Chapter 99: Full Moon Offensive

"Sha Lu Te, regarding the counterattack plan you submitted earlier, I believe the timing is ripe." The voice from the high seat was low and flat, but it made the air suddenly solidify, "I only ask one point: can each unit achieve the predetermined combat goals on time before the next full moon?"

"Report to Lord Su Lai De, after the latest assessment, our army currently does not have the combat conditions to execute a large-scale counterattack. The formulation of the previous plan was based on the premise that Grand Duke Sakavi could still fully hold power."

"Now the Grand Duke cannot handle affairs in the short term, the high-level factional infighting is fierce, all parties' forces are difficult to integrate, and the coordinated command system is almost invalid."

"This is not a problem you need to consider." The voice on the throne cut off all hesitation, with a weight that could not be refuted, "Before you advance, I will make every party at the high level recognize the situation and fully cooperate with your military actions. And what you need to do right now."

He leaned forward slightly, and the shadow seemed to press down with it.

"Is to re-formulate the counterattack plan. Remember, what I want is not a deduction on paper, but a military deployment that must be implemented before the next full moon."

"Obey!"

…………

The night that should have had a blood moon hanging high was completely swallowed by heavy lead clouds. The outer city area of Agrik burned in the lightless darkness, and the firelight became claws tearing the sky.

The battle here had fallen into the bloodiest melee. The demon tide was like pus and blood surging directly from the ground; they were twisted in form, their claws and appendages reflecting wet, ghostly light in the firelight, and their roars were mixed with desecrated syllables, enough to make those who had not experienced battle lose their minds.

The battlefield was cut into countless small areas. Behind the broken low walls, Ogre squads held a fountain ruin, using weapons and bodies to block the gap.

Among the burning shacks, demons constantly attacked from the side relying on their cunning shuttle ability, and were forced back by the Ogres' barbaric charges. The narrow streets became death funnels, with corpses piled layer upon layer, almost blocking the passage.

On the roofs and broken towers further away, sporadic musket flashes were like the difficult coughs of an asthma patient; that was the Goblin musket team trying to provide thin firepower support, but the extremely chaotic interweaving of enemy and self made their explosive bullets appear hesitant and stingy.

Above the sky, a few swift shadows occasionally swept across the lower edge of the clouds; that was the Harpy reconnaissance team. Their sharp cries tried to convey information on the noisy battlefield, but were often drowned out by explosions and dying wails.

The battle here was completely different from the entanglement in the muddy Saltwater Swamp. On Agrik's towering city walls, the Lizardman Shamans' cold eyes pierced through the battlefield smoke, and precise and deadly magic power gathered in their hands.

Whenever the demons' heavy siege equipment revealed a ferocious outline in the distance, or a terrifying Abyssal Giant Beast tore through the line, the arcane strikes from the city wall would follow like a shadow—not covering bombardment, but sharp, accurate, and deadly sniping.

Scorching lightning beams, instantly condensed void ice spikes, or stone spikes suddenly stabbing from the depths of the earth, could often paralyze key targets with one hit.

Even more critical was that a nearly invisible light green magic barrier, like a giant bowl turned upside down, covered the key section of the city wall. The corrosive fireballs, whistling bone flying spears, and even filthy curse energy thrown by the demons were mostly deflected, dissolved, or significantly weakened when hitting this barrier.

This powerful defensive barrier effectively blocked the demons' most deadly long-range counterattack power, forcing them to fall into close-range consumption, which effectively weakened the demons' combat effectiveness.

At the foot of Agrik's outer city wall, it was not an empty battlefield, but a labyrinth composed of layers upon layers of stone houses squeezed together. These buildings were mostly built with heavy granite, rough and sturdy, and the demons' desecrated flames could not burn them down, only allowing them to constantly tear and split the black wave of destruction.

Thus, the war was squeezed into narrow alleys, dim courtyards, and winding stairs. The demons' numerical advantage could not be fully deployed under the division of bricks and stones, and they were forced to engage in the bloodiest, most consuming street fighting with the Ogre defenders holding street barricades, windows, and roofs. Blood gathered into greasy streams between the stone slab gaps.

And in this suffocating head-on strangulation, the demon army also had to endure another kind of shadow-like torture: the insidious attacks from the Goblin Mobile Corps Commander squads.

These green figures almost blended into the ruins; they poked short crossbows from half-collapsed cellar entrances, threw ignited white phosphorus cans from connected attics, and even suddenly lifted grates from underground drainage channels, stabbing daggers engraved with inscriptions into the demons' thighs.

They never engaged head-on, only endlessly harassing, weakening, and sniping, making every seemingly calm alley corner filled with the scent of deadly traps; even in areas already occupied, demons did not dare to walk alone in the small alleys.

After three months of continuous day and night fierce attacks by the demons, more than five-sixths of the approximately six-square-kilometer outer city area of Agrik was soaked in foul blood. The area still under the defenders' control had shrunk into an isolated island of less than one square kilometer, tightly surrounded by the demon battle line.

However, their offensive finally showed fatigue and limits. And the real turning point did not come from the defenders' consumption, but from the elemental laws high in the sky: the full moon of the Red Moon plane would appear in the darkness tonight.

This blood-red full moon only appeared once every six months. It was precisely the battle opportunity Sha Lu Te had been waiting for. When the full moon rose to the zenith, the magic elements of the entire plane would surge to the peak, churning violently like a tide.

The elements circulating in the plane would have the strongest repulsion to the filthy existences originating from the Abyss. The demons' power would be suppressed, their summoning would become difficult, and low-level demons might even be burned by the moonlight.

When the demon legion was pressing its last strength toward the defenders' crumbling defense line, strange roars came from the depths of the forgotten, filthy sewer labyrinth beneath the battlefield.

The warriors holding crescent scimitars had bodies as steady as rocks, but their eyes were as sharp as hawks piercing the night. No war cries, no horns, only the subtle exchange of eyes and silent transmission of gestures between the elves had completed all the calibration before the attack; this was the superb skill honed by long years and countless battles.

The Ogre heavy cavalry, clad in thick plate armor with only their scarlet eyes and bone-white fangs exposed, swarmed out like vengeful spirits crawling from the other side of hell, treading through the sewage and mud. Their mounts were armored as well. The massive, white-mist-snorting Giant-Tusked Boars emitted a dull, ramming thud as their short, thick hooves trampled the stone-slab ground.

The appearance of this underground iron cavalry completely exceeded the demons' tactical expectations. They tore through the earth suddenly from the deepest, most core part of the battlefield. Almost the moment they rushed out of the cave entrance, the steel torrent had turned into several deadly wedge-shaped arrowheads, fiercely chiseling into the demons' most crowded, least protected back and flanks.

The terrifying impact was displayed to the fullest at this moment. The armored war boars trampled everything in their path with astonishing barbaric force, the mace smashed the demons' shells at extremely close range, and the giant axe swept across with the momentum of the charge, smashing and splitting the demons who were caught off guard into pieces.

Iron hooves trampled, bones and flesh turned into mud; wherever this fresh force passed, it instantly plowed out bloody, broken corridors in the demons' dense formation.

The demons' command sequence was completely disrupted by this sudden back attack. The demons who were fiercely attacking the front line felt the pressure from the rear, and the offensive stopped and dispersed involuntarily. At this time on the battlefield, the lurking Goblin Mobile Corps Commander squads also launched a fierce attack simultaneously.

As the deputy of the Abyssal Lord Malgash guarding the front line, the Demon Lord Goraton was not just a brute who acted on brutality. His scarlet pupils always examined the entire battlefield coldly, and he had deduced contingency plans for all possible counterattacks, including threats from underground.

When that cavalry troop sprayed out like rust-colored pus from the sewer, Goraton was standing on top of a desecrated clock tower. He was not furious, and a trace of near "as expected" gloom even flashed across his bone-armored face.

Almost the moment before the defenders' cheers rang out, his voice, mixed with sulfur and thunder, had already exploded in the consciousness of all high-level demons through the Abyssal contract:

"Crush them."

The order was short, cruel, and unquestionable. The next moment, the battlefield's aura suddenly changed in quality. Several shadows far larger than ordinary demons rose from the depths of the demon formation. The Legendary Rank Demon Lords, carrying suffocating momentum, personally led the troops to meet the enemy.

The high-level Balors, Abyssal Guards, Flame Prison Dragons, and other elites, like the vanguard of a black tide, collided head-on with those few steel torrents that were cutting through the formation with a violent posture no less than the cavalry charge.

However, all this precisely fell into Sha Lu Te's trap. As a commander well-versed in large-scale legion warfare, he never disdained to consume energy on those endless cheap Dretches. In his view, those cannon-fodder-like offensives were just a "house-playing" to delay time.

The prey he truly craved was always those high-level demons hiding deep in the army formation, supporting the entire demon war system. Those powerful Abyssal Lords and large demons were the true skeleton.

At this moment, the charge of the heavy cavalry rushing out of the sewer was not a simple counterattack. It was a cold and sharp bait, a precisely calculated sacrifice.

Sha Lu Te wanted to use the wounds torn by this troop and the chaos created to force out, or even lure, the demons' precious high-level combat power to enter the battlefield ahead of schedule, exposing them in the preset killing zone.

Of course, even if Goraton had already seen through Sha Lu Te's calculation at this moment, he had no choice; the laws of the Abyss were cold and direct, and the loser was everyone's fuel.

If he shrank his high-level combat power because of fear of loss at this moment, allowing that iron cavalry to tear through the formation and cause the battle line to collapse, he would also be unable to escape Malgash's liquidation.

And if he asked for help from that Abyssal Lord who dominated everything when the battle situation was unclear, it would be no different from declaring his own incompetence. In the Abyss, failure itself was not the most terrible punishment; exposing one's own uselessness was. ===== CHAPTER 100 =====