Xyrin Empire-Chapter 252 - QuelDanas Defense Battle (Part 2)
Chapter 252 -252 Quel’Danas Defense Battle (Part 2)
Chapter 252 -252 Quel’Danas Defense Battle (Part 2)
Quel’Danas Border Outpost—if the remnants that resembled ruins could still be called an outpost.
Today’s fifteenth—or possibly sixteenth—wave of attack had happened, who cared at this point? The relentless beings had finally retreated after leaving behind hundreds of shattered corpses. ‘Retreated’ hardly seemed the right term, though. In reality, their withdrawal was entirely due to the magic barrier’s effect: a special barrier activated in the final moments that had blocked all life signatures near the outpost. Losing their main target and constantly under attack, the Dead Souls finally abandoned the area.
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Less than ten sentries survived, and the mages supplying the magic power for the array were only two apprentices who had just moved beyond the apprentice stage. The limit to maintain the defense had been reached long ago. To have sustained it this far was a miracle among miracles.
Due to Arthas’s devastating invasion, Quel’Danas had become virtually empty, and even apprentice-level mages were drafted into the military to bolster the numbers. The patchwork traveler brigades could hardly support the entire border’s defenses. Before this, the Blood Elves had already slimmed down their sentry unit structure, but this couldn’t fundamentally solve the problem. The soldiers stationed at this outpost numbered merely over twenty—a fraction of what a single sentry unit used to incorporate during Quel’Danas’s glorious days, and half of these were apprentices who, in their first battle, saw two-thirds fall to the claws of the Dead Souls. The remaining two mage apprentices were the only hope for the outpost’s survival—if they lost that barrier that could temporarily block out life signatures, it would take only an hour before the outpost would be completely overwhelmed by a tidal wave of undead.
About a kilometer behind the outpost, a pale blue barrier that spanned across the sky shimmered faintly. It was the last barrier of the entire Elf Kingdom of Quel’Danas, constructed with the only two remaining rune stones from beneath the iron hoof of Arthas. If this protection shield were to extinguish, all of Quel’Danas would be doomed.
Compared to the once-grand and tangible magic barriers that covered all of Quel’Danas, this flickering protection shield, weakened by insufficient energy, was pitifully fragile.
The existence of this outpost stationed before the protection shield, along with other outposts along this defensive line, was intended to block the Undead Army as much as possible, at least to share some pressure off that precarious magic barrier—though now, this effort seemed to merely delay the inevitable destruction.
“Captain, when will our reinforcements arrive?”
A pale-faced young female elf emerged from the battered barracks, her beautiful green eyes filled with undeniable fatigue and lingering fear. Judging by her attire, she was a rookie mage still in her apprentice stage, and the continuous supply of magic power to the outpost’s magic barrier had exhausted her already limited magic reserves.
She addressed the sentry captain standing outside the barracks, who was gazing towards the rotten land in the distance. He was a tall elf warrior, a rarity among Blood Elves who didn’t completely abandon magic for melee combat. This sentry captain was no exception; from the dark red halos coursing over his steel armor, it was evident he was a dual-disciplined warrior with a minor in low-level fire magic—only the long-lived Blood Elves could afford to invest considerable effort in martial training while also mastering complex magical knowledge.
“Soon, if all goes well, reinforcements from Silver Moon City should arrive in a few days. Our current task is to hold this position and prevent any further impact on the Great Barrier behind us… Tolina, you should go rest. Don’t join the next fight, preserve your strength to support the magic barrier.”
The visage of the tired sentry captain forced a comforting smile, thus soothing the rookie mage in front of him who evidently hadn’t adapted to war. She seemed not to notice the hint of determination—or perhaps despair—in the captain’s eyes or forced herself to overlook it, that desperate expression. Tolina, the elf mage, returned a comforting smile and went back inside the barracks.
No reinforcements were coming.
The sentry captain was acutely aware of this fact. The only combat power left in Silver Moon City had already been deployed at the outer defenses of the magic barrier, including his own makeshift unit. This was the last defensive force Quel’Danas had, apart from the dozen Great Mages left atop the Sunwrath Tower to replenish the Great Barrier’s magic power. Besides that, Silver Moon City had only the noncombatants, the old, the infirm, and women and children left…
Despite consoling the few remaining soldiers with lies, the sentry captain knew they all had guessed the reality. They both clung to a false narrative, still forcing themselves to believe in a message that had no credibility at all.
The once mighty and glorious High Elf Kingdom had now fallen so low as to depend on a group of apprentice soldiers to delay the inevitable—an aspect utterly unmentioned in the so-called “plot.”
Of course, the original “plot” hadn’t anticipated the Blood Elves encountering an uprising of hundreds of thousands of Dead Souls just as they were catching their breath…
At that moment, an oppressive sensation suddenly arrived from afar, snapping the contemplative sentry captain to alertness.
Nothing appeared within sight, and no rotting limbs sprang from the scorched earth, but elf intuition was always remarkably accurate. The sentry captain, having long forgotten the elegant personality of High Elves in such battles, without care for the muddy, blood-stained ground, skillfully lay down and pressed his long ears to the earth.
The next moment, his face turned deathly pale.
It was the sound of a large group of cavalry charging, emanating from that rotting wasteland.
In that direction, the only things that moved were rotten corpses and skeletons.
The Sentry Captain stood up, and reflected in his pupils was the smoke slowly rising on the distant horizon and the ever-expanding tide of black.
The tremors of the earth had become faintly perceptible; the soldiers, who had developed instinct from continuous intense battles over several days, alertedly crawled out of their barracks without needing any warning from the Sentry Captain.
“By the Sun Well!” Tolina exclaimed in a terrified whisper, “We’re doomed!”
“How can there be so many!?”
Even the normally composed Sentry Captain couldn’t help but cry out in dismay. The endless undead army he now faced far exceeded the number of enemies encountered in the past few days. Could it be that the hundreds of thousands of restless dead souls were finally launching a full-scale attack at this moment?
Though he had long anticipated such a comprehensive assault would eventually come, facing it in reality was still something the Sentry Captain found hard to accept.
“Hurry… prepare the magic barrier…”
“It’s no use…” Tolina’s face turned pale, “Sare and my magic power have already…”
The Sentry Captain also instinctively thought of activating that lifesaving magic barrier, but he knew clearly that even if the barrier was activated, if the undead army couldn’t sense the presence of life here, what purpose would it serve?
In this flood of the dead, there was no possibility of escape!
Quel’Danas is finished—this was the only thought flashing through the Sentry Captain’s mind.
But just then, a ranger beside him, known for his observational skills, suddenly exclaimed in surprise, “Strange, those monsters seem a bit odd…”
The ranger’s words inexplicably gave the Sentry Captain a glimmer of hope. He observed again the undead approaching from afar and realized that this enemy behaved somewhat differently from those in previous attacks.
It seemed they were not focusing on the target rich in life energy ahead but were only desperately running forward. Even the weaker skeletons were constantly being trampled into fragments by the larger monster corpses. This situation seemed less like a scramble to feed and more like…
Escaping?
The word ‘escaping’ flickered through the Sentry Captain’s mind, sounding absurd at the moment.
Escaping? Could these mindless undead have the concept of escaping? Could they feel fear? Or rather, did they have enough brain tissue to generate the concept of “escaping”?
But the next moment, the Sentry Captain felt he had guessed correctly.
A dazzling white column of light pierced through the gloomy clouds in the distance, falling behind the mass of undead like divine punishment, accompanied by a massive explosion that made the earth tremble slightly. A huge white light ball erupted from the point where the column of light landed, and beside the light ball were clusters of undead limbs thrown high into the air by the explosion.
After the first column of light ended, the second, the third… followed.
Explosion after explosion occurred, with increasingly frequent intervals behind the massive tide of undead and spreading towards this direction much faster than the undead could escape.
Those undead were indeed fleeing!
