“Duke!”

Donick shoved through soldiers who were also starting to stir with unease and sprinted all the way to the very top of the wall, urgency flashing in his eyes.

“Duke, that horn—”

“I heard it.”

Duke Campbell, Lorne, sat on a semicircular platform with no protective cover at all. Those pale blue eyes—like a lake, identical to Muen’s—watched the distance with calm composure. Even the fresh bandages wrapped around his chest from his earlier exchange with the Magic Mountain did nothing to diminish his authority.

Smoke, clamor, death, and killing—those were the battlefield’s base colors.

But when your gaze passed over the dense waves of low-ranking demonmen charging like tireless ant swarms, at the end of the horizon, those tents, fences, and the tall wall that had been erected at some point without anyone noticing, all stood in backlit silhouette, exuding an eerie atmosphere.

The choking haze of war didn’t seem to touch that place at all.

Yet the low, heavy horn sound had come from there.

Lorne stared at that place as well, as if thinking about something.

“The meaning of that horn... is a general offensive, right?” Donick asked.

“It should be.”

The one who answered was Funal.

Though a civil official, he too had put on bloodstained armor. The weathering and dust on his face couldn’t be hidden. His eyes were so tired he looked like he hadn’t closed them in days.

“A month ago, half a month ago, and now—this should be the third time we’ve heard a horn at that frequency.”

“But... isn’t this already a general offensive?”

Donick scratched his bare head, feeling like something was off. 𝒇𝓻𝓮𝓮𝙬𝙚𝒃𝒏𝓸𝙫𝒆𝙡.𝓬𝓸𝒎

The battlefield below—low-ranking demonmen who didn’t fear death were still battering the imperial wall. Every open stretch in front of Dolonsrei Fortress had been stuffed full of attacking demonmen and corpses.

In the past half month, the demonfolk assault had never slowed or stopped. Not only the demonfolk— even the defenders on the wall had killed until their eyes ran red, then gone numb amid unimaginable slaughter.

If this suicidal onslaught didn’t count as a general offensive, then what did?

The wall was only so wide. The space was only so big. Sure, the demonfolk had numbers, but they couldn’t stack themselves in layers and come at them three-deep!

“Of course this counts as a general offensive. With the demonfolk’s scale, even if they split their demonman soldiers into several groups, and each group launched an assault on Dolonsrei Fortress separately, for us, each one ◈ Nоvеlіgһт ◈ (Continue reading) would still count as a general offensive.”

Funal considered. “But this time is clearly different.”

“Different?”

“Did you hear the difference? That horn is a little unlike the normal ones. The frequency is the same, but the tone is clearly different. This time, the horn should be made from the horn of an Abyss beast called a ‘Panshan.’ The sound is low and thick, yet it carries for a hundred miles. Because it’s hard to obtain, it carries special meaning by itself. As far as I know, the demonfolk don’t only blow those horns during a general offensive...”

“Not only a general offensive? Then what else does it mean?”

“It also means... sacrifice! Right! Sacrifice! Those horns are also sounded during sacrifice!”

Funal’s expression shifted wildly, as if he’d grabbed hold of something.

“But that’s what’s strange. The demonfolk have been abandoned by the gods. Only some tribes in the early days—those that refused to believe it—used those horns for sacrifice. After that, even the act of sacrifice itself gradually vanished into the river of history...

“If they really are doing it for sacrifice, then who are they sacrificing to? The demonfolk have been trapped in the Abyss for a thousand years—do they even have an object of worship left?”

“Sacrifice to their ancestors?” Donick scratched his head again.

“Impossible!”

Funal grew even more agitated and rejected it outright. “The demonfolk would never sacrifice to their ancestors, because for them, sacrificing to ancestors is like sacrificing to themsel—”

He abruptly choked off the second half of the sentence and swallowed it hard, so forcefully you half wondered if he’d bitten his tongue.

“What did you say?”

“Nothing.”

Under Donick’s puzzled look, Funal drew a deep breath and forced himself to calm down.

“In any case, this is very strange.”

“I know it’s strange. My brain doesn’t work as well as yours, but I’m not an idiot.”

Donick snorted, thinking Funal had gotten scared senseless by those demonfolk horns—so scared his head wasn’t even clear anymore.

“Right, Duke?”

But Lorne still didn’t respond. He continued staring at the distant scene.

“Funal.” After sitting like a statue for a long time, Duke Campbell finally spoke.

“Yes.”

“I’m going to ask you something.”

“Yes, Duke.”

“That wall—when was it built?”

“The wall?”

Funal narrowed his eyes and followed Lorne’s line of sight into the distance.

Crude fences. Tents made from scraps of cloth. Colorful flags with no unified symbol... In the far rear of the demonfolk army was a camp they had clearly thrown together recently.

But behind that camp...

there really was a wall.

A black wall.

“There really is a wall.”

Funal frowned.

A wall wasn’t strange.

An extra wall on a battlefield wasn’t strange either.

It could be a camp perimeter. A raised platform for observation. A barrier meant to block the empire’s view.

But the question was—

when had this wall appeared?

Even though the empire’s scouts were now pinned inside the fortress and couldn’t be sent out at all, up on the highest point of the wall—in the mages’ observation towers—there were still people watching the demonfolk army’s movements day and night.

So why had no one reported that the demonfolk had started building a wall in the rear?

It was as if...

the wall had simply appeared out of nowhere.

And not only that, it also looked...

“Too long.”

At the end of the horizon, from the far left edge to the far right edge, there was that deepened black outline. Some stretches were obscured by terrain, but instinct told Funal—

this wall had enclosed the entire battlefield of several million.

“I’m very sorry, Duke. I’ll send someone to—”

“No need.”

Lorne remained calm, not showing the slightest wavering at this sudden anomaly. Sitting there, his thick beard stirred in the wind like a lion’s mane.

He was a lion—one that could make the empire’s army face enemies ten times, a hundred times their number, and still not retreat a single step.

And now, this lion stood up.

And Dolonsrei Fortress trembled as if struck.

“It’s here.”

Everyone subconsciously lifted their heads and looked into the distance.

Because at the exact moment Lorne rose, the horn that had echoed across the entire battlefield stopped.

The battlefield should have been loud and chaotic, but when the horn ended, it was as if everyone remained trapped in the lingering weight of its solemn authority. For a brief moment, an eerie silence fell over everything.

In that silence, a new rumble rose.

Far away, at the horizon’s edge, endless dust surged up, mixing with the yellow sand until they could no longer be told apart.

The Abyss wind grew fiercer, like blades tearing at every person’s skin.

The horizon suddenly became uneven. That graceful, natural curve sprouted countless small jagged teeth, making the silhouettes the light skimmed across look especially vicious.

And if you brought your view closer, you’d realize those jagged “teeth” weren’t lines at all—

They were a row of enormous, ferocious monsters.

Earth dragons. Panshan. Scorch wraiths. Gomot colossi... The most vicious, most brutal, most dangerous beasts of the Abyss all appeared. Just lying there, they were taller than even that black wall.

And those savage beasts seemed to have been tamed.

Because on their backs, towering demonmen wore armor as ornate as an imperial general’s, gripped alchemical weapons forged from magitech materials, and held their heads high, their presence overwhelming.

But if you looked closer, in those higher demonmen’s crimson eyes, you could see it—

pain that could not be restrained... and madness.

“Higher demonmen... so they really are launching the final general offensive!”

Donick hollered like a maniac. After all that running in circles, the horn really did mean that in the end?

He never should’ve listened to Funal ramble so much!

“Move, move, move—get people ready!”

Donick was decisive as ever, immediately about to assign men to meet the enemy’s new wave.

But the demonfolk moved even faster than Donick imagined.

“ROAR—!”

The beasts’ roars were deafening. Even the imperial soldiers on the wall clearly felt the crushing pressure. Under the soldiers’ fearful gazes, those massive beasts—driven by higher demonmen—began to charge.

Charge.

Charge.

Charge.

A reckless charge without restraint!

They trampled flesh. Claws tore bodies open from behind. They smashed through everything, their enormous mass grinding over life like millstones. Horrific magical breath poured from those savage maws, turning everything it touched into scorched earth.

And behind them, those higher demonmen swung their weapons and slaughtered every straggler without mercy. No flesh-and-blood body could withstand an assault that sharp. The killing techniques honed in the Abyss’s brutal environment finally revealed their full terror.

And the targets of those blades...

were nothing but the unguarded backs of their own kind.

Yes—their own kind.

Donick went blank. Many soldiers on the wall went blank. Even the low-ranking demonmen whose bodies had just been ripped open by claws from behind... went blank.

On their deformed, ugly faces, confusion still lingered. Heads flung into the air stared at the sudden massacre carried out by the higher demonmen, as if the scraps of reason they had left were still trying to understand why.

For the low-ranking demonmen, one moment they had been hurling themselves at the human wall for the demonfolk’s grand plan, fearless of death.

The next moment, the shadow behind them arrived—

and death and slaughter followed like a curse.

Very quickly, blood mist spread across the distant field beneath the dim yellow sky. Higher demonmen rode their beasts like bulldozers, pushing from the horizon’s edge straight across the battlefield. For a time, the butcher’s scene over there was even more horrific than what was happening at the wall.

Like hell.