Chapter 321: Beneath the Thunder

"Since when could Divine Province summon an army of Demons?"

Tobin Rourke, Western Beacon’s temporary commander, stared at the horde charging his defenses.

"Level eighty. Every last one!"

More Lords were beginning to reach Rank XV, but most were still at XIV. Even those who had advanced rarely had enough Battle Essence to bring all their Heroes and troops to the new limit. Elara and the others faced the same problem despite the income from their Eclipse troops.

Cassian had filled out his main force’s Levels almost as soon as he advanced. Few Lords could imagine having that much Battle Essence to spend.

Against the armies of the current sector, Level 80 offered an enormous advantage.

The Demons ran straight into the traps.

Fire burst from the ground. Blades of wind tore through their ranks, followed by lightning and freezing clouds. Hundreds of thousands of ranged attacks darkened the sky above them.

They kept coming.

Within minutes, the survivors were hammering at the defensive arrays around Western Beacon’s army. More than half the horde had been destroyed, but most of the Legendary and Epic Demons had made it through.

"The first array is down!"

"They’ve destroyed the laser fence!"

"Where are the reinforcements?"

Tobin’s face tightened at every new shout.

His army was hardly weak. It included thousands of Legendary troops. But stranded on an island with no reliable way to contact the outside, he had chosen to build defenses and wait for help. He had even endured Divine Province’s troops moving openly before his position.

He had not expected Cassian to commit to an all-out assault so readily.

"Hold your ground!" he shouted. "Our reinforcements are already on their way!"

The promise steadied the ranks.

Then a new presence rose behind the Demons.

A figure of lightning, a hundred meters tall, appeared above Divine Province’s army. It crossed the intervening space in a flash and thrust an enormous lightning sword down into the defenses.

One array burst. A second followed. The blade pierced several layers before its power finally broke apart.

Tobin’s voice rose to a shriek.

"What is that? Does Cassian have a Mythic Hero? Kinetic Mechs, kill her!"

Thousands of mages had worked together to lay those arrays. A single strike had pierced them as though they were thin sheets of glass.

Darian was staring too. So were the other Lords around him.

Aurelia had been strong before. Reaching Level 80 should not have made this much difference.

The greater change had come from Enlightenment Tea. Thunder Crown had reached Transcendence, and she had comprehended Thunder Will. Her power over lightning had grown several times over. Now she could even clothe herself in this towering form.

Celia’s Grade-D Sword Energy could kill Legendary troops after reaching Transcendence. Aurelia’s lightning skill was Grade A.

Her strength had also made her impossible to ignore.

More than a thousand Kinetic Mechs raised their Gravity Guns. Round after round struck the huge figure in the sky.

Hundreds of Legendary units and over a thousand Epics concentrated their fire. Aurelia could not remain aloft beneath that weight. She crashed to the ground, and the giant of lightning burst apart.

Folded Sky Ward kept the attacks from injuring her. It could not make the crushing gravity disappear. Under more than ten thousand times normal weight, she struggled to move.

Cassian’s eyes lit up.

"So many Kinetic Mechs. They really did prepare for us."

He paid for another Dragon’s Blessing, this one to increase his own drops, then spoke quietly to the fighters beside him.

"Go for the Mechs first."

Divine Dragon Amber shone again. He paid the eight hundred thousand Aether needed for the first minute of Unseal, keeping the continuing cost supplied as the Dragon fought.

The Divine Dragon rose into the sky. One sweep of its tail smashed another defensive array.

Tobin went pale.

The Kinetic Mechs had been brought down from older sectors precisely to restrain Divine Province’s strongest fighters, especially that Dragon. Little more than a month had passed. How had their enemies grown several times stronger in so little time?

Liora gave him no chance to recover.

After summoning the Demons, she drank deeply from her carried Life Water. With Spirit temporarily comparable to a Mythic fighter’s, she sent one powerful spell after another into the defenses.

"Blizzard!"

"Meteor Hell!"

"Magnetic Storm!"

Ice and fire swept the position. Magnetic force tore through it, followed by an enormous Demon Scythe.

Then the Eye of Judgment opened.

The curse passed the protective arrays as though they were not there. A high-star Legendary Hero died beneath its gaze.

Rhea and Celia struck alongside Maren. Swordlight and other powerful attacks battered the remaining layers, giving the defenders no time to repair them.

The last array shattered.

Only a few thousand Demons remained of the horde that had charged across the field.

Darian raised a thumb toward Cassian.

"Without Liora’s Demonic Calamity, those defenses alone would have cost us a fifth of our troops."

Beyond the broken arrays, Western Beacon’s resolve was collapsing.

"Stop! We surrender!"

"We demand protection under the Greyhaven Convention!"

"My grandfather is a director of the Astral Ring Consortium! I can pay a ransom—no!"

Western Beacon’s strength was famous. Its Lords’ willingness to fight when victory slipped away was much less impressive.

There was no way for Divine Province to take prisoners in the middle of this campaign. Cassian had no interest in pretending to accept their surrender, then killing them in batches afterward.

His strongest fighters drove into the Kinetic Mech formation with the Dawnwing corps behind them.

Explosions tore gaps through the machines. As the Gravity Guns fell silent, the weight pinning Aurelia down eased.

She gave a cold snort.

Lightning surged around her, once more forming a giant a hundred meters tall. A vast thundercloud spread across the sky, covering hundreds of acres. Thousands upon thousands of bolts crashed into Western Beacon’s ranks.

Everyone assumed Cassian had sent his people to rescue her.

He could barely contain his smile as Kinetic Mech Sigils began to drop.

They were not Extreme troops, and they were poor choices for ordinary monster hunting. As control troops, however, they were exceptional.

The effect of their gravity rounds could keep stacking. Given enough Mechs and enough room to deploy them, they could theoretically kill even an Eternal.

Theory was one thing. Finding the population capacity and Battle Essence for such a force was another. Cassian only intended to keep a few squads for their ability to pin powerful enemies down.

Western Beacon still had thousands of Legendary troops. That did not stop the first formations from breaking after little more than ten minutes of resistance.

"Kill them."

Cassian sent the Dawnwings after the fleeing high-Quality troops.

The rout spared Divine Province the losses of a prolonged close battle. Chasing the survivors also took time away from hunting for First-Age Coins.

A full day passed before the killing ended.

Ninety percent of Western Beacon’s army had been destroyed. Only scattered troops of middling Quality escaped. Divine Province had lost more than ten thousand troops of its own.

"That was a battle worth coming for!"

Darian had gone a day and a night without sleep, yet he looked ready to start again.

"What next?"

The others turned toward Cassian with the same eager expressions. Life around him was seldom dull.

The million-strong army they had defeated had contained nothing below Rare Quality. The Battle Essence earned in this one day equaled half a month of ordinary hunting.

"First, a few hours of rest." Cassian pointed east. "Then we take the Firstborn Gate."