A piercing alarm shattered the tranquility of the wizard camp, interrupting Jie Ming’s deeper research into the Lava Giants.
Less than ten days after the landing campaign, the alarm blared—far sooner than anticipated.
The intelligence center reported that the Lava Giant Karamos and the Snow Beast King Agron, both sixth-level beings, had once again amassed massive armies, surging toward the wizard camp like an unstoppable flood!
The camp’s location was chosen with strategic intent.
It was deliberately established at the border of the Flame Sun Realm and the Frost Shadow Realm, on the edge of a vast mountain range shrouded in chaotic energy fields.
This position meant that, once battle began, wizards would face assaults from two hostile races on both flanks.
Yet, this was no accident but a deliberate design by the wizard leadership.
As was their custom: only by giving their enemies hope, luring the natives into believing they had an advantage, would they continuously launch attacks, pouring their forces into the wizards’ pre-set meat grinder, thus depleting their core strength.
During this time, the wizards had not been idle.
They had not only fortified the camp’s defenses, upgrading temporary fortifications into runic walls and energy barriers, but the combat wizards had also fully replenished—and greatly expanded—the fodder lost in the landing campaign!The wizards’ bio-beast gene banks and puppet factories operated at full capacity, producing several times the previous number of fodder legions in a short time.
These cold instruments surged toward the camp’s frontlines like a tide, ready to engage.
Compared to the brief aerial skirmish before, the might of the two monster races of the Flamefrost Plane was now even more formidable.
After all, aerial combat required specialized elites or air units, which limited their performance.
But now, fighting on solid ground was where both races excelled.
Their armies came like a tsunami, the earth trembling, fire and frost intertwining, even staining the distant sky with an apocalyptic hue.
This time, the monster armies included not only greater numbers and stronger elite commanders and units than in the landing campaign but also millions of peak first-level ordinary troops from each race!
The Lava Giant army consisted of ordinary Lava Warriors, massive in stature and immense in strength, wielding flaming warhammers and stone shields, stomping across scalding earth with deafening roars.
The Snow Beast army comprised giant Frost Hounds and fur-clad Snow Beast Hunters, moving silently through the snow, their claws gleaming, cold and deadly.
And this was not their limit!
Intelligence from wizards infiltrating enemy territories revealed that even more monsters were rushing from afar.
Lava Giants emerged from underground magma tunnels, while Snow Beasts surfaced from deep glaciers, endless like a swarm of ants.
Combined, the two hostile races likely had hundreds of millions in reserve forces!
This meant the wizards faced an unimaginably vast native force. Though individually inferior to the wizards, their numerical advantage was undeniable!
“All personnel, prepare for battle!” Wizard Augustine’s stern voice echoed across the camp. Standing atop the command tower, his body surged with the power of laws, appearing both diminutive and immensely powerful.
At his command, the wizard camp transformed into a functioning war machine.
Golems forged of metal and bone, and bio-beasts fused from countless alien remains, let out silent or low growls.
Forming two orderly ranks, they charged fearlessly against the Lava Giants’ onslaught and the Snow Beasts’ arrow storms.
They knew no fear, no retreat, only pre-programmed directives—charge, exhaust, destroy.
The torrent of flesh and steel collided heavily with the storm of magma and frost!
Boom!
The colossal impact detonated the battlefield!
Dense explosions rippled ceaselessly along the frontline, molten lava and biting ice shards flying everywhere, corrosive acid and toxic ice fragments blending into a deathly inferno.
Lava Giants swung massive stone fists, pummeling bio-beasts and golems, each strike accompanied by sprays of magma, tearing flesh and shattering steel.
Yet, the golems’ inner cores still flickered, and the writhing remains of broken bio-beasts continued to cling to enemies, detonating their final strength even when dismembered.
On the other side, the Snow Beast army glided through the icy mist like specters.
Their movements were swift and silent, their ice-crystal bows drawn taut, unleashing a relentless hail of ice arrows.
Each arrow carried immense piercing power, easily penetrating the energy shields of wizard fodder.
The robust Snow Beast warriors, wielding claws and ice axes, engaged in deadly combat with the wizards’ flesh abominations.
Ice blades clashed with bone spikes, ringing like metal, as blood and white ice crystals mingled on the battlefield.
The combat wizards now displayed their might.
Stationed behind the second defensive line, they cast powerful spells in support from afar.
Elemental energies surged in the air, sorcery runes weaving into nets, thick beams of energy piercing the sky.
Each hit triggered a small explosion.
Yet, the monster armies were vast, their battle lines stretching far. Even with the wizards’ full effort, they could only hold the line, unable to push back.
For a time, the situation stagnated.
While the wizards and monster legions waged a bloody tug-of-war at the camp’s frontline, deep in the Lava Giants’ heartland—a region of roiling magma and towering volcanoes—a subtle change was unfolding.
Three seemingly ordinary volcanoes served as hubs for the core ley lines.
Their peaks, once emitting faint smoke, now glowed with an eerie crimson light.
Countless Lava Giants, expending untold effort, had secretly altered the flow of the surrounding ley line magma.
They channeled the magma, rich with pure fire and earth elements, like rivers into the bases of these three volcanoes, charging them with ferocious energy.
A colossal, suffocating elemental force was coalescing within the volcanoes.
This was the Lava Giants’ strategic weapon!
Developed in secret during their long war with the Snow Beasts, it was a powerful tool capable of altering local battlefields!
As the energy reached its peak, the volcanoes’ internal fluctuations hit their zenith.
The next moment, with three muffled booms, three massive crimson beams, like burning war spears, shot skyward, targeting the area where wizards and monsters were locked in bloody combat!
The beams traced perfect parabolas through the air, landing precisely in the battlefield’s center, then exploded outward almost simultaneously!
A visible ripple of light, carrying terrifying heat, surged from the three impact points.
The battlefield’s temperature skyrocketed in an instant, soaring to a suffocating thousand degrees Celsius!
This sudden extreme heat dealt devastating blows to unprepared wizard fodder and Frost Shadow Realm monsters!
Some less durable bio-beasts and golem shells charred and curled under the heat, their internal energy cores overloading rapidly.
Many let out wails, emitted smoke, and collapsed.
The heat-intolerant Snow Beasts screamed in agony.
Their frosty bodies melted and evaporated under the heat, turning into black liquid, some reduced to pools of blood.
The air filled with the acrid stench of burnt flesh and sulfur.
Worse still, the barren, blackened ground at the Flame Sun and Frost Shadow Realms’ border cracked under the baking heat!
Vast streams of molten lava erupted from deep underground, like open wounds, turning the battlefield into a flowing sea of magma!
In this extreme environment, the previously suppressed Lava Giants thrived!
They roared with ecstatic triumph.
The scorching heat and flowing magma, far from harming them, became their source of strength.
Their bodies swelled in the heat, the molten blood on their surfaces growing hotter and thicker.
Some Lava Giants even evolved into pure liquid magma forms, moving freely through the lava, as if one with the earth.
Their bodies absorbed the surrounding heat and magma, their strength surging dramatically in a short time!
In an instant, the previously balanced battle shifted!
The Lava Giants’ tide, bolstered by the erupting magma, pushed the wizard fodder’s lines back several kilometers with ease!
The wizards’ defenses began to waver on a large scale.
At the rear of the battle lines, Karamos, cloaked in a blazing magma storm, laughed wildly: “Hahaha! That’s it! Tell those at the back to keep charging and unleash more attacks!”
His massive form, bathed in the crimson beams from the earth’s core, loomed larger and more terrifying.
He directed his Lava Giants to continue charging the three strategic volcanoes, ensuring the battlefield advantage would grow.
Karamos gazed at the wizards’ temporary retreat and the Snow Beasts’ pitiful wails in the heat, his eyes gleaming with smug satisfaction.
He prided himself on this tactic that both crippled the “white-furred freaks” and repelled the foreign invaders.
Yet, at the peak of his triumph, his massive body suddenly shuddered!
It wasn’t an external attack but a primal warning from his instincts, a dire premonition.
As a sixth-level being capable of communing with the plane’s origin, his usually dull instincts now screamed with alarm.
At that moment, a terrifying force was quietly gathering at the battlefield’s center—beneath the torn spatial rift!
Its power was so immense that it sent an unprecedented shiver through his heart.
“What in the world is that?!”