Chapter 264: The Soul Harvest Crusade (ii)
Dust plumed into the night sky as a massive Tarnstead artillery division rushed down the southern trade routes. The narrow canyon walls echoed with the frantic crack of whips and the heavy, grinding wheels of fifty brass cannons rolling over the stone.
Gulag stood dead center in the middle of the canyon pass, waiting in the darkness. She leaned heavily on her iron mace, watching the vanguard of the enemy army rush toward her.
"They brought the heavy guns," Gulag rumbled, her Amber Earth mana core flaring to life within her chest. A deep, resonant hum vibrated through the canyon floor.
She did not wait for the Tarnstead soldiers to draw their weapons. Gulag hoisted her mace over her head and brought it crashing down into the bedrock.
The impact fundamentally rewrote surface. A wave of amber light washed over the canyon floor, racing beneath the boots of the marching army and the heavy wooden wheels of their artillery carts. The solid bedrock instantly transmuted into fragile, hollow glass.
For a fraction of a second, the Tarnstead army marched on a transparent mirror. Then, the sheer weight of their own war machines broke the surface.
The deafening crunch of shattering glass echoed through the pass. The ground completely gave way beneath the division. Hundreds of standard infantrymen screamed as they plummeted into the newly formed sinkhole, instantly crushed beneath the falling brass cannons and splintering wooden carts.
The slaughter was instantaneous and absolute, burying the weak beneath their own heavy artillery.
On the jagged edges of the massive pit, the surviving Tarnstead officers and royal mages scrambled back in sheer terror. Realizing they had marched directly into an ambush, the mages hastily began weaving spatial runes, attempting to open teleportation gates to extract their high command.
High above them on the canyon ridge, Tharok crouched on a rocky outcropping. The Gargoyle commander slammed his boots down, locking his Centipede Braces into the stone.
"Anchor set," Tharok announced.
He activated the heavy leg armor, generating a massive gravitational field that locked the surrounding space into place. Down in the pit, the mages’ teleportation runes violently fizzled out, shattering into harmless sparks. The spatial tethers were completely nullified. Trapped and unable to flee, the officers drew their blades in a panic.
Korlon stepped out from the shadows of the ridge, looking down into the massive glass crater. The Dark Elf Alchemist raised his arm, the Crystal Gauntlet on his wrist pulsing with a sickly, iridescent light.
Thousands of microscopic glass shards and dust particles still drifted through the air from Gulag’s transmutation.
Korlon channeled his gauntlet, forcibly transmuting the ambient dust and raw mana into a heavy, violet mist. The paralytic toxin rapidly cascaded down into the pit, blanketing the surviving command staff.
The Tarnstead officers inhaled the mist. Their weapons slipped from their fingers, clattering against the unbroken glass ledges. Within seconds, their muscles locked completely rigid. They collapsed like felled timber, their eyes darting wildly in panic, breathing but entirely immobile.
Gulag walked to the edge of the pit and rested her mace on her shoulder. She looked down at the paralyzed officers and grinned.
"Bring the heavy chains," Gulag ordered her battalion. "Load them into the wagons."
The first major inner city of Tarnstead stood as a monument to the coalition’s wealth, surrounded by three layered domes of shimmering magical energy. Below the humming barriers, thick iron gates barred the main causeway, manned by hundreds of elite royal guards.
High on a forested ridge overlooking the valley, Xael knelt in the brush. The Sylph sniper drew the bowstring of his Star-Iron longbow back to his cheek. He loaded three Basilisk-Bone arrows simultaneously, the pale tips glowing with volatile energy.
He released the breath from his lungs and let the arrows fly.
The projectiles streaked across the night sky and struck the apex of the magical domes. The moment the bone tips pierced the energy fields, they detonated. Massive, fifty-meter spheres of absolute anti-magic erupted in the air. The layered shields violently short-circuited, peeling back like dead skin and exposing the city walls to the open air.
Before the Tarnstead mages could even begin to chant a repair sequence, the earth trembled.
Orikal charged down the causeway. The massive Obsidian Golem did not carry a weapon as he himself was the weapon. The Centipede Carapace Plating fused to his rocky exterior glowed with kinetic energy as he built up speed.
He hit the reinforced iron gates with the force of a falling meteor. The indestructible plating transferred the kinetic force perfectly, obliterating the iron doors and sending deadly shrapnel tearing through the defending guards.
The Vanguard infantry flooded through the shattered archway like a tidal wave of steel and claws.
"Slaughter the guards!" Krax roared over the din of battle, his Blood-Mane hair whipping in the wind. "Ignore the civilian districts! Leave the weak in their homes!"
While the infantry butchered the military defenders in the streets, Krax locked his eyes on the towering central citadel. He gripped his greataxe and channeled the violet Ley-Crystal embedded in the steel. He violently inverted his own gravity, launching himself hundreds of feet into the air.
He arced directly over the battlefield and plummeted toward the citadel’s flat stone roof. As he fell, Krax reversed the gravity field outward. The localized singularity ripped the massive stone blocks of the roof right off the building, exposing the royal court hidden within.
Krax dropped into the opulent throne room. The Centipede’s Wrath gauntlets on his forearms absorbed the kinetic energy of his landing and instantly released it in a devastating shockwave. The royal bodyguards were crushed against the marble pillars, their armor flattening under the pressure.
The local king and his core mages scrambled away in sheer terror. Krax simply chuckled, hoisting his greataxe over his shoulder. He stepped over the ruined guards, grabbing the terrified king and his head mage by their velvet collars.
The gravity siege was over in less than ten minutes.
