Chapter 842: Whetstone

Chapter 842: Chapter 842: Whetstone

A blaring alarm echoed across the fortress, making the stone walls vibrate under a red strobe light.

Ethan frowned as he watched the control panels flash with crimson warning symbols.

"What is that, Crul?" asked Ethan.

[It appears something is wrong, Master], replied Crul in his mind, operating at a blistering speed. [We have been detected. The base’s secondary fail-safe activated, and they are attempting to initiate the fortress’s self-destruction protocol.]

"Can you override it?" questioned Ethan firmly.

[I am on it, but that is not the worst part], reported Crul as the consoles fired command lines to bypass the charges. [I intercepted hundreds of transmissions. They managed to broadcast our position before I could seal the frequencies. They are issuing requests for massive reinforcements; the entire enemy fleet is about to be deployed against our position.] 𝐟𝒓ℯⅇ

"Damn it...", muttered Ethan, tightening his grip on his sword hilt. "I thought this would be a clean breach. What do we do?"

[We have two options, Master], analyzed Crul cold-bloodedly. [Fortify our position within this pass and hold them off, or flee before the perimeter closes entirely. What choice will you make?]

Ethan remained silent, feeling the surge of runic mana and death energy swirling deep within his core.

"Prepare for battle," declared Ethan, his eyes igniting with a violet glare. "I feel I am on the verge of ascending to the next realm, but something is holding me back. There is a barrier in my cultivation. I will use them as a whetstone to break my current limits."

[Sending the signal to Vaelen and the others to advance with the rest of the fleet], confirmed Crul.

"Good. Prepare everything for the assault," commanded Ethan.

[Master, they know we have taken the fortress, so they will not fall into an ambush inside the hangar], cautioned Crul. [I recommend we leverage the massive dome and the mountain’s automated defense batteries to channel their advance and receive them with concentrated crossfire.]

"Sounds sensible to me," agreed Ethan. "Prepare everything to receive them."

Ethan stepped out of the command chamber, leaving behind the bodies of the officers, and made his way through the corridors until he reached the upper exit. He ascended the stairs carved into the bedrock until he reached the highest peak of the mountain, towering above the clouds that shrouded the Pass of the Two Gorges.

The freezing summit wind howled with intensity, but Ethan sat down on the rocky pinnacle, laying the Black Chaos Sword horizontally across his lap.

He closed his eyes and entered meditation. As he circulated his cultivation technique, he could feel a thin yet unyielding barrier holding him back from reaching the next stage of power. Despite the resistance within his body and the weight of the Dao, Ethan continued to cycle his energy, using the mountain’s chill and the impending arrival of the enemy armada as the forge to temper his spirit.

[They are here, Master], Crul’s voice echoed directly within Ethan’s mind.

Ethan opened his eyes slowly. In the sky above the cloud layer surrounding the summit, hundreds of teleportation wormholes tore open, warping the firmament with sparks of unstable mana.

"Bombard them," ordered Ethan, standing up and drawing the Black Chaos Sword. "Don’t let them exit."

Instantly, thousands of heavy artillery turrets embedded into the bedrock of both mountains pivoted and unleashed hell. A storm of runic energy surged toward the spatial distortions, obliterating the leading light vessels the moment their hulls emerged. However, the enemy fleet’s heavy shields responded; gargantuan vanguard battleships materialized first, locking high-caliber magic barriers into place to absorb the fortress’s punishment.

Ethan observed the enemy deployment from the mountain peak, his eyes glowing with a violet light.

"Initiate command Horde," said Ethan.

[Executing command Horde], confirmed Crul.

The thousands of captured ships hovering inside and outside the pass launched like an unhinged swarm. Unconcerned with long-range engagements, dozens of smaller vessels engaged short-range jump drives, driving through localized wormholes to ram directly into the enemy battleships.

One after another, Ethan’s vessels slammed into the hulls of the heavy dreadnoughts in a succession of deafening explosions. Ethan was sparing nothing to crush them before they could form their battle lines.

Two of the enemy’s primary flagships, their shields collapsed and hulls shattered from the ramming, began spiraling downward into the canyon engulfed in flames. Yet before they even struck the ground, more of Ethan’s smaller ships detonated against them, hastening their destruction.

Out from the fire, smoke, and metal debris, thousands of undead surged unharmed from the flames, leaping like a ravenous plague onto every surviving soldier.

The enemy army’s communication channels collapsed into chaos.

"They are ramming us! Every man for himself!" screamed a panicked commander over the command frequency. "The small ships aren’t stopping! They are kamikazing into our shields!" ⅇ𝒃𝚗ℴ

"Our shields have collapsed! Central Command is not responding!" shrieked another officer amid deafening explosions. "Where are the Main Command reinforcements!"

Through the secondary teleportation portals, the vanguards led by the adjunct generals fought to hold formation and stem the slaughter. However, the mid-tier command vessels could not withstand the assault of Ethan’s fleet. Their dreadnoughts were falling one after another in an unprecedented aerial massacre.

The main generals of the armada, commanding the heaviest divisions, were barely en route through the spatial distortions, their progress delayed by the fortress’s artillery fire and the burning wreckage of their subordinates.

The enemy’s calculations were entirely useless against Ethan’s strategy. Even though the enemy armada managed to destroy a dozen smaller vessels for every heavy dreadnought they lost, the numerical disparity was absurd. Ethan held tens of thousands of smaller captured ships from his previous campaigns and had no hesitation in trading them away as expendable pieces to pulverize the vanguard. Worst of all for the invaders, Ethan’s heavy battleships still waited lined up in the rear, their cannons charged at maximum output, awaiting the command to surge into battle and finish off whatever remained standing of the enemy army.