Defiance of the Fall

"Display intent," Janos muttered just as Zac was about to call out his order.

"The Kan'Tanu are not fools," Rhubat said. "The unholy ones will sense our approach soon enough. An army this size cannot go unnoticed, even in this chaotic environment. Our lines stretch for miles. Warmaster's plan to push them back early might make them expend more resources on defenses, but it should reduce the surprises."

Zac agreed. He wasn't worried about any walls or defensive barriers the Kan'Tanu could erect in a couple of hours. He was more worried about the Kan'Tanu setting up kill zones with Heart Curses, and it seemed preferable to drive the enemy back to their base before they could booby-trap the whole city. The order was given, and twenty thousand of their fastest warriors split off from the seemingly endless line of warriors.

They separated into groups of six to ten before spreading out, forming an impassable net in front of the army. Only the occasional scout would be able to pass through their perimeter unnoticed, and the squads moved close enough to easily reinforce each other in case of larger fights. If the Kan'Tanu wanted to sneak around and hit their base or siege machines from behind, they'd have to take a huge detour.

Zac joined Joanna's special unit, which solely consisted of Valkyries. They rushed through the crumbling city with speed far exceeding what the main army could sustain, their eyes peeled for points of interest and enemies.

Moving through a region of Cosmic Energy as Draugr did nothing to slow Zac down. Having awakened his bloodline to Early Shallows had drastically improved his resistance to the ambient energy, and the effect was further bolstered by his upgraded [Adamance of Eoz]. His Void Emperor Bloodline and Void Vajra Constitution had already made him extremely resilient, and this pushed it a step further.

Even the chaotic and unstable energies seeping from the planetary wounds were rebuffed before penetrating his skin. As things stood, Zac believed he could even temporarily withstand the Remnant's pulses of Creation and Oblivion without nullifying them with the opposing Dao.

Their group saw nothing but desolation for ten minutes until Zac spotted a weak hint of life hiding far up in a ruin with his Draugr vision. It wasn't one of their own, which meant it was either a civilian or Kan'Tanu scout. Considering the utter lack of survivors until now, Zac leaned toward the latter.

His guess was quickly proven right. The scout had somehow realized he'd been exposed even though a thick wall of smoke separated their groups. He turned tail by jumping toward a neighboring building, heading toward the Kan'Tanu camp. The movement caused some ripples, but his aura almost disappeared the next moment. Of course, that was not enough to elude the eyes of Zac or his followers.

"Enemy," a Valkyrie alerted, and Joanna and three more spear maidens turned into blurs as they activated their Movement Skills.

Zac was even faster. A shroud of utter darkness swallowed the world as time seemingly ground to a halt. Even the Dexterity-focused Valkyries appeared like mortals when Zac passed them by, turning into a streak of darkness shooting straight for the fleeing scout. Zac felt like he'd come home as he whizzed between crumbling buildings toward his target.

The change of perception was one of his favorite aspects of the new-and-improved [Abyssal Drive]. Before, the movement skill had reduced the world into a monochrome of life and death. Now, the skill better lived up to its name, as it almost felt like he'd summoned the Abyssal Lake.

The change wasn't just cosmetic, either. One of the biggest weaknesses of the old skill, beyond the long activation time, was its inability to pass through turbulent energy. That downside had almost gotten him killed in the Twilight Chasm, and it wasn't the only time he'd been forced to deactivate the skill before he was ripped to shreds. As Zac continued to progress, the environments he operated inside would only grow more dangerous.

This shortcoming was one of the main issues he'd wanted to fix while workshopping upgrades, and the Abyssal Pond had provided the perfect opportunity. The movement skill combined the resilience of Eoz with Azol's connection to the Abyss. The Abyss followed him wherever he went in his current state, turning hostile environments into his home field.

Some experimentation had confirmed that the movement skill didn't actually suppress the surrounding energies. It was more like he had one foot in reality and one foot inside his personal Abyss, reducing the effect of chaotic energies and even attacks. It was slightly reminiscent of the [Stone of Hope] he'd used to alleviate the damage when opening nodes in the E-grade.

Such a useful addition was probably enough to elevate his movement skill to Peak quality, but it wasn't the limit of what it brought to the table. There was one aspect that Zac liked even better.

The scout was quite agile, but he was ultimately only a Late E-grade cultivator. Zac rapidly closed in until he finally sensed the scout was within reach. The scout froze momentarily, enough to miss his step and crash into a wall. That delay was all that Zac needed. He appeared by the scout the next moment, grabbing him by the neck.

A weak pang of danger made Zac cut the man in two, destroying the Heart Curse just as it was about to explode. Zac had hoped to interrogate the man to see if any elites were among their ranks, but he guessed the curse had realized its host was doomed. Joanna and the others caught up a second later, looking at the gory display with a mix of awe and disappointment.

It was a shame with the scout, but the skill's efficacy still left Zac satisfied. Anyone entering the range of [Abyssal Drive] could be dragged into the Abyss, though the effect was nowhere near the level of Tavza's domain. It only lasted a moment, and only much weaker cultivators would have their senses completely sealed for the duration. The elites he'd tried it on could still function to varying degrees.

Vilari wasn't impacted at all, but most would have their perception and reaction reduced. It didn't sound like much, but it could mean the difference between life and death when every advantage counted. It wasn't just useful for attacking, either. His pursuer would momentarily have their vision obscured when he was forced to run for his life.

"His equipment is old, and he's wearing self-bought parts. He shouldn't be from one of the Kan'Tanu's regular armies but rather a local militia. I guess that's fair, considering they got such a suitable environment," Joanna commented before looking at Zac with a raised brow. "You promised."

"I know, I know," Zac said with an embarrassed smile. "Just got caught up in it. I won't meddle unless necessary."

One of the requests put forth by his commanders was that he keep his head down during the neutral battlefields. Part of it was not to clue the enemy in on a powerful ranker leading the enemy faction, which might lead to reinforcements or outsiders waiting beyond the neutral zones.

Most importantly, his people needed practical experience to improve their teamwork. A few days of practice was nowhere near enough to perfect the Calamity Company's operations. The best solution was to practice on these contained battlefields where he could step in if necessary.

Taking out the scout didn't slow their group down, and they weren't the only ones that had found prey. The unstable energies acted like a natural dampener, but Zac could still sense contained eruptions of Dao and Energy to both his sides. Their group spotted a small Kan'Tanu squad a moment later, and they were dealt with almost as quickly as the scout, even if he stayed back this time.

Joanna descended on them like a crashing meteor using an offensive movement skill. Three of the warslaves were dead before they realized what'd hit them, each having a hole punctured through head and stomach. The others tried to flee, but the Valkyries had been through this dance before. The soldiers only managed to get a dozen steps before being struck down one way or another.

The Kan'Tanu seemed to have realized their enemies were running down their base, but that didn't mean their soldiers were called back. Showcasing their signature ruthlessness, the Kan'Tanu sent out more people in larger suicide squads. Their job was not to stop the advance but to sacrifice themselves to slow down the Calamity Company while taking out a few soldiers in bursts of mutual destruction.

It didn't change anything. The advance squads fused into larger groups to deal with the human traps, and the small flashes of energy were replaced by loud eruptions of outright battle. Half an hour passed this way, and Zac estimated they'd already killed well over 100,000 Kan'Tanu defenders. The thought almost left Zac breathless.

One hundred thousand casualties weren't much compared to some historic wars back home, but this was just a minor clash on a preliminary battlefield. When you considered these numbers in the scope of the whole sector, the daily loss of life was almost incomprehensible. Thankfully, they had only lost a few hundred soldiers, most of them to Heart Curses and Cursed Ground rather than the sacrificial warslaves themselves.

The environment grew increasingly rough, and soon they found hints of the Kan'Tanu taint on almost every building. It almost looked like a sinister sibling to Mossy had taken hold over the city district, with black pulsating tendrils covering walls and ceilings. Most of them were inert, but every so often, a spike would detach from the walls to strike at a nearby target. No wonder Petrus had called this a Kan'Tanu home-field advantage.

Suddenly, a spiritual fluctuation was followed by Carva rising from the ground.

"My Lord, it's just up ahead," she said.

"Good job," Zac said as they moved to a greater vantage.

They were still a dozen miles from their destination, but a noticeable lack of smoke gave him a clear view of the enemy's Battlefront Arrays. The Kan'Tanu's starting location looked similar to theirs, a huge square over a mile wide. However, in their case, they had completely transformed the region already. The surrounding buildings had been leveled to make way for a large, sturdy wall, but Zac noted they only had cleared out the surrounding kilometer.

That was the killing field, and beyond was a solid band of intensely tainted buildings. A dense layer of throbbing sin had suffocated all flames, creating a natural disaster zone separating them and their target. Zac had never seen such a huge swathe of cursed energy before, and the scene left him hesitant.

"What do you think?"

"It's odd," Joanna muttered. "Their soldier doesn't seem well trained or well equipped, but they have far more of these tendrils than we usually encounter. There's no way this is just something that had been left on the battlefront. The barrier is still actively growing."

"That stuff has to be grown somewhere," Tamira commented. "Maybe these guys are from a curse production world, so they have a lot of this stuff lying around?"

"Either that, or they're hiding their strength," Joanna nodded.

Zac's gaze swept across the region, but he couldn't find any hints of danger or fate gathering. It might be a trap, but Zac had never felt as confident in his instincts. After all, he'd made some improvements in this regard over the past few days. He even had a new title to show for it.

[Destined: Reach 1,000 Luck while in D-grade Reward: Effect of Luck +7%.]

The above-expected results in the Abyssal Pond had given him 99 luck, putting him right at the threshold of breaking one thousand. The surprise boon had prompted him to spend 50,000 of his starting Merit on a D-grade Luck Attribute fruit, pushing him past the 1,000-mark threshold.

The fruit cost twice as much as the normal ones, but it was still a huge bargain. Normally, Luck-attributed fruits could run you up hundreds of times more. Even then, Zac had noted that they didn't sell as well as he'd expected. Then again, most would choose tangible powerups rather than something as elusive as Luck when your life was on the line every day. And only Zac had the massive multipliers that drastically increased the effect of each Luck Fruit.

Hopefully, it'd make his campaigns more fortuitous, letting them avoid the deadlier targets for the time being. He'd also moved the [Lucky Beads] to his Draugr form, which left him with an extreme sensitivity to danger. Zac believed he'd be able to sense it if there was any hidden elite with a strong fate among the Kan'Tanu in the distance.

Seeing the Kan'Tanu furiously work on shoring up their defenses filled Zac with impatience, but there was no point in attacking just yet. The grace period would last another three hours, and they'd just be wasting their energy on nothing. At least their fast sortie had accomplished its goal. The Kan'Tanu didn't dare send out more troops from their protective bubble, turning them into sitting ducks as the advance squads formed a perimeter around the square.

Zac almost felt bad for the cultists, knowing the Battlefront Teleporters were sealed during the grace period. They could send more people through, but none could leave. Then again, it was for the best. They'd have to fight these Kan'Tanu sooner or later. The bigger bite they could take out of the enemy lines on each neutral battlefield, the fewer defenders would remain when they reached the real world.

The bulk of the army caught up an hour later. Multiple city blocks were quickly leveled, letting the army gather. The scene was similar to the sea of faces Zac faced before, but the atmosphere was different. It was somber, subdued, like the calm before the storm.

Zac sighed before turning to Ciru Volor and nodding. The stone turtle scurried away, and three hundred War Machines were slowly rolled to the front lines, forming a mile-wide line parallel to the distant square.

The machines, if you could call them that, looked like ten-meter-tall glass spheres covered in a mesh of white metal, each holding a miniature star. Zac could sense the oppressive heat from within, even with the powerful isolation of the white runes. They came from the Blazing Comet Constellations and were one of the models that couldn't be stored at all.

Zac was ready to intercept an attack from a distance, even if he doubted the Kan'Tanu's machines could reach that far. If anything, they wanted the Kan'Tanu to emerge from their turtle shell and target the dangerous-looking contraptions. Of course, the Kan'Tanu knew better than that. Almost two hours passed in oppressive silence, at which point he finally got a nod from Rhubat. It was time.

"Launch."

The runes atop the hundreds of spheres lit up in nigh-perfect sync, and even Zac felt his heart palpitate upon seeing the tide of Stellar Flames that rolled forward. The scene slightly resembled the talisman he'd used during his first battle, but how could a single talisman compare to the combined might of one hundred D-grade War Machines? The fury unleashed was blinding and all-consuming, filling Zac's whole field of vision.

The whole realm shook from the onslaught, and burning scars in space formed a trail behind the advancing apocalypse. The buildings caught in the conflagration simply disintegrated as the wave advanced, leaving a burning glass-like surface in its wake. Leveling ruins barely weakened the opening salvo, and it continued right into the band of condensed Cursed Ground. A piercing screech echoed through the district as a massive tangle erupted to meet the incoming wave.

Almost a third of Zac's soldiers paled by the spiritual shockwave. Thankfully, it wasn't strong enough to cause any real harm at this distance, but it proved that the suspicious moat wasn't ordinary. If they'd tried to enter and cleanse that wall the normal way, they'd definitely have taken a hit. It was an important reminder that quantity could make up for quality. Even Zac would find himself in deep trouble if hit by the wall of fire he'd unleashed, and most of his elites would have had a hard time surviving inside that massive tangle.

Stellar wrath clashed with millions of profane tendrils, and the stars emerged victorious. Some elements were better than others at dealing with Heart Curses and Cursed Grounds, and both Lightning and Flames had proven effective at dealing with the sinister energy.

A deafening sound resembling the wail of millions of anguished souls was released from the towering wall of smoldering tangles, but deep, rhythmic thumps from large drums the Corpselords had brought dispelled some of the effects. It even made Zac's heartbeat speed up, and he felt himself itching for battle.

"Advance!" Rhubat roared, their voice amplified by the ground to sound like the call of a Mountain God.

The roar of war soon drowned out the roaring flames. A sea of warriors stepped onto the still-smoldering pane of glass, their rising Killing Intent holding the promise of a storm—a storm of violence about to come down on the Kan'Tanu.