The Archmage’s Destruction Strategy - Chapter 133

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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#133. Awakening

Seoa, who had drawn upon mana far beyond her limits to capture the colossal Corrosion Entity as it fled, lost consciousness from the impact generated when the Hive Hornet crashed to the Surface.
And moments later, as her eyes slowly opened, what greeted her was a sight that could only be described as hellish—a battlefield torn from the depths of damnation itself.
Insectoid monsters with massive bodies several meters in size, towering effortlessly over human height.
Artillery fire so deafening it seemed ready to rupture eardrums at any moment.
The sound of steel plating being forcibly torn apart, bolts securing the armor plates shattering under the pressure they could not withstand.
Soldiers emerging from half-destroyed cockpits, firing pistols at monsters rushing to tear their limbs apart.
Despite having eliminated nine of the ten Level 8 Corrosion Entities beforehand and engaging in battle, the situation on the Battlefield that unfolded before her eyes did not appear favorable for their forces.

“Now that you’re awake, fight too.”

At that moment, a familiar voice reached Seoa’s ears from beside her.
As she turned her head toward the source, she saw Shirasaki Miyu with an indifferent expression, fluttering a grimoire in one hand while rapidly chanting incantations.
Realizing that she had remained unharmed while unconscious because Shirasaki Miyu had protected her, Seoa patted both her cheeks urgently and rose to her feet.

“Thank you for protecting me.”
“If you’re grateful, I’d appreciate it if you fought with all your strength. I was just beginning to feel the strain of holding the line alone.”

Now conscious, I checked the lingering pain in my mana circuits before immediately beginning to cast spells.
Because I had forcibly cast spells beyond my Circle level to seize the colossal Corrosion Entity’s ankle moments before, my physical condition was far from good.
Well aware of this, I actively utilized illusion magic and mental magic—my specialties—instead of high-output attack spells requiring intense mana manipulation, providing support to our forces.
I restored the morale of our soldiers gripped by fear before death’s door, while ensuring that the claws of enemies entranced by illusions slashed through empty air.
Yet despite my assistance, the only allies I could save were the handful of Pilots near me who were protecting me.

“Where is my Teacher?”

After casting spells in succession, I felt dizzy and steadied my breathing before asking Miyu.
Miyu then glared in the direction where Atlas had been, her expression full of displeasure, and spoke.

“Still sleeping.”

At the location where Atlas had fallen, so many enemies had swarmed that the massive hull of the colossal machine was completely obscured, forming a shape like a gigantic hill writhing with life.
And the countless monsters on that living, squirming hill were pounding the outer armor plating of the enormous mobile fortress with claws worn to breaking points, desperately attempting to breach Atlas’s interior.
In a situation where even if Sung-jun awoke now, it was uncertain whether Atlas would function normally as before, I gazed toward where Sung-jun slept with desperate longing.

Teacher…

At that very moment when she gazed at Sung-jun with desperate longing, inside the mobile Fortress Atlas, the surviving crew members and insectoid Corrosion Entities that had breached the interior were locked in a desperate struggle for survival.

“Damn it! Another breach!”
“Get the shield-bearing Golem forward! Use that shield to plug the hole!”

Fortunately, the hole that had been torn through the Hangar inside the Fortress wasn’t large enough for enemies to pour through en masse.
Moreover, when the Monsters realized the breach and simultaneously thrust their heads inside, they became wedged against each other, creating a bottleneck that worked against them.
Thanks to this reprieve, the survivors used the steel Golems inside the Hangar to forcibly seal the hole.

“Push with all your strength!”
“Wait! Let me try to fix it with this!”

In that instant, a Guard operating a steel Golem with quick thinking pressed the nozzle of its flamethrower against the shield and fired at maximum output.
The shield’s temperature skyrocketed instantly, and the claws of the Monsters desperately trying to pierce through it sizzled and adhered to the scorching surface.
The original plan had been to use the ultra-high-temperature flamethrower to weld the shield held by another Golem to the hole, but this method proved equally effective.
The surface of the shield, now too hot to even touch, completely prevented the enemies from approaching.
Yet despite the Soldiers’ valiant efforts, the endless tide of enemies continued to gradually erode the highest-tier defensive magic that Sung-jun had placed over the Hangar.

***

-KWAAAANG!!!-

With the explosive impact, Karcerion’s body was sent flying like a shell, hurtling toward the Control Tower far behind.
Barden, standing beside Karcerion, swung his hammer down and hastily summoned a massive Fortress Wall in front of the Control Tower.
It was not a rigid wall designed to block attacks, but a soft, yielding form meant to absorb the collision.
As Karcerion, buried deep within the thick wall, immediately burst outward and deflected the front claws of the colossal Monster that had been flying toward Barden, Barden swung his hammer.

-KWADUDUK! KWAJIK! KWADUK!-

Like bamboo shoots piercing through the earth, a massive steel spike column erupted through the Deck and soared into the Sky, striking the chest of the colossal insectoid Monster with tremendous force.
Barden had intended to pierce clean through its exoskeleton, and while he succeeded in lifting the creature’s upper body, he gritted his teeth at the steel column that failed to achieve full penetration.

“Damn thing’s ridiculously tough!”

The exoskeleton of the colossal Monster, which could deflect even Karcerion’s single-point breakthrough that surpassed the Xu Tian Spear in piercing power, boasted durability so formidable that Barden’s defense-specialized abilities couldn’t hope to breach it.
Meanwhile, the giant sickle-shaped front claws wielded by the enemy possessed such sharpness that they could slice through the Fortress Walls Barden summoned as easily as cutting tofu.
To face an enemy that simultaneously possessed offensive power overwhelming their defense and defensive power overwhelming their offense, Barden and Karcerion unleashed a coordinated assault, pooling all their abilities.

“Damn it! Wake up! You damnable master! At this rate we’re all going to die!”

While spewing curses mixed with complaints toward their callous master—who lay sleeping soundly without a care in the world, leaving such an overwhelmingly powerful enemy to them—
every single person deployed across the simultaneous battlefields, despite facing different circumstances, found themselves dwelling on the exact same thought.
The overwhelming burden created by Sung-jun’s absence.

‘How could the presence of a single person exert such tremendous influence over the entire battle situation.’

General MacFarlane, who had been controlling the entire battlefield from the command center aboard the Hive Hornet, had maintained considerable confidence right up until combat commenced.
Nine of the ten colossal Level 8 Corrosion Entities had already been eliminated beforehand, nearly ten thousand allied soldiers piloted Steel Golems, and most importantly, he had three powerful subordinates of Sung-jun—Barden, Karcerion, and Argen—serving as reinforcements.
By contrast, the Atlas piloted by Sung-jun lacked particularly powerful support aside from Sung-jun himself.
This led General MacFarlane to believe they might actually clear the battlefield through their own strength before Sung-jun even awakened.
It didn’t take long to realize that this was merely a naive miscalculation.
The general watched as the hologram at the center of the control tower gradually turned red.
Green dots indicating operational status transforming into red dots signifying complete shutdown.
Each signal meant another Steel Golem operating in the field had been completely destroyed by enemy forces.
Death. And then more death.
Of the roughly ten thousand Steel Golems assembled through desperate recruitment—even conscripting civilians—approximately five thousand had become inoperable or been completely destroyed.
And the aerial carrier Hive Hornet, the very base of this Steel Golem fleet, was now completely surrounded by enemy forces.
The general began to understand why someone as powerful as Sung-jun had desperately sought to reinforce U.S. Military strength.

‘If we’d engaged them directly, even five or more Mages of Sung-jun’s caliber would have been annihilated.’

The enemy’s assault grew increasingly fierce with each passing moment—so much so that even if Sung-jun awakened now, it seemed questionable whether he could reverse the tide of battle.

“General! That… no, never mind.”

Another Adjutant, looking toward MacFarlane, forcibly swallowed back the words he’d been about to speak.
Yet the general didn’t need to hear the rest—he understood perfectly well what word the soldier had been about to utter.

‘Retreat…’

The problem was that retreat was impossible.
Escaping in an aerial carrier without a mana reactor, completely surrounded on all sides by the enemy, was an impossibility.
Moreover, he couldn’t simply abandon all the women and children aboard the Hive Hornet and flee.
In the end, from the moment he’d entered this battlefield, the general had been given only two choices.
Either refrain from participating from the very beginning, or throw himself into battle and fight until the moment of death.
Just as the general’s mind began entertaining the thought that perhaps this entire dire situation was a trap set by Sung-jun, he suddenly realized one crucial fact.

‘Wait… are the enemies truly in the advantageous position right now?’

Objectively speaking, it was the enemies who found themselves in an absolutely disadvantageous position.
Nine of the ten Level 8 Corrosion Entities had fallen, and even the last survivor was pinned down by the coordinated assault of Barden and Karcerion, while countless enemies had been reduced to well-tenderized meat under the concentrated barrage of the steel golems—a casualty count that bore no comparison to our fallen.
Moreover, unlike the enemies who had committed every card to this battle, we still possessed our strongest trump card, yet unplayed.
The card named Sung-jun, slumbering deep within the heart of the mobile fortress Atlas, even now huddled against the desperate onslaught of our foes.
Only then did the General grasp why the enemies, despite their dire circumstances, refused to retreat and instead hurled themselves into this suicidal final stand.

‘They have nowhere left to fall back to either.’

The sheer number of enemies was, in a sense, inevitable.
They must have marshaled every Corrosion Entity from across the American Continent itself, as well as those scattered throughout Canada and South America, throwing them all into this battle.
Without doing so, the overwhelming numbers arrayed against us would have been physically inexplicable.
With that realization, the General gripped the microphone and roared toward his soldiers.

“Do not falter! The enemy believes themselves disadvantaged—that is why they thrash about in desperation! Hold just a little longer! The moment Ma Sungjun awakens, victory shall be ours!”

The General’s anguished cry was less a declaration than an incantation.
His voice carried not merely the assertion that victory would come when Sung-jun awoke, but a desperate plea that victory could only come if he did.
It was both an appeal to his soldiers and a cry for salvation directed at Sung-jun himself.

‘So please, stop sleeping and wake up.’

Naturally, the General’s voice, amplified through the speakers across the Battlefield, never reached Sung-jun’s ears.
The entire Battlefield was already saturated with deafening noise, and besides, the space where Sung-jun slept was a sealed chamber where all external sound was perfectly isolated.
Yet the moment the General’s voice, trembling with anguished emotion, cut across the Battlefield, the countless beasts that had been attacking with frenzy suddenly ceased their movements as if by magic.
The body of Atlas, which had been covered like a living hill by hundreds of thousands of monsters, began to move slowly, as if awakening from slumber.

-WHOOOOSH!-

The monsters blanketing the mobile fortress crumbled and cascaded down from the violent upheaval, and from within the writhing hill, a colossal arm thrust skyward.
The armor that had covered its surface vanished without a trace, leaving only the skeletal internal framework of Atlas’s arm—gaunt as a skeleton’s limb—barely maintaining its form.
It was a tremendous stretch, a harbinger of the ‘Grand Mage’s return’ that the survivors had yearned for so desperately.

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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