Year 3805, Day 18
I think I've fully understood the entire process. I've already reviewed every step thousands of times.
On the other hand, I've hit a bottleneck in my sword mastery for hundreds of years now.
Waiting longer will only create a mental block that will prevent my breakthrough.
Now that everything is ready, I have no reason to wait any longer.
I've already prepared all the necessary conditions for my breakthrough and rented a special cultivation room for a year within the sect.
The place is protected by an elder at the Expansion Realm, a level that surpasses the maximum threshold of this world. It's said that he has made an agreement with the will of the world to achieve this.
All of this to say that every condition is met.
If I don't break through, it means I wasn't destined to in this lifetime.
...
"Is it finished?"
"In progress. I'm bypassing the firewalls," a hurried voice replied.
"Didn't you say it would be quick?!" Ruvia exclaimed, with a sharp look.
"I'm doing my best here!"
"Well, do it faster! The army is already on the way," Nevra said.
"Then slow them down. I don't know why the protocols changed, but I'll need another ten minutes to reach the missile silos. Even if we left a backdoor in the command prompts, we still need to access it."
Silence fell in the room, while the other Donvers watched the scene with varied expressions.
Although the three intermediate beings hadn't acted, they didn't dare move a muscle.
They watched the lines of code scroll by with a range of expressions: some showed fear, others excitement, or apprehension.
Nevra sighed and brought her arm guard close to her head, pressing a button.
"Headquarters, this is Beta Team, we're going to have a slight delay."
...
A few dozen kilometers away, on the deck of the lead airship.
"Marshal, we've just received a transmission from General Sysseras. The deactivation of the nuclear warheads is taking longer than expected. It should be done by ten minutes."
Sylvera frowned upon hearing the report from the steward but quickly relaxed.
"Maintain course but reduce speed by half. Begin the descent twenty kilometers from the target and disembark at fifteen. Relay the order to the entire army to be ready and disembark in an orderly manner."
The Novarian saluted and quickly turned away.
...
Some time later, in the high-ranking officers' quarters, the Minks captain seemed lost in his thought.
He was sitting on his bed, holding an old, damaged photo in his hands. It showed two large white apes dressed in formal attire, holding hands and smiling at the camera.
He was proudly wearing a colonel mark on his epaulets, while the female affectionately caressed her round belly.
As he bitterly recalled the past, anger gradually replaced the sadness in his gaze, and his tear-filled eyes turned into a violent shade of red.
"Valepy, I swear on my name, I will make you pay. No matter how long it takes, I will make you pay. Whether it's for my wife, my son, my title… I'll take everything from you until you beg me to die!" he swore, growling as his teeth ground together.
As he drowned in his hatred, the lights in the room suddenly turned red, and a deafening alarm rang throughout the base, snapping him out of his trance.
...
In less than two minutes, all the high-ranking officers were gathered in the command room, staring in horror at the wall-mounted screens.
Ten massive magical ships had deployed their eight mechanical legs and landed on the ground. Rows and rows of soldiers continued to disembark and assemble into four enormous formations, each divided into twenty-five subgroups.
Each of these hundred groups included over five hundred people, and one being stood proudly in the air above them, giving orders.
In addition, about fifty giant beasts calmly watched as the soldiers took their positions, half of them being large winged reptiles flying overhead.
As the lieutenants panicked internally, the door opened once more, and the captain, clad in his powered armor and holding his helmet in hand, stormed in, shouting.
"Someone explain to me where they came from! I want a clear estimate of their strength and exact position!"
A lieutenant quickly grabbed a tablet and read the report.
"Captain, they appeared as if by magic fifteen kilometers to the south two minutes ago. Neither drones nor radars detected them. According to drone cameras, there are over 50,000 beings, including nearly two hundred C-rank mutants. So far, we haven't spotted any B-rank mutants, but it's they're probably hiding nearby. Lastly, although they are visible on cameras, these ten strange ships are invisible to our radar. We know nothing about their armaments or capabilities."
The captain frowned, scanning the room.
Besides those at key posts, all the commanders were present, totaling around forty 3-star marauder lieutenants.
"We're not taking any chance. Launch five nuclear warheads at them, now!"
Another lieutenant rushed to a control panel and entered a long string of characters.
Beep Beep
An error message appeared on the screen, making him frown.
He backtracked and re-entered the password.
Beep Beep
Cold sweat trickled down his back as he felt the captain's sharp gaze on him.
"Move aside, I'll do it," said another monkey, taking his place.
He felt like heaven had granted him a reprieve and silently stepped back.
The other lieutenant re-entered the same string of characters, and then—
Beep Beep
As his expression crumbled, the captain immediately understood there was a problem.
"Move!"
He shoulder-checked the lieutenant, sending him flying across the room, and entered the launch codes himself.
Beep Beep
"DAMN IT!"
He roared and slammed his fist onto the console, which shattered under the impact.
Without wasting time, he rushed to another terminal, entered the code again, but the result didn't change.
He switched plans and tried to launch the thermobaric bombs, but again, the same error message appeared.
At that moment, even a fool would have realized the situation was far more severe than a technical glitch.
He quickly grabbed his transponder and, after pressing a few buttons, yelled into the device.
"Bassy, you idiot! What's happening in the machine room?"
Four or five kilometers away, outside the room, Lieutenant Minks had no idea what was going on.
"All clear, Captain. Nothing's moving here."
"No, you idiot, we just lost the intercontinental weapons. Go check it out now!"
The lieutenant panicked and spun around, placing his hand on the fingerprint scanner.
But the terminal denied him access. As the captain screamed into his earpiece, Minks drew his blade from his back and made two cuts, slicing the door in half.
However, instead of the terrified Minks he expected, he came face-to-face with a golden barrier.
...
Inside the barrier, Ruvia suddenly turned her head toward the entrance.
"It seems we've been detected," she said calmly.
BOOM BOOM BOOM
Heavy blows echoed from the entrance, forcing the Donvers to cover their ears and groan as blood flowed from their seven orifices.
Nevra waved her hand casually, and soon, the noise disappeared.
Nevertheless, the ripples were still visible on the surface of the barrier as the three-star marauder continued to pound on it.
"How fascinating. Even though he's only a half-spirit warrior, he has the strength of an advanced Rank 4. The technological prowess of this civilization is quite impressive," she thought.
Unfortunately for the Minks, the formation disk had been created by the naga magus after spending years of effort and an immense amount of resources. Even a beginner Rank 5 would take over ten seconds to break it.
As for a mere Rank 4, well, it would take at least one or two hours of effort.
"How much time do we have left?" Ruvia asked the Donver leader.
"The communication systems will shut down by… now!" He clicked a button, and soon, only static was heard over the radio waves.
...
In the command room, Captain Minks' transponder exploded against his ear, making him jump.
Moments later, a lieutenant shouted from the other end of the room.
"We've just lost radio communications! Only wired comms remain!"
The captain's face darkened, and his mind raced, trying to come up with a solution.
Finally, he sighed and donned his helmet.
"Open the hangars wide. I want all units ready for combat and out of the base. Focus all firepower on the ground troops. Activate the base's defense systems and shoot those bastards down. I want the Viking squads on high alert and engaging the ships, backed by the defense systems. Under no circumstances can we let them through!"
The man roared into the mic, and instantly, the entire base sprang into action.
He wasn't stupid, and clearly, they wouldn't have time to intercept the intruders, who were well-prepared, before the Great Army reached the base.
He was well aware of the power of these strange races. If they managed to enter the base in close-quarters combat and guerrilla warfare, they'd stand no chance.
It was going to be a race against time.
Fortunately for them, the Minks had long been prepared for any eventuality and were very close to the extraction zones.
The marauders quickly donned their powered armor, and the regular troops grabbed their rifles.
In less than a minute, like ants emerging from the ground, regiment after regiment of soldiers poured out from the depths of the earth.
Huge pits opened up all around. Sometimes, regiments of soldiers would run out, other times, massive levitating tanks advanced at high speed, or a group of fifty gigantic mechs carrying heavy equimpent emerged.
At the same time, numerous turrets and missile launchers rose from the ground, clearing away volcanic rock and turning toward the approaching enemy.
...
Ten kilometers away, all the intermediate beings turned their heads simultaneously to the north.
"What an intense murderous aura!" Sylvera thought.
From the top of the airship, he scanned the area and quickly spotted the enemy army emerging from the ground.
Suddenly, his gaze fell on a large metallic structure rising from the earth.
He immediately sensed a large amount of energy accumulating in the barrel of the cannon. Just from its size, several tens of meters tall, he was certain that the weapon's lethal power was immense.
Before the weapon could fully charge, he quickly condensed a qi blade and sent it directly at the cannon.
Swoosh
BOOM
In a few seconds, it had crossed the entire battlefield and crashed into the cannon, shattering the structure and everything nearby within a fifty-meter radius.
However, Sylvera couldn't help but frown.
Aside from the troops, he saw hundreds, if not thousands, of weapons and turrets emerging from the volcanic ground.
"This is going to be more complicated than expected," he thought.
...
Somewhere, at the lowest level of the base.
"I was right to have a bad feeling," said a deep voice.
"How many times have you repeated that line in the last five minutes?" someone else asked, visibly annoyed.
"Don't piss me off. You should have listened to me!" the first voice retorted.
"Enough!" said a third person.
In the dimly lit room, only his red eyes and brown fur were visible. Without his imposing size, almost no one would have guessed he was a Donver.
Nevertheless, the two red-eyed Minks fell silent instantly.
Such a scene would have made any other Mink's eyes widen, but here, it seemed normal.
Upon a second glance at the room, nearly three hundred individuals were gathered. They were all kind of races and form, but they had one thing in common: their red eyes and bloodthirsty aura.
"No one could have predicted that an unknown army would appear out of nowhere, nor that they would be so powerful. Even though we changed the base's security codes, it's clear something is happening that we don't understand. In any case, it's too late to intervene!" the Donver said in a calm voice.
"So what do we do?" another figure asked. "The plan might be compromised."
"The mission is now secondary. The real problem is that there are several wyverns in this army," replied the vampire leader. "That alone shows that there may still be remnants of the Draconians in the Polaris system."
"Sir Baron, if I may, what could a few Draconian remnants possibly do? Unless a real dragon emerges, our clan can easily handle a few wyverns."
The leader cast a disdainful glance at the young vampire who had just spoken.
"A mere frog in a well. You've clearly never experienced the terror of dragons! If the ancestors hadn't sacrificed themselves back then, we would have lost the war. Without mentioning a true dragon, just a few peak drakes are enough to hold us at bay. As long as the king remains asleep, we must take this very seriously. I will personally report the situation to the Duke."
He scanned the room and finally spoke in a dark voice.
"Now, it's time to leave. With the strength of the intruders, we won't be able to hold them off in any case."
As he said this, he injected his spiritual energy into the medium-quality spirit stones beneath him.
"Sir Baron, what about Sir Knight Mikar?"
"He has already been deployed by the captain of the base and won't be able to slip away without putting us all in danger. Fortunately, I was able to contact him before we lost communications and told him to use the blood burning technique to try to severely wound one of the enemy leaders. We will make sure to remember his sacrifice and honor his family. Now, hurry up and enter the formation!"
The vampires pressed close together to all fit within the small formation, and then the magical runes lit up with a bright light that filled the entire room.
Moments later, when the room became dark once again, nothing remained but shattered spirit stones and an almost entirely erased and unrecognizable magical diagram.
...
(Reminder: The amount of spiritual energy stored in a spirit stone depends on its quality: poor quality: equivalent to Rank 3, low: Rank 4, medium: Rank 5, good: Rank 6, excellent: Rank 7)