Free Web NovelThree fernando-class battleships crushed over the remains yet to dissipate on the sea surface, continuing their advance.
The main island was already within sight.
The entire island was enveloped in a translucent golden cocoon of light.
The light was not dazzling, yet it carried a sense of pressure that made one subconsciously hold their breath.
Runes flowed slowly across the surface of the light curtain; this was a protection personally bestowed by a deity—at least, in the eyes of ordinary people, it should be so.
Inside the bridge, Alvin issued a tentative command: "Test fire one high-explosive shell."
The turret adjusted its angle, and loading was complete.
"Boom—!"
The shell exploded the moment it contacted the light curtain.
However, the flames spread along the barrier's surface, and the shockwave was completely absorbed, only causing a ripple on the golden light layer, like a stone falling into the center of a lake.
The light curtain was not damaged; instead, it grew brighter after absorbing the energy.
Louis stood before the side window and picked up a pair of high-powered binoculars.
Peering through the light curtain, he saw the island's true coastline.
Tens of thousands of white-robed believers knelt densely along the shore, layer upon layer, from the reefs to the tide line.
Their lower bodies had already merged with the land, turning into root-like golden veins below the knees that dug deep into the sand.
Hands raised high, heads tilted back, their lips opened and closed silently.
With every rhythm of their prayers, the blood vessels on their bodies flickered with a faint golden light.
Vitality was being drained, flowing along the roots into the earth, then pulled by some force to finally be injected into the light curtain in the sky.
They were gaunt and hollow, yet maintained in an abnormally excited state by the golden feather flowers; like ignited firewood, they would not go out until they were exhausted.
Sako, standing beside Louis, subconsciously gripped his hilt, his voice carrying clear anger: "What do they take people for? Worse than livestock."
Alvin spoke in a low voice: "This is a Faith Shield. As long as these believers are alive, the barrier won't fail. If we attack by force, we'll need to consume more than half of our ammunition reserves and bombard it continuously for at least three days."
Louis lowered the binoculars and shook his head slightly: "Don't be fooled. They aren't believers, nor are they soldiers. They are disposable fuel."
Someone on the bridge subconsciously swallowed.
Louis turned around: "Load Deep Blue Type IV, airburst."
The order was quickly relayed, and the broadside battery adjusted its elevation.
"Puff— Puff— Puff—"
The shells traced arcs through the air, exploding one after another high above the light curtain, but there were no flames.
A deep blue mist spread through the air, slowly sinking with the sea breeze.
It carried no kinetic energy, simply following the airflow to silently seep into the interior of the golden light curtain.
A chilling aura quickly covered the entire coast.
A believer on the shore, who was praying loudly, inhaled the first breath of the blue mist.
His body stiffened slightly, his pupils dilated, and then quickly lost focus.
The spiritual resonance maintaining the fanatical state was forcibly severed, and the neural signals abruptly cooled.
His raised hands dropped, his prayers turned into intermittent mumbles, and then his whole body slumped forward.
Immediately after, the second, the third... swaths of figures began to lose their support.
Looking from the bridge, the crowd that had been stuck to the beach like nails collapsed in unison the moment the blue mist swept over them.
Like a field of ripe wheat being swept across by an invisible scythe from one end of the horizon.
Tens of thousands of people fell into a deep sleep simultaneously within seconds.
The golden light in the blood vessels quickly dimmed, receding along the roots, and finally extinguished completely.
The light curtain in the sky began to flicker.
"Ping—" A crisp, short sound of shattering rang out.
That golden shield, which had once blocked a naval battery volley, disintegrated like a shattered eggshell, turning into a sky full of light specks and slowly dissipating in the wind.
The island was exposed without any protection before the steel fleet.
Louis lowered the binoculars: "Prepare for landing."
...The steam landing craft charged onto the beachhead, the hull making a dull thud in the shallow water.
The heavy iron ramp hit the beach as it lowered, the sound hollow and crisp.
The Red Tide Knights, carrying magma essence rifles with bayonets, stepped onto the beach one by one, quickly spreading out to occupy a fan-shaped battle line.
The cold mist left by the Frost Leaf gas shells had not yet dissipated, and the air was mixed with a dry, dusty smell, like dust stirred up in an old warehouse for years.
Reynolds, the vanguard knight captain, was the first to disembark. He had just taken two steps when his foot slipped, and his body lunged forward, nearly falling.
What tripped him was not a stone, but a human figure.
A white-robed believer lay on their side on the sand, still in a kneeling posture.
Everything below the knees no longer existed, replaced by a bundle of coarse roots extending from the severed legs and digging deep into the ground.
The Frost Leaf mist had put him into a deep coma; green saliva seeped from the corner of his mouth, and his chest rose and fell weakly, proving he was still alive, though he wouldn't be for long.
Reynolds bypassed him and continued forward.
As far as the eye could see, the entire beach was covered with these half-human, half-tree things.
In various poses, yet excessively quiet, like a field of strange crops uprooted by a storm.
He stepped onto the white sand, and the sensation underfoot made him stop.
Instead of a soft sinking feeling, a series of crisp snapping sounds came clearly from under his boots.
Reynolds frowned, the hair on his back slowly standing up. He shouted, "Ike, come over here."
The accompanying alchemy apprentice ran over, his gaze behind the goggles tense.
He didn't touch the ground with his hands but pulled out a folding shovel and scooped up a shovelful of white powder.
The powder was excessively fine, barely holding its shape on the shovel.
Ike took a glass test tube from the leather bag at his waist, unscrewed the cap, and carefully dripped a drop of purple developing solution.
The liquid began to churn the moment it touched the powder.
"Sizzle—" A plume of black smoke rose, accompanied by a foul stench like burnt feathers.
Ike let out a dry heave, the sound muffled by his gas mask.
He stared at the rapidly changing reaction liquid in the test tube, his fingers trembling slightly.
"Captain..." His voice was tight. "This isn't sand. There are soul remnants."
He used the tip of the shovel to push aside the surface powder; underneath was the same ghastly white. "This is bone ash."
A brief silence spread through the team.
Ike took a breath and finished his sentence: "The entire mudflat is paved with ground-up dead people. These plants drain the living and decompose the corpses as well. This place truly eats people without spitting out the bones."
Several knights subconsciously lifted their feet, as if afraid the ground beneath them would suddenly come to life.
The team continued to advance inland.
Passing through that crowd of sleeping root-sculptures, the scenery suddenly opened up.
Tall trees stood on both sides of the road, their bark a uniform and pure gold, their leaves rustling softly in the wind like layers of thin gold foil.
A young knight couldn't help but whisper, "It's actually quite beautiful..."
Reynolds slapped the back of his helmet: "Shut up."
He drew his dagger and walked to the nearest tree: "Check the sample."
The blade sliced into the bark, and warm, crimson liquid suddenly sprayed out, directly coating Reynolds's goggles and flowing down the gaps in his armor.
The tree trunk convulsed violently, and a piercing, distorted shriek erupted from within, like someone whose throat had been slit.
The ground burst open as bundles of golden aerial roots erupted from the earth, frantically coiling around Reynolds's legs and joint connections.
The ends of the roots split open, revealing fleshy suction-cup mouthparts that gnawed on the alloy leg armor, making an ear-grating screeching sound.
Reynolds's heart rate quickened for a moment. He used Battle Qi to burn the roots on his legs and looked at Ike.
Ike swallowed and immediately responded: "Carbon-based structure, extremely high lipid content. Alchemy fire will work!"
Reynolds stepped back half a pace to clear the line of fire, and the heavy flamethrower troops moved forward.
Orange-red alchemy flames roared out, instantly engulfing the screaming golden tree.
Dense popping sounds came from within the flames, and the smell of burning grease was nauseating.
A few seconds later, the trunk stopped convulsing and collapsed into a charred heap, while the roots coiled around Reynolds's legs quickly withered and fell off.
Reynolds kicked away the charred remains at his feet, shook his boots, and looked back at the team: "Remember this. Burn them on sight. Don't save fuel. Continue advancing."
...As the assault team left the burnt-out woods, the temperature in the air rose noticeably.
It wasn't heat from the sun, but a humid, stifling feeling of air being repeatedly breathed in an enclosed space.
A built-up area appeared ahead, but the atmosphere was extremely eerie.
It presented a soft and bloated form, like a whole area of fleshy tissue that had been forcibly ripened.
The houses were not built, but grown.
Giant limb silhouettes were entangled with each other—looking like thighs, arms, or some underdeveloped organs—bound together by thick roots and bulging into oval fleshy pods.
The surface was covered with a translucent membrane that rose and fell slightly with breaths.
The so-called windows were merely narrow, long slits.
The tissue at the edges of the slits would periodically contract and close, looking more like blinking eyelids.
The air was hot and humid, carrying a sticky, fishy smell, as if they had walked into the body cavity of some giant creature.
A thick layer of semi-solid mucus covered the ground. With every step, the soles of their boots pulled out long, thin threads that then snapped, making a faint but uncomfortable sound.
The streets were lined with residents whose lower bodies were merged with the buildings, their bodies fixed to the walls, revealing only their upper torsos.
Their heads hung low, motionless, like a row of forgotten wax figures.
Reynolds raised his hand to signal a slowdown. Just as the team approached to within twenty paces, those wax figures moved simultaneously.
Their heads lifted, and their originally blank faces began to writhe violently. Muscles surged and reorganized under the skin, as if an invisible pair of hands were kneading wet, soft clay.
Within seconds, the first face finished shaping.
It was Reynolds's face—not just the features, but even the old scar under his left eyebrow was replicated without the slightest error.
Seeing this, Reynolds's breath hitched.
Immediately after, the change spread.
Thousands of faces took shape at once, turning into the likenesses of people the knights knew: fallen comrades, relatives far in the rear, even the knights themselves.
The air began to vibrate.
"Buzz—"
Thousands of mouths opened and closed simultaneously, like a low-frequency resonance formed by the superposition of countless messy tones.
"Why..."
"Give me... yours..."
"I want it too... I want it too..."
The voices reflected and echoed through the streets, blending into a storm of mumbles whose source was impossible to distinguish.
A young knight's muzzle lowered as he stared at the familiar face in front of him, his throat tightening: "Mom..."
At that moment, a roar drowned out everything.
Just then, an armored command vehicle crushed through the mucus on the ground and forcibly squeezed into the front of the line.
The vibration of the tracks interrupted that eerie resonance.
The bulletproof turret on the roof rose, and the alchemy loudspeaker array activated.
"Wooooo—!!!"
A sharp, high-frequency siren tore through the air, carrying a clear physical impact.
It was a combination of an atomized deterrent mixed with Frost Leaf extracts and sound frequencies specifically designed to disrupt mental resonance.
"Ah—! Ah—!"
The residents on the street wailed shrilly in unison.
The faces that had just finished shaping were like wax figures scorched by high heat, quickly softening and collapsing, turning back into featureless lumps of meat.
The knights snapped awake, cold sweat sliding down their backs.
Louis's voice came through the loudspeaker: "Those are illusions. They are just monsters jealous of your human appearance.
Three hundred meters ahead, full-coverage flamethrowing! Burn!"
Flames advanced along the street.
The fleshy buildings quickly carbonized in the high temperature, and the air was filled with the smell of charring.
The city lost its form in the fire, leaving only a twisted, collapsed ruin.
Just as the cleanup was nearly complete, the ground suddenly began to tremble.
The mist was torn open from the front, and a heavy cavalry regiment charged out from between the ruins and scorched earth.
Over three hundred Stitchers Connected by Thorns advanced in a single rhythm.
Their bodies had been forcibly expanded, and the boundary between man and beast was completely erased.
Limbs were crudely stitched into places they didn't belong, and thick sutures continuously oozed dark red liquid during the run.
The monster at the very front was a head taller than its kind.
Six arms grew from its shoulders and back, and its lower body was a forcibly assembled centaur structure.
Its four main arms each brandished a serrated heavy sword the size of a door, while the other two arms hung at its sides and back, swaying with its run.
It let out a chaotic and shrill roar, yet its speed was unnaturally fast.
A light reconnaissance tank from the Red Tide vanguard was the first to adjust its direction, and its vehicle-mounted machine gun opened fire.
Bullets swept densely across the monster, only splashing a few blood blossoms on the layer of stitched fat that was half a meter thick.
The next moment, the monster was already close.
Four thick arms simultaneously gripped the tank's turret base.
Accompanied by the ear-piercing sound of tearing metal, the turret was yanked straight off its ring and swung to hit ~Nоvеl𝕚ght~ the flank.
The hull, losing its armament, flipped heavily onto its side.
This scene caused a brief delay in the infantry line behind.
Reynolds had already charged to the very front.
"Knight Regiment, advance and slaughter!"
He drew his chainsword, the teeth letting out a low roar as it started up.
Over a hundred Red Tide Knights, clad in standardized dark red plate armor, stepped out from the ranks.
Battle Qi ignited at the same time.
Crimson, azure, gray, and other colored glows erupted from them like materialized flames, the air distorting in the heatwave.
A stitcher swung a heavy sword down toward a head.
The Red Tide knight meeting it held his sword with both hands, neither dodging nor evading.
"Boom!"
A loud bang echoed, and spiderweb-like cracks appeared beneath the knight's feet, yet he didn't retreat a single step.
The crimson Battle Qi on him instantly surged, forcibly withstanding a monstrous strength far exceeding his own.
"Too slow." freewёbnoνel.com
The greatsword swung out, a crimson sword light extending several meters, splitting that bloated body in two along the centerline.
Organs were shattered in the bursting Battle Qi. The corpse was still twitching as it fell, and more stitchers pressed forward.
Severed limbs wriggled on the ground, trying to reattach, and the battlefield quickly turned into a chaotic melee area.
"Clear the way!"
The roar of engines drowned out everything.
Over a dozen heavy Steam Tanks charged into the battlefield from the flanks, their heavy armor crushing the ruins.
That Six-armed Centaur turned, trying to flip the steel once again.
When its palms touched the armor surface, blue-white electric sparks suddenly flashed.
The Alchemy Electric Shock Reactive Armor triggered.
The monster's muscles instantly charred and convulsed under the high voltage, its movements freezing.
The rotary crushing roller at the front of the vehicle started, its spiked drum pulling the monster's lower body in.
The horse-leg structure was instantly shredded, and flesh and blood were sprayed into the air.
Reynolds glanced at the battlefield: "They have too many limbs. Adhesive Bombs, lock down their movements."
White alchemy foam was launched from the rear ranks, covering the front line.
Extra arms and legs quickly became entangled in the adhesive.
The more the monsters struggled, the tighter their limbs became entangled, with some directly binding themselves into immobile balls of flesh.
Reynolds put away his chainsword: "Artillery, clear the ground."
White flames fell from the sky.
The adhesive and fat ignited simultaneously; white phosphorus flames burned through the skin and drilled into the bone marrow.
The bound monsters could not roll, only hissing and roaring in the intense fire.
A few minutes later, only charred carbonized remains were left on the road.
Heavy tanks crushed over them, the sound of crisp shattering coming from under the tracks.
The Battle Qi knights re-formed their ranks, their breathing not yet fully settled.
The hatch of the armored command vehicle slowly opened, and Louis's voice came through the amplifier, drowning out the remaining sounds of the battlefield: "The surrounding threats have been cleared. Leave them to the follow-up troops."
His gaze passed over the still-smoking remains, falling on the distant holy city enveloped in golden light: "Vanguard, follow me and continue the advance. Straight to Avalonia."
