49: Chapter 49 The Last Line of Defense

The players of the Divine Wind Battalion were like a pack of mad dogs with lit fuses, charging headlong into the steel-like ranks of the Black Demon Guards through the gap that Charge to the End had torn open with his life.

There was no order, no tactics, only the most primitive exchange of life for damage.

A Rogue player from the Divine Wind Battalion, the moment his chest was pierced by a magic spear, plunged his poison-coated dagger deep into the gap of a Black Demon Guard's armor. With a fierce and gratified smile on his face, he dissolved into a stream of data along with his enemy.

A Talisman Master player covered his body in his last few detonation talismans, acting like a human cannonball as he crashed into the densest part of the enemy group. The last words he left in the legion channel before dying were: "Damn, this wave was worth it!"

From the very beginning, the battle entered a white-hot meat grinder phase.

The Black Demon Guards were elite, the sharpest blade in the hands of the Demon Lord Night Radiance.

They were well-coordinated, radiating demonic energy, and every strike was precise and lethal.

But they had never seen enemies like this before.

These people were not afraid of death.

No, they welcomed death.

They used their bodies to block gun barrels, used their teeth to bite armor, used the most unsightly methods to harass, and used the most resolute ways to self-destruct.

Their attacks might have been weak, but that overwhelming madness, that determination to treat their "characters" as consumables, made these battle-hardened Demonic cultivators feel, for the first time, an inner... confusion and chill.

However, confusion could not bridge the chasm of power.

After just the initial charge, the offensive of the Divine Wind Battalion was contained.

The Black Demon Guards reorganized their formation, and like a black tide, began to crush them in reverse.

The players' fragile defensive line was easily torn apart, dissolving into white light in droves, but before they died, they still stubbornly held onto one, or even half an enemy, creating even a second of breathing room for the companions behind them.

"Hold the line! The flanks! Keep pouring it on, damn it!"

The roar of Immovable as a Mountain was already hoarse. He stared fixedly at the battlefield, the bloodshot veins in his eyes almost bursting.

He knew that this brief stalemate was bought by Charge to the End and countless brothers at the cost of "30% deletion of account." Once this momentum was lost, there would be no more chances.

And right on the edge of this scorched battlefield, in the temporary command post, the air seemed to have frozen.

Keyboard Warrior Governing the Nation gripped the wrist of Gossip Reporter Little Trumpet so tightly that it hurt her.

"How is it? Did you ask? What did that guy Chen Kang say!"

"I'm asking! Stop shaking me!" Little Trumpet's face was deathly pale. Her fingertips were tapping rapidly on a secret chat interface in the void, every word trembling.

On the other end, hundreds of miles away at the Black Spider Hall headquarters, Chen Kang was facing a water mirror, which displayed the incredibly tragic battlefield.

His hands were shaking, and the teacup he was holding fell to the ground, shattering into pieces.

Madmen... He had seen the players' madness, but he had never seen them march to their deaths in such an organized, unhesitating way.

He watched as those familiar or unfamiliar IDs dimmed one by one, and the barrier in his heart born from the hatred of his clan's extermination was quietly collapsing.

Just then, his secret communication channel with Little Trumpet lit up.

[Gossip Reporter Little Trumpet]: Quick! Chen Kang! Does the Heavenly Demon Blood Sacrifice Grand Array have a physical array core? The kind that can be destroyed!

Chen Kang's pupils constricted sharply.

Array core?

He subconsciously looked up at the figure suspended in the sky in the water mirror, god-like and demon-like — Night Radiance.

In his mind, the deepest secrets about the Demon Lord circulating within the sect flashed by in an instant.

The legend about the "moon soul stone," which he regarded as a taboo, yet could not help but pry into.

Tell them?

Tell these enemies who exterminated his family?

But... if he didn't tell them, these madmen... and that ancestor in the ancestral hall, as well as the faint sense of belonging he had just developed... would all turn to dust.

His heart was in a tug-of-war, and cold sweat instantly soaked his back.

[Gossip Reporter Little Trumpet]: Chen Kang! Answer me! This is our last chance! I'm begging you!

The word "begging" was like a needle, stinging Chen Kang's numb heart.

He remembered the girl in the market who, while haggling with him, clumsily stuffed a bottle of healing medicine into his hand;

He remembered the look of "one of our own" that the group of madmen gave him when they pulled off that absurd stunt of "reciting the ancestor's quotes" to "catch the mole."

He gritted his teeth, his hands trembling as he typed a line on the communicator.

[Chen Kang]: Yes! But you... can't destroy it.

[Chen Kang]: The array core is that moon soul stone in the Demon Lord's hand! It is his life-bound magical treasure, and more importantly, his... life!

The moment the message was sent, Chen Kang felt as if all his strength had been drained, and he collapsed into his chair.

In the command post, when Little Trumpet read this line, the air completely froze.

The last trace of color faded from Keyboard Warrior Governing the Nation's face. He slowly let go of her hand, staggered back two steps, and sat down on the ground, his eyes empty.

Array core... is in the Boss's own hands.

And it's his life-bound magical treasure.

What does this mean?

It means their only hope is to charge in front of that terrifying Demon Lord at the peak of Foundation Establishment, pseudo-Golden Core realm, snatch his lifeline from his hands, and then destroy it.

This is no longer hope.

This is naked... despair, the kind that makes one unable to even conceive of the thought of struggling.

"It's over..." a player muttered to himself.

And at this very moment, the situation on the battlefield completely collapsed.

"Boom—!!"

From the rear position, a loud noise erupted.

The first war puppet, painstakingly built by Liver Emperor V87 and the players of the Engineering Department, stepped onto the battlefield with heavy strides.

It was covered in explosive runes, its two arms were huge battering rams, like a rampaging steel beast.

"For the Industrial Revolution! Ram it for me!" Liver Emperor V87 roared for the last time in the channel.

The war puppet charged fearlessly toward a Black Demon Guard, but was casually tapped on its core by the Black Demon Guard's spear.

"Click."

The puppet's movements stopped abruptly, and then, it exploded with a bang!

The violent airwave overturned several surrounding players, but only made the Black Demon Guard's protective demonic light flicker slightly.

Industry, in the face of absolute immortal magic power, appeared so ridiculous.

High above, Night Radiance's brows furrowed even deeper.

The death throes of the ants below caused a trace of impatience to arise in his heart, which was restless because he was about to see the dawn.

He rubbed his fingertips against the moon soul stone, applying slight pressure, as if soothing something.

"Yue'er... these bugs are more annoying than I imagined."

He decided not to wait anymore.

He was going to take action himself, crush these bugs who didn't know life from death, and get the only thing he wanted.

He slowly stood up, and that world-destroying pressure suddenly intensified tenfold!

It was as if the entire firmament was collapsing toward the ground!

Pfft!

All the players who were still standing, regardless of strength, spat out a mouthful of blood at this instant, pressed firmly against the ground by this pressure, unable to move.

Night Radiance raised his hand, and in his palm, a mass of black lightning, dense to the extreme, was condensing.

"It's over."

His cold voice was like the judgment of the Grim Reaper.

Immovable as a Mountain held that battered pot lid firmly over his head. The pressure made every bone in his body groan under the unbearable burden.

He looked at the black lightning about to descend, looked at the brothers around him who were crushed or eroded by demonic energy and disappeared into light. There was no anger in his eyes, only a dead silence.

He remembered the days and nights on the forum when he argued until his face was red with that reckless fool Charge to the End over tactics.

He remembered how he mocked the other for having courage but no strategy.

And also remembered how the other mocked him for being timid and indecisive.

So... in the end, it was all the same.

In the face of absolute power, what difference was there between being reckless and being steady?

Perhaps, that guy was right.

At least, when he charged out, it was gratifying.

The corners of Immovable as a Mountain's mouth curled into an ugly smile.

He used his last bit of strength to send the final voice message in the legion channel.

"Brothers... in the next life, let me... be the one to charge..."

Before the words finished, that mass of black lightning crashed down.

There was no earth-shattering roar, only a dead, dark silence.

Wherever the lightning passed, whether it was players, the wreckage of war puppets, or the earth itself, all were silently annihilated.

The figure of Immovable as a Mountain, along with his pot lid that symbolized "protection," were completely swallowed by the darkness.

[World Announcement: "Immovable as a Mountain" has fallen, Life Essence decreased by 50%.]

[World Announcement: "Skillful Hands Mending" has fallen...]

[World Announcement: "Liver Emperor V87" has fallen...]

[World Announcement: "Keyboard Warrior Governing the Nation" has fallen...]

A series of system announcements, like a requiem composed for the players, coldly scrolled across the retinas of every survivor.

The battlefield was silent.

Only a few players remained, lying in pools of blood, looking despairingly at the sky.

At the back mountain, the last life-skill female player, "Appearance is Justice," shielded the trembling old blacksmith Grandpa Li with her body. Before her eyes, the energy bar named [Life Essence] was rapidly depleting.

She didn't cry, just stared blankly in the direction of the ancestral hall, murmuring to herself.

"Ancestor... your golden coffin... I'm afraid I won't be able to see it..."

The next second, her figure also turned into dust.

High in the air, Night Radiance indifferently withdrew his hand, as if he had just crushed a nest of ants.

He took one last look at the cleared battlefield, and his gaze finally fell upon that solitary ancestral hall.

He took a step, and his figure appeared above the ancestral hall. In those deep eyes, for the first and last time, a hint of irrepressible excitement and fanaticism was revealed.

"key of the divine prison... I am coming!"

However, just a moment before he was about to make his move.

A cold system prompt, laced with blood-colored mist, popped up in front of all the fallen players.

[Warning: You have died. The current area is suppressed by the "Heavenly Demon Blood Sacrifice Grand Array". Souls cannot return, and the resurrection channel has been interrupted.]