Just as the War Chief and the general had expected, the defensive line on Wolf Ridge Mountain still could not stop the tide of mutants surging from the wasteland. When the overwhelming corrosive energy arrows and the countless mutants that were not afraid of swords and sabers pounced on the defensive line from the mountain path, even the bravest mountain warriors and champion warriors had no choice but to retreat and give up the defensive line under their feet.
The tribal warriors did not lack courage and wisdom in battle, but they did not have good enough weapons, enough soldiers, enough prepared positions, and no backup. Their only advantage was the terrain of Wolf Ridge Mountain, which was easy to defend and hard to attack, but in the face of the enemy's tireless nature and endless numbers, this only advantage would soon be exhausted.
In fact, not only Morakot and Camilla, but many of the commanders in the tribal army had long known that this would happen: there were several loopholes in the Great Wall, and the pressure from the wasteland was endless. The tribal warriors could not stop the monsters at the eastern foot of the mountain barrier, so they could not stop the increasing number of enemies in other places. Unless the loopholes in the direction of the Great Wall were blocked, the direction of the war was doomed the day the mountain barrier fell.
But even so, the warriors of the tribe would still choose to continue the battle until the day they were completely annihilated. This was the stubbornness engraved in the bones of the orcs. Since ancient times, they were not a race that would be defeated by desperate situations. An enemy that they could not defeat would not make them bow down. They would only choose to die on the road of charge.
"This will not be the end …"
The cold wind brought a pungent smell, and the quiet red jade forest seemed to have sensed the restless breath. The towering ancient trees around the forest rustled in the wind. The old orc Morakot and his elite team were walking through the forest. He looked up at the dim shadows in the depths of the forest, listening to the faint shouting in the wind as he muttered softly to himself.
The ancient forest did not respond to the old orc's mutterings. Only the faint sound of leaves rustling in the wind and the rustling of snow echoed in the forest. At this moment, the sun had risen, and the morning light shone through the gaps between the canopy into the forest clearing. Under the hazy and illusory light, some invisible cyclones were quietly gathering in the thick snow and soft soil.
The warriors felt the scrutinizing eyes in the air. Morakot gently waved his hand, and the soldiers behind him immediately stopped. He looked up at the end of the clearing in the forest, and his eyes fell on a strange boulder.
The boulder was abruptly erected in the middle of a circle of smaller stones. The irregular surface of the boulder was engraved with dark red fine lines, and a few rough-looking natural crystals were inlaid on the top of the boulder, like some strange eyes. Morakot stared at the boulder until an invisible wind rolled up the snow and withered leaves to block his sight. Then the wind gradually stopped, and a few figures appeared in the 'stone circle'.
They were wearing thick cloaks, and their entire bodies, including their faces, were hidden under the cloaks. The surface of the cloaks fluttered slightly from time to time, as if they were not flesh and blood under the cloaks, but a large amount of shapeless smoke and dust. These figures held decayed, fragile weapons in their hands, as if they would break at the slightest touch. The cracks on the surface of the weapons were filled with a pale blue shimmer, and the cold breath of death flowed out from them.
"Forest keepers," Morakot stepped forward from among the silent warriors, and looked at the 'human' figures in the cloaks with a calm expression. "I speak to you on behalf of the great chief."
"We know why you're here. Ling Wu told us about the war in the east," one of the figures said. His voice did not sound like it was made of flesh and blood. Instead, it sounded like a distorted vibration that was purely based on the resonance of the air. "You're so useless. I didn't expect you to lose so soon."
Morakot's nose twitched, but his expression remained calm. "You will soon realize how powerful the 'tide' is."
"Perhaps, but we don't care about it." The leader of the forest keepers seemed to laugh, but Morakot and the warriors only heard the hollow sound of the wind. "We only care about the conditions that your 'great chief' promised us … We set the Red Jade Forest ablaze, and she will let us die. This is the entire content of the deal … Am I wrong?"
Morakot quietly looked at the figures in the stone circle, and in the corner of his vision, in the shadows of the forest, there were more gazes and shadows looking at them. Those were the 'forest keepers' of the Red Jade Forest, a group of people who were defeated by the orcs in the war a thousand years ago and were chased into this magic forest. They were cursed by the oath and trapped in a state of neither life nor death for eternity. Few people in the outside world knew about them.
They were not the dead, but they were not the living either. They were the sad ones who were blessed by this land and abandoned by it. They were the masters of the orcs a thousand years ago.
However, their rule had been overthrown by their own slaves a thousand years ago. Now, the only ones remaining here were a group of "cursed people" who had almost forgotten the past.
The Land of Auglay was ancient and uncivilized. In this era, it might not be as' advanced 'and' civilized 'as other countries in the world, but there were still a lot of ancient secrets that the outlanders could hardly imagine in this mysterious land. Everything in the Red Jade Forest was just an insignificant ripple in the long history of this land. And now, it was time for the ripple to die down completely.
Morakot took out the animal tooth pendant from his pocket and showed it to the leader of the forest keepers. "The great chief's promise is as unquestionable as the mountains. This is the last debt between you and the world of the living. The Spirit Wizards have instilled the contract into it. I will leave it here. When the flame in the Red Jade Forest burns, this thousand-year ill-fated relationship will end."
In the dark forest, countless gazes were instantly focused on the animal tooth pendant. Morakot could feel the almost tangible desire and passion in those gazes. This pressure even made his hair stand on end. But he still maintained his calm demeanor, calmly took a few steps forward, and placed the pendant on a stone at the edge of the stone circle.
The leader of the forest keepers moved almost immediately. He floated a few meters away like a puff of smoke and reached out his arm made of ashes and smoke, wanting to touch the pendant. But before his fingers touched the surface of the pendant, a blue flame burst out from his fingertips, forcing him to step back and put out the fire in a hurry.
"The contract has not been completed. You can't touch it." Morakot seemed to have expected this. He said to the forest keeper with a calm expression, "You don't have to touch it. As long as the forest starts to burn, it will naturally return to dust."
The leader of the forest keeper 'floated' back to his original spot without saying a word. Two cold eyes seemed to fall on Morakot from the darkness under the hood. After a moment, a hollow voice came from the shadow of the hood. "I hope you are really prepared … When the Red Jade Forest burns to the ground, you will have no way out."
"When our ancestors decided to launch a counterattack a thousand years ago, there was no way out either," Morakot said flatly. "We are all used to it."
…
As the army spread across the mountains, the resistance of the civilized world was like a weak candle flame in a storm, flickering in the darkness before being extinguished one by one. The mortals outside the wastelands who had been living a comfortable life for a long time and their laughable "mountain defense line" were like castles on the beach in front of the real army. No matter how beautiful they looked, they collapsed silently.
In the depths of the Western Front army's turbulent wave of aberrations, a large number of high-level aberrations and synthetic 'behemoths' clustered around their command node. Druil, a dark treant with yellow skin and a terrifying brain-like treetop, used his roots to climb up a rock that had been corroded into a purplish black by the chaos magic energy. He stretched his branches in the cold wind. His dark brown eyes rolled behind the layers of bark as he looked at the hillside that was gradually illuminated by the sun.
The line of defense of the mortals was there. They occupied the commanding heights of the mountain and were still resisting stubbornly. But the firepower they fired from the heights was meaningless against the massive army of aberrations. The army from the wasteland was now advancing like a black tide against the mountainous terrain. They had built firing points on both sides of the mountain paths. The magic and burning boulders released by the exhausted orcs and their eldar allies could only splash a few insignificant waves in this' tide ', and these waves were now weakening at a speed visible to the naked eye.
At the pass further north of this line of defense, another army had successfully broken through the weak defenders there. The massive number of aberrations would soon bypass the mountain range and directly attack the so-called 'sacred forest'.
"Bertram is an incompetent fool … but at least he has accumulated valuable experience for us with his failure," the dark priest in charge of commanding the western army said to another priest beside him. "Now we have found the weakest point in the mortal defense line. As long as we destroy this ancient and weak kingdom in front of us, their ridiculous' alliance 'will definitely suffer a great blow."
"As you said, Patriarch Marcellus," the low-ranking priest on the side immediately shook his withered branch and said, "But we also have to be careful of what tricks these cunning 'mountain people' have up their sleeves. Their resistance is very tenacious. Even though they have retreated to this place, there is no sign of collapse. I'm worried that they still have —"
"Their tenacious will is the only thing worthy of praise. But willpower cannot change fate. We are their fate." Marcellus, the dark priest, laughed. His voice was dry and harsh. "We have cut off the entire western battlefield, from the Magnificent Wall to the mountains in front of us. Our army is spread all over the land. Even if the mountain people have reinforcements and want to launch a siege, they will not be able to break in at all. As for the inland of Augre … Heh."
He sneered disdainfully.
"That's a country covered by mountains, forests, and torrents. Reinforcements from other countries of the alliance — even if those reinforcements really exist, they won't be able to reach the frontline in a short time, unless their entire army can fly over from the sky!"
Marcellus said as he looked back at the low-ranking priests who were waiting for orders and the large team of Aberrations controlled by the priests. In this silent team, the most eye-catching thing was the "goods" they carried.
They were large cubes neatly placed on the ground — the dark blue network control nodes that had not yet been activated.
"Instead of worrying about the uncivilized orcs, we should now focus on the next step. Destroying a weak ancient kingdom is not our real mission," Marcellus said slowly. "Where is the next drop point?"
"It's an ancient city called Red Jade City, if it's still called that," the junior priest immediately replied. "There's an invisible fissure in the depths of the city. The locals know nothing about it. They only know that the active magic environment near the fissure is a 'gift from their ancestors.' We need to blow up the city center and then throw the runestones in."
"Very well, Red Jade City. Next is Helm City and their 'Ancestral Peak.'" Marcellus's gloomy eyes swept across the dormant runestone cubes. "They will definitely fight to the death to guard the so-called 'Sacred Mountain.' But we have to get this node. The plan has been carried out to this day, and the dark blue cracks in the wasteland that can be used have basically been completed. But the overall progress is still nearly half done. Those damn sirens. "
"Yes, those damn sirens. If it weren't for them, we wouldn't have to rob the dark blue node of the Ancestral Peak," the low-ranking priest echoed. Then, he turned his roots and looked at the ridge defense line that was in the middle of a fierce battle. Under the illumination of the rising sun, the flags of the Augulay tribal kingdom and Great Chieftain Camilla were still flying high, but the blood and corpses around the flags were accumulating more and more.
It was only a matter of time before they destroyed the defense line of the forest tribes.
…
A low and pleasant humming sound came from the depths of the steel ground. The cold wind in the sky was blocked and filtered by the energy shield that covered the entire fortress, leaving only a gentle airflow blowing on the deck. The mountains and valleys moved slowly on the distant land, and the clouds were within reach. Sometimes, they could even fly through the clouds. This was definitely a unique experience in Rebecca's life.
Although the dragoons could also fly in the sky, except for the group of dragonborn pilots who were good at extreme sports, normal humans could not experience this sense of 'spaciousness' when riding the dragoons. People would die if they opened the cockpit at high altitude.
Rebecca walked on the unusually wide deck of the Dawn of Earthly Dawn and took a deep breath of the cool, refreshing air. Just as she felt refreshed, she heard the voice of the Dawn of Earthly Dawn's Cortex Prime wafting from a nearby loudspeaker. "Good morning, Creator. Hope you had a good night's sleep."
"Actually, I didn't sleep much. I couldn't sleep at all. But that's not a problem." Rebecca waved her hand and said casually as she walked to a large platform at the end of the deck. "How about you? How did it feel to fly for the first time? "
"Good. All systems are normal." The Cortex Prime immediately replied. "My virtual personality judged that it was a 'pleasant' experience."
"That's good. Keep it this way. Then let's give those monsters a big surprise!"
You've already exceeded your reading limit for today. If you want to read more, please log in.
Login
Select text and click 'Report' to let us know about any bad translation.
