Chapter 73: Chapter 73: The Bloodied Skies

Chapter 73: The Bloodied Skies

SKREEE!

The sky above the Great Wall tore open with the deafening, unnatural shrieks of the Corrupted Storm-Vultures. 𝚏𝕣𝐞𝗲𝐰𝕖𝐛𝐧𝕠𝕧𝚎𝚕.𝐜𝚘𝗺

They blotted out the bruised clouds, diving toward the Vanguard defensive lines like a barrage of living missiles.

HISS!

A volley of highly corrosive, neon-green acid rained down.

It struck the shimmering blue magical barriers erected by the Academy mages, sizzling violently against the shields and filling the air with the acrid stench of sulfur and melted ozone.

Standing at the absolute forefront of the anti-air Mage Battalion was Estella Everdawn.

Her silver bracelet was fully expanded into her wooden staff. She was sweating profusely.

Her breathing was heavy, but her violet eyes were locked onto the chaotic skies with unbreakable focus.

She wasn’t firing massive, flashy lasers like she had in the Wildlands crater.

That would drain her mana too quickly in a prolonged siege. Instead, she was relying on her monstrous Level 35 Intelligence stat.

Dozens of microscopic, needle-thin points of white-gold starlight hovered around her, snapping upward to snipe the wings and eyes of the diving vultures.

"Hold the line!" a senior Vanguard Mage screamed next to her, struggling to maintain his barrier.

"Do not let them break the shields, or the acid will melt the infantry below us!"

Estella gritted her teeth. She glanced down at the chaotic battlefield at the base of the wall.

She saw the flash of Aegon’s crimson spear and the freezing mist of Reina’s axe. But nowhere in the shadows did she see Draven.

’He is not here,’ Estella realized, her heart hammering against her ribs.

’And he is not going to save me.’

She felt a sudden, profound sense of gratitude.

Draven knew she needed this.

If he held her hand, she would forever remain the helpless captive from the basement. She needed to bleed.

She needed to forge her own legend.

SKREEE-RAAAAH!

The clouds parted violently.

An Alpha Storm-Vulture, three times the size of the others, plummeted directly toward Estella’s sector.

Its feathers were reinforced with dark metallic plating, and its maw dripped with highly concentrated acid capable of melting through standard Vanguard shields instantly.

"Scatter!" a mage yelled, breaking formation in sheer panic.

"Do not move!" Estella commanded, her voice ringing with the unnatural, heavy authority of the Star of Ruin.

She did not flinch. She watched the massive Alpha plummet toward her.

She was struggling. Her arms trembled under the immense magical pressure radiating from the beast.

’Wait,’ Estella told herself, her eyes narrowing.

’Do not waste the shot. Wait for the opening.’

The Alpha opened its grotesque beak, preparing to unleash a torrent of acid.

’Now.’

Estella thrust her staff upward. She didn’t aim for the heavily armored chest. She aimed directly down its open throat.

ZAP!

A highly concentrated, hyper-dense needle of starlight shot perfectly into the beast’s mouth, piercing straight through its brainstem from the inside out.

The Alpha convulsed mid-air, its brain instantly scrambled.

Its massive, lifeless body crashed violently onto the concrete parapet, sliding to a halt just inches from Estella’s boots.

Estella lowered her staff, panting heavily. The mages around her stared in absolute awe.

She wiped a bead of sweat from her cheek. The battle was far from over, but she was holding the sky.

---

Far below the roaring artillery of the Great Wall, amidst the ocean of clashing monsters and Vanguard Knights, a phantom walked through the battlefield.

Zero moved with effortless, terrifying grace.

His dark tactical suit and featureless white mask blended seamlessly into the smoke and shadows.

With Blank Canvas active, neither the feral Razor-Hounds nor the Vanguard Knights even registered his presence.

He was completely ignoring the foot soldiers.

BEEP! BEEP!

Inside Draven’s mind, the Tactical Radar suddenly flared with an aggressive, blinding crimson ping.

It wasn’t registering a target above ground. It was pointing directly downward.

Zero stopped in the middle of the warzone.

He looked down at his boots.

The corrupted earth was slick with the blood of thousands of fallen monsters and men.

But the blood wasn’t just pooling into mud.

It was seeping.

The earth was actively drinking the biomass.

The corpses of the fallen Vanguard Knights and the shattered Abyssal Razor-Hounds were slowly, almost imperceptibly, sinking into the ground as if pulled by an invisible, necromantic undertow.

’There it is,’ Zero thought, a cold, manic grin stretching beneath his mask.

’Elder Martha’s hidden card.’

Zero channeled his Vector Manipulation.

He applied an extreme gravitational force to the corrupted soil beneath his feet, parting the earth like a curtain.

He slipped into the subterranean darkness, the ground sealing flawlessly behind him.

He dropped thirty feet into a massive, hollowed-out cavern beneath the Wildlands.

The stench was unimaginable. The cavern was a literal womb of rot and dark magic.

In the center of the underground chamber sat a horrifying, unformed monstrosity.

It was a colossal, beating heart made of stitched, mangled flesh.

Veins as thick as tree trunks stretched upward, anchoring into the ceiling, actively sucking the fresh blood and corpses from the battlefield above to fuel its growth.

It was the Corpse Titan.

[Target Identified: The Corpse Titan (Gestation Phase)]

[Status: Incomplete. Absorbing Biomass.]

[Threat Level: Apocalyptic (Upon Completion)]

The beast was not fully formed yet.

It had no eyes, no limbs, no consciousness.

It was merely a grotesque, churning mass of stolen meat, waiting for the carnage above to feed it enough power to break through the surface and eradicate the Great Wall.

Zero landed silently on the cavern floor.

’If the Vanguard Knights knew what they were standing over, they would break formation and run,’ Zero analyzed coldly.

’And if I destroy it now, Martha will just redirect the ambient mana to summon something else. No. We wait. We let her think she has won. As they say, Revenge is the dish best served cold.’

Zero casually walked up to the colossal, beating mass of flesh. He tapped his spatial ring.

THUD. THUD.

Six massive, heavy black spheres materialized at his feet. Cole and Lyra’s Void-Core Charges.

Zero picked up the first bomb. He didn’t just toss it on the ground. He was a master of anatomy and physics.

He used Spatial Rend to make a microscopic, painless incision into the thickest, most vital arterial vein pulsing on the Titan’s unformed chest.

SQUELCH.

He shoved the heavy black sphere deep into the churning meat, sinking it directly next to the Titan’s central core.

The flesh instinctively healed over the intrusion, completely swallowing the bomb.

Zero moved methodically around the cavern.

He planted the second charge near where the structural spine was forming.

The third and fourth went into the primary mana conduits acting as the beast’s lungs.

The fifth and sixth were buried deep into the foundational leg joints.

The Titan did not react. It was a dormant fetus, blindly absorbing the horror of war.

It had absolutely no idea it had just swallowed a lethal dose of alchemical and mechanical annihilation.

Zero stepped back. He looked at the massive, pulsing abomination.

’When all hope is lost,’ Zero mused, pulling his pocket watch from his dark suit.

’When the Cult thinks they have broken the Bastion and this ugly bastard climbs out to take a bow... I will snap my fingers.’

He turned his back on the beast.

He manipulated the gravity around his body and shot back up toward the surface, leaving the dormant bombs ticking silently in the dark.

He emerged back onto the blood-soaked battlefield.

The war was escalating.

The roars of the Goliath Siege-Turtles shook the earth, and in the far distance, blinding flashes of solar heat and liquid-silver clashed against the oppressive, rotting darkness of the Cult Elders.

The Apex battles were raging.

The students were bleeding.

Zero adjusted his white mask, his pitch-black eyes locking onto a massive Cult Elite directing a swarm of hounds toward Aegon’s blind spot.

’Time to prune some branches,’ Zero whispered, melting back into the shadows.