Once the Mist entered its ebb phase, Levi's army finally surfaced in Lin Jun's full-map view.
By then, they were already close to Oath City, the United Kingdom's capital.
West of Oath City, on a watchtower perched alone atop a mountain, a handful of sentries spotted the imperial army.
After a beat of stunned silence, they lit the beacon. Thick smoke shot skyward like a pillar of black stone.
They had done their duty. The act also gave away their position.
Before long, several black dots hung at the far edge of the sky: vampires in bat form.
The sentries in the tower knew there was no escaping. They directed their Puchis, took cover along the tower's inner side, and readied themselves to sell their lives dearly.
But the two vampires that arrived never came down. Commanding the blood they had carried with them, they congealed it in midair into long, needle-thin arrows and sent them lancing down through the narrow stairway opening at the top of the tower.
Several short screams followed. Then a man burst out of the stairway, armor smeared with blood, two Puchis clinging to his shoulders, their tentacle-blades whirling to shield him.
He came out, raised his crossbow, and sighted on the vampires above.
The bolt never left the string. A blade of blood broke through the Puchis' guard from behind and ran him through the chest.
He looked down at the red point jutting from his front. His fingers loosened, strengthless, and he collapsed into a pool of blood. The two Puchis on his body, obeying his final order, resisted for a few seconds more before countless blood arrows pinned them dead.
The vampires descended, checked every corpse, drove one extra blade through every heart, and only then flew back toward their army.
After they had gone, mycelium climbed the watchtower and wrapped and swallowed the bodies, Puchi and human alike.
Yet beyond recovering a sliver of mana, Lin Jun decomposed precisely nothing.
Naturally. Their souls had been ripped out at the moment of death.
Through [Inspiration], Lin Jun watched those souls stream toward the imperial army and vanish into that monolith.
That soul-harvesting trick looked a great deal like the Yellow Codex. The monolith was clearly the Demon King's handiwork.
And the imperial army's ability to travel inside the Mist appeared to be the monolith's doing as well.
What he couldn't tell was whether those were two separate functions, or two faces of the same one.
And besides. Collecting souls?
What was that slime playing at now? A good number of those souls should have become his own Mushroom Converts!
Oath City now stood on the brink of encirclement, Levi before it and Sigmund behind.
Against the Empire's onslaught, the United Kingdom had no choice but to concentrate nearly all its strength on defending Oath City. The price: every other city inside the new defense line became a cake laid out before the Empire's blades, with barely any strength left to resist.
On Oath City's wall, Alama stood gazing toward the distant camp of his old rival Sigmund when heavy footsteps sounded behind him.
"Out with it. What's the bad news this time?" Alama asked without turning.
Lorenzo stopped at his side, rested his staff on a merlon, and followed his gaze out. "The other army is nearly at our walls. Northgate Fort and Valebridge Fort... their garrisons had been pulled here, so the enemy simply walked in on the way past. As for those who didn't flee in time..."
Lorenzo paused. "They have likely been slaughtered to the last."
Alama's fist came down on the battlement. Stone chips flew. "Animals!"
"I fear the Empire has come to wipe humanity out entirely this time." Lorenzo's voice held level, but deep worry pooled beneath his eyes.
"Extinction?" Alama gave a short, scornful laugh. "I say they've lost their minds and come to die with us! Levi, Sigmund, Darean, and one newly minted lord-level demon-born besides! Everyone who can fight is here. Aside from that intelligence chief Morfrey, Duke Velariss, and the Demon King himself, not one of them is missing." He counted the names off on his fingers, one by one. "That whole vast Empire of theirs, and they just stop defending it? All we need to do is pin them here. Pin them until the Mushroom Fortress guts their homeland. Then we'll see whether they still have it in them to keep fighting!"
Lorenzo sighed as well. "Yes. It truly does look like madness. What in the world are they after?"
As the two of them talked, a tall figure came walking up.
"Excuse me. Coming through."
Sophia leapt lightly onto the very merlon Alama had just punched.
She surveyed the distance first, then drew her bow, condensed several hundred mana arrows, and loosed them at the sun.
The arrows soared up into the clouds and vanished from the sky.
A long moment later, like stars falling, they dropped into the imperial camp sitting at the very limit of sight.
Even across that distance, Alama could see mana shields blooming in a panic all over the enemy camp. A pity he couldn't make out how many casualties the volley had claimed.
Her work done, Sophia turned and descended from the wall. She had been at this for days, harassing the Empire's camp at random hours. Her first round of picked shots had even sniped two careless hall-level experts of the Empire outright.
In the beginning, the imperial camp had actually sat not far from Oath City, right at the textbook distance for a besieging army.
It was Sophia, shot by shot, arrow-rain by arrow-rain, who had forced them back and back, all the way to the edge of sight, until they could barely be seen at all.
Evidently, they still hadn't retreated far enough.
Sure enough, by the next dawn, Alama could no longer find the imperial camp with his naked eye. If he hadn't known Sigmund was waiting for the two armies to join, he might have believed the crisis was over.
Then, before Alama's and Lorenzo's astonished eyes, Sophia mounted the high tower once more.
This time, she reached up and plucked out one of her own eyes, tossed it high into the air, and then, exactly as on the days before: drew, condensed her mana arrows, loosed.
Except this time, even the target lay beyond anyone's sight.
"The Hero is... a bit much," Lorenzo couldn't help muttering under his breath.
Strike capability from beyond visual range: dropped into any war of the past, it would have been a crushing advantage.
Imagine it. What army could endure, day after day, an enemy it could not even see, while any head that popped up risked being shot off on the spot?
Well. Perhaps the Mushroom Fortress's Converts could.
Alama nodded along, then turned uneasy. "If the Hero has grown this strong... then what of the Demon King?"
"Let us hope the Demon King stayed home this time. Otherwise it truly might..."
Lorenzo never finished. On a stretch of fungal mat outside Oath City, right under their noses, light bloomed and mana gathered.
Then, under their wary stares, a Puchi appeared upon it, tentacles folded behind its back.
"Teleportation?!"
As the two watched in disbelief, wind stirred beneath the Puchi's feet, and it rose in a slow, dignified float until it hung level with them.
At the same moment, No. 10's telepathic voice sounded in their minds: "Gentlemen. By the Fungus Lord's command, I have come to your support!"
As it spoke, the temporary teleportation array below flared again, and No. 7, No. 2, and No. 13, a whole handful of the Mushroom Tribe, came through in one batch.
Though in contrast to No. 10's elegance, they arrived dismembered...
And meanwhile, on the Empire's northern flank...
"Move out! Move out! Down with the slime's tyranny! The world belongs to the Puchis!"
To the Boss's impassioned declaration, three great Puchi armies rolled out toward the Empire in an unstoppable tide!
(End of Chapter)
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