Chapter 127

"Plan change." Puglin's voice instantly resonated in the consciousness of all the dragons through powerful Dragon Tongue Magic, clear, calm, and beyond question.

"Our goal is no longer to storm the rift, but to lure that 'hill' and most of its minions at least twenty kilometers away from the fissure, dragging them into the 'Great Jaw Canyon' of the Black Ridge Plateau."

Fedmina's roar instantly echoed across the battlefield: "Clumsy lump of rotting meat! Your flames are only fit to polish my scales!" The extreme insult and substantial burning pain successfully drew the Demon Lord's primary hatred firmly toward her.

A portion of the metal dragons formed several elite wedge formations, and under the lead of Puglin himself, launched several highly threatening, yet appropriately controlled, assaults.

The target was aimed directly at the "Abyssal Colossus" and the "Soul-Binding Guards" at the edge of the fissure. Puglin personally struck, a condensed torrent of metal breath melting and shattering the arm of one colossus;

The holy impact of the gold dragons forced the Soul-Binding Guards to form a defensive formation. These actions gave the Demon Lord a clear signal: the dragons intended to forcibly break through the line and make direct contact with the fissure! This triggered "Gorgtan's" core instinct to defend its territory.

Seeing that the hatred was solidified, Puglin watched as the Demon Lord let out a heaven-shaking roar and began to move with mountain-like strides, commanding the main army to press toward the direction of the metal dragons' assault. He immediately ordered:

"Everyone, maintain contact, withdraw in an orderly fashion!"

The dragons no longer lingered in battle, but instead, in a loose circular formation, continuously used breath and spells to attack the vanguard and flanks of the demon army, especially by constantly "provoking" the Demon Lord himself to ensure it would not lose interest.

…………

When the Demon Lord's roar and the thunder of the dragon interception battle echoed in the canyon twenty miles away, the core area of the Howling Abyss fell into a strange, relative state of silence.

Sakavi fully manifested from a dense, seemingly living shadow. Behind him followed the silent, sharp-eyed black dragon Karawa and his dragon-beast subordinates.

Like the most loyal shadow guards, they quickly dispersed, occupying several key energy nodes around the fissure, carrying out efficient and silent clearing of the remaining scattered demons or Abyssal derivatives.

Sakavi did not immediately look at the fissure, but instead raised a front claw. Shadows coiled between his claws, condensing into several constantly rotating, incredibly complex dark runes.

A short, harsh syllable issued from his throat—not Dragon Tongue used for communication, but an incantation purely for channeling the essence of shadow.

As he cast the spell, a heavy grinding sound came from the ground. Twelve obsidian obelisks, which had long been lurking nearby and disguised by magic as ordinary rock pillars, broke through the cover of activated tissue and slowly rose.

They were precisely controlled, centering on the fissure, and inserted into specific positions around it, forming a twisted, non-Euclidean geometric array.

The surfaces of these obelisks were etched with dense, flowing mixed incantations of Abyssal and Dragon Tongue, but their cores had been thoroughly "polluted" and reconstructed by unique shadow secret arts.

The moment they were in position, the obelisk bodies began to absorb the stray Abyssal energy and light from the surrounding environment, causing the light at the heart of the abyss to dim slightly, and condensing a point of deep darkness at the top of each obelisk that seemed capable of devouring souls.

A powerful and eerie shadow confinement field began to take shape, not only isolating the violent exchange of energy inside and out but also beginning to faintly "suppress" the pulsation frequency of the fissure itself.

He opened his mouth and spat out strings of low, long-winded Dragon Tongue magic passages filled with multiple resonances and eerie harmonies. This incantation sounded neither holy nor violent, but instead carried a cold, programmatic, and rule-level twisting force.

Suddenly, the tone of the incantation became sharp, like a billion rusted knives scraping, and the obelisk array flared with black light, focusing a massive, transformed shadow corruption force onto the fissure.

This force attempted to forcibly accelerate its "disorder" and "inertia." The purple-black light of the fissure began to grow dim and mottled, and at the edges, dark red energy crystals resembling rust appeared and spread, while the amplitude of the fissure's expansion and contraction weakened significantly and became sluggish.

The remaining Abyssal energy spontaneously condensed into tentacles or demonic faces to counterattack, but all were suppressed and dispersed by the dragon-beasts and the shadow field of the obelisks.

Sakavi's spellcasting was focused to the extreme; there was not a hint of emotion in his yellow slit pupils, only cold calculation and absolute mastery over the dark arts. The fissure was shrinking and dimming at a speed visible to the naked eye, its surface covered in more and more spiderweb-like shadow patterns and rust crystals.

However, just as the sealing reached its most critical point and the fissure was about to close completely, a sudden change occurred! Deep within the fissure, that originally violent but chaotic Abyssal will seemed to undergo some strange qualitative change due to being on the verge of complete closure.

It suddenly condensed into a beam of extremely concentrated purple-black light, filled with pure malice and a will to strike back, ignoring the obstruction of the shadow tentacles and lunging at Sakavi!

This was no longer scattered energy, but the most vicious curse backlash issued by the Abyss against "ending" itself. The sealing ritual of the Corrupted Swamp had reached its most dangerous moment.

Just as that curse beam, condensed with Abyssal malice, was about to pierce the black dragon's chest, a glimmer of long-anticipated, almost cruel, dark light flashed deep within his emotionless yellow slit pupils.

He did not interrupt the long and complex sealing Dragon Tongue, but the tail end of his chanting shifted ever so slightly, sliding from a note that promoted "rusting" to a dark syllable representing "grafting" and "transfer."

At the same time, the patch of shadow on his left front claw, which had always been denser than on other parts, suddenly peeled away!

That patch of shadow was not mere darkness; at the moment of peeling, it transformed into a shadow mirror image with the exact same magical fluctuation as Sakavi, meeting the incoming beam.

However, this mirror image was by no means a simple illusion; it was a channel Sakavi had prepared in advance, tightly connected to an "anchor point" far away.

The Abyssal curse "hit" the mirror image precisely, and the purple-black torrent of malice surged in frantically, intending to pollute and tear apart his soul essence.

But the next second, this destructive force followed the shadow channel, moving at a speed exceeding space, and was forcibly grafted onto the soul of a demon prepared in advance in the Sulfur Valley twenty kilometers away!

The final light of the fissure was extinguished completely. That once-pulsating, massive purple-black wound had now become an ugly scar covered in thick dark-red "rust scabs" and spiderweb-like shadow patterns, branded firmly onto the earth.

All abnormal sucking, howling, and energy eruptions ceased. The direct channel between the Abyss and this plane was completely locked by a seal characterized by cold, inertia, and twisted shadows.

Next, Sakavi did something that seemed trivial: he extended his claw and made a virtual grasp at the very center of the seal, where the rust scabs were thickest.

A small, inconspicuous piece of "scar tissue" with dark red rust and shadow patterns detached silently, flew into the shadow under his wing, and disappeared. Was this a "backdoor" or "key" he had reserved? No one knew.

When the black dragon's message arrived, the interception force in the canyon, under Puglin's command, suddenly erupted with a final round of suppressive breath volleys.

Immediately, under the cover of the bursting energy and dust, the various formations rapidly ascended, broke contact, and flew swiftly toward the pre-agreed coordinates, the "Old Crown" highland.

…………

This was a towering mountain peak standing alone on the edge of the Black Ridge Plateau, far from the direct pollution of the Abyss. Its top was not sharp, but a huge, unusually flat and vast platform, as if it had been sliced flat by a giant blade from mythology.

The rock mass was grayish-white and dense in texture, possessing a natural, weak resistance to Abyssal energy.

It was currently the "twilight" hour of this plane, with the sky rolling with dark red and deep purple like eternal war flames, but the sky above the highland was eerily clear. A special magic channel formed a natural, weak barrier, isolating the filth and howling remaining from the Abyss below.

Scattered along the edge of the platform were several huge, heavily weathered square stone pillar remnants, carved with ancient patterns that could no longer be recognized, suggesting that in an era too distant to trace, this might have been a watchtower or a holy site.

The dragons landed one after another, their heavy bodies slamming onto the rock platform, emitting thunderous sounds that echoed in the thin air.

When the last dragon landed on the "Old Crown" highland, the weary panting and the sound of scales rubbing against each other had not yet fully subsided, and Puglin slowly raised his scarred head.

Twilight, like a congealed blood scab, was smeared onto his amber scales, and those usually calm slit pupils were now settled with shadows heavier than mountains.

His voice was not loud, but it was like a meteorite crashing into a silent ice lake, shattering the brief, illusory tranquility of surviving a disaster:

"The fissure sealing mission was very successful; all those present are worthy of the glory of the dragons."

He paused, and the thin cold wind at high altitude swept across the platform, as if even it were holding its breath.

"However," Puglin's tone sank, every word sounding as if it had been scraped off metal, "I bring bad news from afar."

His gaze swept across every pair of dragon eyes on the platform that were watching him, whether they were burning, cold, or wise.

"Just as we were fighting here to seal the Howling Abyss, the 'Pale Pass' to the northwest... has fallen."

He announced the name of the place as if spitting out toxic ice shards.

"The Paladin Commander of the Church of Light, 'Unbroken Bulwark' Bayer, along with the twelve-man Holy Emblem Knight Order he led... have been confirmed to have all fallen.

The secondary fissure they attempted to seal was not only not closed, but under the violent backlash and the concentrated impact of the demons... it has been completely breached."

A wave of uncontrollable scale-armor trembling and heavy breathing sounds came from the platform.

"Very good. From now on, your Marshal position is dismissed. When it will be restored, wait for your Grand Duke to decide. Now I have the right to do this."

He finally delivered the cruel conclusion, his voice sounding hollow and cold in the twilight:

"Our victory here cannot reverse the fatal gap that has appeared in the entire defensive line. This grand operation of jointly intercepting the Abyssal infiltration... has failed on a strategic level."

In the shadows, Sakavi's hoarse voice sounded again, like a viper sliding over cold rock.

He did not look at any of the dragons, his yellow slit pupils staring at the horizon gradually being swallowed by the Abyssal twilight, as if he had already seen the terrifying tide about to surge.

"Then," he began unhurriedly, every word wrapped in a layer of cold, almost mocking 'pragmatism', "my great victors, I fear there is only one course of action left that is decent and wise for us now—"

He paused deliberately, letting the word "decent" emit a rich, ironic flavor in the bloody air.

"Disperse and 'take temporary shelter.' Or rather, find a cave deep and hidden enough to properly 'store' yourselves."

He finally moved his head, his gaze sweeping over those scarred, massive bodies, his tone devoid of any joy of survival, only cold, unsettling foresight.

"The things crawling out of a fresh wound like the 'Pale Pass'... will not be the howling Abyssal scum we just slaughtered."

His voice dropped even lower, carrying a chilling certainty of someone who knew the inside story, "The first wave of hunters with complete intelligence—what their claws crave will inevitably be those of us who have just successfully 'humiliated' the Abyss and still carry the fresh scent of the seal."

A slight gurgle issued from his throat, like a sneer in the dark.

"Before those slow-moving 'main forces' in the Pantheon finally decide to move their noble feet and step into this mess," the Corrupted Swamp used a clearly contemptuous term.

"We had best be thoroughly... 'low-key.' Let shadows become scales, and silence replace roars. Any unnecessary appearance is equivalent to nailing a glowing tombstone to oneself."