Earth's Greatest Magus

Chapter 2983: Corruptions

"HOLD THE WALLS!"

Anderson’s voice carried across the central plaza, and the meaning behind those words spread through both armies faster than any messenger ever could.

The defense of Dravos was no longer Cassian’s.

The lieutenant general had taken command.

The two city lords accepted the transition without objection—Cassian with visible relief in his eyes, Verrin with a soldier’s nod—and within seconds new orders began spreading across the battlefield.

Every Magus-realm fighter was to fall back from the front line. Their cultivation alone could no longer burn the mist from their veins, and feeding more of them into the haze was feeding the swarm, fresh hosts. Instead, they were redirected toward Arctus and the formation corps.

The instant his boots touched the plaza, Arctus and half a dozen fellow formation masters scattered throughout the city, weaving massive arrays designed not for destruction, but for survival. Domes of purification light rose over the most crowded districts while healing formations awakened beneath them, drawing the sick and wounded toward safety like iron drawn to a lodestone.

The Magus would no longer fight.

They would protect.

Every cultivator channeled their spirit energy to reinforce the array’s barrier and became an anchor for thousands of civilians struggling to survive.

That left the walls to the Grand Magus.

A hundred and fifty of them, give or take — the Dravos defenders combined with the Maren survivors who had come pouring through Emery’s gate.

Their cosmic bodies could resist the violet poison far longer than any Magus.

Specialists from dozens of paths spread across the walls. Holy-law cultivators unleashed purification fields that burned corruption from the air, creating narrow corridors where defenders could breathe freely. Masters of life and nature moved among the wounded, driving infection from tainted blood and restoring damaged meridians. Wind-law experts stood atop towers and battlements, sweeping their arms through vast circular motions that forced entire banks of purple mist away from the walls.

The haze itself bent beneath their power.

Long channels of clear air opened across the battlefield.

And while some cleansed and healed, the rest fought.

The results became visible almost immediately.

The walls stabilized.

The breaches stopped widening.

For the first time in hours, the defenders of Dravos were not merely surviving.

They were winning.

The strategy was working.

High above the city, the small creature watched its carefully orchestrated slaughter begin to slow.

It’s great forehead eye burned blood-red.

Then the chittering began.

"Ki-ki-ki-ki-ki-ki—"

The sound rolled across the heavens like thousands of insects laughing in unison, layered over fragments of something that had never belonged to any language spoken by mortal tongues. The noise rose steadily in pitch and intensity while waves of violet light poured from the creature’s tiny body.

Each pulse darkened the sky further.

Clouds twisted.

The wind died.

The very air became heavy and wrong.

It was a summons.

High above Dravos, the heavens themselves began to change.

Multiple massive yellow eyes opened in the sky.

For a single impossible moment, they simply hung there, enormous and lidless, staring down upon the city from nowhere. Then the space around it distorted, folding inward like fabric being twisted by invisible hands. A face pressed against reality from the opposite side, frozen in a permanent snarl.

The first eye tore.

And a figure stepped through.

The infected Colonel Garran

His Three Cosmos aura burned like a black furnace, and his yellow eyes immediately locked onto Anderson below.

A second eye opened.

Then a third.

Then a fourth.

Across the heavens, reality split apart again and again as more corrupted Grand Magus emerged from the widening tears. Elder Ravik of the Crimson Pine Spear Sect. Lord Daven of the Azure Banner. Sect masters. Clan elders. Faction leaders whose names had been known throughout Baeldum for centuries.

Every one of them now bore the same yellow eyes.

It took less than a heartbeat for the defenders to understand the horror unfolding before them.

The parasite could manipulate space itself.

It had plucked its servants from a battlefield a thousand miles away and dropped them whole into the sky above Dravos.

And it had not finished.

The single rifts began to open into wider ones, and the wider ones into wider still — until enormous tears the size of city blocks split open across the heavens above the wall, edges flickering with violet fire.

And then it began to rain.

Not water.

People.

Tens of thousands of infected Magus came pouring through the great rifts at once, tumbling out of the open sky in a black hail, falling toward Dravos in a screaming tide that blotted out what little daylight the violet haze had left.

Anderson’s face went white. The army he had so painfully dodged at Maren had simply followed them here.

The battle on the walls erupted again, twice as savage and twice as wide.

Anderson surged into the sky to meet Garran himself—exactly as he had at Maren, exactly the duel he had hoped to avoid here. Ayla’s golden tiger thundered upward beside him, while City Lord Verrin of Maren charged into the aerial battlefield behind them.

Once again, the three found themselves locked against the same Three Cosmos-infected who had nearly killed them before, forced to contain enemies that could shatter entire districts if left unchecked.

Which meant none of them could spare a moment to assist the group still fighting the true Parasite X.

The defenders who had confronted the creature earlier had already been reduced to five.

The two One Cosmos Grand Magus were dead. The Sword Demoness remained airborne through sheer willpower alone. Parts of her skin had already turned a sickly purplish-black as the corruption spread through her body. Her breathing had become ragged, her vision unfocused. All of her concentration was devoted to resisting the infection and preventing it from consuming her completely.

That left the Star Tower Lord, the three surviving Two Cosmos cultivators, and Hubert.

It was far from enough.

Parasite X seemed to realize that fact as quickly as they did.

It’s great forehead eye fixed upon the Star Tower Lord, identifying him immediately as the most dangerous opponent remaining. Spatial rifts bloomed around the man, one after another, the creature striking from a different angle every half-second. Stellar fire scattered through empty air; the Tower Lord could only spin in place, dodging, never landing a blow, the rifts closing in tighter with each pass.

Minutes passed,

Then Hubert intervened.

One hand held his revolver, shooting bullets capable of predicting its movement.

The other supported the weakened Duke Damien.

Crimson-gold bullets roared across the battlefield, aimed not at the creature itself but at the locations where it was about to emerge. Beside him, Damien managed to summon what little strength remained, releasing thin strands of golden spirit light that lashed through the air.

Even the Sword Demoness forced herself back into the fight, blood dripping from the corner of her mouth as she unleashed a sacred technique that purged portions of the corruption.

For a brief moment, the defenders managed to stabilize the situation.

Seeing this, the parasite calculated the battlefield in a single heartbeat.

It swiftly vanished into a spatial rift and began hunting easier prey.

The parasite chose its first targets deliberately.

Rather than attacking the Grand Magus who had consumed the resistance pills, it sought out those who remained vulnerable to its corruption.

A group of four Grand Magus held the eastern rampart together, one of the strongest sections of the wall, only moments earlier.

The creature appeared among them without warning.

Corruption erupted.

The defenders reacted instantly, barriers rising and techniques flashing across the battlements, but they might as well have been fighting smoke. The parasite slipped through every defense, flickering between spatial rifts faster than their eyes could follow.

One Grand Magus—a wounded, muscular warrior whose mental defenses had already been weakened by hours of battle—was affected almost immediately. With a roar, he suddenly turned and hurled his sword at a companion standing beside him.

Two others staggered as agonizing headaches exploded through their minds.

The fourth attempted to retreat, but was blocked by his infected companion.

Within seconds, all four had been engulfed.

The Star Tower Lord and the others immediately rushed toward the eastern wall, but they were already too late.

The four cultivators remained standing.

Then four pairs of yellow eyes opened.

A chill swept through the battlefield.

The newly corrupted Grand Magus turned toward their former allies and unleashed their techniques without hesitation, throwing the entire section of wall into chaos.

The parasite did not stay to watch.

It appeared on another section of the wall.

Then another.

Then another.

Every time it emerged, more Grand Magus fell.

Every time it vanished, new yellow eyes appeared among the defenders.

The parasite was no longer fighting the defenders.

It was recruiting them.

The creature moved across Dravos like a living plague, flickering between spatial rifts so quickly that even veteran Grand Magus struggled to follow its movements.

Within minutes, more than twenty Grand Magus had joined the hive.

The effect on the battlefield was immediate.

The balance tilted back in the enemy’s favor. The Star Tower Lord and the others could no longer keep up with the creature’s movements, while the number of infected Grand Magus rapidly approached that of the remaining defenders.

Panic began spreading through the walls once more.

They had barely managed to hold for an hour, yet at this rate, the defenses would never survive the seven more hours needed for reinforcements to arrive.

"What do we do?" Anderson growled, frustration evident in his voice as he searched desperately for another solution.