Defiance of the Fall

Chapter 1096: Wealth Advantage

Zac gazed down at the backs of the advancing soldiers, their silhouettes illuminated by the still-smoldering flames ahead. In an odd way, the endless lines of cultivators stretching across the horizon made him calmer rather than more anxious. The suffering and death of war were turned into something abstract when individuals became cogs in such a vast machine.The stars inside the spherical War Machines had greatly dimmed after unleashing their power, and the contraptions were rolled back to give way for other tools. One model looked like a statue of a masked goddess holding a large glaive in her hand. It radiated powerful waves of death, and a thousand-meter-long turquoise half-moon appeared in front of the statue like a ghastly rainbow that seemed to be constantly collapsing into itself in a cyclic swirl of monstrous energies.

The hundreds of gargantuan glaives acted like a protective cover for the advancing army below and quickly showed their value. Tens of thousands of pitch-black spears, each over twenty meters across, pierced through the smoke curtain and continued toward the advancing soldiers of the Calamity Company. The whole horizon was blotted out in no time, and even Zac felt some pressure upon feeling the innumerable spears flying in his direction.

It was a purely physical attack and a cheaper alternative to using proper War Machines. Most likely, these things had all been manually hurled by the stronger Warslaves to thin out the approaching army. The spears lit up with simple runes to add weight and piercing ability, but they were somehow dragged to the deathly rainbows like moths to the flame. And like the moths, they were incinerated upon touch.

The enormous glaives contained an intractable pull similar to Zac's skillset, dragging everything into the cyclic swirl of destruction. Left was only an ashy snowfall falling toward the ground, joining the soot and smoke of the battlefield.

The Volor stone turtle gave the call, and a third set of War Machines appeared out of nowhere. The contraptions looked like traditional cannons, though their barrels were wider and shorter than what you'd expect. It was roughly as tall as a man but only five meters long, and the payload took up almost half the barrel.

The cannons looked barbaric and crude, but they worked. Thousands of thunderous explosions erupted as the runes across the barrels flashed with burning light. Cannonballs the size of wrecking balls soared through the air above their army, each shuddering with barely contained energy. The bombs continued into the haze, and it felt like the world held its breath in anticipation.

Then, a deafening explosion overwhelmed all other sounds, its intensity so great Zac felt he'd been punched in the ears. The ground heaved, and a massive shockwave swept the dense smoke and lingering flames away. The Kan'Tanu fortress was once more exposed, and it already looked like its hastily erected defenses were teetering on the brink of collapse.

Its protective cover of cursed thorns had already been shorn off by the unrelenting flames of the Calamity Company's opening salvo, and the concussive explosion following in its wake had reached the very foundations of the array-reinforced walls. The array still worked, but the deep fissures across its foundations indicated that most of the embedded Array Flags must have been damaged.

Zac nodded in appreciation in the direction of Ciru, who returned a slightly manic grin. The [Godslayer Cannons] were actually homemade wares of the Atwood Empire, a joint effort between the Ishiate and clan Volor, and the former's mad penchant for destruction had stirred the berserker hearts hiding in the depths of the usually taciturn gemlings. The cannons didn't quite live up to their name as Late to Peak E-grade War Machines, but their destructive capabilities were nothing to scoff at when you had the money to craft high-quality bombs.

Ciru gave the call, and half of the deathly statues raised their weapons in an act of undisguised aggression. Their summoned glaives shot forward as they rose into the air, the whistling air sounding like the wails of lost souls. The conjured blades seemingly moved slowly because of their size, but they approached the Kan'Tanu compound with shocking speed.

The cultists desperately fired more spears and a blinding number of skills to prevent another strike at their barrier, but it was all sucked into the voracious swirl within the glaives. Most were eventually overwhelmed and destabilized, but a few endured. They looked like ghastly spires reaching for the sky at their final approach, before they fell onto the barrier with the force of a falling meteor.

The shield released a blinding light as the Kan'Tanu Array Masters saw no recourse but to activate some fallback measure. It proved futile.

The shield crumbled when the eleventh glaive struck, and piercing screams echoed across the battlefield as tens of thousands of Kan'Tanu warslaves died from the fallout. The Kan'Tanu didn't even have time to react before a fourth set of machines lit up behind Zac. They were thirty meters tall and looked more like traditional Array Towers. They had been transported in a lying position but had already been erected some time ago.

Zac only had ten of these beasts, but each created a huge shimmering array far above the Kan'Tanu's base. It almost looked like they were portals from another world, and hundreds of burning meteors were soon unleashed on the ground. The scene reminded Zac of the special event he encountered with Vai on the Ramsi Wall, where a huge vortex had spat out stones filled with truth.

The magmatic boulders kept coming, and the Kan'Tanu base soon turned into armageddon with their main barrier down. A storm of counter-attacks flew up from the ground, but the arrays were simply too far into the air. Only other War Machines or Hegemons could deal with them, and it didn't look like these Kan'Tanu had any to spare.

The meteor shower could last over an hour as long as Zac supplied the towers with enough Cosmic Crystals, and they put immense pressure on the soldiers below. The Kan'Tanu couldn't escape and they couldn't stay, so they chose the only option remaining. They advanced.

A swarm of desperate soldiers poured through the broken battlement, madly rushing toward the Calamity Company's frontlines. A second round fired from the [Godslayer Cannons] caused untold destruction, but there were millions of warslaves. The distance was huge, but the cultists were all E-grade and desperate. Soon, the unstable swarm of Kan'Tanu slammed into the Calamity Company's far more ordered frontlines, making the cannons useless.

"That's my cue," Joanna said before she set off with a squad of thirty headhunters.

The air rippled around them, and Zac noted they had seemingly become almost invisible to the warriors as they crossed the chaotic battlefield. The Valkyries used a War Array that hid their presence. Their method probably wouldn't work against an alert scout in normal circumstances, but the battlefield had become a perfect cover.

Smoke, flames, radiant skills, and chaotic energies rendered the valkyries practically invisible, letting them move toward the Kan'Tanu backlines in

"There's little point in unsealing the teleporter early," Rhubat agreed after Zac shared the screen. "At least not for a standard engagement like this."

"We could use the downtime anyway," Joanna added. "We need to go over the result and make adjustments. Besides, we must have spent thousands of D-grade Nexus Coins in this blitz. This place looks run-down, but there should be some resources hiding somewhere. I've never heard of a battlefront being completely barren. We might be able to recoup some of our expenses."

Zac nodded in agreement. Their War Machines might have allowed them to overwhelm the enemy, but using hundreds of D-grade Siege Arrays cost a fortune. Not even the Calamity Company wasn't meant to act this exorbitantly. Most Early D-grade armies only had a few as a hidden reserve, but few actually used them in a normal engagement. Many, like the Kan'Tanu divisions they'd fought, had none.

But what could they do? They needed to get used to the equipment, even if it burned money.

"Carva, can you come over?" Zac said into a communication crystal, and the spectral appeared within a minute.

"I'm here, my lord."

"If the Kan'Tanu missed something when they sacked this city, it's most likely hiding underground," Zac said as he took out an [Automatic Map] and marked a few spots. "Beyond the castles, check these locations. I felt something different over there. Coordinate with the hunting groups in case you run into the stragglers."

"If there are underground vaults, we'll find them," Carva assured before leading tens of thousands of spectrals into the ruins.

"I guess I'll join in," Joanna said. "I think we got all the Hegemons, but you never know."

Zac considered going out himself, seeing if his massive pile of Luck could lead him to some treasure. However, a deep thump threw those plans out the window, and Zac's eyes widened in realization. He turned to the Anointed next to him, whose energy antennae had clearly picked up something was happening within Zac's body.

"Could you make sure no one disturbs me for the next couple of hours?"

"Of course, Warmaster."

"Thank you," Zac said, flashing over to a secluded corner of the former Kan'Tanu fortress.

He threw out a block that quickly expanded into a small square house. It was a tent of sorts, or rather a mobile Cultivation Chamber. This particular model was quite expensive, coming installed with both isolation and defensive capabilities. Zac didn't particularly expect a surprise attack, but he didn't wish to be interrupted. Zac entered and nodded in satisfaction when a thick stone dome enclosed the building. Finally, Rhubat sat down atop the newly-formed mound like a stalwart guardian.

Zac retracted his Soul Sense and turned his vision inward. The source of the disturbance was unsurprisingly [Void Heart]. The Hidden Node had been unresponsive since his dip in the Abyssal Pond, but it had finally woken up. Each beat grew deeper than the last, and Zac's eyes glimmered as he felt a shadow of the Abyss spread through the body. Most things entering the Void were returned as normal energy, but there were also special circumstances like the Heavenly Lightning.

He couldn't wait to see what would come from swallowing the purest waters of the Abyss.