Chapter 1328: When Luck Comes, Nothing Can Stop It…

What kind of weapon was that? What was the principle behind it? What was that phenomenon that seemed to tear through space itself? And what was that energy that violently shook the entire impact zone, even severing the psychic links between the aberration legions?

Countless questions flooded the minds of Marcellus and every other “commander” around him who still had their wits about them. Yet at this moment, they had no time for such academic pondering. Only one fact hammered relentlessly against their understanding:

The Cecils, who had pulled out an entire fleet of airborne fortresses, still had a hidden dagger up their sleeve. They possessed a weapon of immense power and astonishing range—one that could fire a single shot from Ruby City all the way to Wolf Ridge Mountain! And it flew many times faster than sound, with enough force to level an entire mountaintop in one blast!

Marcellus spun on his heel and fled. The treant priests he’d brought along to help command the aberration legions did the same. A horde of twisted, malformed tree creatures sprinted wildly across the scorched mountain. The scene was surreal. Behind them, the wandering aberrations and giant beasts received orders to scatter chaotically in all directions, generating widespread smoke, heat, and magical interference to disrupt the Cecils’ observation and targeting systems—at least in theory, this should work.

Meanwhile, high above Ruby City, aboard the airborne fortress Dawn of the Mortal Realm, a factory-like building on the edge of the platform blazed with light. Bright magical crystal lamps and engineering floodlights illuminated the rectangular structure’s exterior walls. Its specially designed sloped roof and sidewalls had unfolded mechanical “wings” resembling arcane energy panels. Complex machinery extended from inside the building, ending in precisely arranged rune plates. Massive waste energy and heat vented from the edges of these “wings,” shrouding the building in a mist that quickly dissipated into the high sky.

Inside, the building was equally bright. Scores of magitech engineers and mechanical soldiers bustled around a massive device composed of intricate rails, charging units, and buffering modules. Nearby, technical assistants summoned frost novas to cool overheated pipes and power beams.

Suddenly, a low, rumbling howl echoed from a partition at the back of the room. The wall slid open, revealing a tubular transport chamber. A rounded, subway-like “car” slid into the docking slot. The door opened, and Rebecca stepped out from the control center inside, her eyes sparkling as she approached the chief engineer.

“How’s it going? How’s the work coming along?”

“Your Highness!” The engineer snapped to attention and saluted. Then, clutching a clipboard, he reported excitedly, “The supercritical accelerator has reached design specifications. We just successfully hit Target One on Wolf Ridge Mountain and completely destroyed it. The system is now cooling down; we’ll be ready for the second shot in a few minutes!”

“Oh, not bad at all.” Rebecca nodded with satisfaction and hurried over to the massive device, standing on tiptoe to inspect it closely. She was intimately familiar with this machine—it was her brainchild from start to finish. The enormous, complex multi-stage rail system, the colossal magical capacitors and overload units, the specially designed waste energy venting and arcane balance modules, and the “chronometer” that precisely triggered multiple sequential boosters—all of it had evolved from the original “Missile Limit Accelerator” prototype built years ago for a “hypersonic flight project” by the Whitewater River.

The “Missile Limit” was a mysterious critical point: at several times the speed of sound, all physical flying objects encountered an impenetrable “barrier.” Traditional mages believed this “missile limit” was an unbreakable wall of truth set by the world itself. For many years, because conventional mages relied on innate spellcasting and faced mental limits and magical backlash, this barrier had never been breached. The belief that the missile limit was insurmountable was deeply ingrained.

Until a stubborn girl named Rebecca, along with a group of equally stubborn “nonconformist mages,” used a bunch of machines that never tired, didn’t degrade, were extremely precise, and could repeatedly recharge to accelerate a metal rod beyond the theoretical missile limit.

That day, a tremendous explosion echoed over the Whitewater River. The unremarkable metal rod obliterated the lab, punched through the facility’s outer wall, and nearly triggered a catastrophic blast on the riverbank…

On that day, High Chancellor Hetty’s hand trembled as she approved the funding, but Rebecca and her team celebrated all night long.

Rebecca ran her hand over the still-warm charging units and the calibration supports behind the rails, feeling the next surge of power brewing within this devastating weapon. A radiant smile spread across her face.

To this day, the phenomena and underlying principles of objects accelerated beyond the missile limit remain unexplained. Even Rebecca, who conducted the experiment herself, has yet to find a theoretical foundation. However, recent research by Lady Mimirna in the field of the “Unified Wave Conjecture” suggests it relates to the “wave boundary” between matter and non-matter. The former magical sovereign further speculated that the enormous energy released beyond the missile limit might stem from collisions between the “physical wave domain” of the ultra-high-speed object and the “virtual wave domain” of the surrounding magical environment…

Rebecca was naturally intrigued by these theories, but even if they were incomplete, her pragmatic nature meant she was eager to put the “Missile Limit Accelerator” to practical use—creating the most powerful bang in human history: the supercritical accelerator.

This thing was a marvel. It could strike targets at extreme distances, and the massive energy accumulated by the physical projectile moving at high speed through the magical field would release explosively the moment the projectile stopped—obliterating enemies and their ancestors alike, with no uncontrolled aftereffects. This was a huge improvement over the infernal incendiary bombs, which, while powerful, were notoriously unpredictable due to the unstable living fire elementals they contained.

Because of this, the tech guys had privately nicknamed the supercritical accelerator the “Ashes-Scattering Cannon,” and the infernal incendiary bombs the “Lineage-Ending Shells”—names that, of course, never made it into official reports.

Rebecca’s mind buzzed with useful and useless thoughts alike, but she quickly snapped back to focus as the system’s cooldown neared completion. She also noticed something: “Wait, we’re still using the old rails at the front end, right?”

“Yes, Your Highness,” the chief engineer nodded. “We’ve put the quick-swap rails into production, but the factory needs more time to adjust. Until the new rails are ready, the supercritical accelerator will continue using the previous ‘three-shot rails’—which still have two shots left.”

“Alright, no need to give those three-shot rails a fancy name…” Rebecca winced at the nickname and waved her hand. “Prepare for the next shot. Target Wolf Ridge again—the mainframe detected complex, chaotic magical flows there. The enemy’s command center should be nearby. Those monsters are cunning, though—they’ve even set up mixed interference shields… Just fire away. Keep two sets of rails in reserve; use up the rest.”

“Yes, Your Highness!” The engineer’s face lit up. Clearly, no one on Rebecca’s weapons development team disliked a big bang.

“Everyone, get ready! Load the accelerator!”

“Loading accelerator…”

“Accelerator loaded. Energy circuits stable. Heat shields activated. Operation zone shields up. All personnel retreat behind safety barriers…”

“Preparing to absorb extra impact. Magical capacitors charging. Release in ten seconds…”

“Mainframe, activate auxiliary stabilization engines and prepare to record firing data…”

“Mainframe acknowledges. Corresponding systems online. Recording started—”

Inside the massive “main gun chamber,” the technicians swiftly completed their tasks before rushing to a platform at the building’s rear. Several layers of magical barriers rose, isolating the operators from the dangerous supercritical accelerator to protect them from the intense heat and deafening noise. A magical network terminal beside Rebecca projected the image of the mainframe at the control center.

The supercritical accelerator’s power was so immense that the mainframe had to activate auxiliary engines to prevent the fortress’s edge structure from tearing apart. This was also a new device still in testing, so the mainframe needed to record its operation.

The brief charging phase ended quickly. The countdown hit zero. A humming sound came from the accelerator. Rebecca watched tensely as the device made final micro-adjustments to the rails. Then, a streak of light suddenly surged into the rail’s end—

A sharp “ping” sounded, followed by a deafening roar that shook everyone on the platform, even through multiple protective barriers.

Despite the mainframe’s preemptive recoil stabilization, the entire platform trembled violently.

The accelerated projectile vanished into the dark night sky like a thick beam of light. Rebecca shook her head, rubbing her ears and muttering, “Whoa—my head’s ringing…”

The mainframe’s hologram above the magical network terminal chimed in, “No kidding. It’s definitely ringing.”

“Maybe we should consider better protective measures next time, or just move the control station to another room…” Rebecca muttered, then glanced at the spare rails and accelerator units stacked on nearby shelves. “But that’s for later… For now, let’s just fire all these things off!”

A wind, more chaotic and unruly than ever before, swept across the dust- and gravel-strewn homeland of Gondor. Deep within the dark, frigid wastelands, hordes of grotesque mutants gathered across the plains and valleys like mountains and seas. Around a lone hill at the center of the plain, countless twisted and fearsome treant priests—fallen dark druids—had rooted themselves, forming a chilling forest at the heart of this shadowed realm. Their roots intertwined with a vast subterranean network, painstakingly cultivated over centuries beneath the wasteland, exchanging intelligence ceaselessly. Like a highly efficient military command center, this network controlled every mutant and bio-engineered beast under its sway.

This massive legion itself was like a vortex, continuously drawing in the “wild” mutants wandering the wasteland’s depths, blindly pulling them closer to become new soldiers in its ranks.

At the very center of it all, atop that small hill, stood the High Pontiff of the End of All Things—Borken.

The dark druid leader plunged his roots deep into the hill’s soil, connecting with the sprawling underground network. Information from countless subordinate nodes converged and diverged within his mind, allowing him to monitor every move of the legion at all times. As the army expanded, he also gained insight into the world beyond the wasteland—the resistance of mortal kingdoms and the progress of their fall.

The legion’s advance was far from smooth. The mortals’ resistance was fierce—but overall, the army still pushed outward. Except for the northern front, the wasteland spread in all directions, and some of the rune stones had already been successfully deployed into the designated deep blue rifts within civilized territories.

Yet, as time passed, even this advance met growing resistance… The advantage of sudden assault was gradually fading. The mortal kingdoms had caught on, and the alliance they formed was beginning to show its strength. Their watchful, mutual defense systems and coordinated land-and-sea supply lines allowed them to hold the line with great difficulty, even stabilizing the situation day by day.

But the dark druids were far from discouraged. From the very beginning, they had anticipated that the legion could not completely destroy the civilized world.

Their ultimate goal was never to conquer every mortal kingdom—they only needed to breach certain preselected regions and deploy enough rune stones there.

The greatest weakness of the mortal kingdoms was their ignorance: they did not know where the rune stones had been placed, which areas were absolutely critical to hold, or the true progress of the hidden plan behind the offensive.

The cold wind swept across the wasteland. Borken’s branches trembled in the night as he immersed himself in the command of the legion, calculating the overall progress of the plan and the remaining lifespan of those pitiful mortals, doomed to become mere history on the path of evolution and transformation. Then, suddenly, a sharp neural pulse surged through the root network into his mind, snapping the dark druid’s eyes wide open.

“High Pontiff,” a nearby priest asked immediately, “what is it?”

Borken’s yellow-brown eyes fixed unblinkingly on the dark western horizon. After a long silence, he finally broke the stillness in a low voice:

“Marcellus is dead.”

(End of chapter)