Defiance of the Fall

Chapter 90: Worsening Conditions

The psychic wolves weren’t as deadly in close quarters, but Zac still was constantly pelted with waves of mental attacks which strained his mind. Fortunately his stats made him able to barely hold on, but he was worried about his partner. A quick glance showed him that he was worried about nothing.

Ogras was creating corpses all around him with his deadly spear. Zac also saw that the demon wore a circlet he had never seen him use before. It was a simple metal band with engravings, and in the forehead between his horns a large milky white gem was inlaid. The gem flashed with power every now and then, giving out a hazy light. It looked like the demon had a tool that protected him from psychic attacks.

Zac didn’t have that kind of luxury, and could only painfully withstand the attacks as he wildly swung his axe around. The two were quickly decimating wolves, but the wolves weren’t just sitting around doing nothing. The flanks of the wolf wave split off from the rest while the main group kept the two powerhouses busy, and instead headed closer to the wall.

Zac tried to move to stop them, but was overwhelmed with shockwaves and mental attacks from all directions, and couldn’t get out in time. The offshoots started to bombard the wall with attacks, mainly targeted the damaged area.

The demons on the wall, led by Alea and Namys, tried to handle the wolves as quick as possible, but most of the attacks were ineffective against the wolves’ newly erected shields. Besides, many warriors on the walls weren’t still back to fighting condition after the initial psychic blast.

Hearing the ominous sounds of rock cracking Zac could only grit his teeth and Summon [Chop]. He didn’t want to use any cosmic energy this wave in order to save it all for the last three, but he saw no option. He expanded the blades to five meters, and in conjunction with [Loamwalker] created huge swathes of death in the main group of wolves.

Every step moved him a few meters into a new group of wolves, who immediately were bisected by a swing of the enormous edge, before he disappeared to the next cluster. It looked like large blood explosions erupted amongst the wolves in quick succession, as he almost wasted no time on movement between the swings.

Over the countless battles over the month he had mostly mastered his movement skill, and could freely move within a few meters of his position with a speed that almost looked like teleportation. It had a huge effect on his kill speed in conjunction with his enlarged edge, but it also cost a substantial amount of cosmic energy.

When he felt he had pruned the group of wolves to the point that Ogras could take care of it himself within the remaining time of the wave, he charged toward the offshoot groups. Ogras seemed to be incensed from seeing Zac rack up a huge amount of contribution points in short order, and his spear turned into a blur as he moved through the wolves. He used some odd skill that caused holes to erupt in the throats and heads of wolves even when the spear was meters away, making it look like there was a sniper in the distance assisting him.

The flanks that assaulted the wall had splintered into even more groups in order to avoid the attacks from the demons, and small shockwaves were constantly flying up at the cracks on the wall. The wall looked ready to fall down, with spiderwebs of cracks running along large stretches. A few earth mages frantically infused the wall with energy in order to patch it up, but it would take some time to restore its structural integrity.

In some areas large chunks of the wall were even lying down by the foundation, having been blased clean off. Fixing those large breaches would take time and require a lot of manpower to lift the pieces back, which there obviously was no time for.

The battle started calming down over time, as Zac eased the pressure for the demons by charging at the wolf packs one by one and decimating them. He was starting to get a pounding headache from all the mental assaults, but he couldn’t do anything but grit his teeth and continue. Another fifteen minutes later Ogras came running over, a sheen of perspiration covering his head. He stopped and took a few deep breaths before he turned

“Lunatic! Leaving me alone with all those beasts,” the demon spat out between deep breaths, looking miffed but obviously not too angry.

“Well it worked out fine, didn’t it? Do you have some solution for the wall?” Zac answered with a shrug as he waved at the crumbling battlements.

The two had taken stock of the available crystals right before the last four waves, and there were enough Nexus Crystals left to power one widespread attack and to use the shield for roughly an hour unless the attacks were too powerful. With three waves remaining he didn’t wish to start using the shield already, potentially leaving them undefended against the last two waves.

As if feeling Zac’s thoughts a deep rumbling could be heard from the wall, and a whole section crumbled, leaving a three-meter wide opening through the wall.

“FUCK!” Zac screamed and didn’t wait for Ogras’ answer, immediately running toward the breach.

The last stragglers of the psychic wolves were already converging at the hole as well, seemingly wanting to cause some damage before they were wiped out. To make matters worse the pillars started pulsing again at this very moment, the 718th wave starting to pour out from the shining lights.

“REPAIR THE WALLS!” Ogras roared as he ran after Zac, shooting out shadow spears at the charing psychic wolves.

With Zac and Ogras holding up the wolves a few dozen burly demons frantically started moving large pieces of rubble back into the wall, where earth mages melded the pieces back into the main structure. The earth mages had been tapped hard lately, and they looked like walking corpses by now, completely pale and with sunken eyes.

But they were the only ones who could fix these types of things in short order, and simply had to keep going even if they overtaxed themselves. They knew that if the wall fell most demons would die. If they were overrun the two leaders in the front might be able to escape, and perhaps the generals like Alea and Ilvere as well. But the earth mages didn’t specialize in escape techniques, and the wolves would hunt them down sooner or later. So they kept infusing the wall with cosmic energy, to the point of harming their bodies.

Ilvere and Namys appeared next to Ogras, who started to give out orders.

“Ilvere, help with the repair of the walls, only you and Zac can hold the largest blocks of stone while they get reattached. Namys, help me control the remaining Psychic Wolves. Zac, can you go ahead and try to stall the next wave?”

Zac looked around for a second and judged the situation was under control, so with a nod he sped off toward the next wave. He held roughly the same pace as the new wolves so he met them right between the wall and the mini-incursions and frowned when he saw the new adversaries.

The new wave consisted of metallic wolves full of jutting edges and sharp blades, looking like some steampunk tool of war. Just from a glance he couldn’t tell whether they actually were machines or living beings. Of course, that line apparently was a bit blurred in the multi-verse, with the Creators being a prime example of that. He guessed that destroying one should give him the answer, as he would see whether parts or metallic blood would spew out.

He took out another rock and threw it with full force at one of the wolves in the front. It moved its head to not take the stone right in its snout, so it slammed into its shoulder with a tremendous crash. The wolf was thrown away a few meters from the impact, but Zac saw the beast shake its body and get back on its feet right away. Where the stone hit only a small dent could be seen, and it didn’t seem damaged at all apart from that.

Zac possessed over 250 strength by now and had the power to lift a small car. That a full-powered throw from him only caused some superficial damage to the beast told a troubling story about this wave. How were they going to destroy these wolves in time? There would only be a scant few that could deal with these things apart from himself and Ogras.

But he had a job to do so he could only grit his teeth. He charged up a five-meter [Chop] and unhesitantly imbued it with his Dao of Heaviness. The blade turned darker and more intricate as he swung at the incoming stampede.

He felt a shock travel up his arm as he mowed through the metallic beings with his axe, their sturdiness being far and above anything he had fought so far. Even the rock wolves from earlier weren’t any problem for him with his overpowered stats.

Luckily the wolves didn’t fare any better as they were destroyed into metallic pieces over the ground. Zac did everything he could to impede the charge expending both mental and cosmic energy in wreaking havoc. Many of the wolves headed straight for Zac in order to avenge their brethren, but some still ignored him and continued onward toward the wall.

Some packs kept trickling past him as the main force kept trying to mob him to death, and after 15 minutes he was pretty wrung out and needed a break. His arm was actually starting to feel sore and he had been forced to swap axes six times in the short duration, as they simply were getting destroyed on the tough bodies.

He started to push back toward the wall, and he could only hope that it was somewhat fixed at least. Unfortunately, he saw that it was still an open entrance, and the metallic wolves were trying to get in. At least the hole was mostly shored up, the opening being quite a bit more shallow.

Zac soon arrived at the breach and met a tired-looking Ogras accompanied by Namys and Ilvere. A quick glance showed Janos and Alea at a walkway that was built above the crack, giving the demons above a spot to throw down large boulders of debris at the monsters. The boulders were too heavy to be carried, but they simply used Cosmos Sacks for it, summoning them up above and letting gravity do the rest.

“These fuckers are so hard to kill, there’s no way we will be able to take down all of them,” Ogras grunted, clearly starting to fade from his high Cosmic Energy expenditure. The two demons looked ready to keel over, but they coordinated their attacks to take down one wolf by one in a stoic manner.

Zac planted himself in the crack, and helped arduously destroy one wolf after another. Eventually, they ran out of time, even as quite a few wolves remained. The pillars started to light up as usual, but this time it looked different. The glow looked almost blinding, and soon Zac saw why.

The 719th wave was an endless sea of wolves, tens of thousands of them. And even as they approached the wall, the pillars kept spewing more out.