Thirty days.
With only a little more than twenty days left before Terra would be fully exposed to the universe, even Rhine Lab could not predict what the scene would look like once that false starry sky was completely shattered. Yet based on common sense alone, the demons were evolving day by day. Once Terra was fully exposed to the universe, would they undergo a complete transformation?
The demons were evolving, and so were the Seaborn. That was one of the few facts that still gave the people of Terra any comfort.
Felix spent ten days recuperating in the far north, and at last he welcomed the arrival of the allied armies of Terra. The first to reach the front lines was the Yan force led by General Zuo. The second was the Laterano army under Cardinal Ers. The third was the alliance of Victoria, New Tara, and the Kingdom of Tara...
The allied armies had arrived, but their path was blocked.
The space outside the Stargate had already been completely reduced to nothingness, while the floating island at the foot of the Stargate hung suspended eerily in the air. Black matter continuously seeped out from the Stargate. These were collapsed beings that had long since condensed into countless small black cavities. They devoured everything around them, hollowing out the entire underground of the Northern Territory.
Nothingness was no longer something confined only to the demons' domain.
It had now entered reality.
There was nothing there. No sound. No light. Only emptiness. And within that emptiness, the Stargate itself had all but vanished. There was no light, no visible outline, nothing that could be seen beyond the void.
Fortunately, the allied forces of Terra were still steadily gathering, and they had remained far enough away from the Stargate, because the Void was constantly devouring new land, and the Seaborn would not act until it had swallowed the ground just in front of the safe boundary.
Although the number of Seaborn was effectively limitless, the same was true of the demons. By now, demon warriors had become rare. That was not difficult to understand. Demons turned the corpses of fallen warriors from generation after generation into demonic shells. But after enduring such relentless bombardment from the Terra Alliance, most demon warrior bodies had long since been blasted into dust. Now, only tens of thousands of terranoid demons remained, while the overwhelming majority had become collapse bodies that filled the entire void.
"Your Highness, what are your plans for the upcoming battle?"
On the electronic platform, General Zuo clasped his hands in salute toward Felix. "The main forces of the Terra Alliance have gradually assembled, but the speed at which the demons devour space is still too fast. Our Tianshi predict that the Void may break through our safe boundary in less than two days. In two days, reinforcements from Kazimierz and Rim Billiton may not arrive in time, and the day of the decisive battle may be forced forward."
"The Seaborn will be deployed ahead of schedule to compete with the demons for space. In the next battle, the main battlefield will be handed over to the Seaborn's forces, while the remaining armies of the Terra Alliance will be responsible for the scattered demon warriors in the surrounding area."
At the mention of the Seaborn, General Zuo felt both relief and a faint sense of absurdity. Who could have imagined that the Seaborn, once feared and rejected by all Terrans, would become the last lifeline of Terra?
Everyone knew how terrifying the Great Silence had been. Iberia's relentless pursuit of the Seaborn day and night had been for precisely that reason. Aegir had fought the Seaborn in the deep sea and lost several cities in the process. It had been a war to the death.
And now?
Iberia had recognized reality and chosen cooperation, even showing signs of bending itself toward Felix. As for Aegir, it had vanished ever since the Seaborn completely disappeared from the deep sea. None of the letters sent by neighboring nations had received any reply.
The few remaining Abyssal Hunters waited aboard the battleship. They made no comment on Aegir's attitude, but even now, they were still not entirely used to fighting side by side with the Seaborn.
Without the existence of the Seaborn, the Terrans would have had no way to solve the contamination of the land or the spread of the Void, and those were the greatest reasons the demons had been able to run rampant. But now that the Seaborn had arrived, the demons finally had a natural enemy, and the Terrans had gained something they had lacked for a long time:
confidence.
As for the one who commanded the Seaborn, or in their own words, their Administrator or Manager, he had won the hearts and support of the Terra Alliance. Whether through his ability to command armies or through his power to charge alone into enemy lines, Felix was showing all of Terra exactly what Terra's future would look like.
Those who were clear-headed and self-aware, such as Siesta, Minos, Sargon, and many other smaller countries and factions, had already submitted to Felix. Their demands were simple. Once the interstellar age began, Terra would inevitably be unified. And as some of the first nations to cast their lot in with Felix, they would naturally receive greater returns in the future.
Felix was not stingy in this regard. In his view, such behavior was a straightforward display of loyalty, and Terra was destined to change. As for what would happen after the war, he did not dwell on it for long. By contrast, the other national powers seemed already to see the first light of hope and had begun imagining what the land of Terra would look like once the war was over.
Felix sneered inwardly at this habit of looking only to the future while ignoring the present. Even so, since they had chosen this path of submission, he would still distribute rewards according to their standing and according to what each of them deserved to receive.
___
It was night.
The night sky above the frozen plains was torn apart by the demons' black tide. The aurora convulsed within distorted dimensional rifts, and each time it appeared, it existed only for a fleeting moment before Seaborn's purification wiped it away, only for the demons to reduce it once more to emptiness. Felix stood atop an observation tower forged from ice, the blue-gold flame in his hand casting an amber glow across the hundred-mile frozen wasteland. Behind him, the banners of the Terra Alliance snapped wildly in the blizzard. Kazdel's skyships cut through the iron-gray clouds, constantly relaying information. Laterano's gunners had mounted heavy Gatling guns upon the ice. Leithanien's spire casters driving artificial colossi, carved burning trenches across the snowfields.
"The ice layer on the left flank has cracked!"
The radar officer's shout rang clearly through the public channel. Felix saw the permafrost on the far horizon rising and splitting open. From beneath it burst tens of thousands of eerie blue tentacles, each ending in the head of a devoured northern warrior. Ghostly fire flickered in the empty eye sockets of those heads, and their shattered jaws chanted blasphemous ancient languages of the sami.
Seaborn was responsible for seizing control of the main battlefield from the demons, while the remaining fragmented engagements were left to the warriors of Terra.
The anti-aircraft guns on the battleships fired in unison. These were now the only weapons that could still effectively injure the demons, and their crimson trajectories sliced through the night sky. As the burning Originium shells exploded amid the forest of tentacles, mushroom clouds of blue fire hundreds of meters high rose from the frozen plains, only to be drawn at once into the void, less as if swallowed and more as though by some gigantic range hood that constantly pulled in smoke and debris. The leader of the Emperor's Children, Kumori, charged at the front. Her arms were fitted with great shields and her hands with mechanical gauntlets. As soon as she reached the foremost line, the shields suddenly unfolded into a field, and the players charging with her raised their own shields in unison, protecting their comrades from the splattering demonic pus.
"The second wave!"
"It's coming!"
The Leithanien spire casters began chanting. Crimson light gathered in their hands and resonated with Ifrit's roar. The blizzard abruptly changed direction, forming a tornado of fire and embers that engulfed the demons in flames and gradually slowed their movements. Where fire and snow collided, pools of water began forming upon the ground, and from within those pools Seaborn emerged freely, tearing the demons apart with every strike.
At last, the demons' true form was revealed.
A spherical void three hundred meters tall slowly rose from the fissure in the ground. It was a mixture of blue and black, with a pale white ring like an eye and red light flickering in the mist within it. When the warriors looked up, they saw that inside that void were frozen countless souls of Terra's many races. Its entire body was made of writhing black, uncanny matter, and wherever it passed, even light itself was swallowed.
This was the true form of the demon.
Not a demon that had possessed the corpse of a fallen warrior and risen again, but its true self.
A chill ran down the spines of the warriors, yet in the face of such an enemy, they chose to believe in themselves.
Ifrit's roar was devoured by the demon's silence. Its true form tore through space and descended. The moment the giant claw of the Diablo slammed into that dark matter, the magnetic field of the entire Northern Territory shifted. Every warrior of Terra felt the tectonic plates beneath their feet begin to move. In the dizzying whirl that followed, they could barely control their bodies and nearly collapsed to the ground.
The demons suffered even more. The moment the dark matter was struck, the demon warriors and the collapse bodies that had been fighting Seaborn and the warriors of Terra all began surging wildly toward it, as if the dark matter itself had sensed danger and was calling them back for protection.
Felix and Ifrit gave it no such chance.
His whole body had already turned into flame, to the point that his original form could no longer be seen. In this battle, he had no intention of holding anything back. The blue-gold fire became a meteor once more and crashed straight into the dark matter. The contact between the two produced no sound at all, yet the flames were clearly being absorbed by the dark matter.
"Go ahead and absorb it. Let's see how long you can keep that up!"
Ifrit pinned the dark mass to the ground with one claw while Felix intensified the flames. His MP was dropping at a terrifying rate, but Felix did not care. With his other hand, he pulled a blue potion from his pocket and drank it. Soon, his MP began slowly rising again.
The dark matter expanded, but now it no longer looked purely black. Instead, it began to resemble a blue-gold substance. Inside the void, the flames with their purifying power spread rapidly, like dry wood meeting a raging inferno. They ignited at once within the dark matter, and after only a short while, the entire mass burst apart under the overwhelming energy of the blue flames.
There was not even the sound of an explosion.
Just like that, the demon's "high-level monster" died silently at Felix's hands.
Not far away, the moment the icy trunks and countless branching limbs that made up the demon warriors shattered, the imprisoned bodies within them decayed and dispersed. At the same time, streaks of light appeared in that dark world, transforming into a ghostly blue torrent that washed across the bodies of every warrior in the Terra Alliance.
Those were...
the spirits of warriors?
But they were already dead. If so, where could their souls have come from?
The moment a Terra Alliance warrior's Originium Arts pierced the demon's torso, time itself seemed to freeze. Purifying light erupted from the wound, spreading into an aurora-like band across the northern sky. The demon's arm suddenly multiplied, transforming into black thorns that lashed across the ground and instantly wounded hundreds of Terra Alliance warriors. Just as that arm was about to rise again, it was forcibly pinned in place by a Victoria tank that had just arrived at the front line.
Then, from the horizon, an azure dragon appeared and delivered the final blow.
As the dragon pierced through the demon's chest, the eerie black-blue branches instantly withered, rotted away, and crumbled into dust. Felix drew in a deep breath and shouted, "The battle is not over! Warriors, charge!"
"Ohhhhh!"
The deaths of the two massive demons gave the warriors a desperately needed surge of morale. Nothing could have inspired them more. Step by step, they advanced, treading across the path that had been purified and opened by the Seaborn.
After drinking the potion, Felix quickly caught up with Seaborn and continued charging forward. The azure sea and the flames gradually brought color back into this void, and from deep beneath the emptiness, that familiar and chilling music rose once again, making the corners of Felix's mouth lift slightly.
Witch King... thank you.
A shooting star flashed past. Felix raised his hand toward the sky.
In the next instant, the Seaborn launched the most ferocious assault on the Stargate since the war had begun. No matter what kind of deep-sea creature they were, every one of them released streams of deep blue purifying energy into the darkness of the Stargate.
"Ifrit, let's go!"
Now transformed entirely into flame, Felix's voice had become deep and indistinct, almost impossible to recognize. He gripped his sword tightly, and in that moment, the blade began to grow, expanding from an ordinary one-handed sword into a massive broadblade. Purifying fire burned across its surface, and wherever its edge passed, the void automatically dissolved.
"Cut through it!"
Ifrit roared and leapt forward, crashing headfirst into the deeper darkness, while Felix followed with sword in hand.
The space inside was extremely unstable, like being trapped in a place with no people, no time, and no...
nothing at all.
In that universe where even matter seemed barely to exist, Felix was stripped of his five senses for an instant.
But he closed his eyes.
Through the burning MP bar, he confirmed one thing: he was still alive, and he was still fighting.
He could no longer even control his own arms, because he had long since lost the ability to control his body.
Here, everything was nothingness.
Except...
Felix felt as though he was smiling.
There were two ways to use skills in Ark.
The first was directly through the menu.
Clicking "Use" in the menu was the beginner's method. The system would automatically calculate and execute the player's actions.
The first method was menu-based skill activation.
The second was casting directly through one's body or through spell language.
And now, he was using the first method.
[Use racial skill [Burning Heaven]?]
[No]
[Yes]