The Broken Halo

Chapter 1082 - 1081: What Struck The Wall

Simon shook his head.

The melody clung to his thoughts like warm water. It was both soft and heavy at the same time. For a moment, he had wanted nothing more than to keep listening.

He drew in a sharp breath, and the feeling cracked apart.

His expression turned solemn.

The siren hadn’t even been looking at him. Not truly. He had only caught the edges of a song meant for the beasts, and it had still slipped past his guard as easily as a breeze through an open window.

He looked at the three creatures again, this time more carefully.

All of them had gathered in the east, where The Wall curved toward the southeast.

The kraken and the serpent were Superior Catastrophe Beasts. Their pressure was enormous and it was also heavy enough to make the water around them tremble.

The siren was weaker. A Prime Catastrophe Beast.

Yet Simon believed it was the most dangerous out of all the beasts.

Strength could be blocked. A song that reached into the mind and soul could not be stopped with a raised arm.

Not many practiced mental techniques or had powerful barriers around their seas of consciousness.

’And somewhere out there is the one controlling them.’

He spread his perception across the sea.

Sky Eye pierced the mist. He searched every rock, every patch of shadow, every ripple that moved against the tide. He drew on the Seed of Wrath as well, reaching for hatred, for intent, for anything that didn’t belong to a beast.

All he found was rage. Raw and hungry, rising from thousands of throats.

No master.

No controller.

Simon’s eyes narrowed.

’Either they’re very far away, or they’re very good at hiding.’

A crimson flash tore through the mist.

Rasken.

The Daemon appeared above the eastern curve and dropped straight onto one of the kraken’s arms. His fist came down.

BOOOM!

The shockwave flattened the waves for a hundred meters. Hooks the size of swords snapped off and spun away. The arm convulsed, and black blood sprayed across the water.

The kraken groaned. Two more arms whipped toward him.

Rasken didn’t dodge. He caught one, planted his feet against the air, and pulled. Muscles bulged across his dark-red shoulders as he tore the hooked suckers out one after another like nails from a plank.

Then the city answered.

Along the eastern terraces, the stone walls split open. Bronze towers rose from beneath them, each crowned with a long barrel carved with runes. Soldiers rushed to their sides carrying open crates.

Simon’s brows rose.

The crates were filled with high grade Hell Stones.

The soldiers didn’t count them. They poured them into the towers like coal into a furnace.

The barrels began to glow.

FWOOOM!

Beams of golden light shot out through The Wall, which parted for them like a curtain. They struck the tide below, and the sea exploded. Beasts were torn apart in clusters, their bodies thrown high into the air before raining back down in pieces.

Above the Wall, hundreds of crystal orbs floated upward. Lightning crackled between them, then lashed down in white sheets across the water. Eels went rigid. Crabs cooked inside their shells. The pink water turned red, and then dark red.

Simon watched another tower fire.

Each shot had swallowed enough Hell Stones to buy a small town.

And the Daegrins were firing them as though they cost nothing.

Then the siren’s song changed.

It became sharper.

On the eastern walls, a group of soldiers suddenly lowered their spears. Their faces went slack. One by one, they walked toward the edge and stepped off.

Officers shouted. Some soldiers grabbed their comrades and dragged them back. Others slapped small metal charms behind their ears, which began to hum loudly.

They weren’t fast enough.

Simon counted nine bodies falling into the churning water before the humming spread across the wall.

The sea swallowed them instantly.

Out over the tide, a flying squad dove toward a cluster of Calamity Beasts. A kraken arm rose from beneath them like a falling tower.

It wrapped around six of them at once.

Simon heard the crunch from the roof.

The arm sank back under, and the squad was gone.

To the kraken’s left, the Redfin Serpent reared its head.

The spinning sheets of water around it flattened into blades and shot forward. They sliced through another squad, through beasts, through anything in their path. Soldiers fell in halves. The blades struck The Wall and the barrier rang like a struck bell, the impact shuddering across its entire golden curve.

But it held.

A green streak cut through the sky.

Seraya.

She led a formation of flying Daegrins out through an opening in The Wall, the Garrun at her side. One of her rings flashed, and a chain of green light uncoiled from her hand. She swung it.

The chain cut through a wave of leaping eels like a scythe through grass.

Another ring flared. Four silver crescent blades appeared around her, spinning in a tight circle. She pointed, and they shot down into the tide, carving a path through the beasts before returning to orbit her.

Calamity Grade Artifacts, Simon judged. These were rare artifacts meant for Demon Lords, and she wore several on her fingers alone.

A third ring raised a jade-colored shield as a water blade came at her. It struck the shield and burst into mist.

Seraya didn’t even look at it. She was already shouting orders.

Then the serpent turned toward the harbor.

Its head drew back, and the water around it rose higher than before.

A figure appeared in the air before it.

Simon’s eyes widened slightly.

Zarven.

The First Merchant stood on a floating disc of white jade, his purple robe snapping in the wind. There was no armor on him and no weapon in his hands.

Only a small silk purse.

He opened it and turned it upside down.

Gold coins poured out.

Dozens. Then hundreds. Then thousands. The stream didn’t stop. Each coin flared with runes as it fell, and instead of dropping, they hung in the air around him like a glittering swarm.

Zarven flicked his fingers.

The coins shot forward like arrows.

BANG!

They struck the serpent’s face and neck in a storm of golden sparks. Scales cracked. Blood sprayed. The serpent shrieked and twisted away, its head whipping from side to side as the coins kept coming.

The serpent’s water blades flew at him.

Zarven brought out something else.

A small set of golden scales.

Simon recognized it. It had been sitting on his desk that morning.

Zarven placed a single coin on one of its pans.

BOOOM!

The serpent’s head jerked downward as though an invisible mountain had landed on it. Its jaws slammed into the sea with a thunderous crash, throwing up a wave taller than the harbor towers.

The water blades, no longer guided, collapsed into spray.

Simon stared at these with slightly wide eyes.

These were Transcendent Artifacts made for Demon Kings.

And Zarven was using them one after another.

Yet his aura remained calm and veiled. He was still hiding his true rank as a Demon King, and Simon noticed this.

Also, the square black ring on his hand had still not been used... or at least, he believed so.

The serpent heaved itself back up, bleeding and furious. Zarven placed a second coin on the scales.

Its head went down again.

A heavy presence arrived from the south.

Torvek.

He didn’t stop to help either fight. He flew straight past them, his grey braid streaming behind him, aiming directly for the black rock in the mist.

For the siren.

The siren saw him coming.

Her song rose into a piercing note.

The tide answered. Hundreds of beasts leapt from the water all at once, stacking on top of one another until they formed a living wall between Torvek and the rock.

Torvek smashed into it.

BOOOOM!

Beasts burst apart. Blood and flesh rained across the sea. He tore through one layer, then another.

A kraken arm swept in from his left. He twisted around it, barely.

Then the serpent’s tail rose from the water on his right and slammed into him.

Torvek was thrown back, skidding across the surface of the sea before catching himself.

He charged again.

This time, the siren looked straight at him and sang a single, broken note.

Torvek’s body jerked. He clutched his head, and blood ran from his nose. For a moment he hung motionless in the air, and three beasts leapt for his throat.

He came back to himself just in time to crush them.

Simon let out a slow breath.

Even a Superior Demon King couldn’t simply walk up to that thing.

The battle roared on. Golden beams. White lightning. Green chains and golden coins. Thousands of beasts dying, the sea thick with their bodies. The Wall shuddered under shockwave after shockwave, its runes flaring and dimming, but it stood.

Simon’s gaze drifted back to the southeastern curve.

The place where the first blow had landed.

He frowned.

The Wall there had healed, but the sea below it was still steaming. And along the edge of the barrier, the runes glowed a faint, angry red instead of gold.

They looked... scorched.

Simon looked at the kraken. At the serpent. At the siren.

Hooks. Water. Song.

Not one of them had used fire.

And none of them had struck The Wall anywhere near as hard as that first blow.

’Then what hit it?’

The thought had barely formed when the sea in the southeast began to glow.

Not gold.

Orange.

The water bubbled. Then it boiled. A column of white steam blasted upward, so thick and hot that the mist around it simply vanished.

Then came the roar.

ROOOOOAAAAARRRR!!!

It rolled across the sea, through The Wall, through the city, and into Simon’s chest.

Something inside him stirred.

In his bloodline world, the Nine-Tailed Byakko rose to its feet. Its tails flared, and a low growl rumbled from its throat. Across the silver terraces, the Uruqath spread all six of its wings.

Neither of them bowed.

They were answering.

Simon’s hand tightened at his side.

A shape rose out of the steam.

Wings came first. Two vast wings unfolded like burning sails, their thin skin glowing orange, threaded with veins of molten light. When they beat once, the steam was blown apart.

Its body followed.

Black scales covered it like cooled lava, cracked all over, with fire glowing through every crack. A long neck. A heavy tail lashing behind it. A head crowned with jagged horns, its jaws hanging open as molten rock dripped from its teeth and hissed into the sea below.

Its eyes were white-hot.

The kraken pulled its arms back.

The serpent sank lower in the water.

Even the siren’s song faltered.

Simon felt its aura press against him, heavier than the kraken’s, heavier than the serpent’s. It made the air shimmer with heat.

A Supreme Catastrophe Beast... similar to a Supreme Demon King.

A fourth Daemonic beast that no one had mentioned.

The creature hovered above the steaming sea, wings spread wide, and turned its burning gaze toward The Wall.

Its throat began to glow.

The exact same angry red as the scorched runes.

Simon’s pupils narrowed.

Now he knew what had struck The Wall.

However...

’What is this thing... and why does it look like a dragon?’