Chapter 476
Meat Grinder
Chapter 476 Meat Grinder
Billions of creations roared at the same moment.
The sound was indescribable.
It is the friction of metal, the collision of flesh, the shriek of energy, the lament of space itself when elements collide.
They converged into a sonic wave powerful enough to shatter the soul, sweeping outwards from the center of the battlefield in all directions. Even the seventh-level wizards watching from high above subconsciously strengthened their mental defenses.
The war of the cannon fodder legions has begun.
From the air, this once desolate, gray-white wasteland is now covered by two distinctly different "tides".
One force surging in was the combined army of the Chaos Cult and the Tower of Annihilation.
The crimson, fleshy behemoths resembled moving mountains, their bodies oozing pus and arcs of electricity, each step causing the earth to crack.
The gray-white skeletal legion marched silently forward, cold soul fires flickering in their eye sockets, their bone weapons engraved with annihilation runes.
Suspended in mid-air are countless distorted flying units—some look like skinned bats, some like a combination of eyeballs and tentacles, and some are simply a shadow that keeps changing shape.
The vast majority of these cannon fodder units are between level three and level five, but their numbers are... too numerous to count.
They surged towards the defenses of the Norren Workshop like a real tsunami, their sheer numbers overwhelming.
In front of them was a steel Great Wall made up of hundreds of black metal fortresses.
On the surface of the fortress, hundreds of millions of defensive runes flicker at a fixed frequency, forming a semi-transparent pale golden energy shield from the foundation to the top.
The shield wasn't thick, it was even somewhat thin, but it covered a very wide area.
With each fortress as a node, the energy fields connect, overlap, and resonate with each other, ultimately forming a super-giant composite defensive array that covers an area of thousands of kilometers.
The cannon fodder of the Chaos Cult and the Tower of Annihilation crashed hard into this "wall of light".
The tens of thousands of flesh-and-blood behemoths at the very front began to disintegrate the moment they came into contact with the protective shield.
Skin carbonized, muscles dissolved, bones shattered—they were wiped out of existence directly by the energy contained within the shield.
But this is just the beginning.
Behind them, even more cannon fodder units surged forward one after another.
They rammed into the shield with their bodies, bombarded it with their energy breath, and tried to tear a hole in it by self-destructing.
Each attack causes ripples to spread across the shield's surface, resulting in violent fluctuations in the fortress's energy readings in the corresponding area.
However, fortresses are not only for passive defense.
The moment the cannon fodder army entered firing range...
"Fire."
The orders were transmitted through the mental network to the control center of each fortress.
next second.
The entire Great Wall of Steel resembles a giant beast awakening, opening its eyes that cover its entire body.
On the walls of each fortress, hundreds of firing ports were opened simultaneously.
Behind each firing port is a specially designed "medium-sized element decomposition cannon".
They are not as powerful as the super-heavy main guns that Jemin controls, but they have a faster rate of fire, lower energy consumption, and are more suitable for clearing out large numbers of low-level targets.
Boom boom boom boom boom!!!
Thousands upon thousands of beams of light poured out from the protective light curtain like a torrential downpour.
The scene was as if countless glowing spikes had suddenly sprouted from the entire defensive line.
The beam of light landed precisely in the area where the cannon fodder legion was most concentrated.
Each hit clears a "blank" area with a radius of tens of meters in the enemy ranks.
All units within the attack range, regardless of their form or level, are reduced to basic particles in the decomposition beam unless they have reached level six.
But this is still not enough to stop the torrent of billions.
More cannon fodder units quickly filled the gap created by the attack and continued their charge.
They rushed to the shield and continuously depleted its energy reserves.
The shield's light began to dim at a visible rate. And at that moment, the cannon fodder legion of Norn Workshop moved.
However, they did not break through the protective shield.
Because it is not needed.
"Let them in."
Dionysius Spencer's voice rang out in the high-ranking wizards' private channel:
"At this rate, our energy reserves won't hold up. Let's open a few gaps in the protective shield and send in the cannon fodder troops. We'll play whack-a-mole!"
The command was executed swiftly.
Several "weak points" suddenly appeared on the surface of the pale gold protective shield.
The cannon fodder of the Chaos Cult and the Tower of Annihilation, like sharks smelling blood, surged in frantically through the breached weak points.
Naturally, the cannon fodder units that were originally frantically charging at the shield also rushed towards the "gap" in the shield.
Then, they ran headlong into the well-prepared cannon fodder legion of the Norren Workshop.
The black giants silently raised their tower shields, squeezing the surging enemies into a narrow area, and then reaped them in droves with their battle axes.
The shadow warriors transformed into flowing black walls, and wherever they went, all intruders were swallowed up by the shadows, assimilated, and transformed into new shadow matter.
The constructs, elemental creatures, and modified beasts released by other wizards also displayed their unique strengths, engaging in bloody close-quarters combat with the enemy in the "street fighting zone" between the fortresses.
This is a pure exchange of quantity for quality.
Every moment, tens of thousands of cannon fodder units die.
But the defenses of the Norren workshop held firm.
Because the "gap" that the shield opens is limited in size, not enough cannon fodder units can squeeze in in a short period of time.
The cannon fodder units inside the defensive line have a higher average level and stronger individual combat power. They also have artillery support from the rear fortresses and shields to isolate most of the direct impact from high-level enemies.
more importantly--
Above the battle zone of the cannon fodder legions, on the battlefield belonging to the "high-level cannon fodder" and the "high-level wizards," Norren Workshop was not at a disadvantage.
Fortress No. 7, Third Artillery Control Room.
Jemin sat at the control panel numbered 09, his eyes closed, fine beads of sweat glistening on his forehead.
His consciousness was currently deeply connected with the No. 3 turret of the "Super Heavy Element Disintegration Cannon" outside the fortress.
The wizards used a "rotation system" when using the turrets.
Operate a cannon, fire, exhaust mental energy, disconnect, and let the next wizard take over to continue firing.
The wizard, whose mental energy was exhausted, went to the side to rest and recover his mental energy.
At this moment, turret number three is charging.
Through the turret's perception runes, Jemin "saw" the aiming area.
That was about fifty kilometers behind the battlefield of cannon fodder, an area where a level four cannon fodder unit of the Chaos Cult was gathering.
Approximately 30,000 units resembling giant beetles, under the command of several level-five wizards, are preparing to launch a new attack.
"locking."
Jemin silently recited it in his mind.
Inside the turret, more than seven million runes began to light up simultaneously.
A massive amount of elemental energy was drawn from the temporary elemental pool at the bottom of the fortress and injected into the "conversion array" in the core of the turret. Its attributes were stripped away, purified, and compressed, and it was eventually transformed into pure "decomposition" power.
The mental energy required to operate this transformation array is astronomical.
An ordinary level 5 wizard, if operating such a cannon alone, would suffer mental exhaustion after firing just one shot. He would need to rest for at least several minutes and use mental energy recovery potions to barely regain his mobility.
That's why wizards need to use a rotation system.
For wizards of lower rank, it may even take multiple people to operate a single cannon to fire an attack.
(End of this chapter)