Chapter 110
A soldier whose steps had begun to falter immediately felt the presence of his captain at his side, a psychic pressure that realigned the rhythm of his feet with the collective thunder of hundreds of boots.
A small gap between two shields was swiftly sealed by a lateral movement commanded through a whisper from behind.
The rhythm that emerged was not the simple cadence of a military march.
It was more complex, deeper, like the heartbeat of a colossal creature struggling to endure.
It consisted of the rumble of stomping feet, the hiss of breath exhaled in unison, the clang of metal shields brushing against one another as they advanced, and above all, the pulsing surge of will transmitted from the core layer through the captains to the very fingertips of the foremost soldiers.
Every orderly step was a declaration of existence, a refusal against the sacred chaos that sought to tear them apart.
This very order became a weapon, tangible proof that the chaos they exalted was not formless disorder, but an alternative order—stronger, more disciplined, and more resolute than the heavenly order that attempted to unilaterally seize the city of Thalyssra of the Most Graced Great Sanse.
"If destruction is Your language, then make us a sentence that is never finished being read."
"And if this world must collapse to affirm Your throne, let our hands be the first to push it."
Amid all the tactical clamor and physical strain, the core layer remained the eye of the storm—calm and commanding.
The Banner of Zhulumat, with Zhulumat Katamtum as its axis, did not waver in the slightest.
The Satanic High Elders stood in a perfect circle, like the supporting pillars of an unseen temple.
Their concentration was no longer directed at the battlefield outside, but had sunk entirely into the dimension of doctrine and the collective consciousness of the satanic faithful.
Their lips continued to move in an unbroken litany, chanting praises of gratitude that sounded like the murmur of an underground river—deep, filthy, and heavily laden.
Their prayer was a spiritual architecture erected in the heart of enemy territory.
Every phrase of praise to the Most Graced Great Sanse was not mere reverence, but invocation and affirmation of power.
In their inverted cosmology, calling the Great Sanse "the worst of the worst" was the highest acknowledgment of his sovereignty over the entire spectrum of wickedness, defilement, and rebellion.
That title placed him at the apex of the pyramid of darkness, as the source of all doctrine and power they now wielded to oppose sanctity.
Each time that name was spoken, it felt as though a new foundation block was laid upon reality itself, reinforcing their sphere of sovereignty within the formation.
"Painful."
The shriek did not come from the roiling heavens, but burst forth from the very pores of the city itself, a single sound so devouring that it annihilated all others.
The siren of sanctity.
Its sound was not a warning, but a forced purification aimed directly at the auditory canals and, deeper still, at the very core of every satanist's survival instinct.
As the feet of hundreds of soldiers in the Anti-Rumble Formation were about to slam down for the sixth step, the sound lashed out like a strip of white-hot metal.
Its vibration did not shake the eardrums, but resonated directly through the jawbones, the sinus cavities, and behind the eyes, as if their skulls were about to crack from within under a single vibration too pure, too bright, so absolute that it felt like ultimate evil.
Twenty-two times the sound waves struck.
Twenty-two cycles of acoustic torment that turned the earth into a violently surging sea for the souls that marched upon it.
The outer ranks swayed like trees battered by a typhoon.
The exorcistic shields that had stood upright now wobbled, their edges scraping the ground and leaving deep claw-like marks.
Behind the visors, faces hardened as they fought back nausea rising violently from their stomachs, while their vision swam with white flashes accompanying each shriek.
Their bodies, once aligned in a single rhythm, suddenly lost synchronization.
Some fell to their knees, others staggered with stumbling steps, breaking the perfect living shield formation into a collection of suffering individuals.
In the midst of that chaos, the Orbit-Breaker Line moved like demonic saviors.
Though they themselves endured the same torment, ears bleeding and heads pounding as if crushed, their duty outweighed personal pain.
Shaqar, jaw clenched tight, seized the arm of a subordinate who was about to fall.
His hand, muscular and scarred by old wounds, hauled the soldier back into position with brutal strength born of desperation.
Around him, the other captains did the same.
Onigakure shoved three shields of his subordinates who were about to collide back into alignment, while Makakushi appeared like a shadow at critical points, lightly kicking the ankle of a misstepping soldier to force him back into the rhythm of the faltering footfalls.
They all screamed.
Cries of pain torn from their mouths sounded hoarse and restrained, mingling with broken, ragged breaths.
Every touch, every pull, every shove was an effort to stitch back together the fabric of defense being ripped apart by the siren's sound waves.
"At last, it has come."
Even before the echo of the final siren fully dissolved into the still-vibrating air, the dark, turbulent sky began to give birth to new points of light.
Not random bursts of energy, but cold, orderly formations.
One, five, ten, then dozens.
Holy Beings, radiating from eternity like snowflakes torn free from a heavenly storm, descended with purposeful gravity.
They arrayed themselves in the sky, their spectral wings extended not in flaps, but in a static, constant resonance, emitting golden and alabaster light that stabbed at already wounded eyes.
Their numbers grew at a terrifying rate, not through group arrivals, but through spontaneous manifestation from the air itself.
From hundreds to several hundreds more, filling the horizon like stars descending to judge the earth.
Each increase in their number was accompanied by a thickening psychic pressure, a burden of sanctity so tangible that the air between buildings felt viscous, like honey on the verge of petrification.
Their faces—if they could be called faces—were masks of flawless divine serenity, devoid of any expression but the absolute satisfaction of indisputable existence.
"More than five thousand heads, one will."
The silence they carried struck deeper than the siren's shriek.
For four seconds that felt like four centuries, the thousands of Holy Beings simply stood motionless in the air, fixed like a fresco painted upon a cracked celestial dome.
Their aura of sanctity radiated without obstruction, a pure and incontestable divine pressure pressing downward like a new layer of atmosphere intent on crushing everything that did not align with it.
The air vibrated at a low frequency that made every satanist soldier's chest bones throb violently, as if their hearts were about to be torn from their cages by the gravity of absolute piety.
Then, precisely as their number reached five thousand five hundred and fifty-five—a sacred and deliberate numerical perfection—a mass movement occurred that made ancient instincts scream in terror.
Simultaneously, with not one preceding or lagging behind, their luminous heads turned.
Thousands of expressionless faces, lit from within by light too bright to behold, directed their gaze toward a single point on the earth.
That gaze did not merely see, but focused, examined, and judged.
To be continued…