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Chapter 388: 388
It was an escape, not just from the battle, but from the war itself, from the squalor and the endless, mindless conflict. He had seen enough carnage to last several lifetimes, and the sight of that swirling vortex offered a tantalizing promise of something... else.
He moved with a surprising agility, weaving through the chaos. Ratmen, driven by their primal instincts, clawed and scrambled past him, oblivious to his change of direction. Their single-minded focus on destruction was his greatest advantage. He was a ghost among them, a shadow slipping through the cracks of their frenzied advance. The remnants of his once-proud armor clinked softly beneath his tattered cloak, a faint counterpoint to the cacophony of war.
He reached the edge of the battlefield, the ground littered with the charred remains of the first wave. The air still crackled with residual energy from the sigil’s detonation. The portal shimmered just beyond, a swirling kaleidoscope of colors that seemed to shift and change with every blink. It was close enough to touch, yet felt impossibly distant, a mirage in the heat of battle.
Suddenly, a guttural shriek pierced the air. A hulking ratman, its muscles bulging with unnatural strength, turned its bloodshot eyes towards Chief, recognizing him. It had been separated from the main horde, perhaps disoriented by the earlier explosion. Now, it spotted Chief, a solitary figure moving away from the fight. A low growl rumbled in its throat, a sound that promised violence.
Chief froze. He was battered, bruised, and exhausted. A direct confrontation with the ratman would be suicidal. He had to think fast. He glanced back at the portal and noticed that most of the portals were closing as civilians were quickly thinning in number, its beckoning light now a desperate lifeline. He took a deep breath, steeling his resolve. He couldn’t afford to be caught here.
With a burst of speed he didn’t know he possessed, Chief darted behind a ruined cart, the ratman enraged roar echoing behind him. He scrambled over the wreckage, ignoring the sharp edges that tore at his already damaged armor. The ogre, clumsy but powerful, smashed through the cart with a swipe of its massive claw, sending splinters of wood flying.
Chief sprinted towards the portal, the ratman hot on his heels. He could feel the heat radiating from the swirling vortex, the pull of its otherworldly energy. He was almost there. Just a few more steps. The ogre lunged, its massive hand reaching out to grab him. Chief ducked, narrowly avoiding the grasp, and stumbled forward, throwing himself headfirst into the swirling colors of the portal.
The hulking ratman was about to follow behind when a lighting coursed through its body as it fell down dead.
A mage with a frown on its face looked at where the portal closed, a ratman got away. he could only hope that those on the other end can take care of it.
The last portal closed menaing that the civiliinas were gone, now they could solely focus on the ratmen and hybrids.
Back at the breach, the general surveyed the battlefield. The ratmen had begun erecting crude siege engines, their corrupted biological tech forming grotesque catapults and battering rams from the carcasses of their own fallen. These abominations were neither mechanical nor entirely organic—a twisted amalgam of bone, sinew, and corrupted metal that pulsated with a sickly green light. The siege engines emitted an unsettling hum, as if alive, their movements jerky yet purposeful. From their warped structures, they launched projectiles made of writhing flesh that exploded on impact, spewing corrosive bile over the defenders.
"Mages, target those engines!" the general bellowed.
One of the mages, a younger prodigy named Seraphis, took the lead. Hovering above the battlefield, he extended both hands, conjuring an intricate array of spinning glyphs. With a sharp gesture, he unleashed a torrent of crystalline spears that rained down upon the siege engines. The corrupted constructs shuddered and groaned as the spears pierced their vile forms, causing eruptions of green ichor.
Seeing the damaged siege tech, the ratmen leaders barked orders "We need more bodies" The ratmen moved around grabbing onto any dead corpse they found and threw them at the machines which was slowly healing itself.
Seraphis’ eyes narrowed. "Then we’ll change tactics." He raised his staff and began weaving a complex spell, combining elements of fire and lightning. The resulting storm crackled with raw power, striking the engines with relentless intensity. The protective plates melted under the sustained assault, and the engines collapsed into twitching heaps of gore and slag.
Meanwhile, the ratmen horde facing the army themselves revealed their own corrupted enhancements. Their bodies bore grotesque amalgamations of steampunk and demonic flesh. One ratman, its arm replaced by a grotesque piston-driven claw, let out a mechanical hiss as it tore through an ogre soldier’s shield. Another, its chest hollowed to house a demonic furnace, spewed streams of molten bile, melting through armor and stone alike. The corrupted tech pulsed with eerie life, the fusion of abyss and machinery granting them inhuman resilience and power.
Some ratmen wielded grafted weapons: cannons forged from fused bone and brass, firing shards of jagged flesh-metal that ricocheted unpredictably. Others carried grotesque backpacks with spindly legs that injected bursts of green liquid into their veins, making them faster and stronger at the cost of their own lives. These warped creations moved with an unnatural rhythm, their very existence an affront to nature.
Elinor, observing the chaos, adapted her strategies. "Group spells! Focus your efforts!" she ordered. Teams of mages combined their energy to summon massive glyphs that unleashed waves of freezing wind, immobilizing the augmented ratmen. Others created gravity wells, pulling enemies together into tightly packed clusters that were obliterated by explosive blasts.
A group of mages began conjuring arcane golems, constructs of pure energy and stone, to counter the ratmen’s siege engines. The golems waded into the fray, their massive fists smashing the corrupted technology with brute force. When one golem was ensnared by a hybrid’s acidic threads, it self-destructed in a burst of magic, taking its foe with it.
The mages from the sky were a huge obstacle to the ratmen and their advancement and there was no way for the ratmen to counter them as they have no mages of them own.
Vorenza seeing this from the abyss knew she had to do something before the advantage she has is quickly lost. An order was sent out which was received by a huge creature underneath the city tunnels.
Sknull and the priest, meanwhile, did their best to remain hidden underground while barking orders for their men to push forward. Their eyes were filled with fear as they watched the mages handle their forces with ease.
Sknull was filled with regret as he realized he had let the small power his people had gained go to his head, forgetting the horror of the goblin mages.
He now understood the chief’s fear and concern about the empire. From what he was seeing, they would have been better off facing the hybrids than the mages; at least the hybrids didn’t spit fire or freeze them out of nowhere.
Even the ogres, for example, were monsters in their own right, combined with their rune equipment even with their own enhancements it took too many ratmen to inflict significant damage. If it were only the ogres, Sknull would have had no problem, as they could overwhelm them with their numerical advantage.
Now, he was doing his best to call out orders of advancement so the priest would still see him as useful and not order him to make a suicidal move in the name of the goddess.
He couldn’t help but think back on the chief, wondering if he had died somewhere in the tunnels or if perhaps he was still alive. Nonetheless, anything was certainly better than his current position.
Suddenly, his attention was drawn back by a loud, monstrous roar that echoed from the tunnels into the cavern. "What the hell was that?" Sknull thought in fear, looking towards the tunnels.
His fear increased when he noticed the walls shaking, with rocks falling from the ceiling, and heavy, fast footsteps heading towards their location.
He was about to ask the priest when he noticed a look of fervor, rather than fear, on their face. He could hear the priest screaming with joy: "The goddess’s angel is here!"
The priest, clutching the book, turned his attention to Sknull, who took a step back in fear. "Get ready to accompany the goddess’s angel," the priest commanded.
Sknull was about to refuse, but the intense look the priest gave him silenced him. Sknull waited in silence as an army of hybrids began pouring out from the tunnels.
The space, already filled with ratmen, became even more crowded as the hybrids surged forward, some hanging on the ceiling and standing there silently.
Sknull’s ears twitched as he heard heavy footsteps. From one of the tunnels emerged a being taller than any two-legged creature Sknull had ever seen.
