Chapter 653 — Breaking Ground

Outside the Iron Throne, among the mountain rocks, a metal rail with an elegant curve suddenly extended and pointed toward the battlefield. With a deep humming sound, a blinding and terrifying white beam tore across the dim twilight sky, sweeping slowly over the plain and raking the battlefield beyond the Iron Throne, the armed platforms, the forward ramparts, and the bunker clusters.

The powerful flash pierced the train windows and fell across Ma Qi's cheek, illuminating the interior of the tactical car with peculiar brightness. Gao Yang frowned in the communicator: "Was that the rainbow cannon just now? The monsters attacking hard?"

"Yes, I was just about to report it—this is what has been happening these past two days. The crystal monsters' attacks are growing more frequent and more intense, and there have even been cases of large formations charging, which can only be cleared out by the four Calibrator beam cannons mounted on the mountain—and formations of that size have rarely appeared since the crystal monsters fell into madness."

"This may well be some kind of omen. The strongest 'monster' that the Finality Society created and then lost control of should already be on the move," Gao Yang said rapidly. "Keep close watch on the plain and report any anomaly at once—and remind the armored assault teams entering the war zone: if they encounter a bizarre, powerful enemy they cannot hope to resist, do not fight to the death. Retreat immediately. Securing intelligence is the top priority."

"Understood."

The communication ended. Ma Qi let out a slight breath, then walked to the shielded window and gazed at the steel defense line, at the scorched plain beyond it.

The rail system bearing the Iron Throne had already extended to the edge of Sorenhold, and the defense line had advanced with it to the edge of Sorenhold. At the foot of these mountains that connected the Eastern Marches to the Holy Spirit Plain, countless temporary bunkers, watchtowers, artillery positions, and the Iron Throne itself combined to form an impregnable defense line—yet this line did not rely on solid walls and shields to hold back the enemy, or rather, it did not rely solely on solid walls and shields.

Its principal method of defense was to annihilate everything that came near.

Ma Qi, who had served for years as commander of Bedrock Fortress, had always been confident in the field of defensive warfare, but it was not until he came into contact with the Cecilians that he found the true essence of defense, as though a door to a new world had opened—

The best defense is offense, just as a saying popular among the White Knights goes: the best cure is to kill the attacker ahead of time.

Behind the "platform" where the Iron Throne was docked, atop a rocky ridge, a watchtower built of metal framework stood firm in the wind. Around it drifted the faint glow of shields, and at its summit a crystal device for communications and signal relay turned slowly, driven by a mechanical structure. Below the crystal device, in a small hut clad in steel plates, a sentry kept vigilant watch toward the plain.

The sentry held a military telescope—a new model that, on top of the original optical structure, added a spell-state that enhanced the field of view, further improving its effectiveness for ordinary users. Through the clear vision the telescope produced, the sentry's gaze swept slowly across a stretch of ruins in the distance.

Apart from the occasional crystal monster running about aimlessly in his field of view, everything appeared normal.

The sentry withdrew his gaze and rubbed his eyes, but just as he was about to turn his sight in another direction, an unusual flash suddenly caught his vision.

The flash had kindled in the extreme distance and was not bright in itself, yet it seemed to carry some magic that gave it a powerful presence. At first the sentry thought it was an illusion, but soon he saw a second flash appear, and then the flashes became a constant radiance, rising in the distance...

In a war zone saturated with every kind of magical energy, the mere appearance of some light was nothing to be alarmed about, but after watching that radiance for a moment, the sentry suddenly felt a chill of dread—he had sensed in that light a malice as palpable as something solid!

Without the slightest hesitation, the sentry slammed his hand down on the button nearest him.

A shrill alarm instantly rang out in the tactical section of the Iron Throne. Ma Qi's head snapped up, and he heard the communication from the mountaintop sentry: "Sir! An unidentified flash observed to the southwest! The flash carries supernatural power!"

Ma Qi soon observed the light on the plain as well. By now it had settled completely into a hazy beam, radiating a powerful presence, and within its shifting glow came ceaseless waves of bizarre malice and madness.

That illusory aura could produce no tangible effect, yet it was enough to put Ma Qi instantly on his guard—he realized that this might well be the "anomaly" Gao Yang had spoken of.

"Patch me through to Saint Sunil at once," the commander said in a loud voice, then turned sharply to his subordinate. "Sir Amber, dispatch a scouting party immediately to the place where the light rises and find out what is happening there—and mind you, no carelessness!"

……

Southwest of the Iron Throne defense line, near the ruins of Soring Keep, whose ground was seared with the scorch marks of the wasteland, the earth had already split open. A colossal figure wreathed in holy radiance yet steeped in an aura of chaos slowly emerged from the fissure in the ground and stood motionless where it was.

It was an enormous stag, its antlers like forged light and its eyes like cut crystal, pure radiance swirling around it, and within that radiance holy sounds drifted faintly. Yet the stag's body was hideous and dreadful to behold: its hide was split open in great swaths, filthy flesh writhing and rolling between the cracks, and its limbs were covered in countless wounds, some charred black and some festering, with swollen, deformed growths visible around the injuries. Every muscle, every inch of its skin pulsed and trembled without cease, as though those fleshly structures had been forcibly pieced together from countless disordered factors and were now struggling to split apart.

But the giant stag itself seemed entirely unaware of these dreadful wounds and mutations. It simply stood quietly at the edge of the town reduced to ruins, like a body without a soul.