Heaven and earth fell silent in an instant.
Twenty-three Dark Tide Monarchs hovered in deep space, looking down upon the earth.
They had consulted the information database and already knew every characteristic of the Player Race.
Resurrection without loss, devouring through death, Origin Primordial rules-all the intelligence proved one thing: they had to give this battle everything they had.
Their opponents' terrifying potential far exceeded expectations and could not be measured by the spiritual energy content of a Minor World or any other such metric.
They chose to unseal their Monarch origins simultaneously.
Together, they unleashed a killing offensive, releasing dark power capable of crushing lower-dimensional planes.
Layer upon layer of pitch-black mist mingled together. Twenty-three world-destroying forces at King Level twisted into a single dark torrent spanning a million miles of stars and bore down heavily upon Earth.
Space collapsed along its path amid incessant thunderous roars.
This was the fated challenge Earth had been destined to face from the moment the Dark Tide Rift appeared a hundred years ago.
On the surface, hundreds of millions of players looked up to confront the dark torrent.
Just then, Star Network's voice rang out in all their minds at once.
"Global defense, coordinated formation-"
Instructions were rapidly delivered through Reflection, projected into the minds of different players in different guilds, marking specific coordinates and courses of action for them.
The thoughts of players scattered across the globe synchronized in an instant.
They acted according to the instructions, their power, bolstered by Linked Contract, crossing mountains, rivers, lakes, and seas to resonate across the distance before converging into one flow.
Dense shields of light sprang up first like shoots after rain, intertwining until they formed a defensive layer of light enveloping the entire planet.
As gentle light flowed, the Dark Tide's corrosive