In the pitch black darkness, the city became firewood for the flames. The fire was spreading in the city, like a giant’s footprints, step by step, drawing everything into destruction.
Thick smoke rose from the burning houses, like black hands reaching towards the sky that had been burnt red. Obstructed by rain clouds, the smoke descended from the sky as hot rain of an ashy gray color, with a burning smell. Not only did the rain not put out the spreading fire, but it made the fire rage on as if the droplets were oil rather than water.
The heat from the burning city seemed to have boiled the ocean water. In the turbulent tides, densely packed black shadows could be seen. Under the illumination of the glow of the fire, in the murky sea, a writhing river of darkness extended from afar. More and more rivers of darkness advanced along with the ocean currents and tides, converging here and encircling Avalon.
Each river of darkness consisted of countless vile spawn of the sea. The undercurrent of the ocean had carried them here. Various tribes merging together, they formed the rivers of darkness that seemed to stretch on endlessly. In the faint singing that drifted in and out, they hissed wildly, climbed onto the shallow beach and rushed towards the city, each one striving to be the first.
Just like weeds that could not be wiped out completely, they brutally overcame the defenses, having no fear of death. When their numbers increased to a certain extent, it was truly an appalling sight.
Under attack from the vast army of Murlocs, the downtown area had completely fallen. Apart from a few sporadic defenses, only midtown was still standing, relying on its geographical advantage of being located on higher grounds.
In Ye Qingxuan’s observation, all the other roads leading to the midtown had been blown up, leaving only the Tower Bridge guarded by the Knights of the Round Table.
On the wide bridge that could only accommodate slightly more than ten horse-drawn carriages traveling side by side, the significance of numbers was reduced to the extreme. The knights in power armor were armed with weapons and formed a barrier that fended off the advancing black tide again and again.
The grand knights who had their titles conferred upon by the royal family were in Archangel Armor, allowing them to fly in the air.
The aether furnace operating in full capacity spurted out a blazing flame of a few meters long behind them, like wings of fire. They were equipped with giant weapons tens of meters long. When wielded with their terrifying, inhuman strength, the weapons could cause huge damage. An arbitrary strike could create a bloody crevice in the black tide.
Right at the front of the line of defense, a towering figure of three meters stood like a reef, repelled the tides of Murlocs again and again. Hot breath spurted out from his nose and mouth underneath his helmet. Even from afar, the frightening amount of heat contained in his breath could be felt.
Round Table Armor Geraint!
In the area within ten meters from the knight, gravity was constantly changing with no observable pattern. Sometimes it would be close to nothing, and sometimes it would increase suddenly to hundreds of times the usual amount! All demons who dared to approach were shredded to pieces by the gravitational turbulence.
Gravity formed an invisible iron ball, which rolled forward and crushed everything in its way, causing the ground to cave in. Countless demons collapsed suddenly like sand castles, their bones shattered into powder. Their blood swirled due to the pull of gravity, outlining the contour of the force, making it seem ten times more ferocious.
However, be it the crushing of the gravity increased by a hundredfold or the pull of the spear of gravity compressed into an ultra-dense matter which could suck everything within tens of meters from it towards its core, none of them could get rid of the endless black tide.
The downtown was engulfed in a sea of fire, the midtown was defended difficultly, but the uptown was shrouded in deathly quiet darkness, where no sound could be heard.
In the sea, most of the Royal Fleet’s warships were badly damaged after being swept by the river of darkness, and more than half of the hull enchantments had been broken. The Murlocs and the navy slaughtered each other bloodily on the deck. More and more warships of older versions exhausted their firepower and sank into the sea after the Murlocs chipped holes in them.
Wooden warships were unable to cope with such a situation regardless of how strong their firepower was. After exhausting their ammunition, some of the warships of older versions chose to charge towards the depths of the river of darkness and detonate their own aether furnaces, perishing together with a large number of enemies.
Only slightly more than ten warships of newer versions that had been refitted in the last few decades still maintained combat power, but the situation was at stake.
At the core of the fleet, on a reserve flagship, a figure suddenly rose into the air, holding a cup made of rusted iron, and sprinkled clear spring water into the ocean.
It was one of the seven Cups of Virtues—the Cup of Honesty!
The Cup of Honesty immediately drained the musician holding it of all his strength and vitality upon its launch, turning him into flying ashes, and what remained of him was blown away by the wind. However, the Cup of Honesty remained floating in the sky, a sweet-smelling stream of water gushing out nonstop.
When the sweet-smelling stream sprayed into the air, it evaporated rapidly, then condensed into clouds of clear water mist. They reflected the neon light from the melodies in the glow of the fire.
The water mist had a colloidal texture and instead of blending into the sea, the droplets were suspended on the surface of the sea. They spread rapidly and expanded in all directions, with the reserve flagship as the center.
As the faint mist spread fast, the air crackled, and the seawater was in mad turmoil, forming plenty of white foam on the surface. Demons exposed to the air started to scream as if they had been burnt by fire, and the creatures that dared to inhale quickly felt a burning pain from their respiratory tracts.
The skin exposed to the mist began to rupture rapidly, then hardened into cuticle. Blood oozed out of the countless cracks resembling tiny mouths, the exposed flesh in the cracks hardening rapidly as well.
The lungs were the first to be destroyed. The lobes quickly lost their elasticity. The hardened and deformed lungs could no longer complete the respiration process. They lost moisture and quickly dried up. In the end, the lobes were dehydrated, looking shriveled and contracted, like pieces of rubber burnt black on both sides.
Suffocation brought death.
‘Honesty’ took away any room for flexibility.
Fortunately, ‘Honesty’ only affected bodies made of flesh and blood, and was insoluble in water. The cloudy mist floated on the sea, dancing calmly, posing no harm to the navy officers on the decks of the fleet.
The attacks of the vile spawn of the sea were temporarily halted, allowing the remaining fleet to maintain their line of defense, albeit difficultly.
Following the success brought by the Cup of Honesty, the defending troops in other positions received permission from the command center, three more Cups of Virtues were used successively on the battlefield.
‘Courage,’ which produced a large number of hyperactive spores that spread with the wind and grew wildly, was used on the shores of the downtown area. A large number of demons are parasitized by the spores. In just a few seconds, the demons had rapidly swelled, rotted, expanded and exploded, scattering the spores cultivated in their viscera in all directions.
Iron sand resembling rain fell from the sky. Upon its fall, it quickly decomposed into gas and diffused into the air. Demons would start seeing illusions after inhalation of the gas, driving them into madness and making them unable to distinguish the enemy from their own.
Such was the effect of ‘Justice,’ which descended from the sky.
Before the Tower Bridge, Geraint sighed and raised his arm, holding a gray cloud of mist, which resembled a huge quilt, with gravity, then dropping it to the front. It was ‘Benevolence’, the cup that had the smallest radiation penetration range but could cause intense changes in matter.
Where the gray mist was, everything was corroded, be it metal or rock. The outer layer peeled off, and the material became full of holes, crumbling at the slightest touch. Even such hard materials were eroded, let alone flesh and blood…
Other than ‘Temperance’ and ‘Generosity’ that were not here, and the Cup of Hope which was considered to be the most dangerous, all four Cups of Virtues currently owned by the government of Avalon had been used on the battlefield.
The appalling numbers of the vile spawn of the sea had been temporarily contained.
But their attacks did not stop at all, but increased by several times!
Even ten times as much!
The rivers of darkness were boiling.
The rivers of darkness that extended from the waters in all directions had not been cut off. Although a lot of the vile spawn of the sea had been killed, to the vast sea of darkness, they were insignificant as it would only take a day and a night to cultivate their replacements. Creatures of this level… The sea of darkness could produce as many as were needed!
Shortly after, frightening hisses sounded from the river of darkness one by one. Giant mouths opened one after another. The huge sea monsters summoned, which had traveled days and nights from all over the oceans to come to Avalon, opened their mouths and swallowed their food, free from all inhibitions. They consumed a large number of Murlocs, chewing them into pulp, to fill their hunger from not eating for the past few days.
Then, they set foot on the battlefield…
The first to emerge from the tens of meters of the tsunami was a shriveled Murloc standing on the skull of a humpback whale. The old Murloc, which was so ancient that most of its scales had fallen off, had grown a face that looked vaguely human. The gills on its cheeks opened, tasting the blood in the water vapor. Then it looked down and beat the iron drum, which had cracks all over it and was covered in layers of parasitic rattan, in his arms.
Roaring bangs burst forth from the sunken iron drums, causing terrifying aether waves comparable to that caused by a Scepter.
The creature was a vile spawn of the sea created during the previous awakening of Leviathan. It had survived for these 150 years. It had been hiding for these 150 years, shepherding sea monsters in the deep sea, waiting for its god to awaken.
Once it had appeared, the endless swarms of Murlocs seemed to have gone mad. Their bodies expanded as they entered a frenzy, depleting their worthless vitality to obtain powers far beyond the ordinary.
It was born the supreme leader of the Murlocs, the demon musician that could hear the words of their god and play the song of the tsunami—the tide summoner!
Next, from the black tide that opened up for it, a huge tentacle reached out in a sudden, slammed down, and crushed a warship into pieces! The monstrous tentacle turned, dexterously capturing the humans scattering from the warship. Then, the countless suckers on the tentacles parted to reveal the sharp teeth within, and it gleefully sucked the fresh blood, which it had been craving for ages.
A humongous silhouette emerged from the depths of the ocean, its soft limbs unfolding. The countless tentacles in the depths waved about like flowers.
Countless red spots resembling the holy emblem grew on top of its head, and as the suckers drew fresh blood continuously, the red color of the spots turned a shade brighter. It was the legendary nightmare of the deep sea, the red-spotted squid known as the Ten-thousand-hand Clergy…
At least one huge shadow was emerging slowly from each of the 16 pitch black rivers in the sea comprising of Murlocs. When Leviathan sang in its long dream before its resurrection to summon them, they had quickly rushed here from all over the oceans.
At the moment, less than one-tenth had come. More behemoths were on their way…
They were the true vile spawn of the sea that had the blood of catastrophes bestowed upon them and was granted their own territories by Leviathan, the rulers of the boundless oceans!
If Leviathan was not sealed before they arrive, the situation in the weeks to come would only get worse. The Royal Fleet at sea had just realized that the situation was becoming worse and worse. The first person to discover it was the lookout of the outermost defense frigate of the fleet.
Seawater is flowing.
Flowing irregularly…
The flows are converging at Avalon!
Amid the singing of the tide summoner, the waters roared in response. Huge waves brewed up from afar one after another, howling as they approached. But they did not retreat.
In the blink of an eye, the appalling tide swallowed two warships that failed to escape in time. Crushed by the enormous weight, the steel was smashed into tiny pieces. The terrifying impact from the denotation of the aether furnaces was also suppressed by the seawater. A huge bubble was all that was produced, spewing seawater into the air, only for it to fall back quickly.
More and more tides converged here. Only then did the lookouts realize that the water level was increasing! At the moment, Avalon was already trapped in a bowl-like structure!
Coming from all directions, the waves roared and rose slowly, interweaving into an iron-gray wall. At sea, beneath the skies, all that could be heard was the frightening noise of tons of tons of seawater being carried by the waves.
The sea was still slowly rising. It rose bit by bit, swallowing the shallow beach. A tsunami of a few meters high tsunami howled as it approached, destroying the burning houses and extinguishing the pitiful flame, seeping into the outer parts of downtown.
All the lookouts could no longer suppress the screams in their throats.
The demons no longer paid attention to the fortifications nor the lines of defense, no longer cared about what the humans’ trump card could be, nor anything that humans are trying to do. The humans could do whatever they wanted, for whatever they could do wouldn’t matter.
The demons were going to increase the sea level and drown Avalon completely! Then, the suffocating human beings would have to face the real power of the vile spawn of the sea!
…
At the moment, in the flagship of the Royal Fleet, a dead silence ensued in the Command Center of Defense of the Bridge and the Inland Sea. In the suffocating hot air, General Servin, who was sitting in the chair of the commander, silently removed his tobacco pipe from the corner of his mouth. He took out his handkerchief, and carefully wiped the tooth marks off the briar pipe, which he had bitten on out of shock. But two rows of dents had already appeared on the originally sleek and smooth briar pipe, and could not be wiped off.
Such a pity. It should have been a piece of art.
Servin sighed and leaned his whole body back on the chair as if he were a deflated balloon.
“Life really sucks as the temporary commander of the Royal Fleet,” he whispered softly.
The sheet-white deputy looked at him. “Sir, now what should we…”
Servin smiled in self-mockery and looked up. “Issue a general order.”
He paused and said softly, “We are losing the war, and the capital is at stake. Anglo hopes that all its citizens will honor their duty. This ship would lead the attack later, aiming at the nine o’clock direction from the north. Please make good use of the remaining opportunity for victory.” He gripped the pipe in his hand and cut off the communication.
In the dead silence, the second officer spoke with a dry voice, “Sir, our ship has no reserves available.”
“Don’t we have three more aether furnaces?” Servin cast him a final glance and said, “Give my orders—Attack!”
“For victory!” he declared.
So, the central flagship, the Sovereign, roared, and launched an attack on the tall wall of tides!
Servin closed his eyes. “Marquis Lancelot, I’ll be going on my way first.”
