Free Web NovelChapter 39: Chapter 39: Blinded Holy City
Three hundred miles away from the front lines, the capital city of Aethelgard was drowning in a frantic, unorganized panic.
Deep within the highest spire of the Grand Cathedral, the Chamber of Divination was a flurry of chaotic activity. Dozens of high-ranking clerics and seers surrounded a massive, glowing pool of liquid mercury.
This was the Eye of the Goddess—a continent-spanning scrying array that allowed the Church to monitor the movement of mana across the kingdom.
Right now, the pool was heavily tainted with a spreading, aggressive black ink representing Kaelen’s expanding Dungeon Domain.
"The Heretic’s mana density is stabilizing!" an elderly Diviner shouted, desperately pouring holy water into the mercury to stop the corruption. "He is anchoring the fortress to the ley lines! If we don’t sever his connection, the Whispering Woods will become a permanent scar on the world!"
"Focus your prayers!" the Head Diviner commanded, his hands glowing with intense golden light. "Send the internal schematics of the fortress to Grand Marshall Gideon! The Royal Army needs to know where the Heretic’s core is located!"
"I am afraid," a smooth, silken voice echoed perfectly from the dark corners of the circular chamber, "the Grand Marshall won’t be receiving any mail tonight."
The Diviners froze. The heavy, iron-wrought doors of the chamber were still completely barred from the inside, heavily warded against physical and magical intrusion. Yet, stepping flawlessly out of the two-dimensional shadow cast by the Head Diviner’s own robes was a pale-skinned dark elf.
Lyriel didn’t waste a single second on theatrics.
She channeled her Level 60 agility, becoming a literal blur of silver and black. She moved with terrifying, fluid precision, her poisoned elven daggers flashing in the candlelight. She didn’t use flashy magic or loud spells; she executed the room with the clinical perfection of an apex predator.
Throats were slit before screams could be formed. Hamstrings were severed. The Wyrm-Blight toxin coating her blades instantly dissolved the internal organs of the clerics, dropping them to the stone floor in corrosive, silent heaps.
In less than ten seconds, twenty of the Church’s most valuable intelligence assets were reduced to ash and blood.
The Head Diviner stumbled backward, his eyes wide with sheer horror as he raised a trembling hand. "Demon! Holy Smite!"
Lyriel vanished entirely, slipping into the shadow of a marble pillar to avoid the desperate blast of holy light.
She instantly rematerialized directly behind the old man. She grabbed the back of his white robes, yanked him backward, and drove her dagger smoothly through the base of his skull.
[Party Kill: High Diviner (Level 45). +12,000 EXP.]
Lyriel carelessly tossed the corpse aside. She walked over to the massive pool of glowing mercury. Reaching into her spatial ring, she pulled out a volatile, dark purple alchemical explosive crafted by Elara. She casually dropped it directly into the Eye of the Goddess.
"Master sends his regards," Lyriel whispered, melting back into the shadows just as the explosive violently detonated, completely shattering the Church’s million-gold-coin scrying array into a million useless pieces.
The capital was officially blind.
Back at the edge of the Whispering Woods, Grand Marshall Gideon stood inside his heavily armored command tent. The sun was beginning to set, but beneath the suffocating canopy of Kaelen’s violet clouds, it felt like midnight had already arrived.
"Marshall!" a communications officer yelled, bursting into the tent with a pale, sweat-drenched face. "The communication crystals! They’ve all gone dark! We’ve lost contact with the Grand Cathedral and the Divination Spire!"
Gideon’s single good eye widened. His Level 92 Aura flared, cracking the wooden table in front of him. "He didn’t just build a wall. He sent an assassin to the capital. The Heretic has completely blinded us."
"We must attack!" Cassius Valerius demanded, pacing the tent like a caged, rabid dog. His armor was scorched, and his pride was in absolute tatters after Seraphina had swatted his drakes out of the sky. "We have twenty thousand men out there! We have the siege engines! If we wait any longer, he will just spawn more monsters!"
"You fool!" Gideon roared, grabbing the young noble by the chest plate and easily lifting him off his feet. "We don’t know the layout of that fortress! We don’t know where the traps are! Sending men into a blinded Dungeon is mass suicide!"
Before Gideon could throw the boy to the ground, a deafening, terrifying sound echoed across the royal plains.
It wasn’t a horn. It wasn’t a battle cry. It was the agonizing, heavy grinding of massive stone and iron.
Gideon dropped Cassius and rushed out of the command tent, his heavy mythril boots sinking into the mud. He looked toward the Obsidian Fortress looming in the distance.
The massive, two-hundred-foot-tall black gates of the Dungeon were slowly opening.
Inside the courtyard, the air was thick with the smell of sulfur, ozone, and pure, unadulterated violence.
Kaelen stood at the front of his army. Behind him stood five hundred Abyssal Brutes—towering, eight-foot-tall monstrosities spawned directly from the Primordial Core. But they weren’t mindless, naked beasts anymore.
Thanks to Elara’s manic genius, every single Brute was clad in thick, jagged Void-iron plate armor. They wielded massive trench-maces and heavy tower shields that pulsed with corruptive energy.
Seraphina stood at his right, the Eclipse Breaker resting effortlessly on her shoulder. The Mythic-Tier greatsword actively hummed, hungry for the holy magic it was designed to devour. Elara stood a few paces back, her hands glowing with volatile green alchemy, ready to support the vanguard.
"The Church believes that Dungeons are meant to be raided," his deep, resonant voice echoed across the courtyard, amplifying perfectly through his Level 65 void mana. The Brutes let out low, guttural growls of absolute loyalty.
"They believe we are meant to wait in the dark, hoarding treasure until some righteous hero comes to cut us down," he continued, his violet eyes burning like supernovas in the gloom. He slowly raised his hand, pointing directly toward the terrified, disorganized ranks of the Royal Army visible through the opening gates.
"Tonight, we teach them the truth," he declared, a dark, blood-chilling smile spreading across his face. "We are not the prey. We are the cataclysm."
Kaelen violently dropped his hand.
"Kill them all. Leave the Grand Marshall for me."
The Abyssal Brutes roared—a deafening, terrifying sound that physically shook the earth. The five hundred heavy-infantry monsters charged out of the Obsidian Fortress in a flawless, terrifying wedge formation. freewebnovel.cσ๓
The Royal Army’s front lines, entirely composed of Silver-rank spearmen and low-tier paladins, hastily tried to form a shield wall.
"Hold the line!" a Captain screamed, his voice cracking with terror as the ground violently quaked beneath the Brutes’ charge. "Brace for impact!"
The clash was an absolute massacre.
The Void-iron armored Brutes didn’t even slow down. They crashed into the Church’s shield wall like a tidal wave of black metal and muscle.
The physical difference was insurmountable. Platinum shields crumpled like tin foil. Men were sent flying dozens of feet into the air, their bones completely shattered by the kinetic impact of the trench-maces.
[Party Kill: Royal Spearman (Level 25) x40. +45,000 EXP.]
[Party Kill: Silver Paladin (Level 30) x15. +30,000 EXP.]
The front line of the twenty-thousand-strong Royal Army collapsed in literally less than a minute.
Seraphina moved like a golden blur of death through the chaos. She leaped directly into a tight formation of elite Holy Knights.
With a single, devastating swing of the Eclipse Breaker, she violently devoured their combined defensive wards and cleaved six men perfectly in half, the jagged black blade cleanly cutting through their wyvern-scale armor.
From the rear, Kaelen casually walked out of the massive fortress gates.
He didn’t run. He didn’t rush. He simply strolled into the absolute chaos of the battlefield, his hyper-dense void mana passively crushing any stray arrows or spells that dared to enter his airspace.
Through the blood, the screams, and the destruction of his front lines, Grand Marshall Gideon finally locked eyes with the dark god of the Dungeon.
