Chapter 1327 — More Savage Than Savagery

"Hierarch, our frontline forces have been checked. The 'Bloated Defilers' are no match for those aerial fortresses," a low-ranking dark druid said beside him, his voice carrying a hint of panic. "We... need to avoid their edge for now and replan our attack route..."

Marcellus swayed his withered branches, his dark brown eyes fixed on the low-ranking priest who had already shown cowardice. "Shut up. I don't need you to teach me!"

The low-ranking priest's mutated limbs quivered as his root-like tendrils retreated. Marcellus, meanwhile, raised his head toward the dark western sky, glaring viciously at the frontline direction lit by various flashes—he was no stranger to aerial fortresses. When he was still a mortal, he had even personally boarded the "Radiant Vault," hailed as the Silver Crown, as a "guest," and had been received personally by the Silver Empress, who was then still a child. He had witnessed with his own eyes those ancient sanctuaries and the deep corridors hung with portraits of sages.

In those days, he had been an exchange scholar sent by the Gondor Empire to the Silver Empire—a laughable and distant identity.

But he knew that the Radiant Vault had already crashed. Amid flames and thick smoke, it had fallen on the northern border of the Highland Kingdom like a symbol of an era's end, and the spectacular sight of its descent had stirred great waves through the dark root-network of the Finality Assembly, moving even the Grand Hierarch Bolken to lament—yes, it had crashed. That ancient, miraculous, symbolic aerial fortress had crashed, and every fellow believer of the church had rejoiced at that moment. Though the Silver Empire had temporarily stabilized its defensive line thanks to its fall, the mortal world had truly lost its greatest military reliance—at least until recently, Marcellus had firmly believed so...

Who the hell could have guessed that those Cecil people would turn around and pull out another whole formation of aerial fortresses!!

Of course, from the intelligence sent back from the front, Marcellus could easily judge that those aerial fortresses flying in from the northwest were far smaller in scale than the elves' Radiant Vault—whether those fortress-like "escort ships" or that "mothership" with its ferocious firepower, all were much smaller than the fallen Radiant Vault. But no one with a normal mind would judge the threat of such things purely by "size."

The Silver Elves' Radiant Vault was already in its dotage; decayed and declining, it was more a symbolic token. It was powerful, but its power had reached its end—whereas those things now appearing above Ruby City were brand-new war machines.

They were war machines the Cecil people had built specifically for this war, armed to every inch of deck and hull. They were new, ferocious, precise, merciless. They were not precious symbolic tokens, not heirlooms to be hidden away—the only reason the Cecil people had brought them out was to let them kill on the front lines.

With the highest efficiency, the most merciless posture, to kill to their hearts' content and execute destruction.

The order to withdraw spread through the mental link. The black tide across the Augustre land surged once more, but this time it contracted backward—there was no longer any point in letting aberrations throw themselves against flying fortresses that commanded the sky. The priority now was to preserve strength, readjust the main force's deployment, use the vast already-corrupted lands as a buffer and delay, and seek as quickly as possible in the coming period an opportunity to change the situation.

"More monstrous than the aberrations..." Marcellus glared viciously at the distant sky. He thought of the intelligence Bertram had brought back after his defeat on the northern battlefield, thought of that living forest on the northern front that fed on aberrations, and could not help murmuring into the night wind, "The essence of civilization is a conqueror more savage than savagery... Interesting..."

The low-ranking priest beside him blinked. "Hierarch, what did you say?"

"Just some meaningless musings," Marcellus's tone unexpectedly calmed, as if the rage and hatred of before had been mere illusion. He looked at his subordinate and began issuing orders methodically in that calm, "We will abandon the Ruby Forest and Wolfsback Mountain and leave those corrupted lands to the humans—you take the runestone squad and open a deep-blue rift nearby. Send a portion of the runestones through first, then move to the southern region and join up with Ditmore..."

He stopped abruptly.

An inexplicable chill spread through his roots and mutated nervous system, a chill that carried a premonition of approaching death. This dark priest, transformed from a high druid, suddenly stared fixedly toward Ruby City. There atop Wolfsback Mountain, already turned into the aberrations' home ground, he experienced a kind of "intuition" as though he were being watched by some bloodthirsty beast on an isolated, open plain.

The low-ranking priest immediately noticed the change. "Hierarch, what's..."

Marcellus cut him off before he could finish, speaking rapidly. "I have a bad feeling. We move at once!"

The low-ranking priest had no idea what was happening, but he obeyed his superior's order immediately. Yet before he lifted his root-tendrils to move toward the eastern slope of Wolfsback Mountain, he instinctively glanced back toward Ruby City and could not help muttering, "But we're still very, very far from the front line. There's no way those Cecil weapons could reach all the way here..."

He had barely spoken half his sentence when a horrifying shriek, bursting suddenly in the night sky, shredded the clouds above Wolfsback Mountain—but more terrifying than the shriek was the sight of Marcellus watching helplessly as a swift stream of light flew in from the direction above Ruby City and, faster than sound, struck a nearby peak!

He could not make out what the thing was; he could only tell that it was swifter and more dreadful than any "skyfire." The thing was even faster than sound—only when the great explosion soared into the air did he hear the sound arrive through the atmosphere. Then the nearby peak was enveloped in a blinding spherical radiance, a chaotic blend of streams of light in various colors. A terrible energy pulse swept across Wolfsback Mountain, briefly depriving him even of his perception of the entire aberration legion. Then he saw that ball of light swell in the night sky, roaring as it ignited the air, then instantly contract, leaving behind in the darkness a very distinct trace like some kind of spatial rift, and bringing a second wave of energy impact along with a dreadful explosion and tremor.

In that moment, it seemed the entire mountain range trembled faintly.

Two or three seconds later, the radiance finally dissipated. The attack, of unknown origin, had come quickly and gone quickly, yet the marks it left were permanently seared into the eyes of every witness—

The hilltop vanished, leaving behind only a hollowed, spherical crater where it had stood, eaten away and scooped out by some unknown force.

Half the leaves on Marcellus's body dropped away in an instant, and he spun around and ran!