Chapter 168 - 167: Emergency

Chapter 168: Chapter 167: Emergency

The author’s note about subscriptions (1538 average, let’s count it as 154) has been omitted. I’m working hard on updates and asking for everyone’s full subscription here!

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On the bed in his quarters, Gu Su was still fast asleep. The Puppet Communicator hanging by the headboard suddenly exploded with a scream—sharp and piercing, as if someone had poured shards of glass directly into his ears.

"My lord, emergency! My lord, emergency!"

The sound was so abrupt it shattered the blurry black shadow sitting on the cardboard box by the bed, which dissipated into a wisp of smoke and vanished into the air.

Gu Su was jolted from his deep sleep. His back instantly tensed, and one hand had already subconsciously reached for the Plague Cutter beside his pillow.

He had no time to recall what the bizarre black shadow had shown him while he slept. Faint impressions of esoteric knowledge from a book titled *Circulation, the Foundation of the City!* still lingered, but he cast them all aside.

He snatched the communicator and roared at its worn-out puppet face:

"What’s going on?"

The puppet’s mouth opened and closed, emitting a hoarse, urgent voice: "Enemy invasion! A massive enemy invasion!"

Gu Su threw off the covers, his bare feet hitting the ice-cold floor, and dashed out of his quarters in a few strides.

The air outside was bone-chilling, carrying a faint smell of something burnt and the dampness of rot.

He looked up at the sky, and his pupils contracted sharply.

The night sky, once as thick and black as ink, was now filled with countless green points of light.

The points of light were densely packed, as if someone had scattered a whole bag of Fireflies into the sky, or like some kind of eerie phosphorescence flickering between the clouds.

They left long, thin trails as they plummeted toward the ground at extreme speed. The scene was identical to that of the first wave of the ship invasion, except this time the color wasn’t gold, but a uniform, ghostly green.

Gu Su’s heart sank.

But he knew that if it were just an air raid of this magnitude, his Undead subordinates would never have woken him in the middle of the night.

Something much worse must have happened.

He sprinted barefoot, ignoring the sharp pain as gravel dug into his soles, and rushed up the rampart in one go. The moment he gripped the crenellation and looked out, his breath caught.

Outside the Graveyard Demon, the ground was churning.

It wasn’t the violent shaking of an earthquake, but rather as if something was squirming underground, pushing its way up.

Huge swathes of earth were thrust aside, swelling into one mound after another. The surfaces of the mounds constantly cracked and peeled, emitting a low, rustling sound. The noise was so dense it made his skin crawl, as if countless insects were gnawing on the ground all at once.

Gu Su scanned the area and saw that this anomaly covered the entire region within his line of sight. It wasn’t just in front of the Graveyard Demon, but on its flanks, to its rear, and even far off in the direction of Sector 71. Everywhere, these mounds were bulging upward. Their numbers were simply incalculable.

"Odd-Eyes!" he yelled hoarsely, his voice exploding in the night air. "Take the Bone Dogs over there! See what those things are!"

An agile figure leaped up from below the rampart.

Odd-Eyes’s pair of eyes, burning with red and blue flames, were particularly striking in the darkness. It let out a low roar—a command only the Bone Dogs could understand.

The next moment, nearly three hundred Bone Dogs surged from every corner of the graveyard, a torrent of white following closely behind Odd-Eyes as they charged toward the nearest patch of mounds.

The Bone Dogs were extremely fast, reaching the churning ground in just over ten seconds.

Odd-Eyes was at the very front, flames flickering in its eyes, staring intently at a freshly split earthen pit. From inside the hole, a sickly green claw emerged, followed by a head, then a torso—

It was a type of Lizardman Gu Su had never seen before.

They were clearly smaller than the two previous batches he had encountered, standing only slightly taller than a Kobold. Their small, thin frames looked malnourished.

Their skin was a sickly, wrinkled green, devoid of scales. They looked like carrots just pulled from the ground, still covered in damp earth.

The weapons in their hands were laughably crude—nothing more than wooden sticks barely thicker than a finger, the tips haphazardly charred to a blackened point. They didn’t even have proper spearheads.

Without a moment’s hesitation, Odd-Eyes lunged at the one that had just crawled out of the pit and sank its teeth into its neck.

The Bone Dog’s bite force was astonishing. With a crisp CRACK, the Lizardman’s head lolled to one side, and its limp body slid back into the pit.

The other Bone Dogs pounced on their own targets. For a moment, the air was filled with a cacophony of gnawing, snapping bones, and the screeches of dying Lizardmen.

The small creatures that had just crawled out of the ground didn’t even have time to get a clear look at their enemies before their throats were torn out.

If there were only a few dozen, the Bone Dogs could have handled them easily.

If there were a few hundred, the Bone Dogs could have held their own.

But the problem was—there were too many.

Standing on the rampart, Gu Su watched helplessly as the mounds burst open one after another. The Lizardmen swarmed out from underground like ants from a disturbed nest, a dense and teeming mass.

Three to five crawled out of one pit, meaning thirty to fifty from ten pits. And within his field of vision, there were easily over a thousand such mounds.

The number of Lizardmen grew and grew. Soon, they weren’t just crawling out of pits; they were trampling and shoving each other, squeezing out of every crack and crevice. Their green forms converged in the darkness into a surging tide.

The tide spread with astonishing speed, completely covering the ground wherever it passed.

The Bone Dogs continued their desperate Tearing.

Odd-Eyes’s roars echoed through the night, directing the Bone Dogs as they charged back and forth.

Every one of their pounces claimed the life of a Lizardman. The white Bone Dogs weaved through the green tide, leaving corpse after corpse in their wake.

One Bone Dog was tackled by three Lizardmen at once. Even as its sharp, bony teeth clamped onto one of their necks, more Wooden Spears were thrust into its eye sockets. Another Bone Dog charged in too deep and was instantly swallowed by the green tide. A white Bone Claw flailed once above the waves, then it sank, never to resurface.

But the green tide was simply too overwhelming.

The Lizardmen didn’t care at all how many of them died.

They charged forward over the bodies of their fallen comrades, stabbing wildly with their crude Wooden Spears, using their teeth for Tearing, and throwing their small bodies at the Bone Dogs’ legs.

Their absolute numerical superiority allowed them to attack without regard for cost. Trading ten for one was worth it; trading a hundred for one was also worth it.

Gu Su watched helplessly as Odd-Eyes was swarmed by a dozen Lizardmen. Its eyes, a swirling fire of red and blue, darted left and right within the green encirclement. Each act of Tearing sent an enemy flying, but more immediately piled on.

Finally, the encirclement closed completely. The flames flickered twice, then went out for good.

The Bone Dog unit was wiped out.

From the moment Odd-Eyes led the charge to their complete annihilation, no more than five or six minutes had passed.

Gu Su’s fingers dug into the rampart’s crenellation, his knuckles turning white.

But he had no time for shock; the green tide was already surging against the walls of the Graveyard Demon.

"How many?" he asked Crow’s Caw, his voice hoarse.

The ghostly flames in Crow’s Caw’s eye sockets flickered. Its voice held a slight tremor. "The Bone Dogs... are all gone. But they took at least... four hundred, maybe five hundred with them."

They had taken out more enemies than they had lost. Not a loss. You could even say it was a gain.

But Gu Su didn’t feel like he’d gained anything at all.

Because the green tide hadn’t receded in the slightest; in fact, it was swelling. The dead Lizardmen didn’t even make a ripple. The ones behind simply trampled their corpses and continued their charge.

It was too fast.

From the moment the enemy crawled out of the ground to the moment they formed an army large enough to overwhelm the Bone Dogs, no more than ten minutes had passed.

So fast that he had no time to order the Bone Dogs to retreat, let alone send other units to support them.

’This has to be a joke. My Undead, wiped out by a swarm tactic!’

Gu Su took a deep breath, forcing himself to calm down.

"Magic Skeletons, to the ramparts!" he commanded hoarsely, his voice exploding in the night air. "Get the Corpse Witches up on the ramparts!

All Magic Series, prepare for battle!"

Behind him, the Black Fog roiled as Red Ice, Flame Bone, and Acid Wind swiftly led their respective squads onto the rampart.

Ghostly flames flickered in the empty eye sockets of the Magic Skeletons. Their hands began to gather Magic Radiance, Ice Arrows, Fireball Techniques, Poison Gas Bombs, and Lightning Arrows—they condensed all the Magic they could prepare.

Gu Su wasn’t idle either. He extended his right hand, palm down, aimed it at the surging green tide outside the walls, and began to rapidly chant a Spell.

Subordinate Corpse Explosion.

This Magic required corpses.

And on the battlefield, corpses were the one thing they didn’t lack. The bodies of Bone Dogs and Lizardmen carpeted the ground in a dense layer.

The moment the Spell was complete, an invisible wave spread out from Gu Su’s palm.

Immediately after, the remains of a Bone Dog closest to the wall suddenly exploded. Shards of white bone flew in all directions, sweeping into the surrounding Lizardmen with powerful force.

Although the explosion couldn’t compare to a true Corpse Explosion Technique, its power was enough to send three to five Lizardmen flying and embed bone fragments deep into their sickly green flesh.

But it wasn’t enough.

There were too many Lizardmen.

Gu Su gritted his teeth and continued chanting.

He had to block the first wave of the assault, buying time for the Magic Skeletons to cast their Magic and for the Corpse Witches to climb onto the ramparts.

Otherwise, his Graveyard Demon would be completely submerged by this green tide tonight.