Chapter 745: The Darkest Hour! (Asking for Monthly Tickets)

“Divine magic! Use the divine magic at once!” bellowed Sword Saint Crius, dispatched by the Radiant Divine Kingdom, as he finally sensed the anomaly.

But in the next heartbeat, when his gaze fell upon the Arbiters’ Temple Divine Mage Corps, a scene of absolute horror met his eyes.

The mages stood vacant-eyed, their pupils contracted to pinpricks, submerged in an ocean of raw terror as though enduring some unfathomable nightmare.

Others turned upon their own comrades in a frenzied slaughter, hacking relentlessly at corpses that had long since grown cold and still.

“Did you truly believe a rabble like yours could stand as our equals?” Beside the Shadow Demon Dragon, the tall, skeletal figure finally spoke. “Fools. Giving you the illusion of parity was merely to lower your guard, the better to sweep these divine mages away in a single stroke!”

Like an invisible detonation, the terror rippled across the battlefield, as shadows crawled over the city, choking out the once-clear sky into a shroud of bitter, frigid dark.

At the Summit of Nations, Saint Duran’s face turned an ashen slate at the sight.

Simultaneously, every Saint-tier expert felt the offensive of their adversaries sharpen into a lethal frenzy.

Though the Saints were spared the madness gripping the common soldiers, the battlefield was collapsing like a mountain in a landslide; the Shadow Legion cut through the ranks as if walking through empty air, and short of a miracle, nearly a hundred thousand elites would be annihilated.

And once they fell, the Saints knew their own hour would strike.

A suffocating shroud of dread and humiliation pressed upon them—not from a fear of death, but from the sheer, intolerable weight of such an ignominious defeat.

A streak of dark light suddenly lacerated the heavens.

Spurting lifeblood instantly painted the sky crimson.

The Saint-tier warrior in golden armor, supreme champion and sovereign of the Mountain-Chain Principality, suffered a hideous, gaping wound torn across his flank.

“Where are you looking?” Before him stood a grotesque, semi-human monstrosity, balancing a massive, exaggerated scythe from which fresh blood dripped lazily down the edge.

The creature raised the weapon, lightly licking the crimson from the blade as if savoring a vintage wine.

High above, a colossal vortex of terrifying energy converged, solidifying into the distinct silhouette of Saint Duran.

It was a magical projection, a corporeal manifestation carrying at least thirty percent of his true might.

With a wave of his hand, he showered the field in a peculiar radiance, causing the dense terror to fray slightly, though it began to pool again the moment the light receded.

Yet, the soldiers driven mad by fear regained a fragile thread of sanity.

Countless men fled for their lives under the relentless pursuit of the Shadow Legion, but fewer than half would ever escape.

The once-arrogant human elites retreated in a panicked rout, utterly broken in spirit.

Following them, the Saint-tier experts began a fighting retreat.

Under the ferocious counter-offensive, several among them were instantly wounded.

“Retreat!” Duran’s projection commanded in a heavy tone.

“Fall back! Retreat immediately!” cried Sword Saint Crius.

Driven by the premeditated trap of the Shadow Legion, the rout was absolute, and now, the figure resting upon the back of the Shadow Demon Dragon finally made its move.

A colossal blade, wreathed in the fury of a burning sun, cleaved through the air, seemingly ripping a great tear into the sky itself.

Bearing the brunt of the blow, several Saints attempted to muster their defenses, only to be blasted backward by the cataclysmic force.

The weaker Saints instantly coughed up mouthfuls of dark blood.

The darkening sky began to weep a miserable drizzle.

Rain washed over the gore, sending crimson rivulets flowing through the ruined streets and alleys.

Countless bodies lay scattered amidst the debris—elites who hours before had shouted declarations of certain victory.

“They… they fell just like that?”

“Is it… truly lost?”

Faces once proud and aloof now stared at the carnage in stunned, vacant silence.

They were the apex predators of the world, the undisputed elite.

They had envisioned dying gloriously in battle, but never had they imagined an end so thoroughly pathetic.

“Retreat… retreat?! Retreat!”

For them, it felt as though the war had ended before it had even truly begun.

“Fleeing?” A creature with the lower body of a hooved beast and the torso of a man descended slowly from the heavens, suspended by a violent tempest and crackling lightning.

It spoke in a low, grating cadence: “Had we not intended to exterminate you all in one place to save ourselves the trouble of hunting you down individually, we would never have wasted such effort.”

Each word sent tremors through the surrounding space, the raw, unbridled energy radiating from its form whipping into a gale that tore at the fabric of reality.

With a flick of its palm, a thick arc of lightning struck Duran’s projection, shattering it into a spray of residual magical particles in the blink of an eye.

Back in the grand council hall of the Summit of Nations, the projections now displayed only the sinister, goateed visage of the hooved monstrosity, watched by the paralyzed assembly of dwarven, elven, and human sovereigns.

The creature looked up at the firmament, where the sky had plunged into total dark, as if some monolithic entity above was blotting out the sun.

“Damn it! The projection in that sector has failed!”

“What are they doing out there?!”

From fielding the most magnificent coalition in history to a desperate flight of Saints, it had taken less than a single day.

“No! We cannot retreat!” shouted the middle-aged man in golden armor—the ruler of the Mountain-Chain Principality and its sole Saint-tier defender. “We cannot fall back!”

Beyond the city walls lay nothing but vast, defenseless plains to the south; if this threshold fell, the Shadow Legion would march unchecked, and his nation and people would be utterly erased.

“We cannot retreat!” he screamed, but his voice was swallowed by the wind as the others continued their flight.

“No—!” A despairing shriek tore from his throat as he watched the iron hooves of the Shadow Legion shatter the walls, crush the homes, and tear the city to splinters, trampling everything in their headlong rush toward the heart of his kingdom.

In his mind’s eye, he saw yet another human realm crumble into oblivion.

A nation built upon the lifeblood of countless generations.

“We cannot flee!” he cried, grabbing the arm of Crius, the envoy of the Radiant Divine Kingdom.

Crius coldly wrenched his arm free.

“You have lost your mind, Lord Layton.”

The balding, somewhat stout sovereign stared at the devastation, his heart weeping tears of blood.

As the Saints departed one by one, a brave young warrior beside him—bearing a striking resemblance to the king, his armor already battered and broken—could endure no more and charged back into the fray with bared steel.

With a final roared defiance, he was instantly impaled by a forest of enemy spears.

“Ah—!” The middle-aged king, the lone Saint of the Mountain-Chain Principality, threw himself back into the slaughter. “I know a small nation like ours means nothing to you! A Saint? I am merely a pathetic old man who barely scratched the threshold of the Saint-tier in his twilight years… incapable of defeating a true enemy!”

“I know that among us all, I am the most useless!”

“Even so, I am the one who cannot run!” madness consumed him as he charged alone. “This is my domain! If I must die, I shall die upon this very soil!”

“Now, look upon the dignity of a small nation!” His greatsword cleaved through the air, parrying a storm of incoming spears and lances, as a spray of his own warm blood splattered against the blackened sky.

Suddenly, Wilson halted his retreat. “Perhaps you are right.”

As a black scythe cleaved the heavens, the Guardian Sword Saint of the Morning-Star Empire vanished, reappearing instantly to intercept the lethal blade with absolute precision.

“If we all stand aside as we are doing now, when our own hour comes, there will be no one left to stand with us!” he shouted.

If the nest is overturned, no eggs remain unbroken; if the Shadow Legion marched through, the neighboring realms would inevitably share the same grim fate.

Hearing those words, several more Saints hesitated, and finally, they stopped their flight.

"A pack of fools!" several of the Saint-realm elites, including the Sword Saint Cleus, spat as they hurriedly led their men away.

Having lost the Arbitration Temple, their most powerful ally, this was perhaps the darkest moment of their entire lives.

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