ALL NOVEL Chapter 404: Behind the Curtain
The Green Shield is one of the functions of the city's defensive formation. It can block several attacks from a rank 15 beast before being smashed. However, even with such incredible defensive power, after being attacked by over ten thousand beasts of ranks 12, 13, and 14 for ten minutes, its color changed from green to yellow.
Fortunately for the humans, the time the Green Shield bought them was enough. They killed thousands of rank 12 beasts, many rank 13 beasts, and even a few rank 14 beasts.
...
The rank 15 beast observed the battle situation with cold eyes. Dark beasts usually lack wisdom, but it had recently been granted wisdom by the Queen herself. From that day on, it had worshiped the Queen as its master.
Some time ago, the Queen sent it here with instructions to destroy the city, but she didn't allow it to act personally. Instead, she gave it an army and ordered it to use the army.
Seeing the situation now, it began to panic. The tiny humans were much tougher than it had thought; so many dark beasts had died without being able to harm a single strong human.
Being a beast that had only recently been granted wisdom, it was not a good commander and severely lacked experience. Its 'battle strategy' was simply to attack them head-on and destroy them.
"You may attack personally now," a voice rang in its mind.
The beast, over 50 kilometers tall, kneeled toward the north.
This scene attracted everyone's attention. It was extremely bizarre to see such a powerful dark beast kneeling toward an unknown existence. Many martial gods and other high-ranking cultivators worried about the possibility of another, even stronger beast appearing. Of course, none of them even imagined that the Queen herself was behind it; only Master Green knew who the beast was kneeling toward.
"Yes, my Queen!" Master Green also bowed toward the north. Usually, the Queen is everywhere, so there is no need to bow or kneel in any particular direction, but at the moment, the Queen's projection appeared in the north, so they bowed toward the north.
The Queen had just ordered something that would terrify all the city's cultivators: she instructed Master Green to disable the Green Shield. In her opinion, the Green Shield was making the battle dull.
Just as Master Green was about to teleport to the formation core to disable the shield, a phenomenon appeared on the battlefield that caused panic among every martial god practitioner and higher.
Practitioners of the martial god realm and spiritual cultivators of the soul-body realm and higher have a deep connection with the space around them; they can sense when something happens to it. Just now, the space beyond a radius of 500 kilometers had been severed from the main world. This meant they could no longer run away; once they reached the boundary of the 500 kilometers, they could not go any further.
But for them, the real cause for concern was not the mutation in space; after all, they had the Green Shield, which provided a safe haven. The real cause for concern was: who did it? Who was powerful enough to completely separate the space of this area from the wider world? Not even rank 16 beasts were strong enough to do it. Many began thinking of the scene just now, where the rank 15 beast had respectfully and humbly bowed toward the north.
All clues pointed to a being behind the curtain who was responsible for all this.
However, regardless of what had happened to the space, the shield was still there. As long as the being behind the curtain didn't come out personally, it wouldn't be a problem to at least defeat these dark beasts.
But then, the Green Shield disappeared.
"What happened?" a martial god wood elf shouted in disbelief. Could it be that the being behind the curtain was intervening personally?
Without the shield, the attacks of the thousands of remaining dark beasts landed on the inner city, causing horrors. The cultivators were busy defending themselves; they didn't have time to block attacks for mortals. The beasts' attacks hit residential areas, causing the deaths of millions of people.
Boom! The rank 15 beast took a step forward, opened its mouth, and shot a dark ball toward the city.
A dark ball is a bloodline spell of dark beasts; it would dissolve anything it came into contact with and turn it into dark smoke.
An attack from a rank 15 beast is far beyond what soul-body cultivators and martial god practitioners can handle; if this attack hit, it would kill all humans in the city, leaving not even bones behind.
Fortunately for the humans, they also had a soul nucleus peak warrior among them.
Master Green acted quickly and cast his spell, "Lightball!"
Knowledge is crucial; if one doesn't know how to destroy a dark ball, they might inadvertently strengthen it. If Master Green had cast Fireball, Stone Wall, or Energy Shield, it would have only fed the dark ball; after all, darkness can dissolve everything and strengthen itself in the process. Of course, if the dark beast in question were weaker, he could have overpowered it, but within the same realm, he has to be careful and only attack the other party through its weakness.
There are few things that can defend against dark magic of the same rank: one is the Green Shield used by the formation; the other is light energy, which even has the upper hand against dark magic.
The two massive balls, one dark, the other shining with light, hit each other, and both disappeared; it was as if they never existed.
"It's strong!" Master Green thought; his white light should have had a slight advantage, but in the end, both were destroyed, meaning the two spells had similar strength, despite the advantage of light over darkness.
The rank 15 beast took another step forward, directly crossing over 10 kilometers.
Boom! Even one step from it was as if it was Armageddon; its strong and massive body alone was enough to destroy all life on the continent, given enough time.
Seeing there was no other choice, Master Green could only sigh and get ready for a serious fight; he despised fighting beings of the same strength, but today, the Queen ordered him to do it; therefore, he had no choice.
Fighting with a massive dark beast with such a small body is not practical; to solve this issue, Master Green cast his spell, "Projection!"
Immediately, another extremely huge beast—also around 50 kilometers tall and looking exactly like the dark beast—appeared. The only difference between the two was their color; the dark beast was, well, dark, and the newly appeared beast was shining with light.
It had over 500 sets of long arms, countless eyes, and horns and thorns protruding from its body everywhere. Each hand carried golden, shining blades.
This was one of Master Green's trump cards against beasts; no matter how big, the Projection spell would copy the beast on the other side. Using the projection, he could fight the beast much more easily; at least he wouldn't have to be so careful not to be crushed by its massive body.
Master Green could only sigh as he observed his soul nucleus; nearly all of his energy was exhausted with just one move. He only kept a bit for emergencies; after this, he had to rely on the projection.
The two behemoths got close to each other, their numerous arms trying to attack each other's main body; both were evenly matched, fighting each other into a draw.
The land near them had long since completely disappeared; they were too big and heavy and were sinking deeper and deeper underground as they fought.
The two stood in one place, not moving around, and fought each other using their arms; they were measuring each other's strength.
As the two behemoths were fighting, the cultivators were also battling weaker beasts on the ground. The Green Shield had helped them kill many of the beasts. Now, there were many more human cultivators of martial god level and above than there were beasts. Soon, the humans gained momentum, and as the two beasts fought to a draw, the humans on the ground were decimating the beasts.
Perhaps sensing this, the rank 15 dark beast tried changing its strategy. It started taking step after step, trying to get closer to the city center, where Master Green was.
Noticing this, the light behemoth tried to stop it; the dark behemoth took a few direct hits to the body but tolerated them and continued its move toward the city.
With another step, it stepped directly into the middle of the city center, killing countless surviving mortals; let alone mortals, even a few martial god practitioners were crushed to death under its feet.
Looking around with its two main eyes, it searched hard for Master Green, but he was nowhere to be found. Not having found the man manipulating the light behemoth, it did the next best thing: some of its arms attacked the city, killing and destroying the remaining life, turning it into dark smoke and absorbing it.
The ability to turn matter into darkness is exclusive to dark magic; the light behemoth was unable to strengthen itself with this method. The strength of a few mortals and even martial god cultivators is a drop in the bucket compared to the battle of two rank 15 beasts, but in such a close battle, even a drop may be able to tip the balance.
Light beasts also have their own special abilities; for example, they can absorb light from their surroundings and strengthen themselves that way. However, the light beast created by Master Green was, after all, not real; it didn't have those abilities.
Therefore, as the dark behemoth began madly absorbing the many dead mortals and martial artists, the light behemoth was unable to recover any power. Previously, the two were equal in power, but the dark beast began gradually taking a very slight advantage.