Chapter Fifty-One: The Eve of Fierce Battle

Cloud Fortress lay in the southwest of the Greenleaf Plains, guarding the most important road leading from the Vida Basin. It was a sturdy stronghold built into the mountains, its walls tightly stacked from the hardest stone, rising as high as seven or eight men standing atop one another. The ramparts were lined with closely set arrow slits, each providing ample armored protection for the archers defending the city. When I arrived, the fortress was already filled with a garrison of soldiers from various races who had retreated from the Vida Basin, standing in neat ranks, alert and ready to repel the invaders at any moment. In addition, skyfarers from across the continent had poured into this impregnable bastion, numbering in the thousands—a sight I had never before witnessed, for even the most bustling metropolis would rarely see more than a thousand skyfarers gathered together.

Because there had once been two large elven cities in the Vida Basin, the elves made up the second largest contingent among the defenders, after the humans. Intelligence reported that their homelands had been ravaged beyond recognition under the iron hoofs of the Apocalypse Empire, now serving as the largest strongholds for the Apocalypse Legion on the continent of Farvey. The bereaved elven warriors had transformed their sorrow into the fire of vengeance; nearly half of them were rangers, deadly archers clad in green issue leather armor, standing behind the arrow slits. They had set aside the natural gentleness and grace of their race, becoming personifications of death, ready to send the first fatal message of eternal silence to the brutal invaders.

The commander of the fortress was Colonel Rayleigh, a remarkably young and promising level-sixty human paladin. He was not tall, with chestnut hair and brown eyes, his gaze steady and courageous, a longsword at his side. Most of the time, he remained in the fortress’s war council chamber, but at intervals he would walk the ramparts, enter the camps, and inspect every corner of the stronghold with meticulous attention.

“Do you know the difference between brave and courage?” Whenever Colonel Rayleigh saw a young scholar-soldier trembling with fear, he would always walk over and say these words.

“Bravery…” he would lift the young man’s chin, speaking firmly and clearly, “…means we fear nothing and show no alarm in battle; but courage…” he would stoop, clapping the soldier hard on both shoulders, “…is knowing full well the dangers and obstacles ahead, and still persisting to the end, never wavering.”

“Perhaps you are not brave, soldier, but in you I see courage. That is a spirit even more precious than bravery!”

This stirring speech always managed to ignite the fighting spirit in those timid, trembling scholar-soldiers; at such moments, the inspired youth would puff out his chest—though no matter how hard he tried, it would never rise very high—salute the young commander with heartfelt respect, then hurry back to his place in the ranks.

Yet no matter how moving the words, if you hear them every five minutes, even a hymn can start to sound sarcastic. Whenever Colonel Rayleigh passed by, there always seemed to be a shivering scholar-soldier curled up as if waiting just for his encouragement. Later on, when the Colonel passed again, someone in the ranks would impatiently shout, “There he goes preaching again!” Others would mimic his gestures and mouth his words, impersonating him so well that laughter would ripple through the crowd.

Despite having a legion of battle-hardened professional soldiers, an outstanding commander who maintained his composure and resolve throughout, and a volunteer force of skyfarers eager for combat, the truth was that this was a hopeless battle—everyone knew it.

When we accepted the “Cloud Fortress Defense” mission, every officer issuing the quest made it clear: hold Cloud Fortress for more than a day, and the mission is complete. Our enemy had prepared for two centuries; we had but a handful of days. Measured by military strength, this was never a fair fight. Nothing we did here could truly halt the advance of the Apocalypse Empire; all we could do was delay them as long as possible to buy time for our second line of defense. As soon as the time was up, our reinforcements would arrive, and we could use the fortress’s magic teleportation array to withdraw, then collect our reward from any task officer.

We were destined to lose—an inescapable fact. Though within these walls I sensed none of the despair or dejection that ought to accompany impending defeat, it still filled me with a helpless sense of futility.

The only consolation was that here, I found many dear friends: Lyrical Song, Wild Geese Array, Feyin, Longbow Sunshot, Delta Crescent, Tiny Dagger, Krado, Nocturne in B-flat Minor, Black Aurora… and so many more. Seeing them here meant they were willing to pay the price to meet the Supreme God Darymos’s “pay-to-play” requirements and stand vigil in this dimension. Their choice to stay brought me a sense of peace and security. Since the day I was reborn, nearly everything I achieved was with these friends by my side—without them, I would feel empty and lost.

They are my closest friends and mentors, comrades who share life and death, my strongest tether to this world. Only with them do I truly feel alive.

Their presence was an immense support and encouragement to me.

…

Continental Calendar, November 26, 1457. Early winter. First chill. Rain.

A day destined to be forever inscribed in the annals of the continent.

Raindrops drummed incessantly on my metal helmet and armor, a ceaseless patter. Water seeped through the gaps in my armor, sending a chill down my spine. My hands, gripping sword and shield, trembled uncontrollably; I could not tell if it was from the cold or from the tension knotting my heart.

A sudden “crack!”—lightning split the sky, flooding the world in a blinding, searing glare that forced us to shut our eyes. Moments later, thunder crashed in a rolling wave, a sound that seemed to grip every heart, a vast and ominous portent.

That thunder peeled back the curtain on the coming battle.

After the first, most dazzling flash, several more streaks of lightning flickered across the far end of the sky. Though not as blinding as the first, they lingered, weaving through the sky. Even after a dozen seconds, they did not fade. These sharp lines of light converged, ultimately forming a massive net that draped across the horizon.

Under the luminous veil of lightning, the world seemed to warp. Ripples shimmered in the air, making the distant blue mountains waver in our sight. Gradually, the transparent waves thickened, growing almost solid. Beyond these waves, we could vaguely make out ranks of shifting figures.

“They’re coming!” gasped someone in the crowd.

Yes, they were coming. The dangerous, ruthless invaders had broken through the barrier of temporal chaos; after two hundred years, they had returned to these lands. We would be the first witnesses to see these marauders with our own eyes. Whether that was fortune or misfortune, I could not say.

Soon, the first enemies emerged through the portal—a magic gate of spatial transmission. They wore heavy, crude armor and wielded twin massive axes, their skin a bluish green, tall and hunched, two long tusks jutting from their mouths.

These were the most savage hounds of the Apocalypse Empire, traitors to Farvey, brutal warriors who lived by blade and blood—the troll axemen.

After them came a phalanx of undead warriors—skeletal, clad in black mail, wielding sword and shield, their limbs rotting, blue flames burning in their eye sockets—marching slowly forward, shielding the dark elf archers with their dusky skin behind them.

A group draped in red sorcerer’s robes also strode from the portal—at first glance, they looked little different from ordinary humans, but their faces were pale, cheeks hollow, pupils tinged with a chilling crimson. Vampiric mages. I had fought hundreds of their kind before, and even now, standing far atop the walls, I could smell the blood on them.

There were others, too: hulking behemoths with horns on their heads, cloven hooves like rams, massive purple-red bodies—though even compared to the minotaurs of Farvey, they lost nothing in size. I had never seen such beings on this continent, but the name “Withered Demon” floated above their heads.

Demons? Perhaps they existed only in the wastelands of decay.

Trolls, undead, dark elves, vampires, demons—we soon saw the full composition of the Apocalypse Empire’s invasion army. Their forces were vast, every face twisted with menace, and the truth was that what we saw was only the vanguard. Behind them, the Empire’s main host continued to pour through the magical gateway, as if their numbers would never end. I could not even attempt to count them; one thing was certain—they outnumbered us by far.

Besides the regular regiments, there were also a thousand or more loosely formed soldiers of every class and armament among the enemy. I guessed that, like us, they were conscripted mercenaries, now flexing their muscles and eyeing our walls hungrily.

“So many of them…” I heard Niu Baiwan, the only minotaur paladin, mutter in awe. Turning, I saw him awkwardly twist his neck, his face uneasy. There was no trace of a warrior’s steely resolve in his eyes, only two pools of desperate, restless anxiety, like a wildcat frozen by fright.

“Are you all right? How are you feeling?” I asked, worried about his state.

At first, I thought he was just intimidated by the enemy’s overwhelming presence—a perfectly reasonable reaction. Truthfully, staring at the endless horde, my own throat was dry and my palms slick with sweat. Fear is no disgrace; only succumbing to it is shameful.

But my concern was misplaced. After a moment, Niu Baiwan swallowed with difficulty, turned his stiff neck like a block of wood, and ground out two inexplicable syllables through clenched teeth:

“Lag…ging…”

Lagging? Honestly, I had no idea what message he was trying to convey, but judging from the fire blazing in his eyes, he was anything but afraid. On the contrary, he seemed ready to sweep the enemy army before him single-handedly. Who knew what fury and hatred burned within him.

It seemed they had a far greater resolve to resist the invaders and defend their homeland than I. Just seeing the enemy had them ablaze with fighting spirit.

As I puzzled over what “lagging” meant, others around us voiced their support for the minotaur paladin’s complaint.

“Me too, I’m lagging over here,” grumbled Fairy Descends Face-Planting, frowning in defeat.

It seemed everyone had been crushed too long by pre-battle tension; as soon as a shared topic emerged, chatter broke forth enthusiastically.

“All I see are afterimages…” Longbow Sunshot complained loudly.

“Afterimages? That’s lucky—I’m looking at statues here…” someone nearby chimed in, instantly brightening Sunshot’s mood.

“…Damn it, the lightning won’t stop, my eyes are spinning…” a dwarven priestess wailed, clutching her eyes.

“Huh? Lightning? Where?” a half-orc shaman glanced about in confusion. “Nothing’s happening for me…horrible lag…”

“Calling Earth from Mars, calling Earth from Mars, please respond…” Can anyone tell me what that fellow was on about?

“I can hear my own echo…echo…echo…” said a minotaur druid. And indeed, I heard it too—perhaps because of his large nose and the resonance of his nasal passages.

“Look, a flying bear!” a half-orc warlock shouted, pointing skyward in astonishment.

“I’ve got no lag at all…” a human mage boasted at first, then his face fell as he muttered, “…but I’ve turned off all visual effects, set the resolution to minimum—now everyone looks like a giant cube…”

“What are the GMs doing, letting it lag this bad!” complained an elven rogue, though I couldn’t tell whom he was blaming.

“A reliable source says the GMs are downloading adult films on the server—just six more hours to go!” a scholar-mage declared with sinister glee, sparking a chorus of groans, cries of “I want to see Lanlan!” and “Lizi, my goddess!” among the crowd.

Suddenly, as the commotion peaked, a dwarven paladin gave a scream and toppled from the battlements, landing with a heavy thud that sent dust billowing. He lay there, motionless.

“Come look, someone jumped from the wall…”

“Damn, that’s high—takes guts to leap down like that…”

“A perfect backwards dive, Falling Goose to the Flat Sands…”

“Enough fooling—someone get a priest to resurrect him, the battle’s about to start…”

After a noisy rescue, the fallen dwarf was finally restored to life by an elven priest. Crestfallen, he trudged back through the gate, took the long way around, climbed the wall again, and sat down halfway along the rampart, determined not to squeeze into the crowd again.

“Damn it all to hell…” he spat, “…I just tried to turn around, but nothing happened no matter how long I waited. By the time I finally moved, I was already face down as a corpse. With this kind of lag, I’m never standing near the edge again, not even if you kill me!”

Just then, Longbow Sunshot flipped open his magic notebook and shouted proudly, “Hey, my network latency is 819—who can beat that?”

“That’s nothing. I’m at 1,100,” Delta Crescent crowed.

“Thirteen fourteen,” Niu Baiwan replied with satisfaction, his tail arching high in pride.

“Thirteen ninety-seven, one…” another voice began.

But then a sharp laugh rang out—Feyin crowing, “Two thousand three hundred eighteen—who dares challenge me?” After a moment, she stood, turned awkwardly in place, and swept the crowd with a triumphant gaze.

Though I didn’t know exactly what they were doing, it seemed that in those few sentences, an intense contest had taken place. The ice mage, after her class change, had claimed victory by an overwhelming margin. She looked around, but no one dared compete any further.

“Two-three-one-eight, going once…twice…any more challengers? Ahahaha…” Feyin’s laughter sent chills down my spine.

“In that case, I declare the winner of today’s latency contest is…”

“Eight thousand nine hundred seventy-two…” The number finally floated up from a corner. Looking over, I saw Dingding Xiaoge, the half-orc warlock I’d met in the underground caves. He crouched under an embrasure, motionless as if dead.

Amid the stunned silence, Dingding Xiaoge’s voice trickled out in broken fragments:

“…I reported my number at the start…maybe…you heard it…a little late…my connection is…Netcom…”

Silence.

Stillness.

Not a sound.

At last, beside me, the scholar-bard Nocturne in B-flat Minor displayed his professional flair, softly reciting a poignant, evocative verse:

“In this world
There is no farthest shore,
No parting of life and death,
Only
That we share a single server,
You on Netcom,
I on Telecom…”

Delta Crescent bit his lip and raised a trembling thumb, forcing out the words through clenched teeth:

“Truly…strong…”