A different world game? A different world game!

Chapter 1114 The Continent Has Been Half Overturned

In the middle and later parts of the continent of Taril, the air had not yet been filled with the suffocating purple dust and the acrid smell of burning energy.

The land still retains the original colors and vitality of the world of Aigella, and the coldness of the land and the hard lines of the mineral veins are clearly visible.

Only when you gaze into the distance, at the farthest point where your vision blurs and merges with the horizon, can you truly see it.

Only then can one capture an extremely faint, illusory purple halo.

Those are the cruel marks of the Void Devouring Front, consuming the world at a visible speed.

Although the area is temporarily safe, the iron heel of war has already trampled it far and wide.

What were once wilderness, rift valleys, and lakeshores are now dotted with steel fortresses.

The node fortresses, like cold stars embedded in the earth, weave a massive defensive net covering the continent through energy flows and teleportation channels, ready to face the inevitable purple tide.

At one of the node fortresses, numbered 2-11, lies a deep, unfrozen lake, its icy waters reflecting the imposing silhouette of the steel fortress.

At this moment, the fortress is in a brief "preparation period" before the great battle.

The towering watchtower pierced the cold wind, and inside, five fully armed soldiers were carrying out their guard duties.

The thick, enchanted glass blocked out most of the cold wind, but the tense atmosphere seeped in everywhere.

Captain Raymond pressed his face against the tactical goggles, his helmet-mounted eyes rapidly processing information from the front lines.

Confirmation signals of the fall of fortresses 1-11, adjustments to the defensive line after the evacuation of nodes 1-35, reports of sporadic void creatures breaking through the blockade...

Every byte is heavy.

"Tsk, the devouring line has been pushed to 1-21."

A slightly hoarse voice broke the oppressive atmosphere of the channel's information.

The speaker was Cole, a young soldier resting against the wall. He took off his helmet and wiped his face. "At this rate, in two or three days? That thing will be licking the base of our fortress wall."

Raymond suddenly raised his head, his gaze seemingly piercing through the alloy walls of the watchtower and the vast distance, fixed on the direction where Fortress 1-21 had once stood.

His dark face tensed, his jaw clenched, and finally, it turned into a low growl filled with suppressed, boundless anger.

"Fuck the void! It's fucking damned!"

His fist slammed heavily on the cold control panel, making a dull thud.

Mark, the soldier standing nearby, was startled by his captain's sudden outburst of anger and asked in confusion:

"Boss? What's wrong? The Void Invasion has been going on for so long, and you're only now 'upgrading' your rage level?"

He tried to ease the tension with jokes.

Buck, another veteran who had worked with Raymond longer, sighed and answered for the captain.

“Mark, you newbie don’t know. That area 1-21… was carved out inch by inch by Captain Raymond and his ‘Pathfinder Blade’ mercenary group, risking their lives to carve it out from the raging monsters and the mines.”

“That’s his ‘Pathfinder Medal,’ his… territory.”

The watchtower fell silent instantly, with only the messages flashing wildly upwards on the communication channel.

The other soldiers, including Cole and Mark, instinctively turned their gazes toward Raymond, their eyes filled with a mixture of surprise and sympathy.

Sensing the complex looks from his teammates, Raymond shook his head irritably, as if trying to shake off those heavy memories, but a bitter smile tugged at the corner of his mouth:

"...Glorious? Heh, I guess so. Back then, I was only level four, and I led a bunch of greenhorns, but I dared to sign up for the first official exploration team of the Taliel Continent."

"Do you know what that means? It means that there's nothing on the map except 'danger' and 'unknown'."

"Rampaging monsters, collapsed mines, elemental turbulence...aren't all of these deadly?"

His voice carried a hint of nostalgic pride, but it was quickly overshadowed by the gloom of reality.

"I fought tooth and nail to finally get a place to settle down. The document was stamped with the seal of the United Government Office, and I became 'Lord Raymond'."

"Although 'lord' titles aren't worth much anymore..."

Moreover, there are hardly any noble lords anymore.

However, that territory still retains a certain degree of ownership.

He chuckled self-deprecatingly, then his face darkened again, and he scratched his head in frustration. "Back then, I thought about it every day: how to make use of the mine, how to build a decent town by the lake, how to make that frozen soil grow things that could sustain people..."

"Damn it, the blueprint was all drawn up! And what happened? The void appeared out of nowhere! It told me that the 'home' I risked my life for was their chosen landing site! The first place they wanted to trample!"

His voice rose again, filled with resentment and frustration.

Many pioneers share this anger.

After all, they risked their lives to achieve upward social mobility.

The team members remained silent, handing him a water bottle or patting his arm guard.

Comfort seems so pale and powerless in the face of a reality that is swallowed by emptiness.

Those "fucked voids" won't care about a pioneer's dream.

"Hey, boss!"

Mark suddenly grinned, trying to dispel the heavy atmosphere. "What's there to worry about? Compared to those kingdoms that will soon be swept away by the void, what are the Frostwolf Kingdom and the Ironforge Alliance? Your 'territory' that you haven't even warmed up yet is nothing! Their 'misery' is truly devastating! Their power supply will soon become an amethyst graveyard!"

He spoke in an exaggerated, darkly humorous tone.

Raymond was taken aback. Looking at Mark's young face, which was deliberately making faces, and then at Buck and the other team members' suppressed laughter, the pent-up frustration in his chest was actually dispelled quite a bit by this twisted logic.

He couldn't help but chuckle and shake his head: "...Damn it, you're right. Compared to national subjugation and racial extinction, my little 'lord's dream' is nothing."

"At least I'm still alive, I can still curse here, and I haven't actually spent my savings to build up my territory."

He exhaled a breath of white air, as if expelling the heavy sense of loss, and his face regained some vitality.

Because the continent of Taril is newly developed territory, there are not many countries.

But once the regions of the continent of Taril are swallowed up, those former kingdoms will soon face and be destroyed.

Compared to all of this, his new territory was nothing.

The atmosphere inside the watchtower eased somewhat.

This rough and self-deprecating banter was one of the few pieces of driftwood they could grasp when faced with the overwhelming purple terror.

The front-line channels broadcast real-time casualty figures, reports of fortress falls, and devastating descriptions of Apocalypse-class collisions.

It constantly reminded them of what they were about to face.

Casual conversation is the only way to relieve that deep-seated fear and stress.

"I really don't know..."

The young observer, Ryan, who had been quietly on guard, suddenly spoke softly. He gazed at the still clear sky outside the watchtower, his eyes somewhat unfocused. "When we... really drive away the Void and bring Aegir back to life... what color will the sky be?" His voice was very soft, as if he were asking someone else, or perhaps himself.

Raymond's smile faded, and he walked over to Ryan, slamming his rough hand heavily onto Ryan's shoulder armor with a clanging sound.

His gaze also fell upon the faint purple light in the distance, his voice steady and powerful: "Want to know? Then you'd better perk up! Live to see for yourself that day!"

Just then—

Ugh—!

The piercing, high-pitched alarm suddenly shattered the brief silence.

The warning rune at the highest point of the fortress instantly turned from blue to red and began flashing wildly!

"Enemy attack! Alert!"

Raymond's roar rang out at the same time as the alarm.

All soldiers instantly entered combat readiness, like machines switched on, rushing to their respective observation posts. The field of view through their tactical eyepieces was rapidly magnified and adjusted.

On the opposite shore of the deep lake, at the edge of that sparse coniferous forest, several twisted shadows, emanating an ominous purplish-black mist, were stumbling and sprinting toward the fortress in an unnatural, contorted posture.

Their forms were indistinct, as if several creatures had been forcibly mixed together and torn apart, with only the distinctive, nauseating purple energy fluctuations clearly discernible.

"Quantity...one, two...five? Six?"

Cole quickly counted the items, his tense nerves relaxing slightly upon seeing the number, his tone even carrying a hint of relief at surviving a close call.

"Ha, just these few? It seems the brothers in front have held off the main force quite well; these are just a few that slipped through the net!"

Raymond's gaze remained fixed on the approaching purple figures, his expression showing no sign of relaxation, but rather growing even more serious.

His voice was deep and resonant, like muffled thunder rolling across an icy plain: "Don't let your guard down! Their presence here means the Void's 'claws' have already reached right under our noses! Today, they're the ones that slipped through the net..."

He paused, his gaze sweeping over the instantly tense faces of each team member, and said, word by word:

"...Tomorrow will be a mountain of corpses and a sea of ​​blood. Prepare for battle!"

Inside the watchtower, the last vestige of ease vanished.

The cold steel fortress, as if it had already sensed the stench of blood and destruction, stood silently in the cold wind, awaiting the inevitable purple tidal wave.

……

The continental joint command center is located in the rear of the Taliel continent.

Cold metal walls surrounded the core command area, and the air was filled with the deep hum of the energy core and the faint hiss of high-speed data transmission.

Governor Ariris stood before the command platform, her deep gaze fixed on the holographic strategic map before her, constructed from pure magic and data-driven rules.

This suspended 3D image accurately simulates a corner of the continent of Talia, where the world of Aegira is resisting the void, as well as a local battle in the Sea of ​​Sunset.

On the strategic map, the shocking purple, like ink dripped into clear water, is greedily devouring the colors that represent the vitality of the world.

Nearly half of the simulated area has been completely stained with this intense purple, a color symbolizing the void being swallowed up.

Just now, the light representing the defensive strength of the node fortress icon marked "1-21" went out completely, turning into a gray shadow representing silence and fall.

Another frontline stronghold was submerged by a purple frenzy.

Even more worrying is that, beyond the deep purple front, a relatively thin layer of purple "contaminated area" is continuing to spread forward, its tendrils having quietly penetrated the rear node fortress area marked with "2".

This means that the power of void erosion is continuously penetrating, and even if a node does not fall, its surrounding environment is deteriorating.

Alyris's gaze swept across the sea area.

The three-dimensional projection of the sunset over the sea appears more complex than that of the mainland.

The points of light representing the Night's Watch fleet and the mobile nodes at sea intertwined with the purple orbs representing the Void creatures, forming swirling vortexes of intense conflict.

The defense system is still operating effectively, firmly containing the main large-scale void creatures within the pre-set strangulation zone.

However, unlike the clear boundaries of the continental defense network, the three-dimensional naval warfare inevitably has gaps.

Alyris's sharp eyes caught some tiny purple specks of light, like fish that had slipped through the net and had already broken through the main defense line, heading with the ocean currents towards more distant, untouched waters.

She made her assessment in her mind.

These sporadic infiltrating void creatures pose a very low threat level; the ocean's powerful predators and harsh environment are sufficient to eliminate them.

The core task of the defense network has always been to block and deplete the endless void forces.

Just then, a node fortress icon marked "1-36" on the strategic map suddenly burst into a blinding red light.

The alarm hummed low in the command center. Alyris's expression remained unchanged; she was long accustomed to such alarms.

The red light indicates that the "Rift Queen" has appeared near the node and launched an attack.

Almost at the same instant the red light appeared, a striking white dot was clearly displayed on the map, shooting toward node 1-36 from the depths of the continent at an astonishing speed.

That's Bugret.

This half-dragon, half-machine alchemical dragon seems to have formed an irreconcilable feud with the Rift Queen.

The two are like the two poles of a magnet. Whenever the Rift Queen appears to launch a strong attack, Burget will inevitably follow closely and intercept her precisely, continuously collecting the opponent's combat data, and gradually accumulating an advantage.

However, before the alarm had subsided, the piercing buzzing in the command center suddenly rose a notch.

On the strategic map, another rear node fortress icon marked "2-3" also suddenly lit up with the same ominous red light.

Areris's brows furrowed instantly, forming a tight knot.

The appearance of an Apocalyptic being at the rear node is by no means ordinary.

The adjutant next to him reacted extremely quickly, his fingers flying across the control panel, instantly connecting the emergency communication from nodes 2 and 3.

A voice filled with fear and energy interference came urgently.

"Command Center! This is node 2-3! We've been attacked by an Apocalypse-class attack! Target confirmed... It's the 'Destruction Ape'! Repeat, it's the Destruction Ape!"

"He's...he's using some kind of mental attack to break our will! The operators of the city wall's defensive turrets are experiencing a collective daze! Requesting...requesting emergency support!"

"The Ape of Destruction..."

Alysse repeated the name softly, the description of this Apocalypse in the reference material flashing through her mind.

Without the slightest hesitation, Areris turned around decisively, her voice firm and authoritative, and issued the order:

"Let the Earth Dragon go! Immediately support nodes 2-3. Objective: Drive away or contain the Annihilation Ape! Protect the morale of the defenders at all costs!"

Commands are transmitted instantly through data-driven rules.

Inside the command center, everyone's eyes were focused on the red light representing nodes 2-3, waiting for the "Earth Dragon," on whom so much hope was placed, to respond.

Go forth and confront that terrifying apocalypse atop a solitary peak, feeding on the spirits of its soldiers. (End of Chapter)