The deployment of the battery altered the entire trajectory of the battle in a single breath.
Under an unrelenting, rhythmic bombardment, the surging mass of sea monsters thinned out by the second.
They had managed to press within fifty meters of the massive stone wall, but that remaining distance had transformed into an uncrossable abyss, a moat of fire and iron.
High above the chaos, standing on the elevated watchtower of his island stronghold, Reed Newt watched with his hands folded quietly behind his back.
The thunder of the cannons rattled his chest with every volley.
Heavy cannon pieces had been erected across the square towers.
Against the towering forms of the approaching sea monsters, the targets were impossible to miss; anything entering that kill zone was guaranteed to take a direct hit.
In truth, this defense had been planned long before the siege began.
While constructing the outer ramparts of his grand city, Reed had spent a sizable portion of his survival points to acquire a batch of city-defense blueprints, and cannon was chief among them.
Yet, hampered by an incomplete technology tree and a meager foundational tech level, the effective range of these cannons was severely restricted, capped at a mere fifty meters.
That strict physical limitation was the sole reason he had delayed firing until the beasts practically knocked at his gates.
“The destructive efficiency of conventional cannon is truly remarkable,” Reed noted aloud, evaluating the scene beyond the walls with a quiet, objective detachment.
The ordnance he had crafted relied on rudimentary explosive fragmentation shells.
They required minimal gunpowder charges to launch, but upon impacting the earth, the resulting burst sent jagged iron fragments and high-velocity gravel tearing through everything nearby.
The localized, high-density devastation provided far greater lethal impact and consumed vastly fewer resources than detonating subterranean gunpowder traps beneath the soil.
Boom!
Boom!
Boom!
The shockwaves rolled endlessly across the plain outside the fortress.
Slain sea monsters piled up by the dozens, yet the carnage failed to stem the tide.
If anything, the scent of fresh iron and blood drove the survivors into an absolute frenzy.
Their scarlet eyes burned against the dark, and a chorus of guttural roars echoed through the night.
Every glowing eye in the horde locked onto the lone figure of Reed standing high atop the tower, desperate to rip him limb from limb.
“Increase firing frequency,” Reed commanded, his voice cold and devoid of panic.
Shell after shell whistled through the air, dropping squarely into the densest clusters of the oncoming swarm.
Yet, no matter how fiercely the monsters bellowed, the iron wall of fire held them fast at the fifty-meter mark.
Not a single beast could press a step closer.
“Wait…
why aren’t those dying?” Reed’s eyes narrowed slightly as he picked out a subtle anomaly amidst the smoke.
A handful of creatures had weathered multiple point-blank explosions and were rising back to their feet.
While the rest of the horde had been shredded into dismembered limbs and torn hide, these specific entities remained entirely unscathed.
The lethal storm of shrapnel and flying debris seemed completely incapable of breaching their outer armor.
“Roar!” Incensed by the heavy bombardment, the surviving beasts bellowed with enraged embarrassment.
Breaking away from the pinned-down swarm, they surged forward toward the wall at three times the speed of their lesser brethren.
“The artillery can’t penetrate their defense?” Reed muttered, a flicker of gravity settling over his expression.
Framed against the backdrop of rising blazes, he quickly counted twenty of these anomalous beasts, each vastly different from the common horde.
Standing at a towering six meters tall, their massive torsos encased in thick, dark-red overlapping scales.
Their raw strength, agility, and defensive density far surpassed anything else on the field.
With effortless bounds, they cleared seven to eight meters in a single leap.
Within moments, the pack of twenty had closed the gap, charging within twenty meters of the main wall.
Faced with the imminent breach, Reed took a long, steady breath.
Reaching into his coat, his hand closed around a cold, compact piece of black steel.
He drew the weapon, leveled it smoothly at the leading six-meter terror, and squeezed the trigger.
BANG!
A sharp, deafening crack cut cleanly through the deep rumble of cannon fire.
A precise blood-hole erupted directly between the eyes of the lead monster.
Its massive body stiffened instantly before collapsing forward into the dirt, entirely lifeless.
Meanwhile, inside the Observation Room at Valley View Academy, an absolute, suffocating silence descended upon the hall. Visit g.com for the full chapter.
Meinhard Janek and his fellow faculty mentors stared at the projection screen in utter shock, their minds momentarily stalling under the sheer impossibility of what they were witnessing.
Just moments ago, the sudden deployment of artillery had wiped out the standard sea monsters, but it had also flushed out twenty hidden Tier 1 elite beasts.
Realizing the trap, those formidable creatures had abandoned all stealth, targeting Reed directly in an explosive sprint to eliminate the Island Holder in a single strike.
Every observer had assumed Reed’s trial was at an end.
The defensive power of a Tier 1 sea monster was legendary among new survivors; their hides were practically immune to indirect shrapnel and primitive explosive shocks.
Worse still, encountering twenty Tier 1 elites at once was an absurdly brutal difficulty spike that no novice Island Holder in recorded academy history had ever survived.
It was, by all metrics, a guaranteed death sentence.
Yet, in the face of certain doom, Reed had simply drawn a sidearm and casually put a bullet through a Tier 1 monster’s skull.
“Tell me my eyes are playing tricks on me…” one mentor whispered, his voice cracking.
“Was that…
a firearm?”
“It had to be!
The muzzle flash, the immediate kinetic penetration, it blew clean through a Tier 1 skull!”
“This is absurd!
Mastering cannon blueprints is one thing, but how on earth did he advance far enough to manufacture personal handguns?!”
While the faculty struggled to process the revelation, the sharp crackle of gunfire rang out again across the screen.
Bang!
Bang!
Bang!
On the battlements, Reed methodically cycled his weapon, acquiring targets and firing with mechanical precision.
With every crisp gunshot echoing through the dark night, another terrifying Tier 1 beast crumpled uselessly into the mud.
One by one, the ferocious elite strike force was being systematically executed in the dark.