Free Web NovelMinutes earlier, Priest Aron suddenly opened his eyes, his breath filled with scorching air.
"...What?" He sat up from the bed, his nasal cavity burning.
Outside the window, flames intertwined, as if some giant beast had opened its eyes, slowly approaching in the darkness.
He didn't even have time to put on his shoes, rushing barefoot to the window.
The next second, he saw fire.
That wasn't a fire.
Those were a group of... Knights.
Heavy armor reflected a cold, hard metallic luster in the firelight, like devils from the abyss.
They carried strange metal devices on their backs, moving steadily yet swiftly, piercing through the outer defenses set by the Worm-Eaten Household corpses.
Flames roared and gushed from their hands, as if they could devour everything!
"H-how could this be—"
His voice caught in his throat as he stared in disbelief at the rolling, burning flames ahead.
Those weren't ordinary corpse soldiers; they were elite Worm-Eaten Household corpses, selected and created from the Snowsworn elites.
They had once single-handedly defeated heavily armored knights, could tear through shield walls with corrosive claws, and even when ignited by rockets, could continue fighting for several seconds in the flames, dragging more enemies to hell with their bodies.
But now, it couldn't even counterattack.
The flames burst its chest from the inside out, its carapace and bone plates scattering like brittle pottery.
That enhanced Worm-Eaten Household rolled wildly on the ground, letting out a shriek that mixed the wails of a beast and a human, the shriek echoing,
and then it was engulfed by the blazing inferno.
In just a few breaths, it was reduced to a charred, curled up husk, its poison sac even instantly detonated by the high temperature, failing to splatter a single drop of venom.
He heard it, the roar of the flamethrower as the Knight approached, like an angry breath blowing from the depths of purgatory.
The pillar of fire, like a long whip held by a god himself, was scorching and precise, incinerating the Worm-Eaten Household corpse from the inside out.
"This isn't ordinary fire—"
He muttered, his eyes filled with terror.
The Knight advanced step by step, the flamethrower like the fangs of some giant beast, continuously spewing a scorching stream of fire. Wherever it went, the Worm-Eaten Household corpses couldn't evade it.
Even the most difficult "enhanced bodies" were nothing more than faster-burning kindling in front of him.
"This—this isn't right! How could they know about this place!? And this group of people came prepared!"
Aron's heart suddenly quickened, his spine feeling as if it had been sliced open by an ice blade. Cold sweat seeped from deep within his skin, a chill directly assailing his heart. He almost instinctively raised his right hand, the black iron ring embedded with dark purple magic patterns flashing with a sinister gleam.
Inside the ring, the Mother Insect's blood and witchcraft runes intertwined, wriggling like maggots.
Aron chanted in a low voice, blood oozing from his tongue, mixing into the incantation.
In his mind, over a hundred vague, decaying, yet highly aggressive consciousness nodes instantly appeared. He willed them to gather, intertwine, merge, and counterattack!
The Worm-Eaten Household corpses in the streets immediately stirred like a startled swarm of bees, those Worm-Eaten Households hidden behind walls, inside houses, at the bottom of wells, and on rooftops surged like a tide, all rushing towards the Red Tide Knights!
They ran, climbed walls, leaped, fell, and burrowed!
Wriggling broken limbs, sharp fangs, bleeding tentacles, they surrounded the Red Tide Knights from all directions!
Even the wind was permeated with a putrid smell and strange low moans, as if hundreds of thousands of souls were wailing.
A cold glint flashed in Aron's eyes.
This was his trump card, his personally "modulated" elite Worm-Eaten Household corpse army. Even an extraordinary Knight, if caught within it, would find it extremely difficult to escape!
But it was completely useless!
"Wh-what's going on!?" Aron's eyes widened, filled with error and fear.
Those Knights did not retreat!
With heavy metal nozzles on their shoulders, like the staff of the Fire God wielded by a priest, they directly stepped into the torrent of Worm-Eaten Household corpses!
Flames gushed forth!
Not ordinary fire, but flames as thick and blazing as hellish magma, carrying strange grease. As soon as they erupted, they diffused a scorching heatwave into the air.
Boom!
The scorching flames spread out with a roar, instantly forming several blazing fire-locks at the alley entrance, cutting through the Worm-Eaten Household surge!
They ignited upon contact and burned without extinguishing!
The Worm-Eaten Households struggled, wailed, and shrieked in the fire. They tried to leap over, climb walls, and spread out to surround, but no matter from which angle they approached, what awaited them was the baptism of sky-burning fire.
The surging Worm-Eaten Household corpses were instantly ignited, turning into screaming, burning fire-people, stumbling and igniting their fellows behind them, like a self-spreading hellish plague.
Aron desperately tried to control them, but could only watch helplessly as the Worm-Eaten Households one by one lost control, scattered, and were incinerated!
His mental connections felt like they were being severed one by one by the blazing flames. In his mind, the Worm-Eaten Household consciousnesses "exploded" and extinguished, causing veins to bulge on his forehead, almost making him faint!
He felt an indescribable "chill" spreading from his heart, not due to fear, but due to unease.
A deep, unprecedented unease.
"Who—who are these people—?" he muttered, his throat dry.
And outside, that group of Knights, still with their flame-like strides, approached him inch by inch, like judges sent from hell.
Aron's eyes widened, as if he had woken from a nightmare, only to find that reality was the true nightmare.
"I'm sorry, I'm sorry—"
His voice was almost inaudible amidst the wails of the Worm-Eaten Household corpses. His hands trembled as he touched the divine chain on his forehead, as if caressing a Coming Soon broken shackles.
He recalled the Goddess's whisper, that mercy flowing from her very bones: "When there is no other choice, you may open that door. But once opened, there is no turning back."
At that time, he thought he would never need it. Even if the land was covered with corpses and rivers of blood flowed, he would not take that step.
But now he watched the Worm-Eaten Household corpses wail in the fire, watched everything he had painstakingly constructed collapse in the flames.
Perhaps this was what she meant by "no other choice."
"I can only—use it."
He slowly bowed his head, his forehead pressed against the divine chain, as if praying, but in reality, falling.
It was no longer a plea to a god, but an opening of a portal to the abyss.
The forbidden spell was then chanted softly: "The passing of heartbeats, the return of blood to the nest. Goddess, forgive me for defiling your womb."
In an instant, the air seemed to be sucked out.
The surrounding sounds, heatwaves, and even the roar of the flames solidified at that moment, leaving only the sound of a heart beating deeper underground, getting closer and louder, as if some gigantic entity was wriggling, breaking free, and awakening.
"Retreat!!" A Knight shouted, seeing Louis's command.
The flamethrower squad quickly retreated without hesitation, the flames extinguished, and iron boots kicked up scorched earth.
Even though they were battle-hardened, they felt the pressure and fear emanating from deep within the earth.
That was not something they could deal with.
And at this moment, the ground suddenly cracked with a "Crack!!"
Followed by a nauseating birth ritual.
An entire patch of grayish-white resinous nest-body wriggled out from the earth's veins, its damp, peeling texture alarming.
The surface of the nest-body was covered with living structures, translucent cavities slowly contracting, like breathing lung lobes, or a giant—beehive.
And the four nest-pillars on the ground slowly writhed and crawled like twisted limbs. Wherever they passed, the earth cracked and flagstones turned to mud.
The Mother Nest, like a living deity, had personally descended!
At the opening of the nest-body, insect eggs rapidly swelled and deformed, then burst open like putrid lumps, splattering turbid bodily fluid with a gurgling sound.
What crawled out of them were no longer ordinary Worm-Eaten Household corpses, but evolved peak individuals!
Wearing bone armor, limbs like blades, mouthparts split to behind their ears, with fragments of human armor and clothing still clinging to them!
They let out distorted, ear-piercing shrieks, rushing into the fire line, wildly chasing after the Knights.
Fortunately, the Knights had already retreated some distance, otherwise, even flamethrowers might not have been a match for these elite Worm-Eaten Households.
The Priest threw his head back and laughed wildly, his laughter tearing through the air like a nail drill amidst the flames and shrieks, unsettling the mind.
"Hahahahaha! You foolish mortals!!"
He stepped on the still-wriggling resinous nest-body, his robes fluttering wildly in the hot wind, like banners snapping in the wind. He seemed to be edged with flames, standing at the pinnacle of hell, singing hymns,
"Do you know? This is the true power of the Snowsworn! This is the 'Goddess's Divine Grace.' Do you think mere flames can shake her?"
He shrieked, raising both hands, his eyes bloodshot, his throat almost hoarse, yet he shouted more wildly, more maniacally.
"You will all die here!! In this sacred and exhilarating blood sacrifice, you will die where you belong!!"
This was his feast! It was the Goddess's gift to him!
Just as he was laughing wildly, on a distant high ground, Louis merely lifted his hand slightly, his palm pointing diagonally forward.
"Fire."
As his voice fell, the knight pulled the trigger of the launcher.
A roar erupted.
A shriek, like the roar of a thunder god, tore through the sky, splitting eardrums.
The heavy tripod suddenly tilted backward, and what the Magic Bomb launcher released was not a projectile, but a falling torrent of fury.
It dragged a long tail of glowing flames, so hot it seemed to tear the night sky apart!
In Aron’s pupils, that orange-red fireball, a thousand times brighter than any flame, seemed to cross space, falling from the firmament!
The residual ecstasy in his heart instantly froze.
He only had time to hear a sharp “screech—” like a blade piercing his eardrums.
The next instant—
The sky exploded with a roar.
A heavy orange-red Magic Bomb, trailing a fiery wake several zhang long, roared as it plummeted from the night sky. freewёbnoνel.com
That was no ordinary fireball, but a meteor carrying doomsday, striking directly at the core of the Worm-Eaten Household, landing at the junction of the altar and the Mother Nest. frёewebnoѵel.ƈo๓
“Boom!!!!”
The moment the blast core exploded, the ground seemed to be ripped open.
The entire mountainside violently collapsed, and an area within fifty meters was directly engulfed by the scorching fire core; the surface rock instantly melted under the high temperature, turning into rolling crimson magma like blood.
The area where the Mother Nest was located bore the brunt, several tentacles as thick as buildings were directly snapped in the shockwave, their joints bursting and skin peeling back.
Hundreds of Worm-Eaten Household carbonized before they could even wail, then vaporized, leaving no residue.
The blast pressure within eighty meters then surged out, the shockwave carrying distorted high-temperature air currents, like a burning giant wall rushing forward, throwing the second circle of Worm-Eaten Household on the hillside along with soil, broken rocks, and body fragments into the air.
Those reinforced Worm-Eaten Household, which could have fought a single knight on their own, now tumbled and burned like falling leaves, not even having time to scream.
The central area of the Mother Nest was even more like purgatory reborn.
Its massive heart sac swelled to its limit in the heatwave, the insect fluid boiled, its outer shell cracked, and a few seconds later, it exploded with a roar.
The incubation sacs and parasitic tissues inside were completely pulverized, and churning insect plasma surged out with black smoke.
Before the flames had completely dissipated, the entire area around the altar had become a scorched dead zone.
The ground collapsed, forming a charred pit over three meters deep and dozens of meters in diameter, with molten rock bubbling up from the bottom, mixed with carbonized Worm-Eaten Household residue.
The air distorted, the smell of charred flesh mixed with gunpowder burned one's throat, and the scorching pain could still be felt a hundred meters away.
An Worm-Eaten Household corpse struggled to crawl out at the edge; its entire body was charred black, bones exposed, its left arm melted into a deformed block of charcoal, and its right leg, broken in several places, was still forcibly dragging.
It had just propped up its upper body when a lingering flame of Fire Scale surged from the ground, instantly engulfing it in a burning wind; with a “pop,” its limbs exploded, turning into a pile of charred dust.
Thus, the core of the Worm-Eaten Household was instantly torn apart, and the Mother Nest’s regenerative ability was completely terminated in the blazing flames.
And at the moment the Magic Bomb fell, Priest Aron stood at the edge of the blast core, his entire being seemingly crushed by a thousand-pound hammer.
The heatwave rushed at his face, tearing his skin, scorching his eyeballs; he could even clearly hear the sound of his own blood vessels bursting.
He opened his mouth wide, wanting to scream, but only spat out a mouthful of scorching black blood.
His body quickly dried, ★ 𝐍𝐨𝐯𝐞𝐥𝐢𝐠𝐡𝐭 ★ charred, and cracked in the blazing flames.
Like a wet cloth thrown into a furnace, it exploded into countless charred fragments under the high temperature.
His last consciousness was that everything before his eyes was burning, collapsing, disintegrating.
Along with his faith, pride, and life, all turned to ashes in the firelight.
Gray embers drifted down, and the blazing flames gradually subsided.
But the residual heat lingered, the battlefield was left with only a scorched desolation, silent as complete nothingness.
Eduardo’s mouth was wide open, and for a moment he forgot to close it.
He gazed at the scorched purgatory where the ground had been blasted away in the distance, residual fires rising like a mushroom cloud after a volcanic eruption, and scorching waves like a sea, as if even the air had been distorted by the explosion.
“This... what is this—”
He turned to look at Louis, his voice low and hoarse, filled with disbelief.
The young lord beside him, however, seemed to have anticipated all this, his expression as calm as lake water, merely replying faintly: “Magic Bomb.”
“Magic Bomb?” Eduardo repeated subconsciously, his mind seemingly stuck, “Are you sure you’re talking about a Magic Bomb? Not some... Forbidden Curse Relic? Lost Artifact? Papal Grace?”
He had originally prepared to retreat.
Seeing the Mother Nest awaken, that bizarre nest body and those high-combat Worm-Eaten Household were no longer something ordinary weapons could deal with.
After all, the strongest Magic Bomb he had ever seen was only one-fifth the power of the one before him!
He hadn't recovered from that thunderous shock when another thought suddenly popped into his mind:
Wait—how did that thing hit so far, and so accurately?
He abruptly looked back at the launcher still trembling with residual heat; the tripod stood steadily, the tail flame had just extinguished, and white smoke billowed from the muzzle.
It could even control distance and pinpoint launch...?
Without deviation, it landed precisely on the core heart sac of the Mother Nest.
Eduardo swallowed, no longer able to maintain his casual composure, his face now transformed into an unprecedented look of astonishment and doubt.
“Our usual Magic Bombs are thrown by hand.”
That kind of throwing method relied only on luck and close-quarters life-for-life exchanges; it could explode, but often missed. But this thing?
This wasn't combat; it was surgery.
One shot, one kill, the entire nest core was directly blown through.
Did the Empire have such a weapon? He dared say no!
Even the Imperial Capital had not yet developed such miniaturized, long-range, precisely controlled explosive weaponry.
It wasn't that they were incompetent, but that they simply hadn't thought of such a weapon.
Eduardo looked at the figure still standing on the high ground.
Under the reflection of the battle flames, Louis Calvin’s profile glowed with a cold light, like the sharp gleam of a blade tempered in fire.
“This guy—he’s at it again.”
Eduardo turned to look at Louis; although his understanding had been updated again and again, each time he was still greatly surprised by this younger brother.
“Louis, just how many cards are you still hiding?” he whispered in his heart, yet couldn’t help but admire him.
The last time they confronted the Mother Nest, he remembered they were still using the most primitive methods: luring, fire attacks, and hard-fought battles.
Even when successful, they still lost quite a few knights.
But how long had it been? Only a little over a month!
Now this guy had come up with something like... heavy Magic Bombs, tactical fire deployment, thermal blockade?
And it clearly wasn't something hastily put together, but rather meticulously calculated for angle, landing point, even cutting off the Worm-Eaten Household’s retreat routes.
He had already given him a very high evaluation, but now he had to add a few more lines to that evaluation form.
Ruthless to enemies, meticulous to his own people, and understanding the timing for strategic weapon deployment—this was no young lord,
He was practically a war machine, wasn't he?
“This monster-level talent—no, monster-level younger brother, his future isn't just the Northland anymore.”
Eduardo turned his head, watching the scene of the Worm-Eaten Household burning in the sea of fire, and a thought emerged in his mind: “In a few more years, the entire Empire will remember this name: Louis Calvin.”
Not only Eduardo, but even the Red Tide Knights were speechless with shock.
Many of them had witnessed Magic Bomb tests firsthand and knew the power of those flames.
However, when this Magic Bomb, as heavy as a meteor, streaked across the night sky in actual combat, descending with earth-shattering force, the shock it delivered far exceeded their imagination.
This was no longer a simple weapon.
It was a miraculous power, the fiery will of their great lord, Louis!
At that moment, as the knights watched the Mother Nest collapse in the sea of fire and the Worm-Eaten Household perish in droves, only one thought remained in their hearts:
He is unstoppable!
The light of the great lord had already shone into this dark and cold land, and his will was gradually dispelling all despair and decay from the Northland.
And they were the ones standing behind that light.
They had followed the right person.
At this moment, Louis spoke, his tone steady, without a hint of excitement or boastfulness: “Prioritize dealing with any Worm-Eaten Household corpses that might revive. If you find any areas where the insects haven’t completely burned, sweep them with flamethrowers.”
He paused, his gaze sweeping over the wounded on the hillside, a touch more warmth in his eyes: “Casualty count, immediate treatment for the injured.
Ensure everyone returns home alive.”
