All at once, the border that had once seemed too vast and sprawling became a narrow iron cage for colossal beasts to fight within.
As the mountains took a step, disaster-grade hurricanes howled through this sealed box, sweeping countless clouds of dust and monsters into the sky.
And so, they closed in on the Solano Defense Line.
They had taken only one step, yet it felt as though the entire world had toppled down upon them...
Towering to unimaginable heights, they cast everything beneath their shadows and looked down with savage brutality.
There was no need for orders or rebukes, no need even for intimidation or coercion. With a single step forward, they drove the endless sea of monsters onward, crushing toward the Present Realm.
It was as though the two ends of the world were drawing together, contracting. As the battlefield gradually narrowed, the artillery fire, slaughter, and death gathered within this region became ever denser.
Countless corpses had blanketed the earth. Those monsters that continued fighting as corpses even after death gathered into a tide, surging forward against layer after layer of artillery bombardment, passing the towers' defenses and already clinging to the city walls.
Climbing upward.
From afar, it looked like thick black-red liquid spreading upward.
Every droplet of mist was a shrieking monster, every falling raindrop a ferocious horde.
When Demon Mountain shook the earth and deep chasms spread beneath the walls, enormous worms burrowed out from within, their heavy shells and hides enduring the ravages of blades and fire.
Their huge mandibles opened, tearing and gnawing at the barriers around the defense line and towers, while spewing forth an endless stream of their offspring and other things hitching a ride.
And though the enemy was already close at hand and battle imminent, everyone could not