"Something is wrong with the forest."
"Indeed."
Mylene and Claire could sense that something was happening in the Great Forest of Darkness. The time was night, the time when many monsters became active and aggressive but the forest was silent.
Baffled by the strangeness, Mylene and Claire roamed around the vast forest to investigate. In the end, they found an indefinite amount of monsters marching uniformly in the depths of the forest.
"What on earth is happening in the forest?"
"I don't know. But the monsters are behaving like they are following the instructions of someone."
"It seems like that."
Later on, the army of monsters split into two and formed two fronts. One is heading southwest, while the other is heading northwest.
Dozens of thousands of different sorts of monsters are marching their way to the kingdoms of Astley and Boulder.
"This is definitely bad, Claire. This is a lot worse than a simple stampede."
"Yeah. We cannot handle this much even with our strengths."
"If they stay with their pace, they would reach Astley and Boulder tomorrow night."
"Let's inform the countries about this nightmare. I'll go to Boulder; you take Astley."
"I understand. See you tomorrow, Claire."
"See you too."
The couple exchanged kisses before they separately flew out to their designated countries.
The next night, thousands of soldiers and knights had been deployed on the borders of Astley and Boulder. The army was beautifully aligned facing the entrance of the Great Forest of Darkness.
The night prior, Mylene and Claire informed the two countries about a massive amount of monsters that were marching towards their respective territories. So the nearby lords had sent some of their soldiers to garrison the monsters' route.
But there were strangenesses that occupied the thoughts of Mylene and Claire that night. That strangeness was the number of monsters allocated to each country.
The estimated total number of monsters marching in the forest was around forty thousand. It was separated into two fronts: less than ten thousand are coming to Astley, while the Boulder forces have to confront over thirty thousand.
That left Mylene and Claire confused with the division of monsters since both countries had almost the same military power.
But they just brushed off that thought and focused on the battle.
As the strongest force, Mylene and Claire led the troops to fend off the monsters. Mylene led the Astley forces, while the Boulder army was led by Claire.
Once the monsters had passed the forest, they were greeted with the blades and spells of the stationed knights and soldiers. But the two battlefields had their own situations.
The Boulder front, which had the most monster and human participants, had the most intense battle. It was also Claire's most exhausted moment.
Not only are the monsters thousands in number, but each of them is at least C-ranked. Around a thousand are Level 400s, and about a hundred are S-ranks.
Claire concluded that her mana wasn't enough to take all the monsters. But her legendary-grade weapon could supply her mana continuously.
Claire threw destructive spells after destructive spells to kill the monsters. Then she used the Devour effect of her ebony staff to absorb the corpses, restore her mana, and repeat the process.
Once the number of monsters had dwindled to twenty thousand, Claire decided to finish them all with her most powerful and destructive spell.
Surrounded by more than ten thousand hostile individuals, Claire's unique skill was passively activated to its full potential. All of her stats had been drastically boosted by twofold.
Holding her ebony black staff upwards, Claire poured out all of her mana into the air. Thinking that wasn't enough, she consumed all the nearby corpses and some of the monster dead bodies from her Item Box to add more power to her large-scale spell.
"World Magic Level 5: Comet."
A few seconds after she invoked the spell, a single blue line came raining down from the sky. Breaking through the layers of atmosphere, it came down without distinction.
A gigantic celestial body with more than a kilometer in diameter entered the atmosphere of the planet. It brightly colored the cloudless night sky as it dropped off from the cold space.
It leaves a trail of light as its frozen body is vaporized by the sun, forming a long tail that is visible from both Astley and Boulder.
The comet descended from the heavens like a fast shooting star. No one and nothing could stop it from falling. It was just basically impossible to stop it from falling towards the swarm of ten thousand monsters.
The World Magic spell cast by Claire finally hit the world's surface. Its impact caused a devastatingly huge explosion in the northeastern portion of the dense forest.
At the beginning of the impact, the whole battlefield was illuminated by a very bright light. A magnificent view. This was the only word that could describe the explosion.
Next, incredibly powerful and cold gusts of wind and shockwaves shook the whole area. Blowing and freezing everything else within the blast site.
The impact caused the earth to shake tremendously; it was so powerful that its intensity was felt even in Primaria and Doria.
The explosion was so destructive that it carved a two-hundred-kilometer-wide crater on the earth. In a short amount of time, the landscape was painted with nothing but destruction.
The Boulder soldiers and knights, who were ordered to withdraw and forcefully teleport away from the area, finally realized why they should follow the words of Claire.
Meanwhile, the monsters were stunned by the light up above without realizing it would eventually end their lives. Their bodies were either frozen to death or completely obliterated by the impact.
Claire could clearly see the aftermath of her spell but deliberately didn't think about whether she overdid it or not. Her only concern was the safety of her wife, who was fighting on the other battlefield.
◆◇◆◇◆◇
Later on, all the ice on the blast site melted. The water from the sea gushed into the crater and filled it with sea water.
The statements from the witnesses said that that body of water was formed after a star fell from the sky. Derived from that, the newly created sea was named Starfall Bay.
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