Chapter 66: Chapter 66: The Demon General Appears

The resonance of the Great Vault Door’s mechanism echoed through the vents like the rhythmic thunder of primordial war drums. The screeching of gargantuan adamantite chains and the grinding of massive, interlocking gears created a seismic vibration that Dayat felt deep in his marrow. Just as the Dretch Alpha—that basalt-skinned titan of the Abyss—loomed mere meters from the Hesco barricades, the gargantuan gates finally split asunder.

A violent plume of high-pressure steam erupted from the widening gap, followed by the heavy, disciplined tread of armored boots. From behind the white veil of mist, a phalanx of shimmering gold-and-black plate armor emerged.

“Hold the formation! Do not let this Abyssal filth defile the sacred stone of Terragard!”

The voice was a deep, gravelly baritone that commanded the air itself. A giant among his kin, Baruk-Ahn, the personal warden of King Ironbeard, stepped through the line of shields. He was a man with a reputation as a wall that could not be cracked. In his grip, a massive steam-powered bulwark shield thrummed with the solid, amber radiance of Earth Mana.

BOOM!

The collision was like two mountains colliding. The Dretch Alpha slammed into Baruk-Ahn’s shield with the full momentum of its three-ton mass. Yet, the Dwarf didn’t yield a single millimeter. He braced his legs, his boots grinding into the metal floor as he channeled the kinetic energy of the impact directly into the bedrock through his enchanted Earth-Shielder armor.

Dayat collapsed to his knees behind the Hesco barriers, his HK416 slipping from his numbed fingers. His vision was a fractured kaleidoscope—black spots dominated his sight, and the frantic pounding of his own heart sounded like a pneumatic hammer inside his skull. He was suffering from acute Mana exhaustion, a biological collapse that threatened to shut down his nervous system.

Baruk-Ahn turned his head slightly, his sharp eyes taking in Dayat’s wretched condition. Without a word, he approached the fallen human while his troops began the methodical slaughter of the remaining Dretches in the corridor.

“You have fought with the heart of a mountain, Human,” Baruk-Ahn grunted. He placed a rough, calloused hand over Dayat’s forehead. “But your flesh is not as tempered as your will. Accept this—it is an honor granted only to the warriors of the High Deep.”

Baruk-Ahn whispered an ancient Dwarven incantation: [Rune of Berserk-Adrenaline].

Instantly, Dayat felt a wave of searing, liquid fire sweep through his entire bloodstream. This wasn’t a healing spell; it was a violent chemical surge—a spiritual injection of pure energy that forced his adrenal glands to fire far beyond the limits of human biology. It felt as if someone had ignited high-octane fuel inside his muscles. The pain didn’t vanish, but his consciousness was violently jerked back to the surface. His eyes snapped open, his pupils constricting to lethal pinpricks, and his trembling hands suddenly became steady—though he knew this was a borrowed life, a candle burning at both ends before the final darkness.

“I… I can still stand…” Dayat rasped, his voice vibrating with the artificial surge of the rune.

However, the atmosphere in the corridor shifted drastically in a heartbeat. The chaotic noise of battle suddenly seemed distant, as if the sound were being sucked into a soundproof vacuum. The temperature plummeted so sharply that their breath turned into frozen white crystals instantly.

From the darkness of the corridor, beyond the reach of the Sentry Gun’s remaining searchlight, a silhouette stepped forward with a terrifying, liquid grace. He did not run; he did not scream. He was tall, gaunt, his frame draped in armor made of blackened, calcified bone that appeared to pulse as if it possessed a heartbeat of its own.

Malphas.

The Demon General was the living embodiment of despair. As a direct subordinate of The Ghafil of Despair, his mere presence was a psychic weight intended to extinguish the fighting spirit of any mortal. Lunethra, who had only just begun to stabilize, trembled so violently that her teeth chattered. She clutched Dayat’s arm with hands slick with cold sweat.

“Dayat… don’t,” Lunethra whispered, her voice a ghost of itself. “He is no ordinary demon. His aura… it is the herald of the Apocalypse. We cannot win against that.”

Malphas stopped in the center of the corridor, looking at the line of Earth-Shielders as if they were nothing more than ants obstructing a path. His deep purple eyes settled on the M134 Minigun Sentry, which was still radiating heat from its barrels.

“A noisy iron toy,” Malphas’s voice was soft, yet it resonated directly inside their cerebral cortex.

Malphas raised his left hand, his fingers tipped with long, necrotized claws. The shadows beneath his feet expanded, crawling toward the Sentry Gun like a swarm of ink-black leeches. The moment the shadows touched the tripod, a horrific phenomenon occurred: Abyssal Corrosion. The high-strength steel, designed for maximum durability, began to rust and decay in seconds. The black paint peeled away, the internal circuits sparked and hissed, and the six barrels of the minigun began to droop and warp as if they were made of heated wax.

Dayat watched with a sinking dread that felt like ice in his chest. His masterpiece, the pinnacle of his manifestations in this battle, was unmade without Malphas ever having to physically touch it. Desperate, Dayat leveled his HK416 and pulled the trigger.

TATATATATATA!

The 5.56mm rounds streaked through the air, but as they neared a one-meter radius around Malphas, they lost every ounce of their supersonic momentum. The bullets didn’t ricochet; they simply aged centuries in a millisecond, rusting into orange dust and falling harmlessly to the floor before they could even brush the General’s bone armor.

“Impossible…” Dayat breathed. His hands began to shake again. The Adrenaline Rune kept him awake, but it could not combat the spiritual decay radiating from Malphas.

Malphas shifted his gaze to Dola. He went silent for a long moment, appearing to analyze the entity before him. As a servant of The Ghafil, he sensed that within the shell of this silver-haired girl resided something equal to his master—The Maiden of Steel.

However, Malphas saw only a broken, limited vessel. A sneer of arrogant amusement curled his pale lips.

“Lord Ghafil was correct…” Malphas hissed. He decided to discard his caution, choosing to revel in the perceived weakness of the entity.

Dola stepped forward, positioning herself in front of the kneeling Dayat. Her eyes flared with an intense sapphire light, her processors running thousands of tactical simulations per second. “Master, the enemy possesses an entity-threat level: Intermediate-Apocalypse. All standard ballistic weaponry is 0% effective. I recommend a high-mass kinetic strike or molecular-disruption attack.”

“Dola… I don’t have the energy for that,” Dayat groaned, his body starting to reject the adrenaline.

Suddenly, Malphas let out a short, dry laugh—a sound like a knife scraping against a windowpane. “You speak of strategy in the face of absolute deletion, Iron Maiden?”

Malphas flicked his hand. Instantly, a dozen shadows detached from beneath his cloak, gliding like black serpents along the walls and ceiling. They bypassed the Dwarven front line, weaving through the steam to target the vulnerable Lunethra and Kancil at the rear.

“Kancil! Protect Lunethra!” Dayat roared.

Kancil didn’t hesitate. Despite his knees buckling under Malphas’s aura, he gripped his Vibro-knife with a white-knuckled intensity. As a shadow-claw lunged to pierce Lunethra’s throat, Kancil leaped forward.

ZZZZZZZZZ-SHREET!

The ultrasonic vibration of the blade proved capable of disrupting the semi-solid shadow substance of Malphas’s energy. The black blade severed the shadow’s energetic tether, causing it to evaporate into a plume of acrid black smoke. But there were too many. One shadow slipped through, its claw lancing through Kancil’s shoulder.

“Argh!” Kancil was thrown back, blood soaking his tattered shirt. But he didn’t fall. He bit his lip until it bled, using the physical pain to anchor his mind against the despair. He stood again, a tiny sentinel guarding the Elf who was desperately chanting the Aegis Photonis to keep the Dwarves from collapsing.

Malphas grew bored. He stepped toward Dola and Dayat, each footfall causing the metal floor to crumble into rusted flakes. Baruk-Ahn tried to intervene with his axe, but Malphas simply gestured with a single finger. A concentrated blast of dark energy hurled the Dwarven giant backward, slamming him into the adamantite gate with a bone-shattering thud.

“Is this all?” Malphas asked, standing directly over Dola. He raised his hand, his claws poised to crush her throat.

But the moment his fingers neared Dola’s skin, something changed.

Dola remained motionless, but her pupils began to vibrate with a high-frequency shudder. The sapphire glow of her eyes turned a blinding, transcendent silver-white for exactly one-tenth of a second.

(…How dare you touch me…)

A voice, far colder and more absolute than Dola’s usual tone, resonated through the corridor. It wasn’t a sound in their heads; it was a physical vibration that rattled the very atoms of the air.

The Maiden Glitch.

In that microsecond, Malphas’s oppressive aura was utterly swallowed by a presence far more ancient and structured. It was an aura of systematic violence. Malphas flinched, his hand stopping inches from Dola’s neck as it began to tremble uncontrollably. Cold sweat broke out on the Demon General’s brow. His primal instincts, honed over centuries of slaughter, shrieked a singular command: RUN!

Malphas leaped backward five meters, his demonic heart hammering against his ribs. He stared at Dola with a look of pure, unadulterated disbelief. “You… you are still awake?”

But the glitch vanished as quickly as it had arrived. Dola returned to being Dola—the protective, yet limited AI assistant. She swayed on her feet, her internal systems undergoing a massive thermal surge from the glitch.

Malphas took a long, shaky breath, trying to reclaim his composure. He felt humiliated, stung by the fact that he had been terrified by a mere ghost of a dead entity. His fear curdled into an explosive, vengeful rage.

“Enough theater! If you refuse to wake up, then perish with this human insect!” Malphas roared, gathering a gargantuan sphere of dark energy above his head. The orb began to suck all remaining light from the corridor, growing into a miniature black sun.

Dayat stared at the orb of darkness. He felt the weight of total defeat. His weapons were rusted scrap, his strength was gone, and the enemy was a god of the void. The Earth-Shielders were falling like wheat before a scythe.

“Dayat…” Dola turned around. She knelt beside him, taking his hand in hers. Her palm didn’t feel like cold plastic; it felt warm, pulsing with a desperate life. “Do not surrender to this variable. I will bear the burden of the data, but you must be the edge of the blade. Remember… we are not home yet.”

Dayat looked into Dola’s sapphire eyes. Amidst the darkness brought by Malphas, her light was the only thing that felt real.

“Dola… give me the data…” Dayat whispered, his voice cracking. “Give me the weapon that can kill him.”

“A full data transfer of that magnitude will cause permanent neurological scarring in your current state, Dayat,” Dola answered, her voice thick with an emotion she wasn’t supposed to have. “However… if it is your will… I will be your shield until the end of time.”

Out there, Malphas was ready to release the orb. Total annihilation was seconds away. But in the center of that despair, a mad, desperate plan began to take shape in Dayat’s mind—a mind currently burning with Adrenaline, Mana, and a Jakarta-born defiance that refused to break.

Source: Webnovel.com, updated by NovelKeep