Earth's Greatest Magus

Chapter 2986: The Final Stand

The Insectoid Halfbloods had always been the most marginalized race within the Magus Alliance.

For decades, they had bled in service of the Alliance—always at the front of every campaign, always the first sent into the meat grinders of frontier wars, always treated as expendable cannon fodder. Yet despite all those contributions, they were never welcomed into the inner circles of power, never granted a true seat on the council, and were often shunned even by the halfblood communities that should have been their kin. They lived on the outskirts of Sector 13, a quiet hive-people the wider Alliance preferred to forget existed.

Even in this crisis.

The Alliance war machine had moved too quickly, too focused on its own elites, and the wheels had simply rolled past the insectoid colony entirely.

Emery had reached out to all his allies the moment the crisis started— and the Insectoid Queen Phyllis answered without hesitation. The original plan had been for them to arrive alongside the Alliance’s official reinforcements, six hours from now.

He had advised her to come earlier.

And so they came.

The insectoid vessel descended through the violet haze in a slow, grand arc, and every defender on the walls of Dravos turned their heads upward at once.

Tens of thousands of insectoid Magus poured into the heavens above the city, and at their front flew more than thirty of their strongest Grand Magus warriors carrying the same shimmering antennae and golden markings as their Queen.

Across the walls, exhausted defenders stared upward in stunned disbelief.

At first, many could hardly believe what they were seeing.

Then they saw the insectoid warriors dive straight into the enemy ranks.

Hope ignited.

Weapons were raised.

Voices erupted across the ramparts.

”The reinforcements! The reinforcements are here!”

”We’re saved!”

The cheers rolled from gate to gate. Weary cultivators lifted bloodied weapons toward the sky, while civilians sheltering beneath the cracking domes openly wept as the colossal shadow of the alien warship passed overhead.

It was a wave that the corrupted had not been prepared for.

A mantis-kin Grand Magus dropped onto a fused abomination the size of a house and bisected it with twin scything forearms before its mass even registered the strike, the two halves flopping apart in a shower of black blood.

A beetle-armored warrior plowed through a cluster of corrupted hounds in a thunderous charge that pulped them into the broken stone.

A hornet-cultivator dove through the air on shimmering wings, her venom-stinger leaving every Magus it touched seizing and dropping mid-flight.

An ant-kin matriarch raised a hand, and thousands of her soldier-followers swarmed up the wall in disciplined columns to eat the parasite hounds alive, mandibles working in perfect synchrony.

Moth-kin cast hypnotic spore-clouds that turned entire blocks of infected against one another; spider-warriors strung kilometer-long webs of liquid steel between the towers, snaring fused horrors mid-leap.

Within thirty seconds, the front line of the swarm was collapsing.

Anderson, who had stood in stone-faced grimness for hours, finally broke. A wild, half-disbelieving laugh tore out of him as he raised his fist to the sky.

”HAHAHAHA — EVERYONE, FIGHT!!”

The shout carried along the walls, and the defenders surged behind it, fresh strength flooding into legs that had moments ago been ready to fall.

The roar of battle intensified.

And around Emery, the second battle began.

Where minutes ago they had been an island drowning in a black sea, now they were one node in a vast web of allied fire.

Insectoid Grand Magus swept past them, their spirit-techniques weaving into the gaps in Emery’s defense.

A spider-cultivator’s web of liquid steel suddenly bound the corrupted Grand Magus closing on Julian’s left, and the guardian golem’s massive fist finished what the web began. A hornet-warrior’s venom sting dropped two infected charging at Morgana’s flank before her divine flame had finished cleansing the front. Twik’s plant-towers wove together with great chitinous walls raised by beetle-kin to form a hybrid fortress of bone.

And at the heart of it, Emery himself.

Excalibur in hand, he moved through the corrupted ranks like a metronome of light. Every motion of the sword cut a path his teammates needed; every flash of the white blade severed an approaching threat.

A few more minutes.

That was all his weakened seniors needed. A few more minutes, and the new pills would have fully cycled. Then the counterattack could truly begin.

The city walls and above had become a hellscape.

Frozen storms collided with explosive sword arts. Constellations of flying swords carved through walls of roaring flame, while techniques from a dozen different cultivation paths clashed across the heavens in a chaotic storm of destruction. Every collision unleashed shockwaves powerful enough to tear apart lesser combatants, sending ripples of force across the battlefield that obliterated infected Magus and parasite hounds caught beneath them.

The fighting was so intense that even Grand Magus were dying with alarming frequency.

Some were consumed by enemy techniques. Others were caught in stray attacks never meant for them, swallowed by explosions from battles unfolding hundreds of meters away. More were blasted from the sky by ricocheting spells they never saw coming, their bodies disappearing into the chaos below before anyone could help them.

Beneath the carnage, Arctus and his formation corps fought a battle of their own. Without their efforts, the barriers would have fallen minutes ago, and the casualties would already have numbered in the millions.

High above, Parasite X watched the slow reversal of its careful war, and its great forehead-eye flared bloodier than ever.

It seems to have been gathering power, and finally, it unleashed them.

Shrill chittering tore across the heavens, deeper and longer.

Another massive yellow eye opened in the violet sky above the city, and the spatial energy gathering around it was vast — more than anything the creature had summoned before.

Emery’s blood ran cold.

”Stop him!”

Hubert’s revolver bucked three times in rapid succession, crimson-gold rounds streaking up toward the gathering rift — and were deflected, every shot, by the dark spear. Elder Ravik had moved between Hubert and the parasite, recovered enough to play guard. Typhon surged forward through a sweep of mist and qilin wind to charge the creature directly — and a muscular figure dropped from above and slammed him aside. Colonel Garran, the black-furnace aura blazing as he summoned a whirling cyclone of stone and dust that hurled the Qilin hybrid back across a hundred meters of sky.

The defense around Parasite X held.

And the rift finished tearing open.

Reality split, and something enormous was pulled through against its will.

A Supreme figure

Supreme Marc — who, should still have been locked in continent-shattering combat with Supreme Dunadan a thousand miles away — had been yanked across the sky and dropped into the heavens above Dravos. The Hunter Supreme’s corrupted aura flooded outward in a single suffocating wave, and every Grand Magus below felt their knees almost buckle beneath the sheer weight of his presence.

”Oh no...”

Emery’s expression darkened, and he was not alone.

Everyone present understood the implications immediately.

A Supreme was worth more than ten Three Cosmos experts combined. Marc’s appearance had completely shattered the balance of the battlefield. Every second without another Supreme to stop him could doom Dravos and everyone within it.

Marc was barely on the field for a heartbeat before he moved.

Three colossal pythons of living flame erupted into existence around him, each one as long as a city block. Their scaled bodies were woven from blazing crimson qi, their fanged maws roaring with the heat of miniature suns. The mere presence of three Supreme-level summons pressed down upon the battlefield like the hand of a god, causing countless cultivators below to pale.

Then the pythons descended.

They fell in a tight arrowhead formation aimed directly at the heart of Dravos.

Civilians inside the domes began to scream. The chaos at the teleportation gates became madness.

One figure dared to stand on its path

The insectoid Queen Phyllis.

Golden patterns ignited beneath her skin as her antennae blazed with radiant light.

A vast honeycomb-shaped domain unfolded around her. Layer upon layer of luminous hexagonal barriers spread across the sky while countless golden insect spirits poured from every cell of the formation, swarming toward the descending beasts.

The heavens erupted.

The first Python slammed into the Golden Hive Domain and immediately began to slow. Billions of insect spirits devoured its flames, stripping away chunks of Supreme qi with every passing second. The second and third pythons were also caught within the domain, and the endless swarm consumed their power.

Yet the difference between a peak Three Cosmos powerhouse and a true Supreme was painfully clear.

The strain showed almost immediately. Cracks spread across the honeycomb barriers, and countless insect spirits burst apart as they attempted to consume power beyond their limits.

Three of the Queen’s grand magus aides joined in and poured more energy into the domain.

One python finally collapsed, its body completely consumed by the endless swarm before disintegrating into sparks of dying flame.

Only one.

The remaining two tore through the weakening domain.

Their bodies had shrunk. Their flames had dimmed.

But they were still coming.

At that moment, another figure intercepted them.

Ayla.

Riding atop her gigantic lightning tiger, the beastmaster descended from the heavens like a falling star. Ayla’s lightning tiger lunged straight through the creature’s throat.

The sky exploded.

Lightning, fang, claw, and Supreme flame tore into one another in a deafening clash.

The second Python finally shattered beneath the assault.

The third dove unopposed.

And it dove straight at the city.

It struck the great western dome head-on.

BOOOOM.

The barrier flared white under the impact — and cracked.