Chapter 1530 – Strongest Under the Earth

“Who are we?” Chyron bellowed.

“THE LEGIONEM ABYSSI!” the soldiers roared back.

“Who are we?” she demanded again, her voice effortlessly rising above the thunderous march of armoured feet on stone.

“THE SHIELD AGAINST THE DARKNESS!”

“Who are we?”

“THE SWORD OF CIVILISATION!”

“Who are we?”

“THE LEGIONEM ABYSSI!”

“What do you fear?”

“NOTHING!”

“To whom do you bow?”

“NO ONE!”

“FOR HOW LONG WILL YOU FIGHT!?” the Commander roared, her voice crashing like thunder.

“FOREVERMORE!”

“WHO ARE WE?”

“THE FIFTY SECOND LEGION!”

“THE FIFTY SECOND LEGION!”

“THE FIFTY SECOND LEGION!”

With every cry, the soldiers holding the banners lifted them proudly into the air, while the regular troops crashed their fists into their chest plates, causing the deep ring of abyssal steel to shake the walls.

The ants had opened the gate wide enough for the Legion to march through in a column ten wide, and even as she exhorted her soldiers and set their blood to pumping, she was running her experienced eye over the platform the moment she stepped through.

It wasn’t the first time she’d seen the fifth during a wave, but even so… this was something different. The intensity of the mana was absurdly high, and they hadn’t even reached the halfway mark of the wave. Above and below, the outer wall of the fortress formed a sheer barrier, rising into the darkness overhead and disappearing into the void below. The sheer emptiness of that gap between the fortress and the rest of the fifth was mind-bending to look at, but she didn’t pay it much mind.

No, what caught her eye was the platform itself.

As the Legion marched through the gate and over the bridge, their feet slamming down in perfect unison, she studied every aspect of the platform. Running through the channels beneath, an awesome amount of mana hummed, racing like a raging torrent through the conduits and into the fortress itself. All around the platform, the ants were already engaged in heavy fighting, alongside their militia.

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

The fighting was brutal. On the front lines, ants were deluged with acid, slime and mucus as they fought with their mandibles, ripping and tearing into the endless tide of monsters that threatened to smash through their lines at any moment. It was easy to see what the main strategy was. They wanted to use their most powerful weapon, the cleansed mana, to its greatest effect, dragging the monsters into the blue-zone and allowing it to break the corrupted creatures of the fifth apart.

An obvious downside was that this allowed the enemy to get much too close. The monsters of the fifth were all too happy to be dragged forward, allowing them to discharge mucus, parasites and filth all over the platform. The support were doing their best, launching powerful barrages of acid and complex artillery spells into the oncoming horde, but it was never enough to hold back the tide.