__________ POV Narration__________
The horde didn't appear instantly, but it was already mostly formed at the shores of the Dark Continent. Ashton had enough time to return and plan a bit more. He also scouted them a bit.
It brought him to a sickening realization. 'The training wheels are off I guess...'.
An army of at least two billion beasts gathered in one place. From a distance, it looked like countless ants of different sizes was all looking at the sea together.
In truth, after they were gathered by the purple-eyed god, they were simply made to remain idle there while the god dealt with Ashton and defended the temple.
You'd expect they'd scatter without that god's influence. But now there was more than one present.
In total, around 160 gods were living in the abyss. All of them were pairs of eyes that once gazed into Ashton's soul all that time ago.
Now, they took control of the strongest beasts they could find, they were now the ones leading the assault.
The one that Ashton fought was, without any doubt, the strongest of all of them. It was the only reason he alone was able to escape through the seal of the temple and into Zhang Lei's Nen Beast.
Even though the one Ashton fought had the most energy, that didn't mean that the other gods were weak. No, all of them were capable of creating life. Together they had an abundant amount of Shakti.
As for the humans... Well, they already knew that the attack was imminent. They lived each and every day like it was their last. The soldiers knew that they were all in danger, especially the ones that had been part of the defence team along with the Zoldyck family.
They knew the horrors that they were going to face... But they were far from scared. The remainders of humanity were showing, proving, that they were worthy to be part of Humanities last stand.
The training they went through only got harder and harder, each passing minute was important to them. They trained until their bones hurt, then they went and got healed by a Doctor Nen User, and then they got back to training.
There was no need for a lot of sleep. All of them were feeling rested after less than 4 hours of sleep. So all of their time was dedicated to spending quality time with their loved ones, and training.
The Human Army currently reached around 60000 Nen Users, men and women willing to lay down their lives to pave a future for those they loved.
That 60000 was a number that excluded the top brass, the ones that reached levels of strength that many found impressive. They were given a rank of their own, much like the Zodiacs were at some point in the past.
They were called 'The New Zodiacs' But, unlike the old ones, these ones were formed of groups. Each Zodiac Sign had a different group of people. A total of 1200 people reached that rank.
Their strength was actually high. Enough so that Ashton considered many of them to exceed the old Zodiac members.
So, humanity was currently stronger than ever.
Ashton also managed to gather some resources and prepared some... More practical weapons for humanity.
After all, they were going to be dealing with a large number of beasts. In total, every human needed to somehow deal with 30000 beasts on their own if they were to win the fight.
That much was simply unreasonable. So, it was obvious that they needed to thin out the horde before it got close. And, during their last survived horde, they found out that artillery weapons weren't quite as effective as they needed to be, their range was also lacklustre.
So, Cheadle decided to do the logical thing and ask Ashton for his expertise. To which she was reminded that Ashton was none other than the greatest nuclear expert that humanity had ever had.
It wasn't exactly a difficult problem to solve. Ashton couldn't exactly make anything to the level of the Miniature Sun(not that he would/could ever attempt that again) with what he had. But he still made hundreds of weaker Nuclear Warheads just with the scraps he found in his Void Space.
The New Continent was still not advanced enough for them to exploit nuclear power to that extent. So Ashton was left to make things out of what he had.
In the end, the 'Nuclear Warheads' were simply metal cylinders, highly volatile and extremely dangerous to handle.
'One wrong bump and it goes boom' type of dangerous. That was also why Ashton decided to handle the explosive by himself... Well, at least until Zeno talked him into allowing the Zoldycks to help him.
Zeno specifically was able to fly much faster than most beasts could move, so he was a great person for the job. It wasn't exactly practical to have Ashton, the most important person, do everything by himself.
So, spreading explosions became the job of the Zoldyck family.
Ashton also put a lot of the other weapons he had to use and even made use of his surroundings once more, creating natural underwater mines that were capable of releasing lightning explosions.
It was a combination of the abilities of the 'Ancestral Whales' and the Botanical Weapon 'Brion'.
And so, after so much preparation. Humanity was finally ready for the incoming horde.
The soldiers steeled themselves when hearing the alarms. They knew that there was no guarantee of their victory, but they still left their homes with smiles on their faces.
Much like their families headed to the underground tunnels with smiles. There was no reason to be sad, humanity's fate rested on this very day. And they were going to win it, one way or another.
The Zodiacs, Morel, Knov, Kite, Pitou, all of them stared at the vast forest formed in front of their walls. They knew what was coming. They were the first to arrive.
Kite gave Pitou a glance before sighing. He wasn't foolish enough to start anything at this point.
"I guess this is it..." Cheadle said as she released a stressed sigh.
"Now now, there's no need for any pessimism. Our chances are decent..." Morel spoke with a charming smile. The man was not one to ever fear adversity. And he certainly didn't want humanity to vanish, especially not after the sacrifice the old chairman had made for them.
"Decent, yet not high..." Botobai, the aged man said while staring at the large trees that covered the horizon.
"What's with this shitty attitude all of a sudden?! We're here to kill monsters! Stop whining!" Kanzai, like usual, was not overthinking things. His attitude did help a lot though, it made the other smile, steeled their resolve a bit.
I think some would call this, a moment of accidental genius.
"Hmm... I guess Ashton will sound the secondary alarm when they reach land. We need to all be in positions before that." Kite said while he looked at the people that were gathering around the walls.
"The trees will lower for us to fire when the beasts get in range for us..." Maizatom said while looking at the sharpshooters climbing and jumping up the tall wall.
Most of the army was done using fire weapons. After a certain level of Nen mastery, a bow and arrow were much better, more efficient. Especially since they didn't have a range limit.
"EVERYONE! TO ARMS!" A shout hurried everyone to gather to the walls. The voice boomed over everyone. It was released by none other than Maha. A booming voice that shook the walls released from a body that small seemed comical in concept, but it only showed why he was so respected among the troops.
Soon, very soon, the end would begin.
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