{Chapter: 180: Death and Chaos In the Defence Line}
The Tremor of the Underground
As if sensing the weight of his gaze, Alison, who had just begun moving toward the next danger zone, paused. Her luminous eyes shifted slightly, catching the subtle current of attention aimed in her direction.
With a slight furrow of her brows and a faint curl of her lips, she turned to glance in the direction Dex stood.
Even though she felt no direct malice from those eyes, there was something unnatural about his gaze—an inhuman, dispassionate curiosity, like someone appraising a puzzle or an artifact rather than a living being. It wasn't threatening, but it made her skin crawl.
She instinctively felt a sense of discomfort… a low hum of warning from the depths of her intuition.
And yet, she couldn't help but admit to herself—his appearance was undeniably arresting.
Despite her disdain, she had to acknowledge that the man, or whatever he was, had a rare beauty—one that surpassed even the most striking elven men. His long red hair flowed like silk under the light, only partially concealing a pair of curved horns that peeked out at just the right angle to feel dangerous. His golden vertical pupils were mesmerizing—reptilian and alien, yet impossible to ignore.
Still… he didn't feel like an enemy.
Alison's gaze lingered only a few moments longer. Her mind, trained in both magic and tactics, concluded that he must belong to a rare and unknown race—one of those mysterious beings who lived far from civilization. There were always strange bloodlines that eluded categorization.
Besides, she reasoned, the external defensive barriers were still intact. The abyss creatures shouldn't be able to infiltrate this deeply without triggering alarms.
And although she was undeniably uncomfortable with his gaze, she didn't sense the hostility that would mark an intruder.
Just… observation.
So, dismissing her suspicions, Alison turned away and resumed her pace, categorizing him mentally as a "peculiar passerby."
---
Dex, for his part, felt no disappointment in her dismissal. If anything, he found it amusing.
Alison had managed to land a few hits on him during their recent clash, but that meant little. Battle, to him, was no different than breathing—part of the routine of existence. He bore her no ill will for trying to kill him.
In fact, he didn't need any reason to fight.
He fought because it was his nature. Conflict came as naturally to him as walking or talking.
Many had perished at his hand for the simple reason that they were standing in the wrong place—or breathing in the wrong tone. There was no logic to it, no vendetta. Only impulse.
That wasn't hostility. That was simply... Dex.
As Alison's silhouette disappeared down the cracked road, Dex turned his attention elsewhere, his gaze plunging through layers of earth and stone toward something hidden far beneath the surface—somethings he had been nurturing for days.
Somethings alive.
Compared to what brewed below, the infected swarming the surface were nothing more than harmless distractions—noisy by-products of his true creation. They were footnotes to a greater story.
And now... the final chapter was ready to begin.
He could feel it in the rhythm of the earth.
They were at their peak. The timing was perfect.
Boom… Boom… Boom…
---
Alison stopped mid-stride as the tremors began.
Her boots trembled against the ground. The vibrations spread through the soles of her feet, and a sharp, primal instinct seized her spine.
She turned her head slowly, her breath catching in her throat.
Cracks were rapidly forming in the buildings around her. Ancient stones groaned and split open, releasing clouds of dust as foundations began to shift.
And then, a horrifying realization took root in her mind.
"If dead objects like houses can become monsters... what about the ground itself?"
Before she could even finish the thought, the street beneath her feet buckled violently. The soil within the perimeter of the defense line ripped apart, crumbling like a rotted crust.
And from the gaping crevices, they came.
A nightmare of biology and madness.
Giant serpents, hundreds of meters long, twisted up from the depths, their flesh swollen stone with infection. Their scales were warped stone and dust, their forms abominable, and their bodies writhed with dozens—no, hundreds—of grotesque eyeballs.
The eyes blinked in all directions, glowing with sickly light as the beasts emerged howling into the sky.
Their cry was a cacophony of madness and despair.
And worst of all, Alison noticed where they had emerged from—the exact nodes of the barrier network that had protected the outer defense line for centuries.
The barriers that had stood for generations… were falling.
They had already fallen.
And beyond them, in the blackened lands of plague and corruption, the dormant monsters raised their heads.
Some hissed.
Some howled.
Others merely opened rows of teeth and grinned like lunatics they were.
All of them… understood.
The demon's tide had returned.
And this time, there would be no holding it.
---
It wasn't just the barrier that had collapsed.
With a thunderous roar that split the skies and cracked the ground, it became clear—the line between civilization and nightmare had been utterly erased.
The monsters didn't simply emerge from the earth.
They erupted.
They burst forth like infected boils splitting open, spewing corruption, chaos, and death. Towering beasts—twisted horrors whose very flesh reeked of rot and madness—crawled from the earth's wounded skin.
Their colossal bodies dwarfed buildings, moving with a grotesque elegance that defied logic. Muscles like coiled cables writhed beneath corrupted stone flesh. Dozens of yellow, lidless eyes blinked in asynchronous rhythm along their serpentine necks. Rows of barbed, glassy fangs snapped at the air as if impatient for the taste of blood.
The walls and bunkers—once mighty bastions forged from enchanted stone and iron, capable of repelling armies—now cracked like cheap pottery.
Like an adult boot crushing a child's sandcastle, these monsters trampled entire districts beneath their clawed limbs.
City walls that had stood proud for centuries shattered beneath the weight of swiping tails, crashing limbs, and massive heads slamming down like hammers. Entire towers were tossed into the sky like twigs in a storm, vanishing behind clouds before cratering into the earth far away.
Even the thickest fortifications meant to withstand siege engines were reduced to splinters and rubble. The monsters Dex had modified and birthed from the plague were not beasts—they were engines of cataclysm.
Each movement was devastation.
Each breath, pollution.
With every guttural howl that tore from their throats, the skies seemed to tremble.
Without the power of the barrier to repel them, the very air was now thick with toxic mists—fetid clouds of abyssal vapor and noxious spores that oozed into every crack, into every lung.
The tainted breath of the polluted land now flowed freely into the last sanctuary of the living in the area.
And with it came corruption.
The people stationed along the defense line—soldiers, scouts, commanders—watched in horror as the very sky darkened with monstrous shapes. The poison winds reeked of rot and burned the throat like acid. The blood-drenched cries of the dying began to rise like a funeral dirge over the collapsing cityscape.
Alison stood frozen.
This… this was beyond war.
It was a divine punishment.
An annihilation.
Even the bravest of hearts faltered when faced with that tide of madness.
---
Far above, from the balcony of a shattered tower, Henry Moore stood still.
He had seen countless battles. He had faced beasts, undead, and cursed races in the deepest trenches of the world. But nothing—nothing—could have prepared him for this.
He had heard stories. Whispers. Theories. Warnings from mad prophets and buried records from ancient wars.
But to witness it with his own eyes…
The defense line was falling. No—had fallen.
The barriers were gone. The bunkers were breached. The monsters were not just invading—they were consuming.
And all of it had happened in moments.
Henry's lips trembled. His breath caught in his throat. His knuckles whitened around the stone railing as a hundred flaming eyes turned toward the sky and let out an ear-splitting wail that cracked the heavens.
The scream of a new apocalypse.
His heart sank.
Even his seasoned, logical mind had gone blank under the weight of such destruction.
Seconds passed.
Then he forced himself to move.
A trembling hand reached into his coat and retrieved the command relic. It shimmered with faint runes—once a symbol of control, now just another relic of a crumbling age.
There was no choice.
Through gritted teeth, Henry sent a mental signal through the relic, activating its emergency broadcast.
"All demigods, all racial envoys," he said, voice ragged, "begin immediate evacuation. Gather all uninfected personnel and retreat via emergency teleportation arrays. This is not a drill. Prioritize survival. Abandon the front. Save who you can."
He lowered his hand, exhaled deeply, and closed his eyes.
There was no shame in retreat.
Only strategy.
Because remaining would mean only one thing: a death with no legacy, a sacrifice feeding the enemy.
******
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