Chapter 100: Unexpected Allies

“Roar——!!! You filthy worms below, hear me?! Your grandpa’s come to clean you up—HAHAHAHAHA!!!”

Wild laughter rolled through the dragon’s roar, each syllable carrying tangible pressure, sweeping across the battlefield like a tidal wave. Low-tier demons collapsed first; their shrieks cut off mid-cry, as if their throats had been crushed.

Then they began trembling uncontrollably, knees buckling as they sank into the blood-mud. Even weaker lesser demons curled into fetal positions, their chitinous skins oozing viscous fear-slime—this wasn’t direct attack, merely residual pressure.

Iroge’s gaze never once lingered on these inferior creatures. His molten-gold vertical pupils locked fixedly onto the high-tier demons rising in the distance, radiating powerful auras.

Behind him came Visk the Blue Dragon and Morax the Silver Dragon, alongside countless chromatic and metallic dragon-beasts. Wherever their breath struck, high-tier demons vanished instantly into ash; only those who had reached Master rank could barely withstand the assault.

The newly assembled high-tier demons suffered catastrophic losses. Goraton had anticipated the legendary dragons in the city would exploit the chaos to strike, and had prepared countermeasures before the siege even began.

Across the battlefield, several profane arrays—drawn earlier with dragon blood and abyssal herbs beneath the scorched earth and ruins—were simultaneously activated. Their purpose wasn’t to attack the dragons directly, but to violently disrupt magical elements, creating vast zones of chaotic airspace beneath the dragon swarm.

As the arrays activated, the air grew unnaturally thick, gravity twisted randomly, and violent elemental currents raged like invisible blades. This drastically increased the dragons’ energy expenditure for flight and precise breath attacks—dragons, being pure magical beings, were exquisitely sensitive to elemental disturbances.

Dozens of pre-positioned abyssal devourers were driven into the battlefield’s core. Before dragon breath could strike, they frenziedly proliferated and interwove their own bodies, instantly forming a thirty-meter-thick wall of living flesh above the high-tier demon clusters. Though dragon breath could burn through layer after layer, each burning layer consumed precious time.

Through countless bloody battles with dragons, demons had gradually evolved specialized dragon-hunters: monstrous, jointed centipedes adorned with countless hooked claws and energy-suppression devices.

They were pre-deployed underground or amid ruins, waiting for a dragon to fly low—then launching upward like springs, wrapping their bodies around the dragon like chains to gradually immobilize it and drag it to the ground.

Some Master-tier demons also began counterattacking, wielding specialized “Scale-Breaking Spears.” Forged from abyssal ore and demon bones, these spears pierced dragon scales with terrifying efficiency, and bore curses of agony and magic disruption. Demons fired volleys in the gaps between dragon breaths, aiming to inflict sustained weakening and harassment.

At this moment, Goraton gripped a fragment of an abyssal core—a shard from a Shenyuan realm destroyed in internal demon civil wars. If the dragons’ assault exceeded expectations, he would unhesitatingly sacrifice the surrounding demons to forcibly tear open a temporary, foul portal.

This portal could not summon reinforcements, but its outpouring of concentrated abyssal miasma would instantly shroud a vast area, severely disrupting the senses, magic circulation, and even physical stability of all non-abyssal beings—including dragons—forcing them to break contact or descend into madness.

Yet all this seemed merely Goraton’s delusion. In Sharut’s plan, there was never any intention to prolong the entanglement.

When the first young red dragon, charging too far ahead, was dragged down by the Chain-Devils and slaughtered under a storm of Scale-Breaking Spears and self-detonating demons, the most ferocious will in the sky made its decision.

Iroge’s throat rumbled with flame. His molten-gold pupils swept across the battlefield behind him—he saw the young dragon-beasts struggling clumsily in the chaotic airspace, saw dragon breaths worn down layer by layer by the flesh walls, and saw the abyssal aura in Goraton’s hand, more loathsome than anything else.

“Roar——!!!”

A dragon roar, shorter than before yet radiating absolute authority, ripped through the battlefield. It was the retreat order. Iroge’s massive body carved a blazing arc through the air, ascending without hesitation. His final breath blast swept clean a winged demon unit attempting to harass the flank, opening an escape corridor for the dragon host.

Immediately after, Morax the Silver Dragon let out a clear, piercing cry, showering the ground with blinding silver light that disrupted the aim of distant ground units. Visk the Blue Dragon summoned cascading bolts of Kuangbao lightning, erecting a brief death barrier between the dragon host and their pursuers.

The dragon host retreated swiftly and orderly, without a single hesitation. Like a storm cloud snapping shut, they broke contact with the enemy even as the demons’ flesh-grinding wheels began to turn.

Unlike the dragons, who moved freely through the skies, heavy cavalry on the ground could not withdraw so easily. Without aerial suppression, the surviving high-tier demons regrouped once more under Goraton’s command.

Farther away, other legendary demon lords, awakened by the massive magical disturbance, began rushing toward the battlefield beneath Agrik City—but true hunters never lack patience.

On the rear flank of the demon army, in the ruined district shrouded by rubble shadows and lingering magical mist, silence spread like a tangible force.

First noticed was the scent: damp moss, cold night dew, and the sharp, bitter aroma of some razor-edged plant—quietly smothering the stench of the abyss.

Then came sound—or rather, the absence of it. The wind, the clatter of falling stones, even the distant battlefield’s roars—all seemed swallowed, replaced by an oppressive, suspenseful stillness.

Then shadows began to flow. Countless tall, slender figures emerged from every corner of the broken walls. They wore dark, light-yet-resilient armor that absorbed nearly all light, its patterns like living vines.

They rode thorn-deer—graceful creatures brimming with explosive power, towering in stature, their antlers polished into dark crystal, each branch entwined with living thorns. Their hooves struck the ground without a sound, as if treading the earth’s pulse.

They formed silent ranks, arrows nocked on their bows glowed with You blue or silver light—enchanted with frost or anti-magic runes, devastating against abyssal demons.

Warriors wielding crescent blades stood as steady as bedrock, yet their gazes pierced like hawks through night. No war cries, no horns—only subtle eye exchanges and silent hand signals among the elves completed all pre-battle coordination, a mastery forged by centuries and countless battles.

Only a low hum, as if vibrating directly within the soul, echoed—the elf horn blown by magic. The moment it sounded, the still shadows came alive.

The towering thorn-deer surged forward. Jagged ruins, fallen beams, piles of rubble—deadly obstacles to any cavalry—vanished beneath their interlaced hooves as if they weren’t there.

Where their hooves touched, brief, shimmering magical paths flickered into existence, allowing them to ignore physical terrain, maintaining ghostly fluidity and balance while accelerating to peak speed in an instant.

Carrying their elf warriors, they surged like a dark flood pouring from the shadows—silent, swift, lethal—straight into the demon army, still turning to face them.

As the shadow of the night elves sliced in from the flank, the true hammer began to thunder from behind the demon lines. First came a deep, synchronized tremor through the earth—like the beat of colossal war drums.

The minotaur army emerged like mountains in formation. Clad in heavy plate armor engraved with runes, they held totemic war-poles or twin-bladed greataxes lowered to their sides. Each step made rubble tremble and rattle.

No frantic charge orders—only low, thunderous war cries resonating from their chests, merging into a wave of terror that shattered courage. Their charge wasn’t the fastest, but it was utterly unstoppable.

Forming a tightly packed wall of steel and fury, they rolled forward with steady, unyielding force toward the core of the demon defense—the heaviest, yet most sluggish sector.

Almost simultaneously, a completely different tide erupted on the minotaurs’ flank—the troll army. Their formation was wild and loose, yet brimmed with astonishing explosive power and savagery.

These towering regenerators shrieked bloodthirsty, piercing cries, swinging massive cleavers, spiked clubs, or stone-bound chain maces. Their charge resembled ravenous beasts—ignoring all formation or discipline, relying on their astonishingly long legs and agility to leap atop broken walls.

They surged forward in chaotic, lethal trajectories, drenching the junctions and weak points of the demon lines. Their goal: infiltrate, split, carve open wounds—and tear them wider with savage attacks.

The minotaurs’ crushing advance and the trolls’ splashing assault formed a perfect, cruel complement behind the demons—one, order and weight; the other, chaos and wildness.

As the demons’ attention was distracted by the pigmen’s desperate stand ahead and the elves’ flank strike, this dual, contrasting charge from behind became a closing iron-and-fang jaw, biting hard into their spine.

Though the battlefield was already in chaos, the terrifying abyssal lord did not appear where he should have—because he faced a more pressing problem: an ambush targeting him personally.