At the same time, Thermopylae, the forward line.
"Roar!"
A thunderous roar shook the earth. A massive furry claw lifted a bulging slab of rock, its muscles tightening as it hurled the boulder forward.
Boom! Boom! Boom!
Amid the deafening impacts, the Magecraft arrays protecting the city wall flickered on and off, spreading the force that had nowhere to go into the surrounding area to disperse it.
Crack…
As chunks of rock the size of small hills smashed one after another into the light screen, spiderweb cracks spread from each point of impact, quickly pushing the Magecraft barrier to its limit.
But in the end, the wall of light forcibly endured the apocalyptic monster's boulder barrage and slowly began to repair itself.
The Spartan defenders hidden behind the luminous barrier let out long breaths of relief. Their hearts, which had been lodged in their throats, finally began to settle back into place.
Facing that towering bulk, nearly large enough to blot out the sky, the unprepared defenders cursed inwardly.
The Persian mammoth war elephants had already been troublesome enough. They had not expected this new thing on the field to be a giant beast magnified hundreds or thousands of times over, terrifying enough in both strength and defense to inspire despair.
Thud! Thud! Thud! Thud!
Yet before the defenders of Thermopylae could recover from the last wave of attacks, the earth shook violently. Even the pebbles beneath their feet bounced several inches into the air from the tremors.
It's coming, it's coming, it's coming!
"Defend! Defend!"
At the front, the centurion's heart clenched and his face went pale. Amid the shaking earth and mountains, he shouted the warning in a voice that nearly cracked.
Within the dust cloud spreading dozens of meters high, the Behemoth war beast charging into the gorge casually swung its two claws, tipped with sharp nails, smashing the obstructing rocks apart as easily as crushing tofu. Its mighty body broke through jutting stone formations, yet its speed did not lessen in the slightest.
"Roar!"
In the blink of an eye, the Behemoth war beast had charged within a hundred meters. It bent its knees and sprang forward like a frenzied giant ape, raising claws nearly ten meters long and swiping at the Magecraft barrier on the verge of collapse.
It's over…
Dozens of defenders at the front watched that awe-inspiring, sky-supporting palm fall heavily. Their bodies trembled uncontrollably under the beast's roar.
It was the awe and fear of lower species toward higher lifeforms, engraved deep within their blood.
Hum!
At the critical moment, a biting tide of Ether gathered and surged wildly, pouring into the tottering Magecraft barrier like a thousand rivers flowing into the sea.
Boom!
In a muffled roar that nearly pierced their eardrums, halos of blue, red, yellow, and white light flowed outward, forcibly blocking the Behemoth war beast's heavy blow.
Under the violent recoil, the apocalyptic beast staggered back several steps, swayed, and crashed into the mountain rocks on one side, collapsing half of them.
Seizing the opportunity, the Ether scattered through the air gathered madly, forming blue, red, yellow, and white vortices at the breach filled with dust and smoke.
For a time, fireballs, ice spikes, earth spikes, and streams of light rained down in a Magecraft barrage as dense as a meteor storm, smashing directly onto the dizzy Behemoth.
The brilliant colors and continuous explosions lasted nearly ten breaths.
And during that time, what descended from the four-colored vortices was no longer limited to single-element attacks. Flames wrapped around frost with red outside and blue within, falling rocks ignited like meteors, mixtures of water and earth, and enormous swamps meant to restrict movement. All kinds of composite Magecraft appeared before everyone's eyes, leaving the accompanying Magus utterly stunned.
Inside the wall, the surrounding Ether seemed to reverse and converge toward a single point as if in a frenzy.
Following the Mana fluctuations, the survivors looked toward the culprit ruthlessly draining the surrounding Mana. Their eyes bulged so wide they nearly fell from their sockets.
Because the small vortex-like Ether tide had actually condensed in midair into a gorgeous, dazzling crown, flashing with alternating blue, red, yellow, and white light.
Damn it! An Elemental Crown!
This was a unique phenomenon that could only be formed by a spellcaster whose elemental affinity had reached an almost perfect extreme, and it basically existed only in legend.
Even in the Age of Gods, when geniuses were everywhere, those who possessed such a thing could be counted on one hand. They were either famous great heroes, great sages who founded an era, or beings such as witches and Divine Spirits.
The typical examples were Hecate, the Goddess of the Dark Moon, Medea, the Queen of Magecraft, and Athena, the Goddess of Magic.
And now, what were they seeing?
A man no more than twenty or thirty years old, dressed in a white Greek robe and holding a scroll under one arm, actually possessed this terrifying talent. With the Elemental Crown above him, he was bombarding the Behemoth war beast outside with all kinds of composite Magecraft and ritual spells as though they came naturally to him.
"Boom!"
Finally, after nearly three minutes of relentless Magecraft saturation, the young man, whose air combined intellect with laziness, began to feel somewhat tired. He frowned and stopped.
"Teacher, careful!"
Just as the hundred or so defenders who had witnessed this Magecraft display stood with blank eyes and numb faces, Prince Alexander of Macedon hurried over with a reinforcement unit. While asking after him, he raised a hand to support the slightly swaying young man and helped him sit against a slab of green stone.
"Prince Alexander's teacher? I remember now. You're Aristotle, the genius Lord Plato expelled from the Academy of Athens!"
An accompanying Magus heard how Alexander addressed the young man and suddenly realized his identity. The answer slipped out before he caught himself. Realizing his rudeness, he hurriedly bowed with a hand over his chest in apology, then gathered with his colleagues in the corner and began whispering among themselves.
There was a saying in the Peloponnesus that nearly half of Greece's Magus came from Athens, and two-thirds of the elites among them came from the Academy of Athens.
From this, one could see just how revered and powerful the Academy of Athens had been in Magecraft education and talent cultivation before it was sealed by Areopagus.
Among the younger generation of the Academy of Athens, the two most famous geniuses were Aristotle and Archimedes.
However, the more gifted someone was, the more individualistic they tended to be, and the harder they were to control.
Take Aristotle, for example. He clearly possessed talent and a starting point that would make others green with envy, and he had been recommended as a tutor at a young age, yet he advocated logic and scholarship while deconstructing Mystery.
Because his ideas differed from those of his Professor, Plato, their relationship gradually drifted apart. A few months before the Academy of Athens was sealed, he was dismissed and expelled.
Later, this rising genius wandered to Macedon, became Prince Alexander's teacher, and had been secretly following his disciple ever since to protect him.
In fact, the only reason this mountain path, a weak point in the defenses, and the Magecraft protective barrier at Thermopylae had lasted this long was because of the help of Aristotle, the Professor. Otherwise, they would never have held out until the first and second waves of reinforcements arrived.
"How are things with you and Leonidas?"
Sitting on the mountain rock, Aristotle took several deep breaths and recovered a little strength before asking with a frown.
"We barely drove those things back once. For some reason, the Persians are pulling their forces in. I didn't feel right about it, so I brought some men over to check the back mountain."
Alexander handed him a potion while checking their losses, answering in passing.
"Be careful. The Persians are going all in. These war beasts that suddenly appeared have absurd resistance. Most of the power of my Magecraft attacks was canceled out. The one outside probably isn't dead yet."
Aristotle's brow tightened. He grabbed his disciple's arm and warned him sternly.
Alexander nodded slightly, then waved a hand. Dozens of Divine Blood Warriors pulled the spears from their backs and stepped out, preparing to investigate.
Woo!
At that moment, a cold, murderous horn call echoed through the air. The sky suddenly grew scorching hot, and even their weapons became burning to the touch.
"Move!"
Aristotle, whose Ether perception was extremely sharp, felt alarm bells ring in his heart. He immediately grabbed his disciple and leapt toward a deep pit to the side.
Boom!
In an instant, a strange crimson flame fell from the sky. After piercing through the Magecraft barrier, it continued without slowing and smashed into the wall, stirring up a terrifying Ether storm. Bricks engraved with defensive chants shattered and flew everywhere.
Puff, puff, puff, puff!
For a moment, rubble tore through the air. Aside from a few Divine Blood Warriors who reacted quickly, most of the soldiers and Magus left where they stood did not even have time to scream before their bodies were torn apart and shredded into pulp.
Then, before the scattered blood and severed limbs could even hit the ground, they were burned, melted, and vaporized beneath that blazing radiance.
Hiss…
Thanks to their alertness, the survivors who had narrowly escaped disaster pushed the rubble and dust off their bodies and cautiously crawled out from behind the cover they had found. Looking at the charred patches across the ground, they all drew in sharp breaths.
The position they had been defending had become a conical pit dozens of meters deep. Wisps of blue smoke rose from the surrounding rocks, and the edges even showed signs of crystallization from extreme heat.
As for those who had died there, not even bones remained.
The fortress blocking the small path had completely fallen. The sheer brutality of the scene left them drenched in cold sweat and chilled to the bone.
Woo~~ woo!
Almost at the same time, a deep, murderous horn call reached the sky above the main battlefield.
Under the sudden rolling heatwave, the air visibly twisted. Nearly half the trees and grass on the ground withered and burned in moments, while the sea facing Thermopylae began to boil.
Even the aftershock of that terrifying heat was almost unbearable.
If Aristotle had not frantically gathered the surrounding water elements, built an ice wall, and placed protections over everyone, they would have been roasted and ignited in the blink of an eye.
At that very moment, a meteorite several kilometers in diameter, wreathed in raging flame, was summoned from the massive Magecraft array covering the sky and smashed toward the ground with unstoppable speed.
BOOM!
Under the violent tremor, everyone guarding the small path lost their footing.
When the aftershock finally settled slightly, they were horrified to see that the great pass which had held the Persians back for seven days and seven nights had collapsed with a crash, opening a breach that stretched for hundreds of meters.
That wound completely exposed the soft interior of Thermopylae, along with the defenders huddled behind its walls, to the Persians.
Alexander and Aristotle helped each other up. As they looked at the enemy forces spread across the mountains and scattered through the air, their hearts sank to the bottom of the valley.
...
At that moment, the main defensive line of Thermopylae.
Behind the huge breach, a nimble fat man in red robes dug the dust-covered king of Sparta out from a pile of broken bricks and rubble.
Seeing the man's unfocused eyes and dazed expression, the fat man in red said nothing. He slapped him across the face in a frantic series of smacks, then grabbed the victim by the shoulders and shook him with all his strength.
"Hey, hey, Leonidas, wake up! The Persian army is coming up! Where are our people? Where the hell did they all die?! Those two from North America are Main Gods!"
Caesar's gaze touched the Persian army drawing closer and closer to the breach, and there was even a hint of a sob in his voice.
"They're fighting Rama and Vritra. They're evenly matched and can't break away!"
Leonidas, now awake, snapped into a guarded stance. He casually pulled off his warped helmet, picked up his spear and shield, and leaned against the broken wall. While gathering soldiers to face the enemy, he answered urgently amid the deafening explosions.
"What about Achilles and Ajax the Great?"
"They're locked in battle with the great Indian hero Karna and the elephant-headed god Ganesha!"
"Where's that kid Alexander?"
"He just took a group to the back mountain path to support his teacher Aristotle. Right now, we don't know whether he's dead or alive!"
His ears ringing, Leonidas shook his head, which felt like a bowl of paste. As he threw his spear and pinned two approaching Immortals to the ground, he forced himself to focus and shouted.
"Stop thinking about it. Other than the ones being held back, everyone who can move is here. Whether we live or die now depends on us!"
As more and more enemies appeared, the Spartan king and Caesar stood back-to-back, leaning against each other as they cut down nearby Persians. Leonidas decisively crushed the Roman emperor's last bit of wishful thinking.
Even though two waves of reinforcements had arrived from the front and rear, the gap between the Greek defenders and the Persians in every respect was still impossible to fill.
They did not even have enough hero units to match the enemy one-on-one.
And because high-end combat power had terrifying destructive potential, both sides in battle generally maintained an unspoken understanding. Soldiers against soldiers, generals against generals, kings against kings. They also chose open ground for those fights to avoid indiscriminately slaughtering the regular forces of both sides.
As a result, those locked in duels were currently fighting fiercely over the Sea of Chaos, and none of them could decide the outcome quickly.
Originally, by giving everything they had, they could just barely maintain that fragile balance.
But the sudden appearance of the god Mithra had directly blasted through the defensive line in two strikes, tipping the scales of war completely toward the Persians.
"Form ranks! Meet the enemy!"
With no stronghold left to defend, Leonidas and Caesar wiped the blood from their faces, struck their shields, and rallied the remnants.
As the rubble shifted, a group of swaying figures gathered from all around, raising spears and shields for one final struggle.
Only then did the Persians realize that the garrison stationed at Thermopylae had fewer than a hundred men left.
Thud! Thud! Thud! Thud!
Dull thunderous booms like heavy war drums came from the ground once more.
Two more Behemoth war beasts, towering like mountains, violently struggled free of their chains. They grabbed dozens of nearby Persian Magus and stuffed them into their mouths, chewing them up to sate their hunger.
Then the collars of light around the two apocalyptic beasts' necks actually trembled and burned, making them growl and settle down. They fixed their savage gazes ahead and began running on all fours, charging toward the broken wall of Thermopylae.
"Great Mithra, Lord of Radiance, Father of Flames, the horn of war has sounded. May your radiant glory keep disaster from falling upon us and grant victory to this body…"
Amid the solemn prayers of the Zoroastrian priests, everyone looked as far as they could. Through the smoke and dust, they suddenly saw thousands of mammoth soldiers like assembled heavy tanks rushing out of the Persian camp, rolling across the wilderness and surging toward them through the torn-open gorge.
Behind them, dense ranks of Immortals and regular Persian troops swarmed forward, converging on the breach in the wall like clustered ants, a dark mass pressing down.
Not only that, points of white light dust fell from the sky like stardust. The defenders instinctively raised their heads and immediately saw gem-like graceful figures emerging inch by inch from the rotating, solidifying Magecraft arrays. Different numbers of luminous wings spread from their backs, full-body armor covered them, and bows, spears, swords, and shields rested in their hands. They shone like stars blinking in the heavens.
There were more than a thousand of them.
They really think highly of us…
The nearly collapsing Leonidas and Caesar exchanged a glance. Looking at the Persian army less than a hundred meters away and the angels diving from above, each saw the madness flickering in the other's eyes. At the same time, they wiped the blood from their faces and bared savage grins.
Damn it. We're going all in!
Hiss!
At the critical moment, heaven and earth suddenly darkened like dusk falling over the world. A beam of crimson flame descended from the sky and stabbed into the center of Thermopylae's breach, standing between the two armies.
"The hour of twilight has come. Sound the song of despair. This is the end. All things shall perish and return to ash! Outshining the Sun, Sword of Flame!"
With that cold, murderous roar, the air burned and boiled. A thousand-meter flaming greatsword formed above the sword hilt, then used it as a pivot and swept outward, slashing toward the Persians.
Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom!
In an instant, the earth split open and rivers boiled over. Pillars of flame rose like fountains, and the tens of thousands of nearby Persian troops, along with the angels diving down, were instantly reduced to ash in the blazing firelight.
***
...
If you'd like to support my work and unlock advanced chapters, you can follow me on p-@-treon.
[email protected]/PinkSnake (50 Chapters Ahead).
You can also follow as a free member to read a few advanced chapters.
***