"They are here..."
High atop the towering ramparts of Forest Hawk City, Ulrichia spotted the distant human army. Sneering, she commanded the dragonbeasts and cultists below, "Go! Crush these pathetic humans and show them the might of dragons!"
*Wuuu—*
A dragonbone horn carved with ancient Draconic runes blew atop the battlements. Its prolonged, sonorous blast rang out like a dragon's roar, whipping the Cult of the Dragon zealots into an even wilder frenzy.
"For Tiamat!"
Over a hundred evil dragon priests raised their dragon-headed scepters in unison. Black light surged across the sky as malevolent power flooded the battlefield, driving the dragonbeasts into a violent, bloodthirsty madness.
Mottled silhouettes streaked across the sky, bearing down on the human legions.
It was an aerial vanguard composed of flying draconic creatures—wyverns, forest drakes, and venom-spotted flying lizards. They flapped their wings in chaotic disarray, loosing raspy, cacophonous shrieks.
The human legions stood ready. At the front line, a human officer raised his sword and bellowed, "Defensive formation! Prepare to brace against their charge!"
Having fought against dragons, dragonbeasts, and dragon scions for years, these soldiers knew full well how to counter diving drakes. The frontline troops deftly raised their tower shields, locking together an impenetrable, airtight wall of iron.
Behind them, soldiers braced spears, notched arrows to bows, loaded hand crossbows, or cranked winches to span massive dragon-hunting ballistas, setting thick, finger-wide bolts tipped with spiral cross-heads into the grooves.
Soon, the din of screeching grew deafening. The dense swarm swept toward the human lines like a fast-spreading storm cloud.
*Hoo, hoo...*
The soldiers wore grave expressions, their breaths coming slow and heavy.
Sweat beaded on their brows and rolled down their cheeks, drenching the palms that gripped shields, bows, and crossbows.
When the creatures closed to just a hundred meters, the noble officer slashed his sword down and roared, "Fire! Fire—shoot down these filthy vermin!"
*Whoosh—!*
Before his voice even died away, countless arrows erupted from the human lines. Tracing graceful arcs, they filled the sky like a torrential downpour, plunging into the airborne flock.
In an instant, dozens of lead dragonbeasts were turned into pincushions. Screeching piteously, they thrashed and plummeted toward the earth.
Several unlucky wyverns were struck by dragon-hunting ballistas; the cross-bladed bolts tore straight through skin, flesh, and viscera, punching clean through their backs.
Shattered scales rained onto the earth. Warm blood spewed from jagged wounds alongside mangled entrails and shredded meat as the wyverns perished midair and tumbled limply down.
After this single volley, hundreds of dragonbeasts crashed down bristling with shafts, while countless more arrows stood planted in the soil.
Yet even in the face of such grim casualties, the enraged wyverns refused to retreat. They dove wave upon wave toward the human ranks, roaring hysterically.
*Roaaar!*
Watching the closing horrors, the soldiers tightened their grips on spears and shields, bracing for the brunt of the assault.
Within mere breaths, the flock of wyverns, drakes, and venomous lizards slammed into the human vanguard, hurtling against the steadfast shield wall.
The noble officer swung his sword and shouted, "Kill them—!"
"Die!"
"For Fadlan! For mankind!"
The dragonbeasts beat their wings, opening cavernous maws lined with serrated teeth, unsheathing sharp talons, and lashing venomous stingers forward.
The moment the grotesque monsters collided, soldiers answered with ferocious battle cries. Razor-sharp spears gleaming with cold light thrust out through gaps in the shield wall, driving straight into necks, chests, and vitals.
"Die!"
*Skreeeech!*
Dust billowed as blood sprayed everywhere.
The wet thuds of punctured flesh, soldiers' furious shouts, and dragonbeast shrieks blended together across the battlefield. Over a hundred beasts were disemboweled and slain on the spot, their bloody entrails spilling across the earth as crimson spearheads punched through their backs.
The frontmost heavy shieldbearers were drenched in blood, their faces contorted into savage grimaces as they swung hand axes and longswords with one arm, hacking at wyvern throats.
For a moment, the dragonbeasts suffered grievous losses.
Yet these rabid beasts were hardly easy prey. Many had built up reserves of venom and acid in their breath glands, and as they swooped above the lines, torrents of caustic fluid erupted from their gullets.
*Splaaash!*
In an instant, highly corrosive acid melted right through shields. Flesh melted away from unlucky soldiers, exposing stark white bones before reducing them to battered skeletons.
"Aaagh!"
"Curse it!"
Screams rang out one after another. Other soldiers, splattered by venom from the flying lizards, clutched their throats as their eyes bulged and their faces turned purple, vomiting blackish bile before collapsing dead within moments.
Using acid and venomous breath, the dragonbeasts ripped open the human vanguard, jostling to pour through the breach.
"Hold the line! Don't let them breach the ranks!"
The noble officer hoisted a shield and charged into the fray himself to plug the gap. Sweeping his sharp blade, he severed a venom-spotted flying lizard's head in a single stroke.
This officer was a baron from southern Seleucia named Jevon Ford. He had once owned a lovely manor, a happy family, and lived an affluent life.
The arrival of the Cult of the Dragon had destroyed all of it. In that Dragon Calamity, his manor had burned to ashes, and his wife and daughter had been devoured alive while he was forced to watch helplessly, dragged away only by the desperate efforts of his personal guards.
Now, he staked his very life to take vengeance on the Cult of the Dragon and declare war on the five-headed fiend of hell.
"Die!" Jevon roared, lunging forward with his sword point aimed straight at a forest drake's throat.
*Shriek—!*
Foul blood and venom gushed forth, splattering across Jevon's face.
Bathed in gore, his eyes blazed with fury like a warrior returned from hell. Bracing his shield against a wyvern's raking claws, he slashed again, hacking off its wing.
"Filthy vermin, burn in hell!"
Just then, a whistling rush of wind tore the air as a barbed tail lashed out.
The tail stinger punched through Jevon's back, tearing through muscle and viscera before erupting out of his chest, dripping with fresh blood under a cold glint.
*Pfft—!*
Jevon spat a mouthful of blood and wrenched his head around. The culprit—a dark green wyvern—screeched wildly, gaping its foul, bloody maw to snap down on his head.
The corners of Jevon's mouth curled into a grim, blood-stained smile. "Even if I die..."
Using his body as bait, he poured every ounce of remaining strength into his sword, gripping it with both hands and driving it viciously into the wyvern's gullet: "...I'm dragging you beasts down to hell with me!"
*Thrust!*
The blade plunged deep into the wyvern's throat, jutting out from the back of its neck as blood gushed like a fountain.
The wyvern collapsed alongside Jevon, bodies tangled in death. Even as life left him, Jevon's hands gripped the sword hilt with an iron hold that could not be pried loose, his bloodshot eyes staring up at the five-headed dragon shadow in the sky, burning with unyielding defiance.
Soon, melted by acid and venom, the vanguard was piled high with mutilated corpses. Corroded armor and ruined weapons lay scattered in pools of blood, and the human soldiers could no longer maintain their formation.
They devolved into the most brutal melee, relying purely on individual willpower to grapple with wyverns and forest drakes.
Within moments, over a thousand men fell to the ferocious onslaught, devoured in the jaws of dragons.
At the sight of this, Adrian bellowed in fury and led his elite personal guard into the breach, his silver sword blazing with dazzling light.
"For the Lord of Eternal Radiance! Follow me and purge these foul beasts!"
Swinging his blade through the air, he unleashed golden crescents of light that soared skyward, slicing several wyverns to ribbons in an instant. Rays of sunfire blasted forth, skewering multiple forest drakes one after another.
Adrian's arrival turned the tide. Glimpsing that miraculous radiance, the front-line soldiers felt their fighting spirit rekindle, charging into the drakes with reckless fervor regardless of raking claws and snapping fangs.
The tables turned at once. The draconic flock was shattered; beasts took to the air screeching in agony, only to be impaled and brought down by waiting ballistas.
Corpses blanketed the ground as blood pooled and flowed like rivers—both human and draconic—in a scene of sheer carnage.
Perched atop a mound of butchered dragonbeasts, Adrian raised his radiant golden sword high and cried out in a booming roar, "Men! These vile dragons cannot defeat us! We are the children of the Sun God!"
"Eternal Radiance shields us! The great deity watches over us! Under the light of the sun, none can triumph over the people of Fadlan!"
"God bless Fadlan!"
Right then, the earth shuddered violently. From the distance came muffled thuds and echoing, resonant roars.
"Gods above..."
"What in the world is—"
The soldiers stared into the distant mist, horror and disbelief in their eyes. Never had they imagined dragonbeasts could gather in such numbers—vast enough to make their very souls tremble.
Gargantuan dark silhouettes surged from the fog, blanketing the earth like an advancing, undulating mountain range that exerted an overwhelming sense of dread.
Among them were forest landwyrms, swamp dragons, guard drakes, hammerhead drakes, and a multitude of other draconic monsters—the smallest of which measured four to five meters long and weighed several tons.
No one knew how many dragonbeasts lurked within that mist; after all, every single one had been spawned through the sacrifice of mortal lives.
Ten thousand?
Twenty thousand? Or perhaps fifty thousand, a hundred thousand?
One thing was certain: this was not a gathering that could ever exist in nature, and an assembly of apex predators on such a scale was nothing short of apocalyptic.
When tens of thousands of dragonbeasts charged as one, it triggered a massive quake, splitting the ground as billowing clouds of dust swept forward.
Amidst those looming shadows stood several towering, nightmare-inducing colossi—dragonblood colossi.
Perched on their backs, evil dragon priests brandished their scepters and spread their arms, cackling wildly: "Tremble, mortals, before the majesty of the Mother of Evil Dragons!"
Green dragons unfurled their wings eagerly, taking flight to wheel overhead with clarion roars, ready at any moment to dive toward the earth and unleash lethal torrents of acid breath to melt the humans to slag.
The wyverns rallied as well, flocking around the green dragons with viscous saliva dripping from their jaws.
At this sight, even Adrian felt a tremor of fear in his heart.
The spectacle before them was simply too horrifying. The dragonbeasts seemed endless, bursting brutally from the mist like an unstoppable deluge.
Their thudding footsteps and raucous roars alone were enough to make an ordinary man's knees buckle beneath him.
Yet at that very moment, a series of thunderous booms echoed from behind them, instantly drowning out every other sound on the battlefield.
*Boom!*
*Boom! Boom!*
Artillery shells trailing thick smoke and luminous fire ripped through the heavens, interlacing high above to cast a fiery web over the earth.
The shells slammed into the horde, triggering violent detonations that flooded the field with fire. Plumes of dirt soared into the air, and charred flesh flew in every direction. In that single salvo alone, hundreds of dragonbeasts were blasted to smithereens.
Immediately after, motes of spiritual light flickered along the distant horizon. Massive sky dreadnoughts phased into view high in the air, shifting from transparent stealth to their true forms, clearly having lain in wait for this moment.
"Ground bombardment systems ready—"
Beneath the dreadnoughts' hulls, hundreds of gun barrels elevated, aiming straight at the distant horde of dragonbeasts as terrifying orbs of radiance coalesced within their muzzles.
High concentrations of elemental energy surged forth, warping space and churning ripples of raw power as though beneath an oceanic tide.
"Fire!"
*BOOM—!*
With a low hum, dazzling lances of light erupted from the cannons, crisscrossing in midair before tearing into the draconic ranks.
Explosions followed in rapid succession. Giant craters were blown into the earth, and the ultra-high-temperature beams reduced every dragonbeast caught within to ash.
Yet the barrels swept steadily onward, their beams strafing the horde indiscriminately and carving deep, scorched trenches across the landscape.
The dragonbeasts shrieked and roared in agony, yet they could not escape being blasted to pieces and incinerated to cinder, utterly helpless against dreadnoughts hovering thousands of meters away.
The soldiers of the human legion, witnessing the Machine Cult's full firepower for the first time, stood rooted to the spot in stunned silence, as if beholding a miracle.
"Gods above..."
"What power is this?!"
"Could those eccentrics be angels sent by the Sun God to save us?"
The thunderous roar reverberated in their ears, while the flashing blasts and searing energy beams left the soldiers squinting against the blinding light.
Chapter 788