Chapter 274: Chapter 52: A Wall of Flesh and Blood Fills the Ridge

As Murphy and his men gathered in the Deep Red Wilderness, on the other side of the Iron Ridge Mountain Range, Blackstone Fortress was enduring the most brutal and unprecedented assault since the war began.

The meat grinder of war was already running at full speed.

The dark, lightless sky was cast in an eerie, dark red glow by the battlefield below.

The enormous Plane Passage near Eagle’s Beak Peak, like a festering wound, continuously spewed forth ever-denser Chaotic Energy and a seemingly endless torrent of monsters.

This time, the creatures pouring forth were no longer merely the low-tier, non-Extraordinary beings that had conducted scattered raids.

Instead, there were Giant Earth Rock Worms, like mobile hills. Their bodies were over five meters in diameter and nearly fifty meters long. The ground shook wherever they passed. From their maws, they spat a viscous, dark-red torrent as thick as magma—a stream so hot it could instantly vaporize steel!

On the ground, the flood of Scorching Beasts seemed endless. In the firelight, their dark-red carapaces merged into a single, moving tide.

In the air, swarms of Frenzied Flying Cockroaches blotted out the sky, forming terrifying black clouds that would make one’s skin crawl.

Like kamikaze bombers, they dove in swarms from high above, using their own bodies and carapaces as weapons to smash violently into the fortress walls, towers, and clusters of defenders. Each impact was accompanied by the sharp crack of shattering exoskeletons and the violent rupture of internal acid and poison sacs.

Blackstone Fortress, the bastion guarding the pass through the Iron Ridge Mountain Range, seemed as if every one of its bricks was groaning in protest.

"Hold the line! Crossbowmen, aim for the big ones’ eyes and the gaps in their armor! Catapults, switch to explosive rounds and bombard the densest groups of monsters! Hurry, don’t let them reach the gate!" On the walls, the officers had long since shouted themselves hoarse. Their voices, lost amidst the thunderous roars of monsters, the boom of clashing Energy, and the death-screams of soldiers, were nearly inaudible.

Volleys of armor-piercing crossbow bolts slammed into the thick, rock-like carapaces of the Earth Rock Worms, most leaving nothing more than shallow white chips. Only the few that found their way into joints or eye sockets provoked a pained spasm.

Burning boulders, trailing black smoke, crashed down and exploded into searing fireballs amidst the monster hordes. They would clear a patch of ground for a moment, only for it to be swarmed by more monsters in the blink of an eye.

The elite defensive line, composed of the Templar Order and the Bishops of the Church Court, was under unprecedented pressure.

The Knights’ greatswords split the carapaces of Scorching Beasts, even as they risked being sprayed by acid. The radiant light of the Bishops’ Healing Techniques almost never ceased, yet it could do little for a comrade struck directly by Magma Breath.

The casualty count climbed at an astonishing rate.

Below the main walls, the barbican and outer ramparts had long ago devolved into a quagmire of flesh and blood.

The severed limbs of monsters and the corpses of the defenders were piled so high they had nearly filled the surrounding moat.

Dark-red, almost black, blood gathered into gurgling streams. The air was a suffocating, acrid mix of burnt flesh, the foul stench of gore, ozone, and rotting viscera. 𝒇𝓻𝓮𝓮𝙬𝙚𝒃𝒏𝓸𝙫𝒆𝙡.𝓬𝓸𝒎

...

But within the fortress walls, the Lower District—crammed with low stone houses, makeshift hovels, and mountains of debris—was a different kind of hell.

It was crammed with over five thousand civilians who had fled from the various villages and mining towns on the other side of the Iron Ridge Mountain Range.

Most were sallow and emaciated, dressed in rags, with hollow eyes. They cowered in the corners of the cold hovels like frightened livestock.

The groans of the wounded, the wailing of children, and the stifled sobs of women mingled with the faint rumbles and vibrations from the battle above, a constant torment to everyone’s nerves.

Near the crowded main road Murphy had once passed through, a relatively open, stone-paved square that once served as a small market had been turned into a temporary holding area for refugees.

At one end of the square, a few exhausted soldiers in blood-stained armor roughly dragged a thin, struggling man to the center as he cried out hoarsely.

The man’s eyes were wild. He desperately clutched a bulging, filth-stained burlap sack to his chest. Peeking out from inside were half a loaf of black bread and a few wilted, yellowed vegetable leaves.

"Stealing rations! By wartime decree, the punishment is summary execution!" a soldier who looked to be a squad leader announced, his voice hoarse and cold.

A crowd of sallow, emaciated civilians with numb eyes surrounded them. They watched in silence. No one spoke. Few even showed any obvious emotion, only a dead, oppressive stillness.

"No! Sir! I beg you! My child... he hasn’t eaten in two days... He’s not going to make it..." The man was kicked to the ground, still clutching the sack for dear life. He slammed his forehead against the cold stone, the dull THUD THUD mixing with his desperate pleas.

An almost imperceptible muscle twitched in the squad leader’s face, but it was instantly replaced by a deeper exhaustion and a cold resolve.

He closed his eyes and took a deep breath of the smoke-and-blood-tainted air, then sharply drew the stained short sword from his belt.

"Carry it out!"

Before he could finish, another, younger soldier beside him seemed unable to take it anymore. He lunged forward and grabbed the squad leader’s arm. "Boss! He... he only did it for his kid! Can’t we just..."

"Get away!" the squad leader roared, violently shaking off the young soldier’s hand. His eyes were completely bloodshot. "The law is the law! If I let him go today, ten more will steal tomorrow, then a hundred! Don’t you fucking know how little we have left in the storehouse? If order collapses, we all die!"

After his outburst, his chest heaved. He looked down at the broken man on the ground, glanced at the empty eyes of the crowd, and gritted his teeth. In the end, he brought the short sword down.

SHLICK.

The sound was dull, muffled.

The pleading came to an abrupt end.