Chapter 385: Unbelievably Incompetent

Beyond the high walls.

The battle between humanity and the nightmare creatures seemed as though it had never paused for even a moment.

Dark red bloodstains, scattered corpses, shattered weapons, and spent bullet casings...

These shocking elements blended together to paint the brutal picture of the battlefield.

Rat-tat-tat...

Soldiers stood atop the high walls, frantically pouring gunfire into the hordes outside. The attackers were a chaotic variety of nightmare monsters, primarily zombies and walking corpses—the most common horrors found in nightmares.

Bullets were the best weapons against these creatures. Even ordinary soldiers could fend them off using firearms and the mithril alloy walls.

However, the nightmare monsters were not limited to zombies. There were also numerous translucent ghosts with livid faces and bleeding eyes, presenting a truly terrifying sight.

Ghosts were also among the nightmare creatures humanity dreamed of most often.

While they generally lacked high combat power, their most troublesome trait was their immunity to ordinary bullets; only mithril bullets could harm them.

The soldiers were mostly organized into ten-man squads, each equipped with a sniper. These snipers used mithril bullets to systematically eliminate the ghostly nightmare creatures.

As for the transcendents within the army, their mission was far more arduous. Some powerful nightmare creatures possessed extreme mobility and could easily scale the high walls, to say nothing of the ones that could fly.

Su Mu activated Dreamwalking Mode and stood atop the high wall. Watching the tragic slaughter between humanity and the nightmare creatures, he furrowed his brow.

It looked as though humanity was repeatedly repelling the nightmare creatures' charges, but the soldiers were already exhausted. Furthermore, the transcendents were largely not nightmare apostles. They were either retainers hired by nobles or nobles themselves. Their combat awareness was weak, and fear paralyzed them to the point that they could barely unleash a fraction of their actual strength.

This war was entirely different from past human conflicts. They were facing nightmare creatures that felt no fear and knew no fatigue.

"Ah!!"

A shrill scream pierced Su Mu's ears. A demon with a goat's head and a human body was wreaking havoc on the high wall. Its horns resembled twisted, withered vines, its cold eyes gleamed with a scarlet light, and rough, foul-smelling black fur covered its body.

It was incredibly tall, standing over three meters. Its legs were like thick tree trunks, its hooves produced heavy thuds against the ground, and its slender tail ended in a razor-sharp spike.

With a light flick of its tail, it skewered several soldiers straight through.

Nearby soldiers panicked and opened fire, but the bullets struck its body without even breaking the skin. Their chaotic firing was so poorly aimed that they ended up gunning down many of their own allies instead.

A few Bronze transcendents braced themselves and confronted the goat-headed monster.

[Five-Finger Flame Bullet]!

[Heart of Steel]!

[Thorn Spike]!

[Extreme Cold Freeze]!

A barrage of different abilities bombarded the goat-headed monster. While they inflicted some damage, none of the strikes were fatal. Instead, the attacks only roused its ferocity.

Its javelin-like tail viciously thrust toward the most cumbersome man among them, who had cast [Heart of Steel].

The man was clearly scared out of his wits. Gripped by terror, he stood frozen in place and ultimately died as his heart was pierced.

With one companion dead, the remaining transcendents lost all morale. Consumed by fear, they screamed and turned to flee. But there was nowhere completely safe on a battlefield.

They dodged the goat-headed monster only to run straight into a giant, green-faced, fanged bat, which swiftly drained them into mummified husks.

Only one member of the transcendent squad survived. The last man collapsed to the ground, his crotch soaked. Had a Silver Grade transcendent not arrived as backup to dispatch the goat-headed monster and the bat, he would have undoubtedly died too.

Su Mu shook his head as he watched the skirmish. Neither the goat-headed monster nor the bat was particularly strong; they were both around the Bronze 3 level. It wasn't as if those Bronze transcendents had no chance of winning. If they had just coordinated well and relied on their numerical advantage, they could have easily secured victory. Instead, they completely crumbled at the first sign of pressure.

The Silver Grade transcendent who came to the rescue was also nothing more than an amateur. He relied entirely on his overwhelming realm advantage; while he could effortlessly crush Bronze-tier enemies, he would be hopelessly outmatched against opponents of his own level.

"Their combat quality is far too poor. Transcendents are no match for nightmare apostles of the same tier," Su Mu said, shaking his head helplessly.

It couldn't be helped. In the Divine Dream World, there were only two paths to becoming a transcendent: either drink a Transcendent Potion, or become a nightmare apostle and awaken naturally.

What kind of people could consume Transcendent Potions?

The answer was obvious without even needing to think—it was inevitably the rich, the powerful, and those from wealthy backgrounds. Ordinary people couldn't afford them, nor did they have the channels to buy Transcendent Potions. This resulted in the vast majority of transcendents having incredibly poor combat qualities, completely lacking the grit to fight and risk their lives.

Of course, not all transcendents were this abysmal. There were plenty who were clearly seasoned veterans of countless battles, but their numbers were far too few to sway the outcome of the war.

"To think I still released too many."

Su Mu genuinely hadn't expected this. He had only released a month's worth of monsters, purposely dropping them into the ocean at that. Yet even so, humanity failed to hold the upper hand.

His original plan was to wait until humanity had largely digested these nightmare creatures before releasing another batch, repeating the process to ease the pressure on the Seven Kings Barrier and delay the world's destruction.

In theory, as long as the rate at which humans killed the nightmare creatures exceeded the rate at which they multiplied against the Seven Kings Barrier, the Divine Dream World's destruction would be postponed to its maximum possible limit.

Unfortunately, the ideal was beautiful, but the reality was harsh.

Based on the current situation, it was impossible for humanity to eradicate these nightmare creatures within a month unless the Seven Kings intervened.

However, the Seven Kings had all been wounded by the Faceless Angel. They were all holed up in their respective Imperial Palaces, purging the lingering destructive energy from their bodies. They couldn't act easily. If they did so before their injuries healed, they ran the severe risk of damaging their very foundations.

Looking at it this way, the current Seven Kings were also trash. Seven against one, armed with Royal Power Artifacts, fighting the weakest Saint Grade nightmare—yet in the end, it was merely a pyrrhic victory.

They fell far short of the first-generation kings who had slaughtered their way out of mountains of corpses and seas of blood. These rulers were born as members of the Royal Family. Their personal strength relied on inherited bloodlines, allowing them to effortlessly become Gold Kings. They were nothing but flowers grown in a greenhouse.

"Is the world-saving plan going to fail just like this?"

Su Mu fell into deep thought. He had calculated a thousand possibilities, but he had never accounted for these people being incompetent to such an extreme degree. They clearly could have won this war easily if they just performed normally, without even needing to exceed their limits, yet they were determined to lose.

It reminded him of his early school days, skipping class to play games at an internet cafe. He had run into plenty of bizarre teammates who would fool around when they had the advantage and feed kills to the enemy when they were losing. Their main theme could be summarized in one word: loss!

After pondering for a moment, he couldn't come up with a solution. Even he would find it difficult to change humanity's weakness in a short period of time.

He could only take things one step at a time. At the very least, he needed to raise his own strength first, accumulate more baleful aura, and break through to Silver 3 as soon as possible.

Su Mu's figure instantly vanished, plunging directly into the depths of the ocean. Looking at the densely packed, seemingly endless nightmare creatures in the sea, he activated [Severed Thoughts in Sealed Dust]!

Materialized mental power surged out like a tidal wave, instantly blanketing thousands of nightmare creatures.

Immediately after, he reached out his fair, slender hand and gently clenched his fist.