Chapter 85: The Sky Falls
The silence on the invisible spatial highway was absolute.
Grand Duchess Evangeline sat on her massive, armored white elephant. She could not speak. She stared at the devastation in front of her.
Half of her three-hundred-million-strong Coalition army was completely immobilized.
The two thousand Glacial Wyrms carried out a perfect high-altitude strike. Their coordinated frostfire hit the tightly packed Royal Guards and siege mages like an avalanche.
The soldiers did not look like men in pain. They looked like perfect detailed glass sculptures.
Their heavy steel plate armor was coated in thick, flawless blue ice. Their mouths were open in silent screams.
The air around them was so cold it crystallized into a dense, creeping fog that hugged the Umbral Plane.
"They... they are frozen," a surviving Royal General whispered, his voice trembling violently.
He sat on his destrier a few yards behind Evangeline, staring at the statues of his own men. "It happened in seconds."
Lucifer stood a hundred yards away, safely behind the glowing golden line of his Paladin-Mechs.
He didn’t order his thirteen million mortals to charge. He didn’t need to risk a single drop of his army’s blood against the survivors. He had the high ground.
"Isolde," Lucifer commanded smoothly through his comms rune. "They are paralyzed. Finish the front lines."
The Winter Sovereign did not smile. She looked down at the massive, paralyzed square formation of human soldiers. She raised her pale hand, her ice-crystal gown clinking softly in the dead air.
Isolde snapped her fingers again.
The two thousand sub-adult Glacial Wyrms, circling the frozen army like a swarm of white hornets, didn’t unleash frostfire again. They folded their wings and dove straight down.
They did not aim for the surviving soldiers in the rear. They aimed directly for the frozen statues.
"Incoming!" Evangeline screamed, her arrogant facade finally shattering completely. She yanked hard on the reins of her armored elephant, desperately trying to turn the massive beast around. "Fall back! Break the square! Run!"
It was too late. The square formation was a death trap.
The heavy, diamond-scaled bodies of the Wyrms hit the frozen front lines.
The impact was catastrophic. The frozen Royal Guards did not just fall over.
The absolute zero curse had made their armor and flesh as brittle as glass. When the massive, diving dragons slammed into them, the soldiers shattered.
The loud sound of a hundred thousand glass windows breaking simultaneously echoed across the Umbra.
Limbs of solid ice exploded into fine blue powder. Frozen torsos burst into thousands of tiny, razor-sharp shards that sprayed backward like shrapnel into the ranks of the surviving soldiers.
The heavy siege wagons, frozen solid to their axles, were completely pulverized under the weight of the diving Wyrms.
It was an execution.
"My army," Evangeline choked, tears streaming down her soot-stained face. She watched entire battalions of her elite guards turn into blue dust in a matter of seconds. "You... you monsters."
Lucifer watched the slaughter with void-swirling eyes. The Warlord felt nothing but a cold satisfaction.
"They chose to march," Lucifer stated smoothly, though he knew she could not hear him over the shattering ice.
He unhooked the Carnage Core from his hip. The sentient, Tier 8 artifact did not pulse. It thrummed with a deep, violent, blinding ruby-red light.
The sheer volume of high-level death energy flooding the artifact was unprecedented.
The system interface projected a massive, rapidly climbing tally.
[System: Hostile Casualties Detected.]
[Fate Energy Tax Processed: +0% (Targets not under Warlord Contract).]
[Carnage Core: Absorbing Ambient Death Magic...]
[Eliminated: 10,450 Royal Guards (Level 35)]
[Eliminated: 25,000 Siege Mages (Level 30)]
[Eliminated: 50,000 Heavy Cavalry (Level 38)]
Lucifer didn’t get the Fate Energy tax from Evangeline’s soldiers because they hadn’t signed his contract.
But the Carnage Core didn’t care about contracts. It only cared about death. And the death toll was rising by the thousands every second.
The surviving back half of the Coalition army finally broke.
The generals lost all control. The soldiers dropped their tower shields, abandoned their heavy supply wagons, and turned to flee back down the invisible spatial highway toward the portal they had entered through.
It was a chaotic, panicked stampede of over a hundred million terrified men trying to outrun a blizzard.
Evangeline’s massive white elephant trumpeted in fear, rearing up on its hind legs. The beast refused to turn around, completely panicked by the shattering ice and diving dragons.
"Move, you useless beast!" Evangeline shrieked, whipping the elephant’s thick hide with her glowing rapier.
Isolde saw the struggling Duchess.
The Winter Sovereign did not order another volley. She handled the high-value target herself.
Isolde descended from the bruised-purple sky. She didn’t shift into her colossal dragon form. She drifted down in her human shape, landing lightly on the cracked surface of the spatial highway.
She landed directly at the back of Evangeline’s panicked elephant.
The sudden, intense drop in temperature instantly froze the silk curtains solid.
Evangeline spun around, her glowing rapier raised defensively. She found herself staring directly into the burning white reptilian eyes of the Dragon Queen.
"You..." Evangeline gasped, her breath turning to frost. She recognized the ancient, terrifying aura of a Sovereign. "You are the myth. You are the dragon in the ice."
"I am the Matriarch of Obsidian," Isolde corrected her coldly.
Isolde didn’t draw a weapon. She simply reached out with her pale, flawless hand.
Evangeline thrust her rapier forward, aiming for the dragon’s chest. The glowing steel blade hit Isolde’s palm.
The enchanted rapier froze solid instantly. The metal became completely brittle. Isolde snapped the blade in half with a casual flick of her wrist, tossing the frozen steel shards aside.
The Duchess screamed, scrambling backward against the edge of the howdah.
Isolde stepped forward. She grabbed Evangeline by the throat, lifting the Duchess effortlessly into the freezing air.
The heavy, rose-gold plate armor groaned under the sheer physical strength of the Sovereign.
"You bring fragile toys into my Warlord’s sky," Isolde hissed, her breath freezing the tears on Evangeline’s face. "You dare demand his surrender. You are a noisy, greedy little bitch."
Isolde didn’t freeze the Duchess. She didn’t grant her a clean, icy death.
The Dragon Queen looked down at the terrified royal and squeezed.
The heavy rose-gold gorget collapsed. Evangeline’s neck snapped instantly. The Grand Duchess’s eyes rolled back, her body going completely limp.
[Target Eliminated: Grand Duchess Evangeline (Level 45)]
[Status: Boss Kill Claimed.]
Isolde casually tossed the lifeless body of the Duchess off the elephant. The corpse tumbled down the side of the massive beast and hit the invisible spatial highway with a heavy, unceremonious thud.
The Winter Sovereign stood on the howdah. She looked out over the fleeing remnants of the Coalition army.
She raised her hand.
"Wyrms," Isolde commanded softly, her voice carrying a lethal, resonant purr. "Hunt."
The two thousand Glacial Wyrms did not need to be told twice. They broke off from the shattered front lines and banked sharply, diving after the panicked, fleeing soldiers.
The slaughter continued miles down the highway. The shrieks of the dying royals echoed faintly back to Lucifer’s position.
Lucifer sheathed his longsword. The ruby-red light of the Carnage Core dimmed slightly, having reached its absolute maximum capacity.
He didn’t watch the fleeing army. He didn’t care about the stragglers. The Coalition was broken, their leadership decapitated, and their heavy armor shattered.
He walked forward, stepping out from behind the massive, glowing golden wall of the Paladin-Mechs.
Elara and Lyra followed him.
"It is a massacre," Lyra whispered, her voice tight with a mix of awe and horror. She tightened her grip on her silver broadsword.
"They marched in a square formation against an air force," Lucifer stated smoothly, stepping over a frozen, shattered shield. "I didn’t erase them, Saintess. Their own tactical incompetence erased them."
He walked up to the massive, armored white elephant standing frozen in terror on the highway.
Isolde hopped lightly down from the howdah, landing perfectly in front of Lucifer. She bowed her head slightly, her crystalline horns gleaming in the dim Umbral light.
"The pest is silenced, Warlord," Isolde reported, a dark, satisfied smile on her pale lips. "The remaining mortals are retreating toward their portal. My brood will make sure most of them don’t escape."
"Good," Lucifer said. He looked at the Dragon Queen. "Recall the Wyrms in ten minutes. I don’t want them flying too far from the main column. The Umbra is still hostile territory."
"As you command," Isolde agreed.
Lucifer turned his attention back to the massive, smoking crater behind the encampment.
The Star-Shatter Cannon had completely vaporized the central peak of the Umbral Ridge, including the biological horror that had been sleeping inside it.
"The distraction is over," Lucifer announced to his commanders. "We have the ore. We have the space. The Coalition is dead."
He tapped his comms rune, connecting directly to High Ranger Celeste.
"Celeste," Lucifer ordered. "Bring the Phantom Rangers forward. I want the blast zone scouted. The Heart of the World-Eater Epic Boss. It did not die without leaving a core behind."
"Understood, Grand Marshal," Celeste’s voice crackled back instantly. "My scouts are moving in now. The heat is stabilizing."
Lucifer walked back toward his thirteen million cheering, completely unharmed mortal soldiers. The crusade was flawless.
The Warlord had established absolute dominance over the Umbral Plane.
Now, he just needed to harvest the ultimate prize hidden in the crater.