Heavy snow fell, as though the entire Northern Frontier had been frozen inside a silent coffin.
Yet the slumbering Frost Glaive City had awakened.
"BOOM!!"
With a muffled thud like a heartbeat, the Coldflame Reactor at the city's heart surged to maximum output, spewing a pillar of energy like ice-blue lightning.
It drove the temperature to its lowest limit. Veins of ice wound outward from the reactor's core, spreading through the entire city like blood vessels.
Seventeen magical bunkers activated in succession. Frost Crystal Runes within the earth's veins ignited, and ice-blue runes soared skyward, interweaving into rings that formed layer upon layer of the Ice Mist Barrier, blocking the invading Insect Mist spores.
Frost Glaive City's defensive arrays began their attack as well.
"Catapults-load Frost Crystal Demon Explosive Bombs! Coordinates... Brood Hive cluster two!"
"Fire!!!"
Thunderous blasts rang out one after another. More than a dozen Frost Crystal Siege Throwers shuddered against the snowy ground as they launched. The Demon Explosive Bombs, charged with frost energy, traced blazing blue-white arcs like meteors falling onto the battlefield, crashing into the tide-dense ranks of Insect Corpses and the Brood Hives.
"CRAAACK!!!"
Several unfinished ordinary Brood Hives burst apart. The eggs and young insects inside froze instantly in the extreme cold, becoming a bloom of ice-blue petals, as though death itself had passed judgment.
The densely packed Insect Corpses also collapsed beneath the shockwaves, rank after rank, like a wheat field swept by a blade.
Victory... seemed to draw a little closer in that moment.
But only for a moment.
"What is... that?"
Over the distant snowfields, the air began to distort, and the magic crystal screens fluctuated violently.
As though a curtain of warped space and time had been torn open, an enormous creature slowly emerged from the snowy mist.
The