberration was cut into three pieces almost without reaction: one sword severed its head, another its waist.

The twin swords in the blonde elf's hands bloomed like flowers, slashing toward the second enemy at nearly the speed of sound. Elaine's figure spun at the center of that flower of steel. The slow-reacting aberrations let out confused roars and lunged one after another toward the life aura that had suddenly become so bright in their perception. But the next second, a rainstorm of ice spikes materialized out of thin air and came crashing down upon those deformed freaks, too late to dodge.

The foul, flowing flesh was pinned firmly to the earth by the ice spikes. The extreme cold that followed made the monsters' massive bodies brittle and sluggish. Elaine danced through the gaps between ice blades and freezing wind, and her two charged longswords reaped the dying monsters one by one.

One aberration at the edge of the battlefield broke free from the ice spikes at the last moment. The monster raised its arm high, and a dark red beam of energy swiftly took shape in its hand, aimed at the vital spot on Elaine's back. But a longsword came flying through the air, held by an invisible hand of magic. It severed the monster's arm in an instant and, before the creature could recover, cut away its remaining limbs. Finally the longsword soared high and stabbed down swiftly from above. With a burst, it pinned the monster from head to chest directly to the blood-soaked ground.

By then Elaine's final sword had also completed the last harvest. Within a few dozen seconds, the confused roars of several aberrations fell completely silent in these ruins.

Berentia walked toward Elaine and gave a slight beckoning gesture to the side. The longsword that had pinned the monster was drawn out by the invisible hand of magic, its blood flicked away in the air, and then it spun back into the Silver Empress's hand. The latter watched Elaine lift an aberration's corpse with the tip of her sword, and her brows knitted slightly: "How many waves of monsters have we run into now?"

"The seventh wave, not counting the ones we carefully went around," Elaine answered, looking up. "Thankfully they were only stragglers. If these monsters had swarmed us in formation, we probably wouldn't stand a chance. What are you thinking?"

"How did they survive the earlier shock?" Berentia's expression was grave. "A few surviving monsters would be understandable. They are numerous and tenacious, after all; there are always lucky ones hiding in just the right place to escape the shock. But now we have already encountered so many survivors, and... this is still the upper level of the Palace."

Elaine's expression finally changed slightly: "You mean..."

"The upper level, and moreover the upper level after the Palace's main body has already fractured and all connecting passages have been sealed. For these monsters, which originally wandered the plains, to climb up here would not be simple. It would be no less than scaling a steep mountain. Even if they know neither fatigue nor pain, climbing up from the ground below would still take some time, wouldn't it?"

Berentia spoke in a low voice, gazing at the foul remains lying on the ground. The corpses of those aberrations had already begun to decompose. In a rising black smoke, their flesh was rapidly dissipating along with the smoke, leaving only severely corroded, twisted skeletons. This slowly made her think of certain "characteristics" of the aberrations.

"Perhaps... they were 'generated' in the upper level of the Palace not long ago," she said slowly. "Elaine, do you remember that the aberrations have a very mysterious trait? They can 'appear out of thin air' in the magic-energy environment of the wasteland..."