Earth's Greatest Magus

Chapter 2984 Chaos

Across the walls of Dravos, the battle had descended into pure carnage.The defenders were no longer fighting an army of strangers. Every section of the ramparts held familiar faces among the enemy now—Magus who had stood beside them days ago, Grand Magus whose names had once inspired respect, commanders who had shared victories, meals, and decades of friendship. Now they moved with the dreadful coordination of a single will, yellow eyes glowing as the hive directed them like limbs of the same body.

And while the defenders bled to kill their own, the horde never stopped advancing.

Hundreds of thousands of parasite hounds continued to pour toward the walls in endless tides. Fused abominations the size of buildings rolled across mountains of corpses, crushing friend and foe alike beneath their weight as rotating maws chewed through stone, steel, and flesh. Entire battalions vanished beneath the swarm every few minutes, forcing Dravos's forces and Maren's survivors to race constantly between breaches.

Worse still, the infected had begun targeting the city's defensive formations.

Corrupted enhanced attack and devastating spirit techniques crashed repeatedly against the great barriers protecting the civilian districts. Cracks began spreading across the translucent domes, first one, then dozens, spiderwebbing through entire sections of the formation.

Arctus stood at the center of the formation nexus, sweat pouring down his face as his hands moved through seal after seal. Every time a barrier cracked, he forcefully redirected energy to repair it. Every time a section stabilized, another came under attack.

"Need more people to reinforce the eastern district!" he shouted.

"The third barrier is failing!"

Formation masters and Magus rushed to obey, pouring their cultivation into the arrays. Some collapsed from exhaustion only moments later, replaced by others who stepped forward without hesitation.

"Hold the line!" Anderson roared into the chaos. "Hold the line!"

Easy to command.

Almost impossible to accomplish.

Every reserve the defenders had hidden for this moment had already been committed. The warships docked within Dravos had long since abandoned the safety of the city and moved to support the walls. Their cannons thundered without pause, bombardment after bombardment tearing massive gaps through the advancing hordes. Turrets glowed red-hot from continuous firing while volleys of spirit artillery rained across the battlefield, reducing thousands of parasite hounds to ash.

Yet it was not enough.

For every swarm destroyed, another seemed to emerge from the violet haze beyond the walls. The infected continued advancing without fear, climbing over mountains of their own dead as though casualties meant nothing.

The defenders watched in growing despair as breaches that took dozens of Grand Magus to close reopened only minutes later. Entire sections of wall vanished beneath waves of hounds and fused abominations, forcing commanders to constantly redeploy their dwindling forces from one crisis to the next.

The seven hours remaining before reinforcements were supposed to arrive felt like seven years.

They would not last one.

Above the walls, the shrill laughter of Parasite X echoed once more.

The creature drifted through the violet haze like a king surveying his kingdom. Every few seconds, another Grand Magus fell. Every few seconds, another pair of yellow eyes opened.

Then the creature chose its next target.

City Lord Cassian.

The ruler of Dravos stood near the central wall, surrounded by the remnants of his personal guard. His sword trembled visibly in his hand as he watched the parasite descend.

His two royal guards stepped forward.

It changed nothing.

The corruption engulfed them before they could even complete their techniques.

Both men collapsed.

Yellow veins spread across their bodies.

When they rose again, their eyes glowed the same hateful yellow as the rest of the hive.

Cassian broke.

The sight shattered whatever courage he still possessed.

"We need to retreat!" he shouted. "Retreat! Retreat now!"

The City Lord of Dravos—the man whose family had ruled the planet for three generations—turned and ran.

Panic overwhelmed him the moment he realized the terrifying creature was giving chase.

The parasite drifted after him without haste, its great yellow eye fixed upon him like a predator savoring a cornered prey.

Then, just as despair began to spread through the defenders, someone unexpected intervened.

Julian.

The Nova Roma faction leader descended from the sky, tore the round shield from his arm, and hurled it forward with all his strength. The artifact spun through the air like a miniature sun, and a golden halo blazed as layers of sacred light unfolded into a radiant barrier between the parasite and the defenders.

BAMMM!!!

Julian never intended to stand there and test himself against the creature.

The shield had only been meant to buy time.

The moment he threw it, he lunged toward Cassian, grabbed the city lord by the shoulder, and dragged him away from the wall toward the safety of the defensive lines.

It was the perfect opportunity. Not only would it give him a legitimate reason to withdraw from an unwinnable confrontation, but saving the ruler of Baeldum in full view of the city's defenders would earn Nova Roma a tremendous amount of contribution points, influence, and political favor in the days ahead.

Unfortunately, the parasite was faster than expected.

The sacred radiant barrier lasted less than a second before exploding into thousands of golden-light fragments.

Julian's expression tightened.

His free hand slammed against a storage ring.

A massive golden figure erupted onto the battlements.

The ten-meter construct crashed down between him and the parasite with enough force to crack the wall beneath its feet. Ancient runes blazed across its armored frame while dozens of spirit circuits illuminated beneath layers of restored metal.

Randhal's Guardian Golem.

One of the treasures recovered from Randhal's tombs and painstakingly reconstructed by Nova Roma's artificers.

The construct immediately obeyed its master's command.

A giant fist descended.

BAMMM!!

It successfully pushed away multiple infected grand magus. Still, the parasite slipped through a spatial rift and reappeared atop the golem's shoulder, corruption pouring from its claws as it attempted to infect the construct.

Nothing happened.

The golem possessed no flesh to corrupt, no meridians to invade, and no mind to dominate.

A shrill chittering echoed across the battlefield.

The situation became dangerous almost immediately.

Several corrupted Magus and Grand Magus immediately broke away from their battles and accelerated toward Julian's position. One after another, yellow-eyed figures abandoned the walls and converged on him, clearly responding to the parasite's command.

And among them came one face Julian could not afford to face.

A tall figure landed atop the rampart two hundred meters ahead — robes of crimson, beard frosted white, a long spear of dark wood balanced across one shoulder.

Elder Ravik of the Crimson Pine Spear Sect.

A Three Cosmos Master

Ravik's arm drew back in a motion, and his great spear thrust across the distance in a streak of black wind, the strike folding the air around it into a long, howling tunnel pointed directly at Cassian's chest.

The City Lord reacted purely on instinct.

Terrified and barely thinking, he fumbled at the artifacts hanging from his belt and somehow activated the correct one.

A heavy silver barrier burst into existence around him.

Ancient runes ignited across its surface, layer upon layer of defensive enchantments accumulated over generations of the city's rulers. The incoming spear struck the shield with a deafening impact that shook the surrounding battlements.

BOOM!

The barrier bent inward violently.

One rune shattered.

Then another.

Cracks spread across the silver surface as the spear continued pushing forward, and finally stopped a hand's breadth from Cassian's chest.

For a single heartbeat, relief appeared on the City Lord's face.

Then he saw the barrier collapsing.

The silver shield was already breaking apart.

The next attack would kill him.

The safety of the defensive lines lay barely a hundred meters away.

A trivial distance for a Grand Magus.

At that moment, however, it felt farther than the horizon itself.

Julian gritted his teeth and gathered his strength, preparing to rush forward and drag the man to safety.

Then the world stopped.

The parasite's great forehead eye had opened fully.

The yellow gaze locked onto him.

Every muscle in Julian's body froze.

Madness flooded his skull in a single screaming wave.

Voices laughed, wept, argued, and screamed inside his mind all at once, as though thousands of souls had suddenly been stuffed into his head. His Divine Flame ignited instinctively along his meridians, burning away the worst of the corruption before it could fully take root, but the effort came at a cost. Purple veins had already begun creeping across his arm, and a faint numbness was spreading through his fingers.

At the same time, the two royal guards who had fallen moments earlier rose once more.

Cassian's own men.

Their yellow eyes glowed with the unmistakable mark of the hive as they charged up the rampart from opposite directions, weapons raised and faces twisted into expressions that were no longer entirely human.

Julian barely had time to register the threat.

He could not dodge.

He had no time to do anything but watch them come.

Then the entire section of wall exploded.

Not in fire.

Not in blood.

But in green.

A forest of thick vines burst from the shattered stone in a single thunderous surge. Trunks thicker than a man's torso erupted from cracks in the rampart and coiled around the two corrupted guards before they could complete their charge. Their weapons were ripped from their hands, their bodies bound tightly, and within moments, they were suspended helplessly above the wall as the vines tightened around their limbs and throats.

Like a satisfied gardener, a small wooden creature with leafy arms and bright eyes, perched happily atop someone's shoulder,

"Ku... ku..."

Then Julian's eyes widened.

The figure was someone he recognized instantly.

"Sorry, I'm late."

The newly arrived figure was none other than Emery.

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