Chapter 1283: Taming the Old World - Shadow Dragons - Last Front - 8

Against the worst odds, the expected army was not there…

And not wanting to waste the opportunity Sirius and Liu moved forward at a fast pace.

They did encounter a handful of straggling mid-tier Platinums on the way out, which proved difficult enough given their exhaustion, but it was nowhere near the apocalyptic swarm they had anticipated.

The path back to the surface was eerily clear.

Sirius understood the battlefield geometry first. A quiet, heavy pride bled into his tired voice.

"They are still outside," he said, gesturing toward the distant exit. "They failed to secure the dragon's core, but they did not give up on us… They held the line. They stopped the swarm from flooding the mountain until the last possible second. That is very likely why this tunnel is empty, they have been guarding our backs this entire time."

They forced their aching legs to sprint faster. An empty tunnel meant their allies were fighting a suicidal holding action on the surface. It meant the Vanguard outside was likely in a far worse state than they were.

♢♢♢♢

On the surface, the human resistance was indeed at its breaking point…

Lin and Zhao were the final two standing fighters, both teetering on the edge of collapse. They had flatly refused Mayo's frantic attempts to evacuate them. The mere concept of abandoning their former student to be swallowed by the mountain was unacceptable.

Liu was their responsibility.

They had trained him, and they refused to leave him behind, regardless of the impossible odds.

They were not the only stubborn veterans on the field. Yang, completely stripped of his protective armor, was pushing himself off Mayo's bird, his muscles trembling as he tried to stand without a single drop of mana in his core. The academy directors were doing the same, dragging themselves upright, preparing to throw themselves down, to fall from the sky and back into the meat grinder even though their tanks were empty.

They all shared the exact same conviction. Their student was trapped in the mountain, and none of them would retreat until he walked out, that was their pride as educators.

High above Lin, Zhao unleashed his final volley of feathers.

He watched them strike the massive, stitched-together shadow dragon mutant about to breath on top of Lin who was guarding the entrance. It did cancel the attack but he couldn't avoid noting how the projectiles lacked their previous piercing power.

His output was fading fast... So he made the only choice left. Flying on sheer willpower, he positioned himself directly behind the towering abomination. He recalled his feathers one last time, summoning them back through the beast's neck.

The razor-sharp projectiles tore through the mutant from front to back, making the attack explode and inflicting massive internal damage. That specific, perfectly timed strike staggered the behemoth, saving Lin from a crushing blow that would have ground her into the foothills of the crystal mountain.

But that maneuver drained the very last drop of his ether.

Zhao's core went dark… His winged fusion dissolved mid-air, and he plummeted from the sky like a stone.

Lin was left standing entirely alone before the cavern entrance. The mutant dragon was still recovering but hundreds of platinum mutants still wanted to enter.

She channeled everything she had left into one final strike. She attempted her signature thunder kick, intending to paralyze the front line of mutants with chained lightning to buy even just some more seconds. She gathered her failing energy, lunged forward, and kicked.

The resulting attack was too weak...

The thunder manifested as an infirm, sputtering spark that barely made the mutants flinch. Her fusion forcibly canceled itself. Stripped of her power, completely exhausted, Lin stood exposed as the colossal dragon-mutant recovered its balance and brought its massive bulk down to crush the teacher.

And then, with an almost meteoric impact, it crushed her.

Or so it seemed, but Sirius had emerged from inside the cave.

Sirius burst from the mouth of the cave with a split-second to spare. Still cloaked in the amplified darkness of the elemental ring, he placed himself directly between Lin and the descending beast, wrapping his arms around the exhausted teacher. An empowered shadow-jump pulled them out of the impact zone just in time, leaving the mutant to smash uselessly against the empty entrance.

Liu had also shot past them in an invisible blur of motion. He had launched himself into the sky, intercepting Zhao's freefall, catching the older man securely in his arms before he could hit the dirt.

Sirius and Lin landed smoothly on the back of Liu's waiting mount after the second shadow jump.

Both men had made it out…

They had the elemental ring.

And their allies were alive.

The timing could not have been closer.

It was time to pull back.

♢♢♢♢

The southern front battle ended in a bloody stalemate that heavily favored humanity. They had successfully stolen the ring, forced Selthia to burn over two hundred elite high-tier units from her six hundred plus, and left her lamenting on her third failed front of the day.

The only prize the corruption managed to salvage from the south was the Shadow Dragon's core, a somewhat meager consolation for the high cost she paid.

The human Vanguard executed an organized retreat, carrying their unconscious, supporting the wounded, with their prize secured.

When tallying the grand total of the war across all three fronts, the outcome was undeniable.

The North was a flawless victory; Ren conquered the guardian, incinerated half the defending army, and claimed both the ring and the core. The capital was heavily defended and ultimately saved by Arturo's precise tactical gamble and Liora's spiritual fire. The South secured the final ring, decimated Selthia's elite forces a bit more, and forced the corruption into a humiliating parade back with almost nothing to show for it.

Three fronts...

Almost three complete defeats for the indecisive Witch.

It was a crushing, historic victory for humanity, proving exactly what they could accomplish now that the ancient entity could no longer cheat by feeding Selthia meta-knowledge of the board.