Chapter 68: BATTLE OF THE SWAMP (5)

Back in the burning southern forest, the Paladins prepared to charge.

Then, the sun went out, but there wasn’t a cloud covering it. The flames of the burning forest flickered violently as a massive shadow blotted out the sky.

The Rotting Druid watched, his jaw unhinging.

A black cloud of one hundred thousand mutated swamp locusts descended from the sky like a solid block of iron.

“Shields!” the lead Paladin screamed, his arrogance vanishing instantly. “Light the sky! [ SOLAR FLARE ]!”

Dozens of Paladins thrust their hands upward, burning massive amounts of DP to unleash waves of holy fire into the air. Thousands of locusts were incinerated instantly, raining down as burnt husks.

But there were one hundred thousand of them.

The swarm crashed into the golden formation like a tidal wave. They didn’t care about holy fire. They were a biological algorithm driven entirely by starvation.

They latched onto the Paladins’ armor. Their mandibles, hardened by the Star-Iron rich soil they had hatched in, chewed through leather straps. They crawled into the eye-slits of visors. They swarmed the mages, burying them under piles of clicking, biting, thrashing bodies.

“Get them off! GET THEM OFF!” a Paladin shrieked, blindly swinging his sword, accidentally cutting down his own comrade in the chaos.

The Druid and his 1,800 followers watched in absolute, stunned silence as the elite, invincible Golden Army was completely enveloped by a living nightmare.

The locusts ignored the plant-kin entirely as they were rotting and foul. The bugs wanted fresh meat.

Up in the Void, Red was watching the data streams, his violet eyes reflecting the rapidly dropping numbers.

To Red, they were a one-time-use asset. In fact, he wished all of them would be exterminated since they were highly toxic and dangerous, even for his own followers.

What Red was watching was Aurelius’s DP Meter, which Red could estimate based on the frequency of the Paladins’ magic usage.

Down in the forest, the 3,000 Paladins were fighting for their lives. To keep from being eaten alive, they were forced to cast continuous AoE fire spells. Every single [ SOLAR FLARE ], every [ PURGE ], every glowing sword slash drew power directly from the Golden King’s reserves through the Divine Share ability.

Red leaned back, crossing his legs.

“That’s it,” Red murmured, watching the golden dots on his map frantically flash as they spammed high-tier magic against mindless bugs. “Panic. Cast your miracles. Burn your budget.”

Red had never intended for the locusts to wipe out the Paladins. He knew the demigods were too strong for that.

But Red’s strategy was simple.

By the time the Paladins finished incinerating the swarm, they would be utterly exhausted. Their magic reserves would be empty. And Aurelius, sitting miles away in his command tent, would feel his Divine Power bleeding out like a severed artery.

“You wanted to fight a war of attrition, Aurelius,” Red said to the empty Void, a dark smile curving his shadow. “Let’s see whose bank account hits zero first.”

Down in the burning southern forest, the three thousand Paladins thought they were winning.

They stood in a circle, their golden shields raised, blasting waves of [ SOLAR FLARE ]

into the sky as the charred locust husks piled up around their knees.

The swarm was thinning.

“Hold the line!” the lead Paladin roared. “They are just bugs! We are the Sun’s chosen!”

But then, the lead Paladin stumbled. His vision blurred, and his sword felt like it weighed a thousand pounds. He looked down at his arm where a locust had managed to nip him through a gap in his gauntlet, the veins beneath his skin had turned a sickly, necrotic purple.

[ STATUS AILMENT: SWAMP-ROT VENOM (STACKING) ]

“Poison,” the Paladin gasped, dropping to his knees.

The locusts hadn’t just been bred in the deep mud, they had gestated near the Bio-Reactor’s toxic runoff. Every bite, every scratch, delivered a slow-acting, highly concentrated venom.

Panic rippled through the golden formation. Men who had been bitten minutes ago were suddenly collapsing, their nervous systems shutting down.

“Heal!” the commanders screamed. “[ MASS PURGE ]! Draw from the King!”

The Paladins desperately tapped into the Divine Share, drawing massive amounts of DP directly from Aurelius’s reserves to flush the venom from their blood. The golden light washed over them, curing the poison, but the swarm was still there.

Ten seconds later, they were bitten again.

It became a horrific certainty they hey had to burn DP to heal. They had to burn DP to cast fire. And they were fighting an enemy that numbered in the tens of thousands and didn’t care if it died.

Within three hours, the golden light in the southern forest flickered and died.

The three thousand elite demigods, exhausted, drained of mana, and completely overwhelmed by the venom, collapsed into the mud.

The Rotting Druid, and his followers watched from the safety of their grove as the buzzing finally began to subside. The Golden Vanguard was gone. Only a sea of cracked golden armor remained, swarmed by the surviving insects.

Up in the Void, Red looked at his interface.

[ SWARM CASUALTIES: 60,000 ]

[ SWARM REMAINING: 40,000 ]

“Sixty percent loss to clear a flank,” Red calculated, tapping his spectral cane. “Acceptable overhead.”

But the swarm was still hungry, and Red wasn’t one to leave assets sitting idle on the board. He pulled up the Omni-Web map and looked to the West.

Miles away, trudging through the Dead-Lands, was the retreating army of sick Paladins. Six thousand men, coughing up blood, their immune systems already ravaged by the Root-Father’s fungal sabotage.

They had no heavy magic left and they were just trying to walk home.

“They will become a problem once they are healed.” Red muttered. “I can’t send the Locusts to Aurelius’ current base either. He will annihilate them in one strike.”

Red highlighted the remaining 40,000 locusts. He set a new waypoint.

[ RE-ROUTE. CONSUME. ]

The massive black cloud rose from the southern forest, leaving the Druid in stunned silence, and flew aggressively toward the western plains.

When the swarm hit the retreating sick, it wasn’t even a battle. It was an execution.

The Paladins were too malnourished to run and too sick to cast shields. They swung their swords weakly at the sky as the venomous swarm descended.

It was mutual destruction. The Paladins fought to their last breath, crushing and slashing the bugs in pure desperation.

By sunset, the Omni-Web map went entirely quiet in the West. All 40,000 locusts were dead, their short, accelerated lifespans and the desperate defense of the sick men finally wiping them out.

But of the six thousand retreating Paladins, only a few hundred managed to crawl out of the swarm’s path. And without supplies, staggering through the toxic Dead-Lands with fresh venom in their veins, they wouldn’t survive the night.

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