Another earth-shattering howl somehow created an enormous shock wave that pushed toward the fortifications with lightning-quick speed. In just over a second, it closed the distance to the wall, ripping the straggler wolves from the last wave to shreds on the way. The wave slammed into the wall with a tremendous impact, and the only thing stopping the demons from falling off was the protruding wall on the inner side of the wall walk. Multiple cracks ran along the fortifications, and some parts even completely crumbled.
The few demons who hadn’t reacted in time met miserable ends as well. Some at least managed to activate one type of defense or another, such as stone skin or a magic shield. But the defenses quickly shattered as the demons were thrown off the wall into the distance, their life and death unknown. The demons who hadn’t even erected defenses immediately turned to mangled pieces of flesh and bones that splattered their teammates.
“Fucking imbeciles,” Ogras muttered as he shook off a piece of brain matter that had fallen on his legs. He had been the first to throw himself to the floor, his survival skills simply impeccable as always.
“We can’t let them shoot off another blast like that. The wall will completely crumble,” he continued as he turned toward Zac.
The shaking from the impact quickly subsided, and Zac hesitantly looked up over the wall. The wolves simply stood rooted in the same position as before, their white eyes staring at him. Not one of them took a single step forward, and they seemed to be waiting for something.
Zac guessed that it took some time to charge a blast of that power, but he didn’t want to find out how long. This race of wolves clearly preferred ranged attacks, and if they were left alone, they would quickly turn the whole wall into rubble.
He didn’t dare erect the shield, as he wasn’t sure that it could even withstand such a concentrated attack. It was one thing for it to defend against a multitude of claws and bites, but to withstand the concentrated power of hundreds of fused attacks at once? Zac felt doubtful. Even if it held, it would take a massive number of crystals just to defend against an attack of that magnitude, and Zac might find himself without the use of the fortifications against the next three waves.
“We need to go,” Zac simply said and got ready to jump over the wall.
“What the fuck? Are you crazy?” Ogras immediately said, clearly unwilling to brave such an army.
Zac only ignored him and jumped down, creating a thud as he landed. At least there were no wolves of the last wave remaining standing after the blast wave. He unhesitantly charged straight for the ranks of the psychic wolves. As he started running, he heard an exasperated, “Goddamnit,” and a lighter thud behind him.
With a wry smile, he kept running and took out a huge boulder from his pouch. It weighed a few hundred kilos and looked like something a catapult should throw rather than a human. Zac launched it straight into the middle of the pack with a resounding roar, wanting to disrupt their rhythm.
A shimmering shield actually winked into existence in front of the group, and the boulder slammed into it with terrifying force. The shield wobbled and flickered from the impact, but it barely held true. But just as the stone helplessly fell to the ground, a black javelin slammed into the very same spot, cracking the shield with a snap. As the large shield broke, many wolves let out a pained yelp.
The wolves’ magical defenses were down, and an opening was created. One human and a demon rushed inside, each creating a storm of blood.
90
Worsening Conditions
The psychic wolves weren’t as deadly in close quarters, but Zac still was constantly pelted with waves of mental attacks, which strained his mind. Fortunately, his stats made him able to barely hold on, but he was worried about his partner. A quick glance showed him that he was worried about nothing.
Ogras was creating corpses all around him with his deadly spear. Zac also saw that the demon wore a circlet he had never seen him use before. It was a simple metal band with engravings, and on the forehead between his horns, a large milky white gem was inlaid. The gem flashed with power every now and then, giving out a hazy light. It looked like the demon had a tool that protected him from psychic attacks.
Zac didn’t have that kind of luxury and could only painfully withstand the attacks as he wildly swung his axe around. The two were quickly decimating the wolves, but the wolves weren’t just sitting around doing nothing. The flanks of the wolf wave split off from the rest while the main group kept the two powerhouses busy, and instead headed closer to the wall.
Zac tried to move to stop them but was overwhelmed with shock waves and mental attacks from all directions, and couldn’t get out in time. The offshoots started to bombard the wall with attacks, mainly targeting the damaged area.
The demons on the wall, led by Alea and Namys, tried to handle the wolves as quickly as possible, but most of the attacks were ineffective against the wolves’ newly erected shields. Besides, many warriors on the walls still weren’t back to fighting condition after the initial psychic blast.
Hearing the ominous sounds of rock cracking, Zac could only grit his teeth and summon [Chop]. He hadn’t wanted to use any Cosmic Energy in this wave in order to save it all for the last three, but he saw no option. He expanded the blades to five meters and, in conjunction with [Loamwalker], created huge swathes of death in the main group of wolves.
Every step moved him a few meters into a new group of wolves, who immediately were bisected by a swing of the enormous edge, before he disappeared to the next cluster. It looked like large blood explosions erupted amongst the wolves in quick succession, as he wasted almost no time on movement between the swings.
Over the countless battles during the month, he had mostly mastered his movement skill and could freely move within a few meters of his position with a speed that almost looked like teleportation. It had a huge effect on his kill speed in conjunction with his enlarged edge, but it also cost a substantial amount of Cosmic Energy.
When he felt he had pruned the group of wolves to the point that Ogras could take care of it himself within the remaining time of the wave, he charged toward the offshoot groups. Ogras seemed to be incensed from seeing Zac rack up a huge number of contribution points in short order, and his spear turned into a blur as he moved through the wolves. He used some odd skill that caused holes to erupt in the throats and heads of wolves even when the spear was meters away, making it look like there was a sniper in the distance assisting him.
The flanks that assaulted the wall had splintered into even more groups in order to avoid the attacks from the demons, and small shock waves were constantly flying up at the cracks on the wall. The wall looked ready to fall down, with spiderwebs of cracks running along large stretches. A few earth mages frantically infused the wall with energy in order to patch it up, but it would take some time to restore its structural integrity.
In some areas, large chunks of the wall were even lying down by the foundation, having been blasted clean off. Fixing those large breaches would take time and require a lot of manpower to lift the pieces back, which there obviously was no time for.
The battle started calming down over time, as Zac eased the pressure for the demons by charging at the wolf packs one by one and decimating them. He was starting to get a pounding headache from all the mental assaults, but he couldn’t do anything but grit his teeth and continue. Another fifteen minutes later, Ogras came running over, a sheen of perspiration covering his head. He stopped and took a few deep breaths before he turned.
“Lunatic! Leaving me alone with all those beasts,” the demon spat out between deep breaths, looking miffed but obviously not too angry.
“Well, it worked out fine, didn’t it? Do you have some solution for the wall?” Zac answered with a shrug as he waved at the crumbling battlements.
The two had taken stock of the available crystals right before the last four waves, and there were enough Nexus Crystals left to power one widespread attack and to use the shield for roughly an hour unl
ess the attacks were too powerful. With three waves remaining, he didn’t wish to start using the shield already, potentially leaving them undefended against the last two waves.
As if reading Zac’s thoughts, a deep rumbling could be heard from the wall, and a whole section crumbled, leaving a three-meter-wide opening through the wall.
“FUCK!” Zac screamed and didn’t wait for Ogras’ answer, immediately running toward the breach.
The last stragglers of the psychic wolves were already converging at the hole as well, seemingly wanting to cause some damage before they were wiped out. To make matters worse, the pillars started pulsing again at this very moment, the 718th wave starting to pour out from the shining lights.
“REPAIR THE WALLS!” Ogras roared as he ran after Zac, shooting out shadow spears at the charging psychic wolves.
With Zac and Ogras holding up the wolves, a few dozen burly demons frantically started moving large pieces of rubble back into the wall, where earth mages melded the pieces back into the main structure. The earth mages had been tapped hard lately, and they looked like walking corpses by now, completely pale and with sunken eyes.
But they were the only ones who could fix these types of things in short order and simply had to keep going even if they overtaxed themselves. They knew that if the wall fell, most demons would die. If they were overrun, the two leaders in the front might be able to escape, and perhaps the generals like Alea and Ilvere as well. But the earth mages didn’t specialize in escape techniques, and the wolves would hunt them down sooner or later. So they kept infusing the wall with Cosmic Energy, to the point of harming their bodies.
Ilvere and Namys appeared next to Ogras, who started to give out orders.
“Ilvere, help with the repair of the walls; only you and Zac can hold the largest blocks of stone while they get reattached. Namys, help me control the remaining psychic wolves. Zac, can you go ahead and try to stall the next wave?”
Zac looked around for a second and judged the situation was under control, so with a nod, he sped off toward the next wave. He held roughly the same pace as the new wolves, so he met them right between the wall and the mini-incursions and frowned when he saw the new adversaries.
The new wave consisted of metallic wolves full of jutting edges and sharp blades, looking like some steampunk tool of war. Just from a glance, he couldn’t tell whether they actually were machines or living beings. Of course, that line apparently was a bit blurred in the Multiverse, with the Creators being a prime example of that. He guessed that destroying one should give him the answer, as he would see whether parts or metallic blood would spew out.
He took out another rock and threw it with full force at one of the wolves in the front. It moved its head to not take the stone right in its snout, so it slammed into its shoulder with a tremendous crash. The wolf was thrown away a few meters from the impact, but Zac saw the beast shake its body and get back on its feet right away. Where the stone hit, only a small dent could be seen, and it didn’t seem damaged at all apart from that.
Zac possessed over 250 Strength by now and had the power to lift a small car. That a full-powered throw from him only caused some superficial damage to the beast told a troubling story about this wave. How were they going to destroy these wolves in time? There would only be a scant few that could deal with these things apart from himself and Ogras.
But he had a job to do, so he could only grit his teeth. He charged up a five-meter [Chop] and unhesitantly imbued it with his Dao of Heaviness. The blade turned darker and more intricate as he swung at the incoming stampede.
He felt a shock travel up his arm as he mowed through the metallic beings with his axe, their sturdiness being far and above anything he had fought so far. Even the rock wolves from earlier weren’t any problem for him with his overpowered stats.
Luckily, the wolves didn’t fare any better, as they were destroyed into metallic pieces over the ground. Zac did everything he could to impede the charge, expending both Mental and Cosmic Energy in wreaking havoc. Many of the wolves headed straight for Zac in order to avenge their brethren, but some still ignored him and continued onward toward the wall.
Some packs kept trickling past him as the main force kept trying to mob him to death, and after fifteen minutes, he was pretty wrung out and needed a break. His arm was actually starting to feel sore, and he had been forced to swap axes six times in the short duration, as they simply were getting destroyed on the tough bodies.
He started to push back toward the wall, and he could only hope that it was somewhat fixed at least. Unfortunately, he saw that it was still an open entrance, and the metallic wolves were trying to get in. At least the hole was mostly shored up, the opening being quite a bit more shallow.
Zac soon arrived at the breach and met a tired-looking Ogras accompanied by Namys and Ilvere. A quick glance showed Janos and Alea at a walkway that was built above the crack, giving the demons above a spot to throw down large boulders of debris at the monsters. The boulders were too heavy to be carried, but they simply used Cosmos Sacks for them, summoning them up above and letting gravity do the rest.
“These fuckers are so hard to kill, there’s no way we will be able to take down all of them,” Ogras grunted, clearly starting to fade from his high Cosmic Energy expenditure. The two demons looked ready to keel over, but they coordinated their attacks to take down wolves one by one in a stoic manner.
Zac planted himself in the crack and helped arduously destroy one wolf after another. Eventually, they ran out of time, even as quite a few wolves remained. The pillars started to light up as usual, but this time, it looked different. The glow looked almost blinding, and soon Zac saw why.
The 719th wave was an endless sea of wolves, tens of thousands of them. And even as they approached the wall, the pillars kept spewing more out.
91
Lightning Punishment
“RETREAT!” Zac roared as he saw the insane number of wolves approaching. If he had to guess, he would say that the System had crammed twenty to thirty waves’ worth of wolves into one.
The demons immediately complied and moved down from the wall to a far lower one roughly fifty meters further in. It could barely be called a wall, not even reaching three meters in height, and was rather a purchase to gain a bit better vantage when fighting. The wall wasn’t made to physically rebuff enemies, but rather it was there as a line of demarcation, showing where the Town Defense Array would cover.
Soon only Zac, Ogras, and his two confidants were holding off the remaining metallic beasts, as the rest had moved back to safety.
Ogras looked a bit hesitant as he turned to Zac. “Are you sure about this?”
In response, Zac only nodded and took a blue glass ball out of his pouch, not stopping his attacks with his other hand. The glass ball crackled with lightning, as though a thunderstorm had been caught and crammed inside the bauble.
“Alright. See you on the other side, friend,” Ogras said with a solemn expression as he nodded to the other two demons. They rapidly moved backward, leaving Zac alone in the crack, facing a sea of wolves.
Soon after the last three demons were inside, the defensive array flickered into being, covering the inner area of Port Atwood. Zac instead moved out toward the incoming waves. Some of the metallic beasts charged after him, while some tried to claw their way into the array.
As Zac pushed forward, he started to infuse the glass ball with Cosmic Energy, making the thunder inside flit about more and more erratically. After roughly two minutes, a large part of Zac’s remaining Cosmic Energy was consumed, but finally, a change happened in the ball. It was as though it had reached critical mass, and it started to absorb a huge amount of Cosmic Energy from the environment itself.
The ball started to flow in the air on its own, and both Zac’s hands were freed to protect the device. It would take a few more minutes before it was ready. He stayed put and mindlessly killed any wolf that came close, and he was surprised to see that he recognized man
y of the wolf types from things he had fought during the past weeks.
It was like the System had summoned an all-star combination of the wolf waves for the 719th assault. Zac was pelted by all types of attacks, but luckily, his E-grade robe protected him from most of it. As he fought, the sky started to darken, and ominous rumblings echoed out through the island. A huge bolt of lightning flashed, and suddenly, the hovering ball next to Zac was gone. He knew his mission was completed and started to bolt toward the protective array with full speed, not caring about the wolves anymore.
As he ran, the battlefield turned almost pitch black from huge dark clouds that amassed with impossible speed, and then all hell broke loose. Huge pillars of lightning slammed into the ground all around the area, frying any unlucky wolf that was too close. But that was only the start, as the chaos kept intensifying.
The area was blasted with such a number of lightning bolts that the whole southern tip of the island was brightly lit up. The ground crackled and exploded at every place the bolts landed, completely destroying any wolf corpses or fortifications strewn about. In some areas, the lightning was so intense that they started to spread along the ground, creating what looked like lakes made out of lightning. These lakes kept expanding, creating a field of death for anything caught inside.
Zac desperately ran toward safety, shocked at the efficacy of the device. It had sounded mighty from the description when he’d bought it for 3 million Nexus Coins, but he hadn’t expected it to be of this scale. Of course, something like this would only work on dumb beasts who refused to flee. The area of attack even spread toward the array, and lightning bolts slammed into the shield every now and then, making it light up.
The ball Zac used was actually a purely offensive array called [E-Grade Medium-Scale Lightning Punishment Array] that he’d bought as preparation for the monster wave. Different from the offensive capabilities of the town array, it was a onetime usage attack. It was an array that consumed itself to summon the monstrous cloud in the sky that would rain death and destruction over the area.
Defiance of the Fall: A LitRPG Adventure Page 52