Chapter 718: Defense Line
The glass horde broke against Ananta Regalon and did not slow it for even a moment.
Rudra hit the front rank first, and where he struck, the faceted monsters simply stopped being monsters. His card revoked the structure that held their glass bodies together, and they came apart into harmless dust that glittered as it fell across the black ground.
Behind him, the family fought the way they had learned to fight over three layers of climbing, without panic and without waste.
Silvester and Hiroshi worked the flanks, two blades moving as one, cutting the glass creatures into clean falling pieces before they could ever close the distance.
Marcus anchored the center with his shield, planting himself like a stone in a river and letting the horde break around him. Maya slipped through the creatures like a shadow, dropping the largest ones with frost before they understood she was there.
It was not desperate work. It was practiced, almost easy, a family doing a thing it had done a thousand times, and the younger fighters watched the veterans and learned.
The exotic army did the rest. Dread-Reavers tore into the glass creatures in a black wave, Ember-born burned bright paths through their ranks, and the Decree-Sentinels held the line unmoving where the horde pressed hardest.
A hundred thousand strong, the kingdom cut through the first test of the dimension without breaking stride.
Within the hour the glass monsters stopped rising from the ground entirely, as if the world itself had decided the effort was wasted on this particular kingdom.
"That was the welcome," Lily said, wiping glittering dust from her sleeve as the last of the horde fell. "It will get harder the closer we get to the peak. It always does, with these things."
"Then we get closer faster," Almond said.
He looked toward the distant mountain, unmoved by a whole horde defeated, his mind already on the days ahead. Ten of them, one impossible crossing, and every other kingdom in this bowl racing the same way.
The kingdom formed up and began to march in earnest, a river of people and exotic soldiers flowing across the black glass toward a peak that did not seem to grow any closer no matter how far they walked.
The first day taught them the rhythm of the place.
The dimension was not one landscape but many, stitched together at strange seams, and crossing from one to the next was like stepping between worlds.
The black glass gave way to a forest of crystal trees that rang like bells when the wind moved through them, beautiful and eerie all at once. The younger Regalons kept reaching out to touch the trees, and the older ones kept telling them not to, and nobody listened.
"It sings," Tejas said, wonder plain on his young face as a whole grove chimed around him. "The whole forest sings."
"It also cuts," Silvester said, guiding his hand back before a crystal edge could take a finger. "Beautiful things usually do. Remember that."
Then the crystal forest ended at the edge of a floating island, and the ground simply stopped, a cliff of stone hanging over the endless violet nothing below.
"We are not walking across that," Marcus said, peering over the edge at the void where a bottom should have been. "Please tell me we are not walking across that."
"We are flying across that," Clovelle said, already lifting her Skydread squadrons off the ground with a grin. "Try to keep up, big man."
The kingdom crossed the gap the way it crossed everything, together and by every means it had.
Clovelle’s fleet carried those who could not fly. Kexell took a great many on his broad back in his true dragon form, Gopu riding proudly on his horn, shrieking with delight every time the old dragon dipped through a cloud.
Those who could fly did, and the Spirit Lords carried whole battalions of the army across in their drifting domains. The gap that should have stopped them cold became just another thing to cross, and they left the floating island behind and pressed on.
By the end of the first day, they had crossed three landscapes and a gap of empty sky, and the mountain looked exactly as far away as it had that morning.
"It is playing with the distance," Aryan said that night, frowning at the peak as the violet sky darkened toward its strange idea of evening.
"The dimension bends the space. We walk a full day and the peak does not move. This whole trial is designed to make you give up before you ever reach it."
"Then we do not give up," Rudra said simply, and that was the end of the discussion.
They made camp on a plain of soft silver grass that whispered underfoot, and Ainen cooked, because Ainen always cooked, and for one evening the strange dimension almost felt like home.
The family gathered around the fires and ate and talked, a hundred thousand strong scattered in warm clusters across the silver plain. It was easy, for a little while, to forget they were racing an impossible mountain through a hostile world.
Kexell held court at the largest fire, telling the new arrivals a story about the Doom Monarch that had grown three sizes larger than the truth, and Big D kept interrupting to correct the numbers, which only made Kexell tell it louder.
At another fire, Roken had somehow talked a circle of soldiers into helping him sketch improvements for a wall he wanted to build on the upper layer, a wall that did not exist yet, for a city they had not reached, on a plane they had not climbed to.
"He is planning the next wall already," Tejas said, half amazed.
"He is always planning the next wall," Silvester said fondly. "It is the most reliable thing about him."
Off to the side, Dagon and Rudra sat with their cups, two old soldiers watching the fires, saying little, the comfortable quiet of men who had known each other far too long.
"Nine days," Dagon said eventually. "Feels like the old days. Before all this. Marching toward something that was probably going to try to kill us."
"You always did like the marching more than the fighting," Rudra said.
"I liked the company," Dagon admitted, and Rudra, after a moment, gave a small nod that meant he had liked it too.
"Nine days left," Lily said, sitting close to Almond with a bowl in her hands. "You are doing the thing where you stare at the horizon instead of eating."
"I am thinking," Almond said.
"You are always thinking. Eat while you do it." She pressed the bowl into his hands, and he took it, and for a moment the two of them just sat in the warm noise of their family.
"We will reach it," she said quietly. "You know we will. We have done harder things than walk up a hill."
"It is a very large hill."
"We are a very stubborn family," Lily said, and Almond finally smiled, and ate.
The second day was when they met the other kingdoms.
...
In the Upper Layer, many empires that were not busy were watching these trials.
This realm of Kings and Puppets only allowed 10,000 Kingdoms. Almond had gained his position by destroying many Kingdoms in the bottom-tier plane, which means he kicked out Kingdoms from the ranking and dissolved their monarchy, which means their people lost the right to participate in the various events and progress.
Without being a Kingdom, it was impossible to progress, it was especially so as when climbed from bottom to middle, and middle to upper.
At the time of this trial, Ananta Regalon ranked at 1739th in the leaderboard.
And it was one of the fastest rising towards the upper-layer like a few others, thanks to them clearing their Hell-Mode Quests.
As with all things, a certain type of hirarchy also existed in the upper-layer.
All the powerhouses and their forces were still developing. The goal was to reach Tier-100, but none has attained it because it is slow and hard.
Slow and hard.
John Wicked’s PeakWicked Kingdom ranked at 47th rank.
The strongest were the top six Kingdoms, and would only ever be six, though the kingdoms in these top six might change every now and then.
This was because there were six ultra position in this realm of Kings and Puppets’s upper layer, that the forces could fill.
Filling this position means having the authority to command other Kingdoms in the upper layer, and everyone must also obey them. Of course, the commands can’t be harmful to them.
After all, these six positions came with responsibility.
These six empires had chance to get annihilated completely because of this position.
Because this position was called Defense Line. A position in which they were responsible for defending against world-ending events.
These six Empires must utilize other Empires and Kingdoms in the upper-layer, forming alliances and work together against these world-ending events.
The reward would be shared according to the contribution. Moreover, there would be additional reward as well, which the Defense Line Empire could give to others if they wish so.
So the forces in the upper-layer were eager to have more Kingdoms rising and managing to reach there, to increase the overall speed of everyone’s progression.
Naturally, Defense Line’s world ending events were not the only way to get stronger.
There were other exotic events, which could wipe out them or make one stronger enough to snatch a position from the current top six.
