Reidar circled above the clearing outside the settlent and watched his army move through Kingsgate.
Four portals remained. The three he had already closed had collapsed fast once his Demon-Lords found the magic circles, but the remaining four were spread across different parts of the city, and each one was still pouring monsters into the streets at a rate that made his jaw tighten.
Through the Overmind Consciousness, he could see the situation at every portal at the sa ti. The western rift was the largest of the remaining four, easily sixty ters across, and the creatures coming through it were stronger than the ones from the others.
He redirected the bulk of his forces toward two portals at the sa ti: the western one and the southern one, which sat near the survivor district's outer edge and was close enough to the settlent that monsters from it could reach the barriers within minutes if left unchecked.
The Elental Demon-Lords split into two groups of roughly 170 each and flew toward the two portals. Below them, thousands of undead from the Eternal Death-Host marched through the streets.
At the western portal, the situation was a grinding fight. His Dread-Bastion Juggernauts had ford a wall three blocks from the rift, and the monsters slamd into them in waves that never seed to stop.
Each ti a Juggernaut took a hit, the Soul Feedback skill triggered, reflecting 100% of the damage back as True Damage, which killed or crippled whatever struck it, but the monsters kept coming in numbers that forced the line back one ter at a ti.
The Ghost-Strike Inquisitors fired from the rooftops, punching through the bipedal creatures' armor with enough force to pin them to the ground. Night-Stalker Assassins appeared behind the enemy lines, cut throats and severed tendons, and vanished before the surrounding monsters could react.
But it wasn't enough. The portal was too large, and its output was too fast.
The first group of Elental Demon-Lords descended on the western portal. Inferno Tyrants unleashed rolling waves of fire that turned the street in front of the rift into a lake of fla, while Frost-Blight Sovereigns froze the monsters that tried to push through the fire into solid blocks of ice that shattered under their weight.
Storm-Wraith Archons called down chains of lightning that arced between the frozen and burning creatures, killing dozens in a single discharge.
The combined assault created a kill zone in front of the portal that nothing could cross alive. The flow of monsters slowed as the creatures on the other side of the rift pushed against the wall of elental death waiting for them.
While the Demon-Lords held the line, Reidar sent Primal Chira-Colossi to dig. The magic circles were beneath the street, just like the others. Three Behemoth-Apes tore into the cobblestones, pulling up chunks of stone and earth until the runic array was exposed, while Hydra-Serpents kept the periter clear of any monsters that tried to flank from the side streets.
At the southern portal, the fight was different.
The creatures coming through were around levels 450–530. They were not smart, but they were fast and many. The Aegis Phalanx had to spend defending the weak survivors instead of dealing with the larger threat.
Reidar sent the second group of Demon-Lords to the southern portal alongside 5,000 undead from the Eternal Death-Host and 20 Shadow Specter-Kings. The Specter-Kings reached the portal first, shifting through the shadows and materializing directly around the rift's base.
Dark tendrils of shadow wrapped around the six-legged beasts as they erged from the portal, and the creatures vanished piece by piece, dissolving into shadow before disappearing from existence. The Specter-Kings left no corpses and no blood, just empty space where monsters had been.
The Death-Host ford a periter around the portal and killed anything the Specter-Kings missed, while the Demon-Lords bombarded the rift from above with a sustained barrage of fire, ice, and lightning that turned the surrounding area into a crater of scorched earth and shattered stone.
Reidar directed the search for the southern portal's magic circles. His Bone-Reaver Berserkers tore into the ground around the rift's base, and it took them less than two minutes to find the magic circle buried beneath a layer of packed earth and broken stone.
The Inferno Tyrants concentrated their fire on the circle. The stones cracked, the runes shattered, and the portal above them flickered and collapsed. Monsters that had been halfway through the rift were cut apart.
At the western portal, the Behemoth-Apes had exposed the magic circles like overeager archaeologists who'd had way too much coffee.
Reidar gave the order, and the Demon-Lords shifted their fire from the kill zone to the circle itself—because apparently even magical runes weren't safe from an old-fashioned demonic tantrum.
Concentrated elental attacks struck the magic circles from multiple angles, like the world's most aggressive ga of whack-a-mole, and the stones cracked under the assault.
The runes started blackening and splitting, probably wondering what they'd done to deserve this kind of treatnt, as the magic that held them together ca apart in what could only be described as a catastrophic case of structural failure.
The western portal flickered like a faulty light bulb that knew its ti was up. Its surface cracked with all the dramatic flair of a villain's evil plan falling apart.
Then it collapsed, folding inward and unceremoniously cutting through the monsters that were still trying to cross it.
Thousands of Reidar's summons surrounded the monsters on the Kingsgate side like the world's most aggressive welcoming committee as the rift vanished, leaving the poor creatures without reinforcent and with the realization that they'd just beco very, very outnumbered.
The remaining two portals were in the northern and central districts of the city. Reidar redirected his forces toward them, pulling the Demon-Lords and the bulk of his undead away from the now-closed portals and sending them north and center.
Then he saw it—and the sight froze sothing deep in his chest. Miles away, across the ruined landscape, a shape rose against the horizon like a monunt to extinction itself. Even from the settlent, even across kiloters of scarred earth, the silhouette was unmistakable. Vast. Ancient. Inevitable.
A silhouette blocked the horizon, and none liked it.
The World-Carver Behemoth was here.
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