Chapter 81: Printing More Army
The Grand Army marched deeper into the Umbral Plane.
Lucifer rode his Nightmare Steed at the front of the colossal column. The thirteen million mortal soldiers followed, their armor glowing brightly with the golden buff of Solaris’s Blessing.
The invisible spatial highway beneath their boots remained rock solid, maintained effortlessly by Lucifer’s Void Arcanist core.
Behind Lucifer towered the Prime Architect.
The fifty-meter machine moved with smooth, controlled precision. Its massive metal feet struck the invisible path with deep, steady impacts that the soldiers could feel in their chests.
The five newly forged twenty-meter Arcane Sentinel Titans marched behind their creator, their crackling purple aether-cannons tracking the dense gray fog.
"We are approaching the coordinates," High Ranger Celeste called out over the comms rune. She rode her armored dire wolf fifty yards ahead, surrounded by the Phantom Rangers. "The fog is thinning. The magical pressure is spiking."
"I see it," Lucifer replied smoothly.
He didn’t stop his Nightmare Steed.
A massive, floating landmass appeared in the distance. It was not a flat island like the ruined outpost.
It was a rugged, chaotic mountain range made almost entirely of raw, glowing purple Umbral Ore.
[System: High-Density Resource Zone Discovered.]
[Location: The Umbral Ridge.]
[Warning: Extreme Hostile Swarm Detected.]
But the mountain range was not empty.
The jagged peaks and deep valleys of the Umbral Ridge were crawling with movement.
Millions of Void Beasts swarmed over the ore deposits. They were a chaotic, horrifying mix of Level 40 Crawlers, Level 45 Stalkers, and massive, heavily armored Level 50 Abyssal Brutes.
The sheer density of the monsters was staggering. They formed a moving, shrieking mass of black chitin and purple death magic across the entire landmass.
"By the Light," Lyra gasped. The Dawn Saintess rode her white mare beside Lucifer. Her blue eyes widened in shock. "There are millions of them. The entire mountain is a hive."
"It’s not a hive," Lucifer corrected her. "It’s a buffet."
He pulled back on the reins of his Nightmare Steed. The beast halted, snorting a cloud of dark smoke.
The Prime Architect stopped instantly behind him, the loud thud of its footsteps dying away. The thirteen million soldiers of the Crusade came to a halt.
Lucifer dismounted. He stood at the edge of the invisible spatial highway, looking across a mile-wide chasm of empty void separating his army from the Umbral Ridge.
"We cannot cross that gap without a bridge, Warlord," Elara noted. The Valkyrie stood beside him, her Twilight wings shifting uneasily.
"The mortals cannot fly. And if we try to build an invisible path across, the beasts will swarm us mid-crossing. It is a fatal choke point."
"I am not building a bridge," Lucifer stated coldly.
He opened his Dimensional Vault.
He reached deep into the spatial storage and placed his hand on the massive, glowing blue mound of refined mana crystals he had extorted from Lady Aurelia in Silver-Port.
He had half a million crystals.
Lucifer didn’t take a handful. He took them all.
"System," Lucifer commanded. His voice dropped to a low, dangerous hum. "Target the Prime Architect. Initiate Automated Assembly Line protocol."
[Target Locked: Prime Architect (Level ??).]
[Protocol: Automated Assembly Line (Titan-Class Production).]
A massive blue interface projected from the fifty-meter machine’s chest, hovering over the chasm.
[System Output: Assembly Line Requires Fuel Source.]
[Minimum Requirement: 200,000,000 Mana Crystals.]
The cost was astronomical. Two hundred million crystals was more wealth than existed in the entire human kingdom.
It was a hard-coded system barrier designed to prevent a single player from instantly spawning a mechanical army.
"I don’t have two hundred million," Lucifer said smoothly.
He pulled a single, glowing blue refined mana crystal from his vault. He held it up to the dim gray light of the Umbra.
"I have the multiplier."
Lucifer closed his iron gauntlet around the crystal.
"Apply the Apex Multiplier to the fuel source," Lucifer roared. "Overcharge the grid!"
[Divine Talent: Apex Multiplier Activated!]
[Applying 10,000x multiplier to Mana Crystal Density...]
[Warning: Catastrophic Power Surge Detected. Archmage capacity required to stabilize.]
Lucifer’s chest flared with blinding, violent violet light. The Warlord channeled his entire Level 50 mana pool into the single crystal in his hand, forcibly multiplying its energetic value by ten thousand.
He didn’t just multiply one crystal; he linked the multiplier to the entire stockpile of half a million crystals sitting in his vault.
The resulting power surge was apocalyptic.
The spatial rift of his Dimensional Vault didn’t just open, it erupted. A blinding, continuous beam of hyper-condensed blue aether energy shot out.
It no longer looked like crystals, but a solid beam of pure magic.
Lucifer grabbed the beam with his bare left hand. He physically grabbed the raw magic, ignoring the intense, burning heat that threatened to melt his armor.
He swung his arm, slamming the beam of multiplied energy directly into the glowing blue vertical slit in the Prime Architect’s massive chest.
BOOM.
The fifty-meter Titan convulsed violently.
The impact of five billion equivalent mana crystals hitting its internal reactor simultaneously overloaded the machine’s ancient safety protocols.
The dark metal armor plating of the Prime Architect glowed white-hot. The blue runic veins coursing through its massive limbs turned a blinding, unstable violet.
A shockwave of pure, displaced aether-energy ripped outward, flattening the front ranks of the mortal army and blowing the gray fog back for miles.
[System Warning: Prime Architect Power Grid Overcharged!]
[Capacity: 5,000,000,000 / 200,000,000.]
[Automated Assembly Line: Unlocked. Operating at 2,500% efficiency.]
The loud hum of the machine turned into a high-pitched, continuous scream of mechanical birth.
The Prime Architect did not kneel to refine ore this time. It did not need to. It had enough raw, liquid mana to bypass the physical construction process entirely. It used pure spatial distortion to forge matter out of thin air.
The massive chest cavity of the Titan hissed open.
It was not a slow process. It was an eruption.
Twenty-meter Arcane Sentinel Titans poured out of the fifty-meter machine’s chest like water from a broken dam.
They did not step out one by one. They were violently ejected in rapid succession, landing heavily on the invisible spatial highway in front of the mortal army.
They were perfectly forged from black Star-Metal and white Dragon Bone, their broadswords drawn and their purple aether-cannons fully charged.
Ten. Fifty. Two hundred.
The assembly line fired a new, fully operational siege engine onto the battlefield every single second.
The sound of massive iron boots hitting the invisible floor became a continuous loud roar.
The thirteen million mortal soldiers stared in absolute and paralyzed awe.
They watched their Warlord stand in front of a fifty-meter god of steel, physically holding a beam of liquid magic, while an army of indestructible giants exploded into existence.
"By the Light..." Lyra gasped, her holy aura completely dwarfed by the violent violet light of the overcharged forge. She had to shield her eyes. "He is printing an army."
"He is breaking the rules," Elara agreed. The Valkyrie’s golden eyes burned with fierce pride.
Five hundred. Eight hundred.
The massive, heavily armored Titans quickly ran out of room on the spatial highway. Lucifer did not stop the production.
He expanded the invisible floor, using Gravity Crush to flatten a massive, ten-mile-wide staging area directly over the chasm.
The Titans marched forward, forming a colossal, perfectly rigid wall of black metal and white bone facing the Umbral Ridge.
[System: Production Complete.]
[Units Forged: 1,000x Arcane Sentinel Titans (Combat Class)]
Lucifer cut the connection. The blinding beam of liquid mana vanished. The spatial rift snapped shut.
The fifty-meter Prime Architect staggered slightly, venting a massive cloud of superheated white steam from its exhaust ports. The blinding violet light in its runes cooled back to a steady, powerful blue.
Lucifer lowered his hand. His iron gauntlet was completely melted off his left arm, exposing his bare skin, which was rapidly healing under the Starweaver’s Celestial Regeneration.
He exhaled a long, steady breath. The massive mana drain left him momentarily exhausted, but his Archmage core was already pulling ambient energy from the Umbra to refill.
He looked out over his new front line.
Across the mile-wide chasm, the millions of Void Beasts swarming the Umbral Ridge had stopped moving.
The massive influx of light and noise had caught their attention. The entire mountain range of black chitin and purple magic turned to face the glittering golden army and the wall of Titans.
The monsters shrieked. It was a loud unified chorus of pure, Abyssal malice that physically shook the floating islands.
They began to pour down the jagged slopes of the Umbral Ridge, charging blindly toward the chasm.
"They are coming!" Lady Scarlett roared from the Vanguard, her scarred face pale as she gripped her twin curved swords. "Commander, they are going to bridge the gap!"
The Void Beasts did not need a physical bridge. The massive Level 50 Abyssal Brutes leaped into the empty air, using crude, localized spatial magic to hurl themselves across the mile-wide drop.
Millions of smaller Crawlers and Stalkers clung to their backs, hitching a ride across the void.
It was a tidal wave of teeth and dark magic crashing toward them.
Lucifer did not panic. He did not order the mortal army to brace for impact.
He drew his ruby-red longsword. The Carnage Core flared, instantly sensing the impending slaughter.
"Titans," Lucifer commanded softly. His void-swirling eyes locked onto the incoming swarm.
The thousand Arcane Sentinels responded instantly. They did not raise their broadswords. They raised their right arms.
One thousand massive, crackling purple aether-cannons aimed directly into the empty space over the chasm.
"Eradicate them," Lucifer ordered.
The Titans fired.
It was not a volley of individual blasts. It was a continuous, synchronized barrage of hyper-condensed Void energy. One thousand beams of blinding purple light ripped across the chasm, forming a solid, impenetrable wall of destructive magic.
The incoming tidal wave of Void Beasts slammed into the barrage.
The result was absolute, instantaneous annihilation. The heavy bone plating of the Abyssal Brutes vaporized in seconds.
The black chitin of the Crawlers melted into ash. The purple beams did not stop upon impact; they punched straight through the front lines of the swarm, drilling deep into the masses of monsters behind them.
The loud shrieks of the beasts were completely drowned out by the roar of the aether-cannons.
[System: Massive Hostile Casualties Detected.]
[Fate Energy Tax Processed: +20% directed to Warlord Core.]
Lucifer stood behind the firing line.
He felt the sudden, massive rush of death energy flood his Carnage Core.
The faint red tethers snapped across the chasm by the thousands, feeding him the raw power of the slaughtered monsters.
The meat grinder was open for business. The Warlord had brought his heavy artillery, and the Umbral Ridge was about to be stripped bare.