Chapter 2980: Baeldum Battle 7
The same violet storm had bloomed over Maren—and Maren was faring no better.
Two titans waged a war that shook the heavens.
Supreme Dunadan had long since forced the battle with the corrupted Hunter Supreme far away from the city itself. Their power was simply too great. Every collision between them carried enough force to flatten mountains and erase entire districts from existence.
As a result, the battlefield had drifted several miles from Maren, deep into the surrounding wilderness.
Even there, the devastation was catastrophic.
A colossal projection of ice, a frozen giant wrought in Dunadan’s image and towering like a mountain, strode through the clouds. Every movement unleashed blizzards powerful enough to freeze rivers solid and bury forests beneath layers of frost.
Against it raged a menagerie of colossal beast projections.
A lightning tiger large enough to tear through mountain ranges.
A flaming serpent whose body stretched across the horizon.
A wind eagle whose wings generated storms with every beat.
One after another, the corrupted Hunter Supreme hurled them against Dunadan’s frozen avatar.
Where the two Supremes clashed, the sky itself seemed to split apart. Thunder rolled continuously across the continent. Shockwaves rippled through the earth, causing distant mountains to crack and landslides to cascade down their slopes. Entire valleys vanished beneath walls of ice and fire as the battle raged ever farther from civilization.
It was not a conflict any cultivator could even approach.
It was a battle between beings capable of reshaping continents.
That left Maren’s defense to everyone else.
And the city was losing.
The heaviest weight fell upon Maren’s strongest. Among the eighty corrupted Grand Magus, three burned deadlier than all the rest — three full Three Cosmos experts, the apex of the fallen advance team: Colonel Garran, Supreme Marc’s own aide; Elder Ravik of the Crimson Pine Spear Sect; and Lord Daven of the Azure Banner. The lesser infected could be traded against and recovered from. These three could only be contained — and even that came at a ruinous price.
It fell to Maren’s own pillars to hold them.
Ayla circled Elder Ravik atop her great tiger, loosing her beasts at him one after another and burying them just as fast, until barely half her pack still lived.
City Lord Verrin — only a Two Cosmos, hopelessly outmatched — kept Lord Daven a single step short of the gate through sheer desperation and his multiple top-grade artifacts.
Anderson himself anchored the center against Colonel Garran, his razor winds grinding against the colonel’s corrupted fury, the veteran commander barking orders and bleeding in equal measure, holding both the duel and the whole line together by will alone.
They all bled white and battered; they were pouring out everything they had just to pin three of the enemy in place.
And it was still not enough.
Julian, along with dozens of others, fought at the heart of the line, a golden halo bursting into existence behind him as he unleashed his [Guardian of Faith - Michael]. With sword and round shield in hand, he stood as the anchor of the defense. Poseidon battled beside him, summoning waves and spears of water through his divine trident. At the same time, Guskov remained farther back, his massive cannon thundering across the battlefield as shells tore through the advancing swarm.
The arithmetic had turned against them long ago.
A hundred living experts against eighty corrupted Grand Magus and a swarm beyond counting had always been a battle balanced on a knife’s edge, and that edge had finally begun to cut.
A dozen of their own had already fallen.
A dozen more were severely wounded.
The line was bending.
A corrupted Grand Magus crashed through the defenders and lunged toward a group of exhausted cultivators. Julian met him head-on. His shield slammed forward with enough force to shatter the infected expert’s ribs before his sword followed in a brilliant arc of golden light, severing the creature from shoulder to waist.
Before the body had even hit the ground, two more infected rushed into the opening.
"Right side!" Guskov roared.
A wall of flames erupted from the earth, buying precious seconds before the infected smashed through it.
Poseidon answered with a tidal wave of azure energy that swept dozens of lesser infected from the battlefield, but even as they fell, more climbed over their bodies and continued advancing.
There were too many.
And then, all along the front, the parasite played its cruelest card.
Hundreds of the infected leading the horde suddenly convulsed — and burst apart where they stood, each corrupted body detonating into a great blooming cloud of purple mist. The clouds merged as they rose, swelling into a single poisonous tide that rolled up and over the ramparts and down toward the streets beyond.
The creature spends its own swarm to seed the sky with corruption, the violet haze drifting hungrily toward the thirty million sheltered within.
To the citizens, that mist meant death.
Yet Julian did not turn to defend the walls.
Poseidon fought at his side, and through the chaos, he kept stealing glances at his faction leader — because Julian was calm. Where Poseidon saw only catastrophe closing in, Julian’s eyes stayed fixed on the sky, waiting. For what, Poseidon could not begin to guess.
Then it came.
From the command position, Lieutenant General Anderson finally made his move.
The veteran commander raised a single hand toward the heavens and released a beam of brilliant light that shot high above the battlefield. The spell climbed through the violet haze hanging over Maren before exploding into thousands of golden sparks that scattered across the sky like a firework, illuminating both the retreating defenders and the endless tide of infected below.
A signal.
The moment it appeared, the reaction was immediate.
Julian saw it and did not hesitate. Around the battlefield, more than a dozen Grand Magus commanders responded in the same way, their expressions hardening as they relayed the order they had been waiting for.
"Fall back!!!"
The words spread rapidly through the defensive line.
