Chapter 91: Fortress Complex

Beyond the ravaged second line of defense, the final barrier of the salt marsh lay like a black colossal beast, silently stretching across the land. This was no simple earth-and-timber fortification, but a true war fortress.

The entire line was built of massive basalt, a stone not only physically indestructible but also magnetically inert to magical energy, effectively resisting the corruption of the Abyss. The walls stood nearly ten meters high, their tops wide enough for four chariots to ride side by side, enabling rapid troop mobility.

The soul of the entire line lay in the five towering defense towers. Each occupied a critical strategic position, carved with enormous energy-concentrating arrays, their peaks embedded with massive magical crystals—the ultimate guarantee for vital strategic support functions.

The five towers could be activated in unison to form a unified magical shield covering the entire fortress complex, capable of withstanding ranged magical bombardments below the Legendary tier. They greatly enhanced the range and power of the defenders’ spells.

Each tower could unleash wide-area elemental storms—chain lightning, blizzards, flames—delivering area-denial strikes against approaching enemy forces. The energy fluctuations radiating from the towers effectively disrupted demons’ perception and divination magic.

Along the walls, battlements, arrow slits, log-and-rock chutes, and boiling-oil spouts were all present. More importantly, the interior structure of the walls was complex, filled with barracks, storage depots, infirmaries, and weapon workshops, sufficient to sustain prolonged defense.

Two hundred thousand heavily armored Pigmen infantry, fierce warriors clad in heavy armor, wielding massive shields comparable to doors and long-handled battle-axes or flails. Their mission: hold every inch of the wall, using absolute strength and defense to crush and hurl back any demon who scaled the ramparts.

Thirty thousand lizardman warriors, withdrawn from the front line, formed the multifunctional core of the defense. After days of rest and reinforcement, they once again entered the meat grinder against the demons—this time, both sides were far more formidable.

This final bulwark, forged from stone, steel, arcane power, and fifty thousand elite soldiers, radiated an air of hopeless solidity. For demons to reach Agrik behind them, they must first bury this fortress under endless corpses and utterly obliterate it.

The fortress now lay deep inland, positioned within the strategic radius of Agrik’s vast mage-tower complex. The demon lords clearly sensed this was no longer a lawless land where they could freely wield their profane powers.

Any attempt to conduct a large-scale profane ritual, like the one that destroyed Norasien, would no longer remain hidden. They would no longer face mere physical defenses, but a complete, alert, and highly coordinated magical defense system.

Any attempt to gather Abyssal energy on a large scale would blaze like a beacon in the night, instantly locked onto by the mage-tower network’s detection grid. What followed would not be silent endurance, but precisely calculated, energy-amplified counter-spells from Agrik’s direction.

“Aquilon, battle report confirmed: the second line fell completely at 3 p.m. today. The fortress complex is now Agrik’s final bulwark.”

“Vex, I’m pleased you’re thinking at this level. But we must be clear: the value here is delay. We’ve already stalled the demons for fifteen days. Agrik’s city defenses are the true final battlefield we’ve prepared for them.”

“When the fire reaches the capital’s very feet, it already signals strategic defeat. To now concentrate all our strength within Agrik is to march ourselves to the final judgment—only a gambler blinded by loss would make such a choice, with vanishingly slim odds.”

“So your plan is to fight a decisive battle here? I hope you haven’t forgotten the real enemy—the semi-divine Abyssal Lord—is still watching from the shadows. Without Agrik’s mage towers, we have no means to resist a being of that caliber.”

“Abandoning our only barrier is strategic suicide. And Agrik isn’t entirely irreplaceable. In this crisis, hesitation is fatal—nothing is beyond sacrifice.”

…………

Recognizing the fortress was not easily taken, the Abyssal Lord ordered four additional demon lords to reinforce the battlefield—though he himself had no intention of coming.

Plague-Source Gulgarrus was a living mountain of rotting flesh, swollen pustules, and writhing maggots. He acted as a vast contamination source, continuously spreading supernatural plagues and withering auras.

Stone would erode under his influence; steel would rust rapidly. Even low-ranking soldiers who inhaled a breath of his aura would see their flesh peel from their bones. His task: corrode the fortress itself, turning its sturdy fortifications into dust.

Fallen Priest Halmarah, once a priest of the Light, had been corrupted by the Abyss and, driven by his hunger for power, became a demon, draped in a tattered robe woven from living runes. He was no close-combat fighter, but a master of Abyssal rituals.

He could construct profane altars directly behind the battlefield, continuously draining the mage towers’ energy supply, destabilizing the unified shield, and even attempting to tear open space to summon stronger, unnatural monsters from the Abyss. He was a strategic-level magical suppression unit.

The primary attacker was Fire-Scourge Axaros, a giant whose form more closely resembled a traditional Balor demon, yet was far larger, his body flowing with dark-red magma. He was a living siege engine.

In his hands were not flame whips, but highly compressed "Siege-Fire Meteorites"—terrifying demonic flames capable of sustained bombardment on a single point until they melted through walls and fused towers. His mission was simple and direct: tear an irreparable wound into the line with absolute force.

Violet Rose Sadela, a six-armed serpent demon, had a lower body of a scaled, massive serpent and an upper body of muscular humanoid form. Her six arms held a decapitating greatsword, a soul-sucking dagger, a thorned whip, a armor-piercing axe, a rune-etched chain, and a shield.

She was both a perfect killing machine and a cunning tactician. She could simultaneously engage multiple directions of attack or parry with her weapons. Her goal: breach the walls, unleash a storm of death within the defenders’ lines, and obliterate any champion who dared stand before her with absolute martial skill.

As a capable commander, Aquilon had long prepared for this. Though not flawless, his plan would certainly force the demons to pay a horrific price.

When the five towers’ energies were linked, they could raise a unified magical shield covering the entire fortress complex. This shield possessed properties of energy deflection, attribute neutralization, and frequency interference, specifically designed to weaken and disperse the ranged attacks and law erosion of Legendary demons.

Upon detecting specific types of powerful profane magic—such as Halmarah’s rituals or Gulgarrus’s withering aura—the shield would concentrate energy into localized overloads, forming a brief absolute magical barrier, while guiding Agrik’s mage towers to deliver pinpoint counter-spells, targeting the demonic spellcasters with ultra-long-range magical bombardments.

Yet given that the primary adversaries were High-Grade or higher demons, whose combat strength was extraordinary, and that the defenders were severely outnumbered and outclassed, Aquilon devised a specialized plan.

The decapitation squads consisted of elite lizardman warriors, shamans, and sorcerers forming hunter teams. Their mission: delay, harass, and rescue. When a section of the wall came under excessive pressure, they filled gaps or used their familiarity with the terrain to ambush demons who breached the inner defenses.

Powerful spatial locks were deployed around the fortress’s core and the five defense towers, greatly increasing the difficulty and risk of teleportation spells, designed to prevent demon lords from bypassing the core via spatial abilities.

Across the open ground before the fortress, vast quantities of alchemical substances had been buried. At need, they could be activated to instantly create vast sticky energy bogs or walls of flame, hindering the overall advance of the demon horde.

Of course, these measures alone could not hold the fortress complex. Upon receiving the distress call, Sakavi swiftly dispatched one thousand members of the Black Dragon’s Wings to reinforce the line, organized into five-man squads, each tasked with hunting down and eliminating hard-to-counter Master-tier demons.