Sword of Dawnbreaker

Chapter 1369: Chapter 1368: It’s Raining Fish

After a brief delay, three Signal Flares shot up into the sky. The Charged Crystals sealed within the flares detonated violently the instant their inertial locks released, activating the array of magic symbols engraved inside the shells—within the next few seconds, colossal globes of light, visible even from Fort Greta, illuminated the ink-heavy clouds, a blinding red radiance diffusing through the dense overcast. Almost in the same instant that this light burst forth, the vapor condensed above the narrow plain reached a critical peak.

On the earth below, the last heavy shell fired from Winter had just completed its long arc and descent. With a detonation that shook mountains and ground alike, a gigantic mushroom cloud billowed skyward—yet the shockwave carried surprisingly few shredded limbs or fragments of aberrations. Under the previous waves of intensive bombardment, most of the aberrations and Bio-synthetic Beasts on the battlefield had already been annihilated. After leaving behind uncountable carcasses, these monstrosities rapidly abandoned the positions they had only just "taken" and fell back to the vicinity of the Gondor wasteland’s border.

They infested the corrupted soil and jagged monoliths, howling amid the storm of dust flung into the air. Though the meteor-like streams of fire falling from the clouds had ceased, the searing agony and shattering impact brought by that "Skyfire" seemed still burned deep into their twisted, mutant nervous systems. The dust stirred up by the final salvo had yet to settle, and the earth continued to reverberate with lingering tremors. This horrifying spectacle propagated outward through the monsters’ nervous systems and the psychic network connecting them, ultimately converging upon the Wasteland Legion’s command nodes, gathering into their "brain"—the dark priests lurking deep within the ruins of an ancient fortress along the wasteland border, northwest of Fort Greta.

It was an ancient border fortress. In the distant age of human glory, it had once been an outpost on the fringes of the Gondor Empire, watching over what was then the most powerful human domain in the world. After the catastrophic explosion of the Well of Deep Blue, the fortress was swallowed by the wasteland and has been forgotten by the civilized world for centuries. Advanced construction techniques of that bygone era, combined with its location beyond the immediate blast radius of the old deep blue cataclysm, have allowed the fortress to retain a relatively intact main structure even to this day. Amid its soaring ramparts and intricately engineered frameworks, one can still faintly discern the splendor it possessed centuries ago—only that this splendor no longer signifies the frontier of civilization, but has fallen to serve as a Sanctuary for things of darkness and corruption.

Bannor stood upon the fortress’s upper platform. His crown of branches, tangled and coiled like a brain, rasped dryly in the wind. The root-tendrils that served him as legs shifted slowly across the ancient, mottled stone, betraying the violently foul mood of this Dark Hierarch. His eyes were fixed on the battlefield to the southeast, watching the aberrations continually retreating from the front and the lingering haze on the horizon. A hoarse, low gurgling sounded muddily from within his trunk, and streaks of liquid reminiscent of dark-red blood seeped slowly from the cracks in his bark.

A vast number of aberrations and Bio-synthetic Beasts had been wiped out in an extremely short span of time. Numerous nodes in the command network abruptly ceased responding. The violent shocks perceived simultaneously by the subordinate nodes created a tsunami-like psychic backlash at the instant the network crashed. This surge struck many dark priests who were directly commanding the legion, inflicting injuries of varying severity—including Bannor himself.

He was Maselus’s successor. After the Wasteland Legion’s offensive against the tribal country of Augari had stalled, and Maselus—the former commander of the western line—was utterly obliterated by that dreadful Sky Fortress, Archbishop Bolken entrusted the remnants of the western line’s aberrations to Bannor, who had originally been stationed in the rear on standby. Bannor did not force the western line—which had already lost more than half its strength—to remain on the Augari front to clash head-on with that terrifying Sky Fortress. Instead, he ordered the entire army to march south, to join the original Southern Front Battlefield legion in a fierce assault against the elves and human beings. He understood that what the evil-cult required was not the so-called "occupation of the world"; what it needed was merely to deploy a sufficient number of deep blue control nodes. Given that objective, abandoning the entire western front was of no consequence. Victories on the Southern Front Battlefield alone would suffice to accomplish the great work...

At least, it should have been so. Until today, things had largely proceeded according to plan.

The elves and human beings showed a remarkably tenacious will to fight. Even after that "Sacred Stars Temple" fell from the sky, they still managed to stabilize the border and even mount a certain degree of "counterattack." Yet their stubborn resolve could not protect every line of defense. The Wasteland Legion’s numerically superior forces repeatedly achieved local breakthroughs, successfully suppressing the northwestern border of the Highmountain Kingdom and advancing to the very walls of Fort Greta. In Bannor’s view, given enough time, those human beings—whose reserves of Soldiers and capacity for sustained warfare fell far short of the aberrations—would inevitably be worn down by the Wasteland Legion. Once the Highmountain Kingdom’s defenses were torn open at the largest point, no matter how formidable the elves might be, they would still find themselves trapped between two converging armies.

Instead, today he ran into the Cecil Clan—those ceaseless, lingering threats, that damned Cecil Clan that somehow manages to erupt onto the field no matter where you are!!

"Archbishop, we have confirmed the bombardment came from the Aldo River. Those Cecil Clan arrived by ship... extremely large Battleships, more than a dozen of them," a dark priest ascended the platform and approached Bannor with reverent caution. "The ’magic cannon’ they are using is different from the ’magic cannon’ we have encountered on the battlefield these past days. In both power and range, theirs surpasses our ’monsters’..."

"The Aldo River... from that far away?!" Bannor’s crown of branches rustled loudly as agitation seized him. "Those damned lowly organisms... dull and inferior on the path of evolution, yet capable only of forging those blasphemous machines that roar with noise... No, we cannot allow those Battleships to remain there..."

A gust blew in from the distance, laden with heavy moisture. The portent of some coming downpour soaked into Bannor’s withered leaves and bark, yet brought no comfort to this "plant," only a deeper, more gnawing irritation and unease. "It’s not just the Cecil Clan... this accursed weather as well. There are no such vexing clouds and rain in the wasteland..."

As though in deliberate response to his complaint, at the very instant the Dark Hierarch’s words fell, an unprecedented thunderclap exploded across the sky. Rolling peals of thunder reverberated between heaven and earth like an immense bronze bell. The sheer force of that moment made the dark priests within the fortress shudder as one. For an instant, they almost believed a shell from the Cecil Clan’s Battleships had landed directly atop their heads—

Then, the heavens opened.

The storm that had been brewing in the dense cloudbank for so long finally broke. It was as if an inverted ocean had been hidden in the depths of the sky, and now its waters cascaded down in endless sheets. The torrential deluge hammered the land from above Fort Greta northward, stretching all the way to the ancient fortress at the edge of the wasteland, and further east to the old line of the Forest Defense Line. In an instant, the entire narrow plain was transformed into a vast floodland. Countless bright bolts of lightning raced and leapt through the clouds. A chorus of howling winds and eerie shrieks that set nerves on edge swept across the whole expanse!

Shaken by the previous thunderclap, Bannor now stared, dumbstruck, at the sudden downpour crashing down before his eyes. The density of the falling water no longer fit his concept of "rain"; it resembled instead an entire body of water hurled straight from the heavens. This dark priest, who had already lived for several centuries, searched his memories. In the days when he was still a human being, when he dwelt beyond in the "normal world," he had never seen, never even heard tell of such rain.

"This rain..." the muttered words of a lower-ranking dark priest drifted from nearby, "this rain is really pouring hard..."

"No—something is wrong..." Bannor cut him off. The violent unease in his heart was coalescing into a palpable alarm. "This is not rain! It’s an assault. We’re under attack! All personnel, prepare for battle!"

"An assault?" The lower dark priest did not understand at once. He turned to Bannor in astonishment. "We’re being attacked by wh—"

He got only halfway through the question before his voice was drowned out by a sudden hum from above and a sharp hiss as some wooden structure was sliced open by high thermal energy. From within the falling storm, a wraith-like figure emerged as if conjured from water and air itself. It was a woman whose lower body was that of a serpent. In her hands she gripped a weapon like a trident, its tines bound with high-energy Light-Wave Warblade by a force field. With a casual sweep, she cut the lower-ranking priest cleanly in two before he had the slightest chance to react.

The lifeless wooden body of his subordinate toppled into the pouring rain, and in that instant Bannor finally felt a long-lost fear. He saw that strange creature holding a bizarre weapon had already turned its gaze in his direction, and around that alien creature, more figures were rapidly taking shape—condensing out of the curtain of rain falling from the sky, out of the water-saturated air, out of the rising flood on the ground, one figure after another, each holding a trident or a particle rifle.

On the castle, outside the castle, across the plains, greater numbers of sea demons finished their descent and began swiftly reaping every creature within their sight—whether towering aberrations or grotesque, vicious Bio-synthetic Beasts, or the dark priests frantically trying to rebuild their defensive line, all these land-born beings looked the same to the sea demons. Close targets were hacked into scraps with Light-Wave Warblades, distant ones were raked by particle rifles. High-energy particle clusters and beam-blades, wrapped in constraint force fields, surged through the rain like rolling waves; with every surge, vast swaths of monsters and dark priests were turned into "impurities" in the stormy surf.

The water kept rising. Even though this was an open plain on all sides, the "precipitation" brought by this downpour did not leak away in the slightest; the astonishing volume of rainwater was bound to this battlefield and, at a speed visible to the naked eye, flooded every ravine along the narrow plain. It was a shocking, terrifying sight—but at this moment Bannor no longer had the slightest spare attention to care about what was happening in the distance.

A high-energy particle mass, wrapped in a force field, skimmed past the treetop and shot into the distance, while his protective Magic shield rippled in layers. Bannor kept summoning masses of vines and withered Treants to block the offensive of those "rain-born aliens," while firing arrows of Corrosive Energy, packed with destructive power, at any enemies that stepped into his range—this was his first time crossing blades with this race, and as a dark priest with profound knowledge, he had already guessed that these beings before him were the very "sea demons" who had been beating the Sons of the Storm into the dirt for seven hundred years. He had immediately relayed the news through the root-network to Archbishop Bolken deep within the Gondor wasteland, and as for what he could do next...

All that was left was to fight to the death and somehow survive this sudden raid.

Ink-green arrows of Corrosive Energy tore through the air with a shrill hiss. A sea demon Soldier, unable to dodge at such close range, was pierced straight through the chest; she didn’t even have time to scream before she burst apart into scattering sprays of water.

The sea demon next to her saw this scene. Her comrade’s death made her shout in surprise, then she burst into loud laughter: "The weakest one just died!!"

Then the other nearby sea demons all shouted in unison, at the top of their lungs: "See you after we die!!"

Bannor felt a chill surging up from his core; if he still had body hair, then every last strand would be standing on end right now.

These sea demons were not invincible. Although they seemed several times stronger than the usual Mortal Races and were equipped with astonishing advanced weapons, as a powerful Order Supernatural Bannor could still hold his own against multiple sea demon Soldiers at once, and he had already managed to kill several of them. Yet this did nothing to ease his mind.

All he felt was absurdity and dread—these creatures simply did not fear death!

They fought in a way that was utterly reckless and fearless, paying no attention to any mortal wounds. If they could win, they rushed in to tear and hack; if they couldn’t win, they still rushed in. Once heavily injured, they would just charge over and self-detonate. They didn’t care about their own lives, nor did they care about the lives of their comrades. When a companion died right before their eyes, they would only shout loudly and excitedly, using an attitude that Bannor found outright hair-raising to comment on that death, loudly praising or loudly mocking it, then turning their heads and going right back to slaughtering every target in sight—until they too stepped into death.

Bannor’s scalp crawled—though he’d already lost his scalp seven centuries ago, it still crawled.

He knew aberrations didn’t fear death either, but that was entirely different. The aberrations’ fearlessness was built on the fact that they fundamentally lacked a complete mental framework; if they could truly think, they would understand retreat and fear. Yet these deep-sea variants called "sea demons" possessed highly developed intellect, and in a state of full rationality they embraced death, rushed toward death, praising and scorning death all at once...

And they were high on it the whole time.

The dark priest who had resolved to annihilate an entire season of civilization to reshape this planet now trembled before these unfathomable deep-sea variants; he even felt that the ones opposite him were the real pack of mad monsters.

And just then, Bannor suddenly noticed that the sea demons besieging him had all stopped attacking in unison.

Those Deep Sea Warriors looked as if they had received some order, simultaneously stowing their weapons and stepping back. At some unknown moment, the torrential rain around them had formed an inverted vortex in the sky; the center of the vortex grew strangely calm. Bannor stared in shock at the surrounding changes, momentarily at a loss for what was happening, but one thing he could be sure of—these crazed deep-sea variants were not about to kindly let him walk away alive.

The very next second, what he was thinking in his heart was confirmed.

A massive roar of water surged up from the rain and flood outside the castle. Countless thick tentacles, reminiscent of an octopus’s arms, climbed up along the fortress’s rough outer wall to the platform. Bannor saw a gigantic figure rising out of the ever-swelling water—a giant of a woman, or more precisely, something formed by fusing a woman’s body with a deep-sea Sea Demon monstrosity. She lowered her head to look down at Bannor, while countless thick tentacles coiled layer upon layer across the platform, forming a sunken structure like some kind of arena. A voice like a thunderous Surge shook Bannor’s auditory nerves: "I heard there’s someone here who’s crazy good at fighting—is that you?"

"Good. I am General Vanessa, Deep Sea Warlord. I’ll fight you."