Chapter 100: Combat Power Assembling, Far from Over

"Ah, ah, ah, it hurts! Water, is there any water!"

"How can these things use magic? Damn it, hurry and find a place to hide, you idiot."

"Run! We can't hold them back!"

The wing-demons' fireballs descended like a deluge. In truth, the fireballs cast by these creatures lacked the potency of a standard mage's spell, but their sheer numbers bridged that gap.

The fireballs fell like rain, igniting everything flammable; even non-flammable objects were shattered and cracked by the explosive force of the fire element. City guards who failed to dodge were struck directly. Fire is not a blade, and armor offered no protection against such searing, burning things.

Undergarments caught fire, and the hellish fire elements ensured the combustion would not easily cease. The flames consumed the oxygen around their mouths and noses; some soldiers screamed as they tried to tear off their burning armor, only to collapse, losing consciousness from asphyxiation.

Others, driven by the excruciating agony of being scorched, lost all reason. They ran about, colliding with other soldiers in the streets and spreading chaos and panic.

"Calm down, calm down!" The veteran hid behind an inn. The sound of fireballs detonating against the walls was incessant, and the entire building shuddered. He shouted at the soldiers, who had nearly collapsed after a single volley, trying to force them to regain their composure, but it seemed futile.

"It's useless! You'll only die faster this way. Find cover, and wait for the enemy to close in before engaging in melee!"

The soldiers running aimlessly were useless. Their exposed figures only drew more fireballs from the wing-demons, who continued to bombard targets that had no chance to retaliate.

Only by hiding could they force these mindless creatures to advance. Once they entered the complex labyrinth of buildings, these physically frail wing-demons would become much easier to handle.

But no one listened. Chaos had spread completely, and panic rippled through the inexperienced ranks. Their reason had been usurped by raw fear; the veteran's cries were meaningless.

Feeling the explosions behind him, the veteran jolted and performed a forward roll. He felt a heavy blow to his back, and his body, already harboring old injuries, lost most of its strength.

"Crack, boom!" The inn wall he had used for cover collapsed under the relentless bombardment. Had he not rolled away with such speed, the falling masonry would have crushed him entirely.

Even so, the debris from the crumbling wall struck his back. The immense impact caused severe internal damage and dislocated several bones. He struggled for a long time, but lacked the strength to rise.

Above, a whistling sound returned. Looking up, he saw the wing-demons' fire elements had recharged. Bright light flickered in their red claws, and a moment later, a sky full of fireballs blotted out the heavens above the veteran.

Amidst the panicked screams and frantic footsteps, he wearily closed his eyes. He felt a sense of despair. To have survived the battlefield this long was worth a lifetime; a veteran should die on the field! At least he had achieved that!

"Boom, boom, boom, boom!" The sounds of explosions arrived—the sound of fireballs detonating. But something was different... they were too far away.

The previous explosions had been accompanied by shockwaves and tremors, but these lacked substance; there was no vibration, no concussive force.

"What is that!?"

"It's coming from inside the city! Are those reinforcements?"

"Waaah, don't... I want to live, I still want to live."

The sound of the fireballs grew distant, and the voices of those around him became clear. Amidst the confused shouting, some soldiers spoke with bewilderment, but more with excitement and the relief of those who had escaped death.

The veteran opened his eyes, dazed. He saw a translucent curtain of light spanning the sky, with visible magical runes flowing across its surface. The barrier had been projected from within the city, forming a line of defense at the front where they had been engaging the wing-demons.

The massive barrier covered the sky before the wing-demons. A multitude of fireballs collided with it, only to shatter and dissipate instantly. Some of the scattered fire elements were even absorbed by the barrier, staining it a deep, fiery crimson.

Once turned crimson, the barrier became even more effective against the single-element spell bombardment. Most fireballs hitting the red-hot shield behaved like soft balls of clay.

After impact, they would burst into a puff of flame and lose all effect, or shrink rapidly like ice balls hitting a hot iron plate, melting away upon the barrier's surface.

"An adaptive barrier! The Magic Academy has intervened!" The veteran looked toward the city with a spark of joy. With his frontline experience, he recognized the spell immediately. Many of the army's field mages and battle-mage scholars came from the kingdom's greatest institution: the Stevenson Magic Academy.

Though the academy was effectively open to anyone with money, mages were not like graduates who could rely on diplomas; strength was strength, and trash was trash—it was plain to see. With its vast resources, Stevenson was undeniably one of the premier training grounds for powerful mages.

The adaptive barrier was a large-scale battlefield defensive spell developed by Stevenson itself.

It required the coordination of a magic circle and several high-level archmages to deploy. Its physical protection was average, but against single-element spells, it was terrifying.

It collected scattered elements, fed them into the barrier's runes, and deployed counter-defensive arrays based on the main circle's mechanism.

Against single-element spells, the adaptive barrier could achieve a terrifying effect bordering on "spell nullification." In a past campaign, the veteran had been lucky enough to see an adaptive barrier completely nullify a "Flame Cluster" attack.

And now, the massive barrier projected from the Stevenson main campus was, single-handedly, nullifying the wing-demons' saturation bombardment.

Since the adaptive barrier had appeared, the next step should be their signature offensive.

Just as the veteran expected, the Stevenson Magic Academy began to purge the wing-demons immediately after deploying the barrier.

A giant, pulsating crystalline object glowing with blue light rose from a location within the city. It climbed rapidly, and upon reaching a critical point, began to tremble violently, emitting an intense radiance.

The outer layer of the crystal shed away in the tremors—it was high-purity mana crystal. What lay within was revealed: a round, impossibly clear and bright droplet of water, glowing with a brilliant blue light.

The "water droplet" hovered in the air, trembling and surging. It looked soft, bouncy, and cute, but the veteran wore a smile. It wasn't because the object looked pretty, but because he had witnessed its terrifying power and knew the devastating blow this "Mana Comet" would deal to the wing-demon swarm.

The "water ball," now stripped of its outer shell, hovered for a few seconds before accelerating toward them. As it gained speed, its shape distorted from a sphere into a prism, and then, accompanied by a violent surge of magical energy, it burst.

This was a pure manifestation of mana—liquid magic of a purity exceeding that of crystals. The embedded magic circles were designed to provide a catalyst for the liquid mana to explode and concentrate its energy the moment it left the crystal shell.

It would all transform into the simplest of spells, using an overwhelming amount of mana to construct a truly terrifying, saturation-style strike.

The bursting spell split into tens, then hundreds of light orbs in the sky. The next moment, those orbs split and burst again, and again! Millions of pure mana aggregates began to rain down upon the wing-demons.

These aggregates were still pure mana; they had no offensive power in a magical or physical sense. But the next moment, a hidden magic core within them activated. A special fluctuation swept across the millions of mana aggregates.

The core's function was to convert this pure mana into the simplest spell of all—the Arcane Missile.

The Arcane Missile was universally recognized as the simplest spell; its magic circuit structure consisted of a single, pathetic loop. Even a "Flash" spell had three.

The Arcane Missile was the "peasant's punch" of the magical world, the "brute force" of the knightly realm.

Correspondingly, its effect was about as impactful as a punch from an adult man. It even flew slowly; anyone with a bit of perception or reflexes could dodge it. It wasn't just mediocre; it was entirely useless.

But now, millions of Arcane Missiles appeared under the core's influence. At this scale, quantity became quality. It was a true deluge, a massive, overwhelming wave of Arcane Missiles pressing down upon the wing-demons.

In the face of such terrifying numbers, the wing-demons' own numerical advantage became laughable. The sheer volume of overlapping missiles formed a wall, like a giant wave in an endless sea, crashing down upon them.

"The Alastair Meteor Shower," the veteran whispered the nickname of this signature Alastair spell. Like falling stars from the heavens, it was powerful, terrifying—a super-spell reaching an eighth-tier magnitude through collective casting.

"Bang, bang, bang, bang, bang!" Endless Arcane Missiles slammed into the wing-demons. Even if the force of an adult's punch couldn't kill or severely wound them with one hit, if one wasn't enough, ten would be; if ten weren't enough, a hundred would.

The "peasant's punch" of the magical world, fueled by sufficient mana, achieved astonishing results. The saturation strike covered the entire swarm, ensuring every wing-demon took hundreds, if not thousands, of heavy blows.

Wings snapped, bones twisted, bodies shattered, and forms plummeted. The wing-demons fell from the sky without the slightest resistance, creating a bizarre and spectacular rain of carnage alongside the falling missiles.

Many Arcane Missiles missed the swarm and struck the buildings in the city wall district, shattering and pulverizing them.

When the "Mana Comet" spell concluded, outside the area covered by the adaptive barrier, there was nothing left but the mangled corpses of wing-demons and a landscape of ruins leveled by the rain of missiles.

This was the Stevenson Magic Academy, and this was one of the reasons Alastair dared to deploy the bulk of its forces to fight the war.

"As expected of the kingdom's best magic academy. No matter how many times I see it, it's always so spectacular." The veteran sat on the ground. The pain in his body hadn't vanished, but the grandeur of the sight made him feel like the green recruit he once was, heading into his first battle.

"So, so powerful. Was it the Royal Family?"

"We're saved, we're saved..."

The relief of the city guards reached his ears. They truly owed their lives to the academy's strategic magical support; otherwise, few would have survived the wing-demons' firestorm.

The survivors began to restore order, clumsily fighting the fires that continued to spread through the streets.

"Next, we just wait for the Night's Edge and the Royal Guard to arrive. The demons in the distance are gone for now, and the streets are stabilizing. As long as we hold, this Hellgate shouldn't be too hard to close."

The veteran sat on the ground, his body too weak to move, but his heart felt much more at ease.

"Hum, hum, hum... crack, crack..." A faint vibration and the sound of breaking stone reached him. The veteran looked at the ground, puzzled. Was something moving beneath the earth?

He glanced back toward the Hellgate. No new demons appeared, only more wing-demons, but they were not an immediate threat.

"Phew, an old bag of bones like me... after this fight, it's about—bang!" The veteran touched his aching lower back. Time spares no one; even if the spirit is willing, the flesh is weak. Yet, the vibration and cracking he had heard suddenly erupted after a brief pause.

Before the veteran could finish his thought, the soldiers around him saw a massive maw, lined with fine, serrated teeth and spanning three meters in radius, burst from beneath the earth. It tore through the paved street and swallowed the veteran in a single gulp.

Then, the giant creature—looking like a red worm with a hard shell etched with lava-like cracks—slammed back into the ground, leaving a massive crater before vanishing from sight.

At the same time, the sound of breaking ground, collapsing buildings, and terrified screams echoed through the surrounding streets.

A new breed of demon has emerged, the Purgatory Worm, and the battle is far from over.

Everything that has transpired is merely the beginning.