Sanctuary Paradise

Chapter 680 Firefight
The roar of artillery fire continued to echo from the battlefield, a faint smell of blood filled the air, with a faint pungent smell of burning.

There is no concept of "daytime" in the Dark Glow Continent. Although due to the cultural influence left over from the old civilization, people are still accustomed to using "daytime" and "night" to divide the time periods of a day, but in fact, what determines day and night now is no longer the dark sky that is always shrouded in miasma, but the flickering pattern of the pyroxene crystal clusters growing on the earth.

Therefore, for most people in the Dark Continent, the term "dawn" has always been a concept that only exists in textbooks.

The same was true for Rick. As a regular soldier of the Tower, although he had received some training, his concept of the word "dawn" was the same as that of everyone else. He simply treated it as a word without any deep understanding.

But today, Rick suddenly realized that he might understand what the so-called "dawn" described in the textbooks was like, because -

"Rick, wake up!!" "Kill!!!"

The urgent shouts and cries of his companions exploded in Rick's eardrums, waking Rick, who was sitting on the upper floor of the power armor, suddenly from his dizzy state. Looking at the rapidly expanding flames in front of him and the bull-horned warriors rushing towards him, he instinctively pushed the lever with the muscle memory formed by thousands of operations.

Boom——! !

The next second, the powered armor lying in a pile of corpses suddenly raised its right arm and bombarded the Gusa Federation soldier's head with a cannon, instantly turning his upper body into a bloody mist.

"Hoo...Hoo...! Sorry, Ira, I just passed out."

The sound of rapid breathing can be heard from the cockpit of the armored car. Riku, who has just woken up from his coma, quickly looks around at the battlefield covered in flames and screams, and apologizes to his companion in the lower half of the cockpit.

"Haha, it's okay. We were blasted away by the opponent's Brilliant Blood-level warrior. It's good enough that we can save our lives!"

The middle-aged man sitting in the lower cockpit laughed, then looked at the cockpit that was flashing a scarlet warning light, then looked at the half-black screen and saw several tall Inhuman figures rushing towards them again, and revealed a look of regret.

"What a pity! I guess we won't be lucky enough to see it to the end?"

"Go down and fight them. Maybe there's a chance to survive."

"Haha, let's not do that. If we two apprentice-level warlocks really run into those Inhuman bastards, we might be torn to pieces in less than two seconds. It's better to wait for these guys to get close and then use power armor to give them a big beating."

The middle-aged man smiled. Rick, who was sitting in the upper cockpit, heard what he said. He did not refute anything. He just looked up at the scene in the sky. The black clouds completely illuminated by the huge vortex of fire were reflected in his eyes. He murmured:
"also……"

boom!
Before the young man in the cockpit could finish the rest of his words, a gray-red fireball that was more than 30 meters wide suddenly passed by the edge of his sight, and finally hit the Gusa Federation team that was rushing towards them not far away with a huge explosion, and then...

[A349, A349! ! Please reply if you hear me! ]

Wow——! !

A low shout came from the communicator, and a team of power armors arranged in a “>” shape came roaring from a distance. In the eyes of the two people in the cockpit that suddenly brightened, they poured out a string of ammunition, weaving a dense firepower network around the power armors driven by the two people.

Finally, two power armors fell from above, and they quickly dismantled the damaged power armors that fell to the ground. The hatches opened, and they pulled the young man and the big man in the cockpit in one by one, and then quickly rose back to the square formation.

"Haha, I didn't expect that I could still save my life!"

"If you want to thank someone, thank Lady Tafina. If she hadn't just dealt with the Blood Warlock, we probably wouldn't have been able to rescue you two in time."

The middle-aged man who had saved his life looked at the ground scene far below him from the cockpit and laughed. The captain in charge of commanding the power armor team heard what he said, explained casually, looked at the map information displayed on the screen, and was about to issue a retreat order when...

"Captain! Be careful!!!"

A rapid roar sounded, and a dark brown light suddenly appeared from a distance, and then rushed to the front of the armored troops in an instant, and when it was about to hit the leading power armor -

boom!
A gray-red fireball flew from a distance and collided with the huge black-brown spear formed by the pyroxene spell, exploding into a huge fireball in mid-air, defusing the opponent's crisis while the captain of the power armor team was sweating coldly.

The next second, a calm and quick voice sounded from the captain's cockpit, and a crooked line suddenly appeared on the screen.

[Unit A19, please reply if you hear me. Please follow the indicated route after completing the rescue mission. Stand by at the marked coordinates in 73 seconds.]

[Warlocks will provide you with fire cover during this period, please complete the task as quickly as possible! ]

The calm and swift voice spoke quickly, and the team leader's eyes lit up when he heard it. Without any hesitation, he answered decisively:

"Unit A19 receives the order! Execute the order immediately!"

A few seconds after the words fell, the power armored team that had originally planned to evacuate was seen once again quickly shuttling across the battlefield.

Not only that, if someone takes a bird's eye view, they can find that, with the gray-black fortress as the center, a large number of action teams composed of formal warlocks and power armors are just like worker ants, shuttling through the battlefield in an orderly manner. Whenever a troop suffers serious damage, a new power armor troop will immediately take over and defend against the Gusa Alliance warriors and the Huiyuan Sect's warlock troops that are constantly breaking through from all directions.

……

"Roar--!!"

At the same time, on the other side of the battlefield, a huge roar came from the mouth of a giant spider-shaped Zerg with a wolf head. A Moon Demon Wolf Spider successfully broke through the fire defense line woven by hundreds of pyroxene heavy artillery and rushed to the bottom of the fortress in one fell swoop. It moved quickly on the armored plate that was almost vertical at 90 degrees as if it were walking on flat ground, and then...

","

boom--! !

A pleasant and rapid chanting sound fell, and Tafina's figure passed by from a distance. She pointed the pyroxene in her hand, and dense dark brown energy runes emerged, circling the staff to form three rune circles. Then a fiery red light bloomed from it, turning into a gray-red flame beast head that looked like a beast. It bit the Moon Demon Wolf Spider that was crawling upwards, and blasted it into ashes in the dazzling firelight. The 159th...

Deafening roars of artillery fire came from the sky, and dozens of artillery shells were fired from the dark brown fortress in the distance, bombarding the energy barrier deployed on the surface of the Nott Fortress, but were all intercepted by the fleeting energy barrier.

Tafina glanced at the gradually dispersing ashes and counted silently in her mind.

This was the 159th Moon Demon Wolf Spider she had killed that day.

These war beasts, called Moon Devil Zerg, are only comparable in speed and destructive power to the Bloodthirsters of the Gusa Federation and the official warlocks of their towers, but their size and defense are too amazing. The two-ring pyroxene spells cast by the official warlocks cannot pose much threat to them. If you want to kill them quickly, basically only the three-ring pyroxene spells cast by the great warlocks can do it.

As for the pyroxene cannon, perhaps because of the 'genetic adaptability' that Lord Black Sword mentioned to them, these Moon Demon Zergs' resistance to pyroxene energy is simply terrifyingly high. Unless they are directly hit by a fortress-level pyroxene cannon, even if it is a city-defense-level pyroxene cannon, it will take at least 30 shots for the opponent to fall. If converted into pyroxene spells, it would take at least a third-ring or even fourth-ring pyroxene energy spell to cause serious damage to them.

In fact, not only these Moon Wolf Zergs, but also the so-called Undead creatures made up of a large number of corpses released by the Huiyuan Sect also caused them a lot of trouble. They even lost a great warlock because of this thing. If the Performer had not suddenly appeared and killed him, they would have been broken into the fortress by the enemy.

Fortunately, the other side seemed to not have many undead creatures of that level that they could mobilize. At least after the death of those undead creatures that even the great warlocks could kill, the other side never sent out undead creatures of this level again. At most, they would send out a few hundred or a thousand ghouls that were barely stronger than the regular army of the tower composed of warlock apprentices, and they basically could not put any pressure on the defense line.

[Lord Tafina, three more Moon Demon Wolf Spiders have broken through the defense line in War Zone 7. Please rush over as quickly as possible!]

"it is good."

A familiar command voice came from the communication device hanging on Tafina's left ear. Tafina nodded and glanced at the battlefield in the distance where flashes of fire appeared from time to time. Her mental strength surged and without any hesitation, she quickly rushed towards the direction indicated by the other party.

Strong gusts of wind whistled past both sides of Tafina's cheeks, causing her hair to fly wildly in the air. If you look down from high in the sky, you will find that the battlefield on the ground does not feel intense... or rather, it feels very scattered.

This is not an illusion, rather, this is the norm for close combat when the number of people is insufficient. Although tens of thousands of warlock apprentice soldiers plus less than two thousand formal warlocks can form a fierce war, for a medium-sized fortress with a radius of two kilometers and a height of three kilometers, this level of war is actually like a fight between ants if you stand on the top of the fortress and look down.

It can even be said that the damage caused by the ordinary soldiers who do not even have the strength of a formal sorcerer, who can hardly break even a 100-square-meter armor plate, and can hardly climb up to the main gate of the fortress at an altitude of 2,000 meters without tools, the greatest significance of their existence is actually to risk their lives to restrain the enemy's high-level strongmen, and even consume more of the enemy's pyroxene energy reserves.

As for the saying that many ants can kill an elephant? Even if we put aside the difference in basic physical fitness and mobility between a formal warlock and a warlock apprentice, even if all soldiers were equipped with a set of equipment that could threaten a formal warlock, normally it would take at least a hundred people to encircle and eliminate a formal warlock, and that's if the other party didn't run away.

It might sound good, but in fact, the cost of the equipment alone is far greater than the value of a formal warlock.

This also includes the power armor produced by their Tower of Order. Although each of these power armors has the destructive power of a formal warlock level and only requires two well-trained warlock apprentices to use it, the price of one power armor is even enough to train more than thirty formal warlocks.

And if the daily maintenance costs are taken into account, even the annual maintenance costs of 1000 power armors are enough to cover the annual needs of 5000 formal warlocks with some left over.

Therefore, even though Tafina had expressed regret before the war that they only had 1000 power armors, she did not take it too seriously.

After all, at this cost, if every medium-sized fortress is equipped with 10000 power mechas, then unless the Gusa Federation and the Huiyuan Sect can be flattened within a year, the Tower of Order will drag itself down.

As for if so many power armors were really manufactured, could they defeat the Gusa Federation and the Huiyuan Sect within a year?
It's a pity that unless all the Grand Warlocks and Grand Warlocks on both sides are killed suddenly, it will never be possible to truly determine the outcome of the battle between the camps by relying solely on this kind of equipment that allows the Warlock apprentice to unleash the destructive power of a full-fledged Warlock.

In other words, even if thousands or tens of thousands of power armors like this were built, they would not pose a substantial threat to a great warlock. Instead, they would be slaughtered by the great warlock on his own. In many cases, there would not even be a need for the warlock to deliberately take action. The residual power of the battle between two great warlocks alone would be enough to crush these power armors.

And this is just the destructive power of the Grand Warlock. If it is a Grand Warlock, the gap will be even more despairing.

This is the bloody truth of the extraordinary world. Reality is not a game. Friendly attacks are not layers that do not interfere with each other, nor are they special effects that can ignore the collision volume of friendly forces and not cause friendly damage. And the enemy is not a living target that stands still and does not take advantage of its rank advantage.

The total attack area of ​​a human individual is less than two square meters. The tens of thousands of low-level attacks that many people imagine will accurately fall on a unit that moves much faster than itself will never happen in reality. Instead, the opponent will come and go freely and run rampant in the army, and if the enemy dares to focus fire, they will be able to achieve a desperate scene of friendly fire MVP excellent record.

This is why a medium-sized fortress would only send about 10,000 warlock apprentices and about 1,000 formal warlocks to garrison on weekdays. Because if it really gets invaded, unless the number of low- and middle-level combat forces on both sides reaches an unreasonable level, the one who decides the outcome will never be these low- and middle-level combat forces whose greatest use is to manipulate various pyroxene technologies to provide productivity, but...

",!"

A pleasant and rapid chanting sounded. In the sky, Tafina, who had quickly arrived at the designated battle zone, looked at the three Moon Demon Wolf Spiders that had rushed to the fortress wall. Without any hesitation, she waved her staff, her mental power surged, and while chanting, she quickly mobilized the pyroxene energy in the staff to make it resonate with the surrounding fire elements.

boom--! !

A gigantic gray-red flaming beast head appeared, and with a sound like a roar, it pounced on the Moon Demon Wolf Spider that was rushing in the front, and turned it into ashes with a violent explosion.

"It's Master Ash Warlock!"

"Great! The Great Warlock is here!!"

On the fortress wall, the official warlocks who had been attacking the Moon Demon Wolf Spider for a long time but could not stop it at all looked at Tafina who arrived in time, and there was a hint of joy in their eyes.

High in the sky, Tafina ignored the gazes of the noble official sorcerers who were obviously still not used to the war and could only serve as artillery here. Instead, she looked at the other two Moon Demon Wolf Spiders that were moving at high speed, locked them with her mental power, and instantly calculated the opponent's movement path in her mind. Her mental power surged, and she was about to release a spell again to kill them, when a dark color suddenly bloomed from the sky -

boom--! !

I saw a fleeting figure flying backwards from the sky like a meteorite, and slammed heavily into the ground at a speed of over a thousand meters per second, setting off a huge storm. The two Moon Demon Wolf Spiders that were affected by the dark energy were like tofu dregs under the impact of the dark energy, and their flesh and blood to their bones were annihilated into nothingness in an instant.

……

(End of this chapter)