Beneath the volcanic cluster, the collapse of the defensive line was no illusion.
The army of modified Magical Beasts, like a black tide, mercilessly crushed the final defensive line jointly constructed by Allen and Victor.
The clash of metal and flesh was exceptionally brutal, with wreckage piling up like mountains.
Under wave after wave of assault, Allen’s seven Golem Legions suffered losses exceeding fifty percent.
The surviving Golems, even when combined with what was left of Victor’s forces, couldn’t even form three complete legions.
"Freedom Gundam Unit 3, heavy armor damage. Unit 5, left arm severed. Unit 4, contact lost!" Jarvis broadcasted one piece of bad news after another.
Allen’s seven sub-threads each performed their duties, controlling the remaining Golems in a fighting retreat.
Two Freedom Gundams were surrounded while covering the retreat, ultimately erupting into a pair of fiery explosions.
Under Jarvis’s precise coordination, the five remaining Freedom Gundams narrowly avoided several surprise attacks, dragging their damaged frames back toward the workshop.
Things were just as dire on Victor’s side.
His Heavy Armored Golem units were cut off and surrounded by the Beast Tide, turned into scrap metal piece by piece.
He gritted his teeth and gave the order, paying a heavy price to drag the paralyzed "Tieyan Judicator" back to the front of his workshop. Its massive body lay across the entrance, like a final steel fortress.
This Quasi-Fourth Level Golem had now become his most expensive doorstop.
Watching his Golems being torn to shreds by the Beast Tide, Victor felt a pang in his chest, and he began to regret his decision to come to this plane.
’This is the second time! The same humiliation of having the enemy at my doorstep!’
Meanwhile, Allen’s main consciousness was completely immersed in the tranquil atmosphere of the Meditation Room.
The roar of cannons and the shriek of alarms from the outside world were nothing more than distant background noise to him.
The power of the Astral Spring surged through his veins. The Deepsea Echo Conch emitted a mystical blue halo, illuminating his Sea of Spirit like a profound, starry sky.
Within his Sea of Spirit, the thirty-fifth Will Rune of the fifth Core Matrix was taking shape under Allen’s spiritual carving knife at a nearly frenzied pace.
The extreme mental pressure and micromanagement put Allen’s Sea of Spirit in a strange state, simultaneously on the verge of shattering and yet extraordinarily active.
The inscription of each Rune came with an extreme stretching of his Spiritual Power, as if it might snap at any moment. But this immense terror, teetering on the brink of life and death, instead pushed his concentration beyond its limits, causing his inscription speed to soar once more.
「Meanwhile, in the underground lair.」
The Black Wizard, through the shared vision of his Magical Beasts, took in the entire rout on the battlefield.
He watched Allen’s battered remnants flee in disarray, and he watched Victor’s defensive line teeter on the brink of collapse.
In the Magma Lake Workshop area, the three towering Flame Demons were still holding on with the regular Golems, but in the face of the massive Beast Tide, it was a futile struggle of a cornered animal.
Up on the mountain, two Magic Furnaces in the volcano craters had already collapsed with a great roar under the assault of the Mechanical Tyrannosaurus Beast’s ultimate destruction cannon.
"Heh, useless," the Black Wizard sneered, his voice filled with disdain. "Without Magic Furnaces, Golems are just a pile of scrap metal. Nowhere near as useful as Magical Beasts. I thought there might be a surprise, but it’s nothing special."
"Full assault! Destroy all the Magic Furnaces! I want to completely strip them of their ability to resist!"
He knew that Level 1 Golem Wizards were extremely dependent on Magic Furnaces. As long as he destroyed their Energy Cores, the outcome of this battle was already decided.
’Destroy all the Magic Furnaces, then immediately withdraw. In a few days, their Golems will be completely out of power. Then I can take their workshops with minimal losses and claim the resources of both zones for myself.’
He was already calculating his post-war profits in his mind, and he had even figured out how to convert these workshops to produce more biological weapons for himself.
Several thousand modified Magical Beasts swarmed into the volcanic cluster like sharks that had scented blood.
The Mechanical Tyrannosaurus Beast stomped its way up another volcano, its steps shaking the very earth, its target set on a Magic Furnace erected at the summit.
By the shore of the magma lake, the main force of the Beast Tide had completely overwhelmed the three Flame Demons.
Earlier, Allen had only withdrawn two of the Flame Demons. The regular Golems in the defensive force here hadn’t moved an inch. They were designated sacrifices, all to make the deception complete.
It now seemed the enemy had taken the bait.
"Countdown, sixty seconds," Jarvis’s voice echoed in the control room, like a death sentence being pronounced.
Victor stared intently at the blue dots on the light screen representing the Magic Furnaces as they were submerged by a dense red tide.
In the Meditation Room, Allen’s carving knife steadily completed the final stroke of the thirty-fifth Rune.
"Countdown, ten seconds."
Victor saw the Mechanical Tyrannosaurus Beast’s giant claw slam down hard on a Magic Furnace by the magma lake, shattering its energy shield in an instant.
"Nine, eight, seven..."
The corners of the Black Wizard’s mouth curled up; a victorious smile was already forming.
"Six, five, four..."
Victor squeezed his eyes shut and cursed with every swear word he could think of.
"Three, two, one..."
"Detonate!" Jarvis’s voice rang out. The switch for destruction had been flipped.
The nine volcanic Magic Furnaces that supplied most of the Magic Power for Zone 18 roared in unison, a sound that surpassed their design limits!
A blinding red light first erupted from the seams of their casings like molten lava. Then, the furnace bodies began to expand at a visible rate, the Rune Arrays on their surfaces instantly overloading and transforming into twisting arcs of electricity.
"BOOM!"
The first explosion tore apart heaven and earth.
The Magic Furnace by the magma lake detonated first. A spherical shockwave of several thousand degrees instantly vaporized the hundreds of Magical Beasts that had been preparing to dismantle it.
The magma in the lake was violently thrown into a hundred-meter-high wave of fire, which crashed in all directions like a tsunami.
But this was only the appetizer.
The explosive energy shot down the conversion rods submerged in the lake, plunging straight into the Fire Elemental Crystal Stone vein at the bottom.
This fuse had just lit the powder keg buried underground!
The chain reaction had begun!
The Fire Elemental Crystal Stone deposits, buried for untold ages at the bottom of the magma lake, could withstand temperatures of several thousand degrees. However, under the super-strong, instantaneous surge of Magic Power, their structure collapsed in an instant, releasing the terrifying energy contained within.
"RUMBLE—"
The entire magma lake exploded!
The lake’s surface was torn asunder, and the bottomless Fire Elemental Crystal Stone vein below was completely ignited. A colossal pillar of energy shot into the sky, launching the Beast Tide above, along with the magma, a thousand meters into the air.
「Meanwhile, near Victor’s workshop, the Mechanical Tyrannosaurus Beast was destroying the last Magic Furnace.」
The Black Wizard, who was behind it, clearly felt the terrifying tremors from the direction of the magma lake through the Magical Beast’s vision. His smile froze on his face, a flicker of shock and doubt in his eyes.
"What is—"
Before he could react, the twelve Magic Furnaces at Victor’s workshop were also detonated at the same time!
Twelve pillars of fire shot into the sky, engulfing the entire volcanic crater.
"Damn it, what’s happening?!" The Black Wizard still hadn’t fully grasped the situation.
Everything was going according to Allen’s calculations. The energy from the furnace explosions was being used to successfully leverage the Fire Elemental Magic Power deep within the entire volcanic cluster.
The explosions at the magma lake and the crater were merely the prelude; the real disaster was just beginning.
The earth’s crust began to tremble violently. Cracks spread like a spiderweb, and scorching magma erupted from them, painting the sky blood-red.
"BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!"
One after another, the volcanoes within a two-hundred-kilometer radius erupted, like ancient beasts awakened from their slumber!
The volcanic ash that shot into the sky completely blotted out the sun. The entire two-hundred-kilometer-long chain of volcanoes had erupted.
But the eruption alone was not enough to vent this energy. The very earth was overturned, as hundreds of millions of tons of rock, soil, and even the crust itself were thrust ten thousand meters into the sky by an indescribable force.
Bright red magma, thousands of degrees hot, gushed from the earth like an inverted tsunami. Accompanied by shattering mountains and shockwaves thick with Fire Elemental Energy, it swept over everything with the force of a landslide, devouring all in its path.
The shockwave expanded outward at supersonic speeds, flattening the mountains in its path and leveling everything as far as the eye could see.
The sky was completely obscured by thick volcanic ash and black smoke, instantly turning day into night. All that remained between heaven and earth was raging red light and the roar of death.
It was as if the end of the world had come.
At this moment, the volcanic battlefield, which had borne countless Magical Beasts and Golems, along with the very land beneath it, was utterly transformed into a Purgatory.
Whether it was Allen’s remaining Golems or the Black Wizard’s modified Beast Tide, all were as insignificant as grains of sand before this world-destroying power.
They were swallowed by magma, torn apart by the shockwave, buried by rubble, and covered by volcanic ash.
Even the Mechanical Tyrannosaurus Beast, whose peak Magic Power could exceed the limits of Level 2, had its flesh and metal completely fused together by the extreme heat before being annihilated.
All life, all struggle, was reduced to nothingness in this ultimate destruction.
Victor’s workshop shook violently in the intense earthquake, and half of its equipment was damaged. Fortunately, thanks to its various Defense Arrays, it did not collapse.
That Level 4 Golem, the "Tieyan Judicator," blocking the entrance was truly tough.
After taking a nuclear-blast-like shockwave head-on, large areas of its dark gold armor melted. The massive frame was forcibly pushed back more than ten meters, completely deforming the workshop gate, but it had ultimately withstood the most lethal damage.
Amidst the deafening explosions, Allen, inside the Meditation Room in Zone 18, remained as steady as a mountain.
Allen was completely oblivious to the destruction outside.
Or rather, he simply didn’t care.
His entire consciousness was focused within his Sea of Spirit.
The fifth Core Matrix. The thirty-sixth Will Rune.
It was almost complete.