The boundary between heaven and earth was forcibly erased.
Nothing remained in sight but a deathly white expanse, and a roar filled their ears-the shriek of hundreds of millions of tons of ice crystals grinding against one another at high speed, as though the whole world trembled beneath that immense power.
The blizzard crashed down like a catastrophic avalanche, swallowing the Brintanhe Fortress Cluster whole.
The precipitous plunge in temperature brought searing pain. The soldiers atop the walls had no time even to cry out before the wind pinned them behind the battlements. They hurriedly curled up in the nearest defensive recesses, their fingers digging anxiously into cracks in the stone, terrified that the slightest lapse would let that brutal force wrench them into the sky.
Their leather armor and padded clothing were as thin as cicada wings before the bitter cold of minus forty degrees. The bone-piercing chill became countless blades of ice, bypassing every defense to invade every inch of skin and stab deep into the marrow.
Atop the fortress wall, the Black Steel Construct swinging its Chainsaw Sword abruptly stiffened.
Its imposing, five-meter-tall body shuddered violently in the storm. The crimson magic circuits that had flowed across its surface like magma rapidly dimmed beneath the extreme cold, finally turning an ashen dark brown.
Though the steel behemoth did not stop functioning, everything it did had slowed to one-tenth of its former speed.
Its power furnace rumbled dully, struggling to supply energy, but the obstructed transmission channels made its body unbearably sluggish.
The lubricating grease in its joints had hardened like stone, becoming heavy shackles. Amid grinding sounds, it raised its arm as slowly as an old man on the verge of death.
It swung at a soldier who had failed to reach a defensive recess in time,