“Speak,” Lyra’xis said as she wiped blood from her blade with a cloth she kept strapped to her belt.

“Our sensors are detecting large-scale movement from outside the city. Multiple signatures are converging on Kingsgate from every direction.”

Lyra’xis stopped. “Clarify. Portal monsters or native threats?”

“Neither,” Torr’vin said. “It’s the monsters that rushed in from the portals the Church opened a while ago. They are the monsters that had been circling the city for the past months—the ones we have been managing through diversion operations. They are all moving toward Kingsgate. Every group. Every pack. Level 400 to 450 creatures from the forest, and the larger predators we’ve been keeping at a distance through the lure operations. All of them.”

Lyra’xis’s mandibles clicked. “The World Carver Behemoth?”

“All of them, Legate, including the monster. The estimated time before the first groups reach the city walls is between five and ten minutes.”

“How long before the Behemoth arrives?”

“10 minutes.”

Lyra’xis understood what that meant without needing it explained. The monster field around Kingsgate—the same field that had kept the city under siege for months, the same field that even the Aegis Phalanx had struggled to manage—was now rushing toward the city as if something had called it.

And she knew what had called it.

The portals. The destroyed portals. When Reidar’s forces collapsed the circles, the residual mana from those circles and the one gathered by those circles dispersed into the surrounding area.

That mana concentration was acting as a flare, drawing every monster within range toward the city, the same way blood in the water pulled sharks.

But it wasn’t like it could have been done otherwise. The only way for this situation to be solved was to destroy the portals, which would prevent more monsters from reaching the planet.

<The portals were a threat, but the mana left behind is not any less of a threat.>

The monsters already inside the city from the remaining four portals were bad enough; Reidar’s army was handling them, but for how long was that going to last? The man was facing hundreds of thousands of monsters with fewer numbers.

Even if his summons were stronger, at some point the sheer sea of enemies would start to wear it.

Besides, his forces were spread across multiple fronts, and each portal was demanding thousands of summons to contain the flow. That made things worse.

Now, adding the entire monster horde from the forest would turn an already difficult situation into an impossibly hard one.

These creatures had reached Earth in months. For a long time they streamed through the portals until the Aegis found them and destroyed them. So the number of monsters was even higher than those currently coming from the portals.

Reidar might not have a problem handling them. In the long run, he would surely wipe them all out, but what about the survivors? What about the Aegis?

The Aegis Phalanx could not hold the settlement and fight a horde of that size at the same time. Not with the forces she had available. Not even with Reidar’s army helping, because his army was already committed to the portals.

Plus, the World Carver Behemoth was coming here. What would Reidar do at that point?

“What is the estimated size of the incoming force?” Lyra’xis asked.

“We are still calculating, but early projections put the total number at over three-hundred thousand creatures. The largest concentration is approaching from the north, led by at least two creatures at level 550 or above.”

<Level 550.>

Of course, some exceptions had crossed the portals. There wasn’t just the World Carver Behemoth out there, but Lyra’xis could still defeat them. She even killed a few during this battle.

The problem was that level was higher than most of her officers and higher than all but a handful of fighters in the Aegis Phalanx’s regional contingent.

Those creatures had been lurking at the edge of the monster field for months, too strong for the lure operations to redirect and too cautious to approach the city while the World-Carver Behemoth was near. But now, with mana beacons blazing inside Kingsgate, that caution was gone.

They were not going to care about the Behemoth because that thing would have a lot of food to feast upon, and they were going to get the scraps. However, scraps coming from the Behemoth were a feast for them.

“Reidar needs to know about this,” Lyra’xis said. “He is the only one with the forces and the level to respond to this development.”

“Understood, Legate. Should I try to reach him through the communication channels?”

“No,” Lyra’xis said, because Reidar did not carry Aegis communication equipment, and even if he did, the man was in the middle of a battle that spanned an entire city. A communication signal might not reach him, and even if it did, the distraction could cost lives.

She turned to the nearest squad of soldiers. Five of them stood in a group near the secondary barrier, their weapons lowered during the brief lull in the fighting.

“You five,” Lyra’xis said. “Find Reidar Miller. He was last heading toward the western portal. Tell him that the monster horde around Kingsgate is coming here. Every creature outside the walls is converging on the city, and they will reach us within five minutes. He needs this information now.”

The five soldiers straightened.

“Go,” Lyra’xis said.

They went. The five Aegis Phalanx soldiers broke from the defensive line and ran toward the inner city at a pace that would have been impossible for human soldiers.

Their legs carried them through the streets and past the fleeing low-level survivors who pressed against the walls to let them through.

Lyra’xis watched them disappear around a corner, then turned back to the barriers they were trying to protect. Though if the level 500 monsters reached this place, the barriers would just be empty air, and that was the case even for lower monsters. That was why most of her strongest soldiers were there just to create the barriers, rather than to fight. The barrier would repel the monsters up to the caster’s level, after all.

Another group of portal monsters was pushing through the eastern side of the city, and behind them, she could see more forming in the streets of Kingsgate, drawn by the fighting and the mana of the ongoing battle.

She drew her blade and moved to meet them.

The settlement had to hold. Everything depended on it—the survivors behind her, Martha and Marcus Miller in the building that had once been Reidar’s company headquarters, and every person who had spent months inside these walls believing the Aegis Phalanx would protect them.

Lyra’xis was not going to let those walls fall. Not while she was standing.

But she also knew that within the next ten minutes, this battle was going to get much worse.

Source: Webnovel.com, updated by NovelKeep