Amid the murmurs of the crowd, members of the Haicheng Bureau of Spiritual Energy arrived at once.
They had anticipated this day from the very beginning, so there was no panic—only the swift, methodical onset of battle preparations.
In the sky, countless drones streaked by. A hulking mutated sea turtle at the forefront of the beast tide raised its head toward them; streams of water gathered over its shell, converging into a serpentine torrent that lashed at the drones.
"Boom!"
"Boom!"
"Boom!"
With a string of explosions, many drones struck by the torrent burst apart, blooming into fireballs that briefly lit the night.
Nor was the sea turtle alone: mutated sea snakes, mutated crabs, and others deployed their own methods to swat the drones from the sky.
That single coordinated action meant the battle had truly begun.
"Brothers, open fire!"
"Open fire!"
Officers roared the order, and a forest of muzzle flashes blossomed.
"Boom!"
"Boom, boom, boom!"
"Rumble!"
Terrifying artillery thundered in waves, pounding toward the onrushing beast tide.
"Rumble!"
"Rumble—rumble!"
The earth began to tremble. Smoke from the bombardment shrouded the whole battlefield, and the stench of powder spread on the air.
A great many mutated sea beasts perished under the barrage; the rest broke and scattered under the relentless fire. The ground was cratered with deep pits, each brimming with mangled carcasses.
These low-evolution sea beasts had no real means of resisting human artillery.
In an instant, scarlet blood sheeted across the earth—and this was only the beginning.
The drones gradually withdrew, replaced by the fighter jets stationed around Haicheng. Once the beasts' positions were confirmed, missiles tore through the night and plunged toward the ground.
"Boom!"
"Rumble—rumble!"
"Rumble—rumble!"
Explosions rose in staggered succession; the ground shuddered again.
Faced with human firepower, many mutated sea beasts quailed. Had the threat out in the ocean not been even more terrifying than the threat on land, they would already have fled back into the sea.
A handful of the stronger beasts suffered little more than pain when struck, their hides too tough for ordinary blasts to maim—but even they could not endure volley after volley without end.
Under overwhelming fire suppression, the beast tide's advance simply stalled.
Seeing this, the soldiers within the city could not help letting relief show on their faces. They had forgotten—this was not a beast tide inside the city but one pressing in from outside the walls. While certain weapons were off-limits, this kind of fire suppression was by no means difficult to execute.
At this rate, even if the beast tide numbered in the millions, the difference would only be how long the line held.
With that thought, a little of the tightness inside them eased.
What they did not know was that the beast tide itself was not the real crisis this time. The true threat was the shadow out in the ocean.
Out at sea, the vast, coiling shadow writhed as if angered by human artillery.
Black tentacles whipped through the water. Then the thing's full body surfaced; dozens of enormous dark tendrils spiraled into a ring, within which pitch-black energy began to gather.
"Roar!"
"Rumble!"
With a guttural bellow, a fathomless beam of black light speared from the ring into the night.
Beneath that black column, the infinite sea seemed torn open; a deep concavity yawned below, and water surged away to either side.
"Rumble—rumble!"
There was no pause at all. The black beam bore a dreadful power; at the instant it touched the tide of beasts, every mutated sea creature it grazed simply dissolved, vanishing into the air—and even then, the beam had expended no more than a tenth of its force.
"What is that?!"
"N-no, no—this is wrong. This has to be a sick joke."
"Weren't the mutated beasts enough already? Power like this—how could it be real?"
"The sea… what kind of monster has the sea birthed?!"
The soldiers fighting the mutated beasts went slack with shock when they saw the black beam shatter the tide in an instant.
They could not comprehend what they were seeing.
Before they could react, the black beam, having punched through the beast tide, did not slow in the slightest. It surged on toward the city.
"Ruuuumble—!"
With a single deafening blast, the hard stone of the wall was pierced straight through. And everything the wall had stood to protect behind it—
"Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom!"
Explosions erupted across the city. Flames spread; smoke swirled.
Buildings toppled in droves beneath the black beam, and countless civilians perished in that same streak of darkness.
"Rooar—"
Down in the deep sea, the immense shadow did not exult in the devastation it had wrought. It simply waited—as if expecting something to appear. When it waited long and nothing came, it gave a single regretful sound and slid back beneath the waves.
What disasters that black beam would yet bring—it neither cared about nor considered.
This was a natural calamity. This was terror. This was the price demanded by the vanguard of the resurgence of spiritual energy.
Chaos.
Utter chaos.
For humans and mutated sea beasts alike.
Those beasts that had scattered and escaped the beam's path plunged into frenzy after their fear broke; they charged madly for Haicheng.
The survivors in the city stared dumbly at the destruction the black beam had left behind.
Just one strike.
Just one beam.
Nearly half of Haicheng—countless lives—gone.
The fire and the secondary detonations were merely collateral costs. Along the beam's central path, there was nothing left at all—people or buildings, every last thing had been erased.
As if wiped away by some mysterious power.
Power like that…
Silence. The entire city sank into silence.
Grief. Pain. Even despair.
But while humans sank into anguish and despair, the already-maddened beasts hurled themselves at the army and began spilling into Haicheng.
"Crunch!"
A mutated crab's adamantine claw scissored, splitting the human before it neatly in two.
"Boom!"
A mutated sea turtle drew its body into its shell, then spun, a grinding, toothed wheel carving through human ranks.
"Hissss—"
A mutated sea snake's cold eyes brimmed with bloodlust; its crimson maw engulfed its prey whole.
"…"
Without the pressure of massed weaponry, without the city walls' protection, direct contact between humans and mutated beasts proved a one-sided massacre.
Even with many espers fighting desperately and bringing down a great number of monsters, there was no stemming the slaughter.
(End of this chapter)