Chapter 1310 — The Setting Sun

"Then keep trying to raise them," An Luo said quickly, "and keep in contact with the Cecilian camp as well. I have a bad feeling... The restarting of the Sentinel Towers won't solve everything. This ancient barrier has suffered irreversible damage. Sentinel Tower No. 98 has fallen, and towers elsewhere may well have been completely destroyed. Even if the silver elves restart the barrier, those utterly destroyed nodes cannot rise again out of thin air... This war has only just begun."

...

A blood-red sunset poured over the edge of the smoke-wreathed forest. Rolling thick smoke kept rising from distant jungles and valleys; enormous columns of smoke pierced heaven and earth beneath the setting sun. A pungent stench filled the upper air, as if the whole world were being slowly set alight, as if a power of destruction were gradually gnawing away at the entire land.

Inside the Radiant Dome, the distant cries of slaughter on the ground could not be heard, but the roar of the ancient magic arrays as they fired still tore through the sky again and again and shook the earth. The towering, ancient Radiant Dome drifted slowly across the sky like a flying mountain. Along one side of the Dome, the once magnificent and exquisite palace walls had been thrown fully open; the decorative panels had been discarded, and the casting mechanisms hidden within began to pour devastating fire and lightning down upon the earth.

Yet even as they poured out these mighty attacks, these ancient facilities were disintegrating and breaking down one after another. Explosions rang out in succession from every part of the Radiant Dome; some magic matrices even self-destructed before they could fire. Thick smoke rose not only from the earth but from every part of this anti-gravity fortress floating high in the sky.

Several enormous arcs of electricity suddenly leaped up from the earth that had become a war zone, tearing apart the thick smoke filling the space between heaven and earth and striking squarely one of the anti-gravity engines at the base of the Radiant Dome. The shield that should have lit up in time did not respond. In a massive explosion, the ancient engine was instantly extinguished, and the entire aerial fortress shook violently.

"Your Majesty!" A temple mentor rushed to the Throne of Dominion. "The third main engine has shut down. We cannot hold out much longer! We must withdraw from the battlefield at once!"

Belantia sat upon the pale-gold throne. She gave a slight nod; in truth, even without the report from below, she could sense the state of this temple at this very moment.

Pain. Dying. Overburdened. Burning and tottering.

This far-too-ancient anti-gravity fortress was bearing a burden far beyond its present limits. Whether providing fire support to the ground or enduring the aerial attacks of the aberration army, it was rapidly consuming what little life the Radiant Dome had left.

Once, this mighty fortress had known the glorious years of its full strength. It too had ruled the sky and overawed the earth. It could pour out destructive power without end and withstand the heaviest blows of any enemy. In those ancient ages, it would surely never have feared those ugly, shallow monsters crawling across the earth.

But now... the Radiant Dome was too old. It had grown so old that merely maintaining flight required all its strength, so old that no amount of patching and repairing could do more than keep it lingering on the verge of death.

A searing, piercing pain burned through her nerves. Belantia endured the agony transmitted by the Radiant Dome and listened also to the voice of this ancient fortress—it was sighing, full of sorrow.

"The Sentinel Towers have restarted," Grand Astromancer Verania came before the Silver Empress. Fine sweat stood on the face of this powerful court mage; clearly she had until just now been using her own mana to help Belantia maintain control of the temple. "The barrier is gradually being rebuilt."

"Only seventy percent of the towers have responded correctly—Master Verania, the barrier is only being 'partially rebuilt,'" Belantia said, staring at Verania. "A fatal breach has already opened. I suspect... some of the towers were completely destroyed by the enemy after losing their capacity to resist earlier. I cannot sense them."

"At least we can hold back most of the monsters—and preserve for the civilized world a chance to counterattack after the great collapse," Verania's eyes shifted slightly, but she quickly regained her composure. "The complete disappearance of the entire barrier would be an irresistible catastrophe, but if it is only a breach... a breach can still be mended."

Another violent tremor suddenly came. A tower on the side of the Radiant Dome was struck directly by an attack from the ground; the shield failed to fully withstand this direct hit. Amid a screech of breaking metal, that structure, which had stood on the temple's deck for thousands of years, broke apart little by little from the middle and plunged irresistibly toward the earth.

Soldiers and mages, their bodies ablaze, burst out from the ruins of the building. Some landed on the deck; others fell toward the earth with the smoke-belching fragments, down into the blazing sea of forest on the northern border of the Highland Kingdom.

"Your Majesty, our shield is about to go out!"

A temple mentor, Gao Luodao, said.

Belantia sighed softly. She knew this aerial fortress had reached its limit, and that remaining here any longer would mean little.

At her next thought, neural signals were injected into the Throne of Dominion and translated into commands the temple's mechanical soul could understand. A series of rumbles and low moans issued from deep within this vast, ancient aerial fortress. The surviving engine units began to adjust their output; the Radiant Dome turned slowly in the air and set course toward the Silver Empire.

And deep in Belantia's mind, she heard a heavy, sorrowful sigh—in all the centuries she had sat here, this was the first time she had heard this temple produce such a clear "voice."

"I know... you are unwilling to accept this," she said softly in her heart. "But there is nothing more we can do here..."

Belantia's inner words had only reached halfway when a terrifying, roaring blast and a series of crackling explosions suddenly came from afar, cutting off every voice and movement in the temple's control hall.

The external monitor feed was quickly connected. The distant battlefield became clear before everyone's eyes, and a horrifying scene presented itself to all of them.

Directly ahead of the defense line facing the Highland Kingdom, at the very front of the forest barrier, the surface of the Sentinel Tower that had sheltered this human southern realm for over seven centuries suddenly erupted in a series of flashes and explosions, great and small. Accompanied by an obvious internal energy detonation, the entire tower began to tremble and sway violently, and at last began slowly to fall toward its base...

With a deafening roar, the tower slammed into its base; a colossal fireball erupted from the point of impact and, in the blink of an eye, consumed everything along the defense line.

A full legion that the Kingdom of Highridge had stationed at the front of the defense line was annihilated in an instant, together with the thousands of elven soldiers posted there who had fought shoulder to shoulder with humanity.

At that very moment, the energy barriers on either side of the Sentinel Tower, which had only just flared back to life, flickered violently and then went dark.

The countless legions of aberrations across the wasteland paused for a brief moment, then became a black tide, surging toward the Kingdom of Highridge's border defense line, already riddled with holes and teetering on the verge of collapse.