Earth's Greatest Magus

Chapter 2975: Baeldum Battle 3

In the pale dunes beyond Dravos, the lone shadow lifted its head and roared.

It was not sound alone. Beneath the deafening noise rode something far more sinister—a psychic pulse that rolled outward across the desert and sank into every corrupted creature within dozens of kilometers. Every last one of them answered.

The desert began to shake.

From atop Dravos’ towering walls, the first scouts mistook the tremor for the distant advance of the parasite army. Then realization spread through the ranks like ice water.

The ground was not trembling beneath approaching feet.

The ground itself was moving.

Entire dunes heaved and rippled as though the desert had awakened and begun to crawl.

Then they appeared.

Thousands.

Tens of thousands.

Hundreds of thousands.

Infected hounds surged over the horizon in a single black tide.

Their skin hung from their bodies in ragged strips, exposing raw red muscle that glistened beneath the harsh desert sun. Extra limbs protruded from their flanks at unnatural angles. Their jaws had split far beyond anything nature intended, opening into grotesque maws lined with rotating rows of fangs.

Within minutes, the entire horizon had turned black.

This was not an outbreak.

This was an invasion.

An endless ocean of monsters was charging across the desert toward the city walls, and at the head of that nightmare walked a single silent figure.

Dravos was the largest city on all of Baeldum, and it looked the part.

The city sheltered more than a hundred million souls behind its walls — the single largest concentration of life left on the dying planet. To hold them, nearly twenty thousand Magus guards manned its ramparts, reinforced by the four First Responder teams the Alliance had rushed to its gates. Together, they fielded more than a hundred Grand Magus. Among the newcomers stood a towering northern warrior and his hardened crew — Fjolnir and the Void Wolf Company, folded into the defense.

City Lord Cassian Dravos stood atop the central command spire, his crimson robes billowing dramatically in the desert wind.

As the latest heir of the Dravos bloodline, he possessed a respectable Two Cosmos cultivation and ruled the greatest city on Baeldum. Unfortunately, while his ancestors had produced legendary generals and statesmen, Cassian himself preferred banquets, galas, and grand speeches to military campaigns.

At least he was self-aware enough to know it.

Which was precisely why he relied so heavily upon the Four Pillars.

Cassian’s voice carried across the command channels, directing his four constables who had guarded Dravos at his side for decades, each a Two Cosmos Grand Magus, each commanding thousands.

Iron General Varros took the North Gate. Crimson Marshal Selene the South. Stone Constable Garen the West. Storm Constable Orion the East.

The city itself was a weapon. Three concentric rings of towering walls encircled it, every layer inscribed with ancient defensive formations that shimmered in the air like heat-haze. Spirit-powered ballistae and thousands of rune-etched magic cannons bristled along the ramparts. Flying defensive platforms drifted above the streets, anti-siege barriers hummed at the gates, and far below, emergency evacuation tunnels honeycombed the bedrock.

It was, without question, the strongest fortress on Baeldum.

Looking out at the black tide swallowing the horizon, Cassian could only pray it would be enough.

The swarm closed to a thousand meters.

Dravos opened fire.

Cassian’s hand fell, and the order rippled outward in an instant.

The walls erupted.

Thousands of projectiles screamed across the dunes at once. Spirit cannons unleashed lances of blue-white light that punched through the swarm in straight, burning lines. Formation arrays flared overhead and rained down sheets of destructive energy. Lightning batteries crackled, fireballs arced downward in blazing showers, and rune-ballistae hurled spears the size of tree trunks deep into the horde.

The desert detonated.

Entire dunes vanished beneath the bombardment. Grotesque hounds burst apart by the thousands—limbs spinning through the air, purple blood falling like rain, fused abominations splitting open and collapsing into steaming heaps. For a few wild seconds, the guards upon the ramparts roared in triumph, the sound carrying across the entire length of the wall.

Then the cheering died.

Because the swarm did not slow.

The dead were simply trampled underfoot and replaced. For every hundred hounds torn apart, a thousand more poured over the corpses without breaking stride. The bombardment carved great bloody furrows through the tide, yet the tide itself did not so much as flinch. The desert seemed alive, endless, and utterly indifferent to its own slaughter.

And through all of it, the yellow-eyed creature continued walking.

Step by step.

Unhurried.

Unstoppable.

The cannon fire never touched it. Beams bent aside before reaching it. Ballista spears veered off course or fell short. It maintained the same pace it had carried since appearing on the horizon, neither faster nor slower, despite the devastation erupting around it.

Stranger still, the infected themselves avoided it.

Even the mindless hounds instinctively parted around the creature, creating a wide circle of space wherever it walked, as though some primal instinct warned them not to come too close.

No one on the walls could explain it.

And that, more than the horde itself, was what truly frightened them.

From atop the command spire, Cassian watched the creature advance, and the knot in his chest tightened with every step it took.

He had read the reports.

He knew exactly what that thing was.

The same creature had appeared in city after city across Baeldum, leaving nothing but slaughter in its wake. Entire populations had vanished beneath its advance, infected and turned into puppets. Hundreds of thousands had fallen under its control, becoming little more than slaves in a growing hive of corruption.

Even from several kilometers away, the sight of that creature made Cassian’s palms dampen with sweat.

It was then that the air beside him tore open.

A spatial rift unfolded in a sweep of distorted light, and several figures stepped onto the platform. Cassian’s guards immediately tensed before freezing as they recognized the terrifying auras radiating from the newcomers.

Five renowned figures.

And one silent silhouette wreathed in darkness.

Emery’s Dark Avatar.

”Ah — you’ve finally come.” Relief broke across Cassian’s weathered face. Then he looked past them, searching, and a thread of worry crept back into his voice. ”Where is Lord Dunadan? Is he not with you?”

”I will be the one in charge of handling this creature,” said Duke Damien Alabaster, his tone calm as still water.

Cassian’s expression flickered. He was plainly not reassured — but one did not question a Three Cosmos spirit champion of Damien’s renown, least of all in this company. He inclined his head with careful respect. ”Fellow Grand Magus Damien. Give your instructions, and I will follow.”

Damien turned to the four beside him — the Sword Demoness, the Star Tower Lord, Archbishop Saint Stephen, and Hubert — and pressed two small pills into each of their hands.

The newly forged resistance pills. Each one represented the combined labor of dozens of master apothecarists, and there were pitifully few in all existence. Five had already gone to Supreme Dunadan and the rest of Group Nine. Of those that remained, Damien turned and offered the last five to Cassian.

”Choose five of your strongest,” he said quietly. ”They are your reserve — should that thing find a way past us.”

The weight of the words settled over the platform.

Cassian took them and nodded.

”Let’s follow the plan,” Damien said.

As one, the group swallowed a single pill each. The Sword Demoness rolled her shoulders, a sharp grin tugging at her mouth — she had clearly been waiting for this. The Star Tower Lord and Saint Stephen remained serene.

Only Hubert looked thoroughly miserable.

”Why am I even here?” he muttered, turning his golden coin over and over between his fingers. ”I’m not even a Three Cosmos, and I already delivered the pills — that was a major contribution already...”

Damien made a single, unhurried gesture — and vanished. An instant later, he stood a full thousand meters out, hovering serenely above the heaving swarm. The other four flickered after him, fanning to either side until all five hung in the open air above an ocean of monsters.

The movement did not go unnoticed.

Far below, the yellow-eyed creature suddenly stopped.

Then it slowly rose into the air.

The endless horde continued charging toward Dravos beneath it, but the creature itself ascended higher and higher until it hovered directly across from Damien and the others.

For the first time, the two sides faced each other in the open sky.

The creature’s eyes began to open.

Across its neck, its shoulders, its chest — dozens, then hundreds of smaller eyes split open beneath its skin, each one burning the same sickly gold, each one fixing on the five figures.

Then the pressure hit.

It came not as force but as a flood inside the skull — voices layered over voices, screaming, weeping, laughing all at once; borrowed memories and stolen grief; a tidal wave of pure madness crashing against the mind from every direction.

But Duke Damien had been ready.

Golden light blazed from his outstretched hand, and a spirit champion’s protection settled over all five like a dome of stillness — blunting the corruption, holding the madness at bay. One breath. Two. His gaze swept across the others, confirming each of them stood firm.

Then he gave the smallest of nods.

The Sword Demoness and the Star Tower Lord moved in the same heartbeat. No words. No warning. The Demoness became a streak of black death plunging toward the creature, her dark blade shrieking; above her, the Star Tower Lord spread both arms as a dozen blazing stellar orbs ignited and fell like a rain of suns.

The yellow-eyed creature watched them come.

And for the first time since it had crawled from the desert, it smiled.

BOOM.

The first clash of Dravos had begun.