The Great Wall in Desperate Circumstances.
It is not a simple wall.
It is a magnificent defensive line that runs across the entire continent, completely separating the rich "Land of Holy Light" from the barren "Cursed Wastes".
Its main body is cast from a mixture of obsidian and dwarven rune steel, reaching a height of 300 meters and a thickness of 100 meters.
Every kilometer along the city wall stands a "Starlight Tower," built by the elves, capable of gathering the power of the stars and automatically targeting and attacking enemies.
The interior of the city walls was hollowed out by dwarven craftsmen into a massive, self-sufficient war fortress. Countless war machines were hidden beneath thick armor plates.
Deep within the city walls, the Holy Light Priests of humanity maintain an ultimate Holy Light barrier, personally set up by a "hero" ten thousand years ago, covering the entire defensive line.
In theory, this barrier can purify all evil and dispel all darkness.
It is the pride of all intelligent races in this world.
It is an immortal monument to their unity and victory over the terrifying demon king ten thousand years ago, which protected world peace.
However, even the most solid monument cannot withstand the erosion of time.
a thousand years.
A full ten thousand years have passed.
The demons never appeared again. That cursed wasteland was utterly desolate, save for the occasional mutated demon beast that dared to roam.
Lasting peace is the best, and also the most potent, anesthetic.
Today, the Great Wall in its current predicament has long lost its significance as a "war defense line".
It's more like a... special, multi-ethnic "free trade zone".
The elves still live in their elegant starlight towers, but they no longer study how to transform the power of starlight into deadly rays. Instead, they focus on using starlight to cultivate the sweetest fruits and brew the finest wines.
The dwarves' rune cannons haven't been fired in centuries.
Bird nests were even built inside the cannon barrels. Their forges were more forging exquisite handicrafts for passing caravans than indestructible weapons and armor. What they cared about most was the taste of this year's newly brewed ale.
Humans, the most numerous race on the Great Wall, have long lost the glory of their knightly orders from ten thousand years ago.
The title of knight was more of a status symbol, something to flaunt and use to avoid taxes. Their daily "training" was more like a series of elaborate social balls.
As for that ultimate holy light barrier...
The Holy Light Church, responsible for maintaining its operation, has long since become bloated and corrupt.
It was dusk.
The afterglow of the setting sun cast a warm and languid golden halo over the majestic Great Wall.
A grand banquet is being held on the gate tower of "Heroes' Gate," the largest pass on the Great Wall.
Prince Elron of the Elf race, Princess Irina of the human Griffin Kingdom, and Balin, the young chieftain of the dwarf Stonebeard tribe, were sitting together, raising their glasses in a toast.
They are now the leaders of the younger generation of the three races on the Great Wall.
“Prince Elron, look at the sunset tonight, how much it resembles the color of your clan’s finest ‘Flame Rose Wine’!” Princess Irina, a human, said in an almost lamenting tone, her eyes filled with adoration as she gazed at the elven prince’s handsome profile.
"Hehe, Princess Irina, you flatter me." Ellen elegantly swirled the crystal glass in her hand, which held a crystal-clear elven fruit wine. "However, even the most beautiful sunset cannot compare to your beauty, Princess."
"Hahaha! You long-eared, short-legged humans, you always speak in such roundabout ways!" The dwarf chieftain Balin gulped down a large mouthful of ale, his mouth full of foam. "If you ask me, nothing compares to my tribe's newly brewed 'Thunder Spirit'! Come on! Down this barrel!"
The banquet was filled with laughter and joy.
No one noticed that on the horizon of the cursed wasteland, which had been silent for ten thousand years, a thin, wriggling black line had appeared beneath their feet.
No one noticed that the sky had begun to darken.
Only one elderly human veteran, stationed in a watchtower on the edge of the city wall, sensed something was amiss.
His name is "Old Jack," and he is one of the few "old-fashioned" people who believe in the "demon threat theory."
Every day, without fail, he would use that old, dwarf-made telescope to observe the distant wasteland.
Today, he felt somewhat uneasy.
He aimed his binoculars at the black line that was slowly thickening.
The camera is shaking violently.
Because old Jack's hands were trembling violently.
He saw it.
He saw that it wasn't a "black line" at all!
That is...
Those were endless, surging, grotesque, twisted creatures that existed only in ancient murals and nightmares!
Deinonychus!
Their sharp claws gleamed with a bloodthirsty cold light in the setting sun!
Sky!
Old Jack suddenly raised his binoculars!
What's blocking out the sky isn't a dark cloud at all!
That is...
Those were billions of gargoyles with rotting bat wings! They gathered together, forming a deathly canopy deeper than the night!
"Waaah...waaah..."
Old Jack opened his mouth wide, as if to sound an alarm.
However, the extreme, deep-seated fear rendered him unable to utter a single sound.
He could only watch helplessly as the black, deadly tide drew ever closer...
Then he heard an aria, melodious yet malevolent, seemingly from the depths of hell.
That voice belonged to a woman.
One, a name he had seen in the oldest, forbidden books of the Vatican.
"Aria of the Abyss..."
"All things wither and die."
As the song began.
Buzz!
An invisible rhythm, filled with deathly silence and despair, swept across the entire Great Wall of Despair at a speed exceeding the speed of light!
Click! Click! Click!
Those obsidian walls that had stood firm for millennia were transformed into sand sculptures weathered over hundreds of millions of years, spontaneously cracking and peeling away inch by inch!
At this moment, the twinkling starlight of those elven towers dimmed rapidly, and their elegant structures, like flowers drained of their life force, quickly withered and collapsed!
And that ultimate holy light barrier, hailed as "never to fall"...
Before Lilith, there was an "aria" that contained millennia of resentment and was delivered with all its might.
Like a soap bubble that has been popped.
Not even a ripple was stirred.
And just like that, it vanished without a trace.
"What...what was that sound?"
At the banquet on the city tower, Princess Irina put down her wine glass, a hint of unease on her face.
Prince Ellen also frowned.
Only Balin continued laughing heartily: "What's that noise? Who's the blind fool who dares to cause trouble at my banquet? I'll teach them a lesson..."
His words came to an abrupt end.
Because he saw that the incredibly sturdy barrel made of runic steel in his hand was rusting and decaying at a visible speed, and then turning into a handful of iron filings.
Immediately afterwards.
He felt his body begin to feel incredibly heavy.
His skin was rapidly losing moisture, and deep wrinkles were appearing.
His hair was turning from black to gray and then to white at an alarming rate.
"What...what happened to me..."
He stretched out his hand, puzzled.
Those were no longer the powerful hands that belonged to the young dwarf.
Instead, they were a pair of hands, covered with age spots, dry and withered like chicken claws, belonging to an old person.
"No...no!"
It wasn't just him.
Everyone at the banquet, elves, humans...
All life covered by "arias".
Their vitality is being frantically drained!
In a matter of seconds, the young girl transformed into a white-haired old woman.
The handsome prince, in the blink of an eye, turned into a skeleton, nearing the end of his life.
Screams, cries of panic, and desperate wails finally replaced the previous cheers and laughter.
But it was all too late.
Rumble rumble rumble!
With a deafening roar!
The Great Wall in the face of adversity, a monument that has stood for millennia, a symbol of hope and glory.
Before the demon army officially came into contact with it.
It is in Lilith's "Aria".
It completely collapsed.
It turned into dust that filled the sky.
The moment the Great Wall collapsed, time seemed to freeze.
The surviving Allied soldiers stared blankly at the apocalyptic scene before them, their minds utterly blank. Their proud, impregnable defenses... were gone just like that?
They hadn't even seen what the enemy looked like yet.
However, the next second, reality, in the cruelest way, pulled them back from their shock to hell.
"roar!"
With a deafening roar, the black demonic tide swept across the ruins of the Great Wall, like a flood bursting its banks, crushing everything in its path with unstoppable force!
Leading the charge were endless, heavily armored Direclaw Beasts! They were like moving steel fortresses, and every step they took made the earth tremble!
"Enemy...enemy attack!! It's the demons! It's the demons!!"
A human officer let out a heart-wrenching, distorted scream.
"Quickly! Form ranks! Elf archers! Fire! Dwarf artillery! Open fire!!"
The command was shouted out at the top of one's lungs amidst the chaos.
However, prolonged neglect had already turned this "alliance" into a disorganized mess.
The elves frantically drew their ornate, more decorative longbows from behind their backs. But before they could nock their arrows, the deathly curtain of gargoyles descended from the sky!
Whoosh! Whoosh! Whoosh!
Millions of poisoned bone spears rained down like a black storm!
*Pfft! Pfft! Pfft!*
The elegant elves didn't even have time to let out a scream before they were riddled with holes by a dense rain of bone spears!
Their prized agility became a joke in the face of such indiscriminate, overwhelming attacks.
Blood stained their magnificent silk robes.
The dwarves, on the other hand, suffered even more misery.
They roared and charged toward the giant cannons buried under the rubble.
It took several dwarves working together to finally drag an old, dust-covered cannon out of the rubble.
"Quick! Load! Let these bastards taste the might of the Stonebeard tribe!" The young chieftain Balin, now an old man with white hair and beard, roared and commanded with his last bit of strength.
However, just as they finally managed to stuff a huge, rusty shell into the breech,
Several even larger "abyssal behemoths" had already arrived before them with heavy steps.
They didn't even use any magic.
However, they raised their enormous, mountain-like feet.
Then, he stomped down hard.
boom!
The earth trembled violently.
The cannon, on which the dwarves had placed their hopes, along with the dozen or so dwarven craftsmen around it, was instantly trampled into a pool of indistinct flesh, a mixture of steel and blood.
After the initial panic, the human knights finally showed a hint of the courage that belonged to the "descendants of heroes".
"For the glory of the kingdom! For the glory of the Holy Light!"
The surviving knight commander's eyes were now bloodshot. He drew his longsword and was the first to charge towards the black demonic tide.
"charge!"
Hundreds of human knights followed behind him, forming a small, fragile cone-shaped formation.
They are the only courage on this desperate battlefield.
However, this courage seems so insignificant in the face of absolute power.
Their charge was like a few small waves trying to rush towards the steel dam.
A massive, heavily armored direclaw beast noticed this reckless cavalry unit. It didn't even bother to use its claws.
It simply opened its gaping maw, a gaping maw covered in slime.
Then, suddenly, it sprays forward!
call!
A torrent of dark green, foul-smelling, and highly acidic liquid gushed from its mouth!
"Aaaaaaah!!"
The leader at the forefront, along with his horse, was instantly swallowed up by the torrent of acid!
The steel armor he wore, crafted by a dwarven master, melted and disappeared quickly, emitting white smoke, as if it were ice hitting hot water.
His flesh and blood, his bones, followed closely behind.
In the end, not even a trace was left.
Behind him, the hundreds of knights met the same fate.
A one-sided, bloody massacre.
No, it can't even be called a "massacre".
Because, at the very least, a massacre requires a back-and-forth exchange.
The scene before us is more like an autumn harvest.
The demons are the harvesters, the farmers.
On this land, all life is like ripe wheat, waiting to be harvested.
On the ruins of the city gate.
Lilith slowly descended from the sky.
She stood barefoot on the corpses of her enemies, the very people who had brought her eternal humiliation.
Her face wore a sickly, satisfied, and intoxicated smile.
She took a deep breath.
The air was filled with the sweet smell of blood and the wails of a broken soul.
This was the most beautiful symphony she had ever heard.
“Ellen…Irina…Bahrain…”
She walked with graceful steps to the corpses of those so-called "chosen ones," who had long since died amidst the "withering of all things."
She extended her slender finger and gently hooked it.
Three wisps of illusory, dissipating souls were extracted from their corpses and struggled painfully in her palm.
“Ten thousand years…” Lilith looked at the three wisps of remnant soul in her palm and said softly in a dreamlike, almost chanting tone, “Your ancestors imprisoned me in that dark and sunless cage with the most despicable betrayal.”
"Now, I'm back."
"And you will have the honor of being the first appetizer at my grand return feast."
After saying that, she opened her cherry-like mouth and took a gentle suck.
The three strands represent the souls of the three major races, the last hope, and the royal bloodline.
She swallowed it gracefully, as if savoring fine wine.
"Ah...what a wonderful taste..."
A sickly flush rose on Lilith's face.
She turned around and looked at the once holy land, which had been completely submerged by the demonic tide.
Her gaze pierced through endless slaughter and destruction.
I looked towards the deepest part of that continent.
There, there were many more enemies waiting for her to "taste".
"A feast of revenge..."
"This is just the beginning."
Behind her, the black demonic tide had completely crossed the Great Wall's defenses.
They are like locusts released from hell, starving for billions of years.
It began to spread, devour, and engulf this rich, beautiful, yet unsuspecting land with frenzied expansion...
An era of light and peace came to a complete end on this day.
A long night belonging to darkness, slaughter, and despair.
It has arrived.
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