Chapter 302 263: I Will Fight Until Death

"For the Divine Emperor's sake! Why haven't the reinforcements arrived yet?!"

A lieutenant, his face caked in blood and grime, frantically pulled the trigger, but his rifle was long out of bullets. Facing the tide of onrushing Demons, he tossed the rifle aside, drew the standard-issue sword for mid-to-low-ranking officers, and grabbed a nearby orderly. His voice was hoarse, his fury underscored by a palpable despair.

"Tell that bastard Georg! I—"

The officer didn't get to finish.

Before the orderly's panicked eyes, a sharp Bone Knife erupted from behind, piercing straight through the officer's body! Their eyes met, the officer's face still frozen in a look of pure rage.

The terrified orderly stumbled backward over a corpse and fell hard to the ground.

He looked up.

A colossal shadow engulfed him.

A behemoth over three meters tall with blood-red skin and knotted muscles loomed over him, its eye sockets burning with sulfurous fire as it stared down at him.

Then, in his peripheral vision, he saw past the Slaughter Demon's body to the countless other Demons pouring through the defensive line.

Hundreds of his former comrades... Even two Imperial Knights of the Death Battle Group were being swallowed by the overwhelming Demon Army.

The orderly tried to flee. He scrambled desperately, turning to run, but he couldn't even get to his feet. The bodies of his comrades from the Auxiliary Army were piled all around him.

He could clearly hear the heavy footsteps and roars of the Demons as they ran past him.

And that was the last thing he remembered before excruciating pain plunged his consciousness into eternal darkness.

...

Barge Port Two.

Thanks to the desperate resistance of the Ash Guard, the last two thousand soldiers of the Defense Army held back the Demon Army's assault with little more than their own bodies.

The entire Orbital Port shuddered and groaned under the constant impacts of space junk and ship debris, sending showers of dust and rubble down from above.

Some of the reinforced concrete walls had even begun to crumble, exposing the high-strength steel rebar within.

Raphael, his power severely depleted, could no longer maintain high-intensity intel gathering on the warzone. Utterly exhausted, he dropped to one knee. Even the white lightning—the physical manifestation of his Mental Power—that coiled around him had grown dim.

They had been defending the Orbital Port for two hours and thirty minutes straight.

Even though every soldier and every Imperial Knight did everything in their power, even paying any price to hold the line and slow the enemy's advance, the enemy's numbers were still too great.

Raphael had no idea how many Demons he had killed. Tens of thousands of their corpses carpeted the entire Orbital Port. Exhaling a ragged breath, he turned his head to look at the Punisher, which was not far behind him. Its hull breach was now fully repaired.

'Agate! How much longer?!'

Meanwhile, inside the Punisher.

The power of the Ancient Black Box, like a dark tide of ethereal blue light, flowed through the Neural Metal Wires connecting Agate to the ship, pouring ceaselessly into the Punisher Ship.

Nourished by this power, damaged precision components began to self-heal and repair, as if they were living things.

During this process, Agate's Knightly Aura grew extremely unstable. The most terrifying power of annihilation in the Real Cosmos spread through his body, plundering and devouring what little Life Force he had left.

Eternal Annihilation.

A true curse from the Saint's Remains.

It was also the great price Agate had to pay for being resurrected by the Ancient Black Box.

The Sages of the Mechanical Order, through all manner of modifications, possess lifespans of nearly infinite length.

Even an Imperial Knight, after ascending to the Earth Military Rank, would have a theoretical lifespan of ten thousand years. But under the corrosion of Eternal Annihilation, Agate's life would not exceed a millennium.

Metal memory restoration technology.

An ancient power from the Ancient Black Box.

Agate should never have mastered such blasphemous Heterodox Technology. But to ensure the ship's repair time was shortened as much as possible, he did not hesitate to break the forbidden seal placed on the Ancient Black Box by the Great Sage himself.

After the core control components of the Punisher Ship were completely repaired, the dense cluster of Neural Metal Wires extending from his spine sparked and began detaching from the ship's interfaces.

Agate, utterly weakened, collapsed to one knee and responded through their shared Telepathy.

'Everyone, prepare for boarding in three minutes.'

Upon hearing Agate's message, Reinhardt cleaved a charging Slaughter Demon in two with his axe, wiped the Demon's Blood from his Full Coverage Helmet that was obscuring his vision, and immediately issued an order.

'Raphael, get off the line with the Ash Guard's Think Tank. Tell them to prepare for boarding in three minutes. Get a headcount of the defending forces here and contact the nearest Imperial fleet. Have them send a ship...'

BOOM—!

Before Reinhardt could finish, a violent explosion engulfed the entire Orbital Port!

A terrifying, orange-red glare transformed into a sea of fire, instantly submerging the entire warzone!

The violent, earthquake-like tremors made it difficult for even the Imperial Knights to stay on their feet.

However, this was only the first wave of the attack. As the second wave of cannon fire from the Bloodsucker Legion's Demon Mother Ship bombarded the Orbital Port, the voice of the Ash Guard's Senior Think Tank Albert, transmitted via Spiritual Energy, screamed hysterically in everyone's minds.

"Vengeful Angels! Whether you retreat or enter the Net Path, you have to make a decision now! These damned Demons are trying to blow up the entire Orbital Port!

My... anti-gravity Spiritual Energy Field won't hold for long!"

BOOM—!

The firepower of a warship's cannons was simply not something that Imperial Knights and Think Tanks of their level could withstand!

This was the kind of bombardment that could level a massive Stereoscopic City from orbit in half an hour; it could completely destroy an Orbital Port as huge as a small, man-made asteroid in just five minutes!

Reinhardt's gaze swept over the soldiers of the Auxiliary Army, who were being thrown about but still fighting the Demons to the death. He gripped his Black War Axe so tightly that his knuckles cracked audibly.

The highest-ranking surviving officer of the Auxiliary Army, Colonel Georg, had also heard Albert's psychic message.

Even with his uncommon courage, he froze for a moment upon hearing what was essentially a death sentence.

If, before he had led his troops to Verne Third Orbital Port, those bastards at the Military Affairs Department had told him this was a mission with no support, no resupply, no retreat plan, and that he would perish in a sea of fire alongside the Demons, he would have ripped off his size 44 military boots and slammed them right in the face of whatever animal had the gall to issue such a bastard order.

But now, knowing that he and his men were doomed, his heart grew calm. His fear of death was no longer so intense.

He grabbed a nearby pillar to steady himself.

His gaze swept over the soldiers who were still fighting to the death. He exhaled a ragged breath, looked down to straighten his war-filthied uniform, and summoned an orderly to give what would likely be the last order of his life.

Unlike his previous furious shouts or hoarse screams, Georg's tone as he delivered his final command was unnervingly calm, because he knew that lies meant to soothe his men's morale were now meaningless.

"Tell the men we have no way out. But I will fight here until I die..."