Ch.1259Why bother fighting fair?

– Gooooooo…!

Not long after the giants, who had suffered critical damage from Balaur’s surprise attack, made the decision to save those remaining in the fortress, convinced of their defeat.

A section of empty space slightly removed from the battlefield began to vibrate with a faint resonance. The next moment, an enormous amount of mana concentrated there as if being sucked in, forming a massive cluster of light.

“That’s…!”

Caliburn, who had been gradually pressuring Geirod based on overwhelming regenerative power and favorable battle conditions, let out a groan mixed with bewilderment.

He knew exactly what that light cluster foretold.

‘Fortress teleportation…!’

It was clearly the precursor to the spatial transfer of Agnita Fortress, the sacred site of the Church of Bellona and the core stronghold of the undead forces, a space the size of a city.

‘They’ve already made their move? And directly toward us?’

This was the situation Caliburn had most wanted to avoid.

He had employed various tactics to prevent this very scenario, but it seemed all his machinations had been in vain.

There was no fundamental flaw in his strategy. He had started the battle a step late to divert Garmerlic’s attention to Haschal, and had hidden the card of Balaur to use in a surprise attack to end the battle quickly.

Objectively speaking, it was a reasonable and efficient strategy, and from Caliburn’s perspective, it was practically the best option.

The problem was twofold.

First, Haschal himself had clearly read his movements. Second, Caliburn had no way of knowing the complications between Haschal and Garmerlic.

Because Haschal, who had seen through his schemes, had sent Ophelia to attack the giants in advance, Garmerlic was able to learn that the giants were under attack even before Caliburn’s assault began.

Garmerlic had marked Haschal as a vessel of death, and rather than disturbing Haschal who had absorbed the divinity of death, he intended to leave him alone for the time being.

These two variables, which Caliburn naturally could not have anticipated, overlapped to completely disrupt his strategy from its foundation.

As a result.

– CRAAAAAASH!

Forcibly twisting and tearing open space itself with vast mana, the Undead Duke’s massive fortress descended upon the battlefield like divine punishment.

—-

The massive fortress appeared, shattering the spatial gate that had opened in the void.

After repeated restoration and expansion, Agnita Fortress was clearly different in scale from when Haschal and Garmerlic had clashed.

While the fortress then had been close to a city-sized stronghold, the current Agnita was, with slight exaggeration, almost like an island floating in the void.

The exterior appearance remained the same as before, but it was now surrounded by three layers of outer walls that hadn’t existed previously, with all sorts of buildings packed in between them.

Barracks for soldiers, supply warehouses, dark towers emitting black mist, embankments engraved with multiple runes, and even strange structures of unknown purpose.

Even its uneven and pointed lower section, as if a rocky mountain had been pulled out whole, was filled with countless embankments between the soil and rocks.

This was the fully restored floating war fortress, completed after 24-hour labor by numerous undead—the true form of the once-renowned Agnita Fortress from the old imperial era.

“Damn it, this is a disaster…!”

Confirming this sight, Caliburn gritted his teeth and spat out a curse. The battle he thought was won had gone awry at the decisive moment.

‘How much time do we have left? About 1 or 2 minutes?’

Although Agnita Fortress had already appeared in the sky above the battlefield, this didn’t mean that the undead army would pour out from inside right away.

The city-scale teleportation ritual was strategically invaluable, but due to its nature of tearing through and leaping across vast spaces, it wasn’t a particularly stable technique.

Even individual long-distance teleportation carried a high risk of death during spatial transit for anyone who wasn’t undead, let alone performing it on a city scale.

Despite laying auxiliary stabilization rituals throughout the city, they could barely avoid being lost by being ejected from the spatial passage during transfer.

The restriction that only the undead could withstand the teleportation itself remained, and even after teleportation, if time wasn’t taken to re-stabilize the space, the entire fortress could be torn apart with the space itself.

In other words, until the space was perfectly stabilized, the fortress had only appeared in form first but was just a phantom without substance.

And the time required for that stabilization varied somewhat depending on the situation, but at most it would take about 3 minutes.

This meant that there were still a few minutes left before the Undead Duke’s forces would fully intervene in the battlefield.

Although an incredibly short time, for a demigod or ancient dragon, it was enough time to devastate an entire city with a natural disaster and more.

For Caliburn, it was the final reprieve that would determine their fate.

“Balaur! We must prevent the spatial stabilization! Can you do it?”

To extend this reprieve as long as possible, Caliburn instructed Balaur, who was about to go on a rampage in earnest, to disrupt the spatial stabilization of Agnita Fortress.

Even the power of a mighty dragon couldn’t stop the spatial transfer that was already in its final stages, but he thought it might be possible to buy some time.

“I can’t block it for long. That ritual is a miracle bestowed by the primordial god.”

Indeed, Balaur warned that it wouldn’t last long, but didn’t say it was impossible.

The next moment, after kicking off the ceiling of Naraka to approach Agnita Fortress, he spread a magical formation mixing more than ten types of light clusters in the void around the fortress, gradually distorting the stabilizing space.

– Groooooan…!

The clash between the miracle trying to stabilize space and the miracle trying to distort it.

The mana drawn from across the city and the dragon’s power mixed with divinity repelled and offset each other, shaking the void with the aftermath.

“Now’s the time! Push with everything you’ve got!”

Seeing this, Caliburn immediately ordered everyone else to fight with all their might, sparing nothing.

“Retreat only turns you into prey. Your path to survival isn’t behind you but right in front! Fight and carve a bloody path!”

Issuing a retreat order would only result in the worst outcome—being delayed by the giants’ interference and then annihilated in a combined attack.

So here, they had to fight with all their might while the standoff between the fortress and Balaur continued, killing as many giants as possible in advance.

‘If we can take down Geirod and Hrungnir like this, that would be ideal… but even if we fail, we can at least avoid a full barrage.’

Even if they couldn’t defeat the giants’ strongest within the reprieve time, if their forces and the enemy became more entangled than they already were, they could avoid the worst-case scenario.

Agnita Fortress could sweep away most of the werebeasts on the battlefield with a full barrage without even deploying troops, but shells have no eyes.

If they did such a thing while giants and werebeasts were engaged in a chaotic battle, not only enemies but allies would be caught in the barrage and suffer massive casualties.

‘Go ahead and fire if you can, Garmerlic. That is, if you want to blow away the allies you’ve just made!’

The moment he destroyed his allies with artillery fire, Garmerlic’s undead forces would be completely isolated even if they won.

The giants who suffered direct damage would consider Garmerlic an enemy rather than an ally, and the frost giants of the north would not continue their alliance with those who mercilessly slaughtered their own allies.

The vampires were already doomed to annihilation the moment Agnita Fortress appeared here, so there was nothing more to say about them.

So if they just stuck to fighting the giant forces, Agnita Fortress’s army would have no choice but to come down to the ground and engage in close combat.

That was Caliburn’s judgment. That’s why, unlike before, he gambled without sparing even his own body, prepared to half die.

“Krakbabel! We take him down first! Hold him!”

Caliburn, who had been fighting Geirod, suddenly turned and charged toward Hrungnir.

Fighting a prolonged battle would take too long, so it seemed he intended to focus on one of the two giants to definitely finish at least one of them.

“How dare you turn your back on me!”

Geirod, not one to stand by and watch, naturally tried to grab Caliburn’s now defenseless legs to forcibly stop him, but—

– CRACK!

“Kuh…! I’ll give you my lower body! Enjoy playing with it!”

Caliburn severed his own waist with his front paws and kicked off the ground with just his upper body, shaking off Geirod.

A self-harm tactic only possible for a werebeast with transcendent regenerative abilities.

“Damn it…! Such a cheap trick!”

Geirod cursed with a frustrated face, tossing aside Caliburn’s lower body and trying to chase after the rapidly distancing upper body.

– SMASH!

But the next moment, Caliburn, running with all his might with just his upper body, smashed his own head with his hands.

“Oh no…!”

Momentarily stunned by the unexpected suicide, Geirod realized its meaning and turned around in surprise.

“KAAAOOO—!”

Caliburn’s upper body, which had sprung out from the cross-section of the lower body embedded in the ground, lunged with jaws wide open and bit into Geirod’s nape.

“Kuh, huk…!”

Blood spurted. Geirod staggered, letting out a stifled groan as his neck was bitten. It was a critical injury he couldn’t block in time due to his delayed reaction.

“You, cunning, beast…! From the beginning you—”

“Aimed for this. Thanks for falling for it!”

Caliburn grinned and shook his head up and down.

Indeed.

The roar about attacking Hrungnir first, as well as the passionate charge that went so far as to tear off his lower body, were all theater to induce Geirod’s misjudgment.

It was merely a deception to divert Geirod’s attention from the severed lower body and regenerate his body from the lower half rather than the upper body to surprise him.