dognovel Chapter 19 [The Birth of a Hero]
Chapter 19 [The Birth of a Hero]
The year 1800 of the Anthill era.
The recaptured area outside the capital city, C-7.
This is the grand stage that Kars has prepared for its god-slaying soldiers.
Hundreds of ghostly assassins roamed the land, and no imposter could escape unscathed.
With the help of the Wither Legion and the Arbiter Legion, they swept through everything in their path.
The battlefield had been cleaned up, and the bugle call of victory seemed to have already sounded.
The frontline judges of death were the first to discover the anomaly.
"Warning! Abnormal energy decay rate of the 'Wave of Apoptosis'! High-energy absorption reaction detected!"
The plague-ridden areas in the core region were seen to be actively sacrificing large numbers of low-level flesh and blood on the periphery.
The wave of death completely lost its power upon contact with this already dead area.
The plague, with its own corpses, built a high wall.
"It's... learning!" Katz exclaimed, his expression turning to near shock for the first time.
"Adjust tactics immediately!" the frontline commander ordered decisively. "All Arbiter units, cross the interference zone and prioritize attacking the core!"
The arbiter struck down those units that produced cannon fodder, temporarily halting the expansion.
But everyone underestimated how quickly the plague evolved during the war.
After enduring several attacks from the splitting beams, the original flesh and blood tissue reorganized in a completely new way.
Plates of armor, gleaming with a cold light, grew out of the flesh.
The split beam arrived as expected and shot into it.
The beam of light, which should have disintegrated everything, was deflected and refracted towards the distant sky after it came into contact with the mirror shell.
The Arbiter, the ultimate weapon of the Kaz civilization, has failed.
"Nip them in the bud before they reach a certain scale, at all costs!" Katz began yet another deduction.
Those mirror units possess extremely high mobility, always moving at high speed under the cover of countless ordinary flesh and blood.
A strike force composed of adjudicators, with the tacit approval of Wise King Kaz, made a decision that violated all operational doctrines.
They abandoned the safe option of long-range sniping and, risking immense contamination and assimilation, charged into that writhing hell of flesh and blood.
Close-range artillery bombardment, a suicide attack.
This is the only way they can think of to break through the mirrored shell.
The commando team succeeded.
At extremely close range, the shell cannot completely deflect all beams of light.
The price of victory was devastating.
Countless filthy flesh and blood, like a torrential rain, splattered onto the judges who had no time to retreat.
"I... am... being... devoured..." This was the final lament of countless frontline soldiers, and all they could utter was this...
This was a Pyrrhic victory.
Inside the temple, the wise king Kaz silently reviewed the battle damage report.
The enemy underwent two targeted evolutions during the war.
For the first time, I learned to build defenses through sacrifice.
The second time, they directly created a unit capable of countering the ultimate weapon of the Kaz civilization.
It's a... life-or-death evolutionary race.
And they almost lost.
In the year 1850 of the Anthill era, the plague launched its final offensive.
A black wave rises from the horizon, the main walls of the hive, the eternal ramparts.
This defensive line, built by the Katz civilization over hundreds of years using the most robust activated metal, is now exposed to the shadow of the apocalypse.
The plague evolved exceptionally quickly, and a completely new siege method was adopted during the siege.
They combined countless assimilated metal fragments with their own flesh and blood to create a completely new unit.
They are enormous, like moving hills, covered in thick, self-repairing flesh and blood armor.
It can be described as a behemoth that sieges cities.
The Arbiter Legion launched a counterattack immediately.
Countless "chain-like split beams" that once terrified the plague precisely hit their targets.
A few seconds later, the hit area began to wriggle and repair itself, returning to its original state.
"Activate the highest purification sequence!" Wise King Kaz mobilized all the Apoptotic Judges to indiscriminately cover the area below the city.
Above the sky, dense waves of death poured down, attempting to dismantle the life structure of those monsters at its root.
As a result, the new troop strength of the Plague was online, and the attack effect of the Judge was greatly weakened.
The siege beasts, bathed in blue energy rain, corroded the foundations of the eternal barrier.
Even the most indestructible living metals are in grave danger under their corrosive influence.
"At least one siege beast must be destroyed before the walls are breached!" The will of the wise king Kaz echoed in the collective network.
The ghost assassins had already infiltrated the battlefield.
They tried to penetrate the layers of flesh and blood to mark the most vulnerable energy core within the behemoth's body.
But they failed.
The core was so well protected that it seemed to be hidden in another dimension, impossible to locate by any known means.
In the Nest City Temple, Wise King Kaz urgently mobilized all computing power to analyze the siege behemoth.
Every second, trillions of simulations are being conducted in an attempt to find a viable weakness.
The analysis revealed despair.
"Conclusion: Unless a saturation attack with enough energy to destroy half of the hive is used, it cannot be destroyed from the outside."
"Buzz—"
An ominous dark red light simultaneously emanated from the surfaces of all the colossal beasts.
Communication between the frontline units and the wise king Kaz was forcibly cut off.
The whole world fell into a deep silence in an instant.
For a civilization based on collective will, this is tantamount to being deprived of all senses.
Following standard operational procedures, they should immediately withdraw and await further instructions in a safe area.
But at the very front of the city wall, an adjudicator codenamed 734 remained motionless.
Its sensors faithfully report the structural integrity of the city wall—three percent, two percent, one percent…
Collapse could happen in an instant.
Retreating is tantamount to handing over the entire nest.
The core logic of 734 has led to a violent conflict.
The supreme command of the collective will clashed fiercely with the imminent real crisis in its newly born mindset.
It made a decision that went against the entire Kaz civilization.
A decision belonging to the "individual".
Based on its independent observation of battlefield energy flow, it captured a detail that had been overlooked by all units, including the wise king Khaz.
At regular intervals, a very faint ripple would spread across the ground beneath the giant beast's feet.
734 raised the tip of his weapon and fine-tuned the frequency of his splitting beam.
This beam of light is for... detonation.
Its target is the land beneath the giant beast's feet.
A beam of light is emitted.
"Boom!" Beneath that land, there was actually a hidden conduit for the giant beast's secret supply of flesh and blood, which was then detonated.
The enormous creature roared in agony, its thick flesh and armor being torn apart from the inside, and it was blown to pieces.
Communication has been restored.
They all "saw" 734's astonishing attack.
I witnessed the collapse of the behemoth.
I also felt that brief yet eternal emotion called "shock".
A new concept emerged from Kass's consciousness: [Hero].