Reidar watched as the debuffs stacked. The Behemoth didn't seem to notice most of them—it was too large, too ancient, too far beyond normal comprehension. But the effect was there. Its movements became more labored. Its steps sank deeper. The entropy fields made the air around it shimmer with speed decay.
Reidar activated his support skills, layering buffs across his entire army.
First came Primal Resonance. The effect rippled across the battlefield as thousands of summons suddenly moved with perfect coordination, their actions flowing together like parts of a single organism.
Then, the Aura of Absolute Purity was activated, cleansing his forces of any debuffs or status effects the behemoth might have inflicted. A wave of energy washed over his army, purging any kind of corruption and stabilizing their forms.
Wellspring of Vitality followed, increasing the regeneration rate of all his summons' wounds. Wounds that would have taken minutes to heal now closed in seconds, and summons on the verge of dissipating found their forms stabilizing.
Emperor's Decree was a commanding buff that increased all stats of his summons by a flat percentage. The effect was immediately visible—attacks hit harder, movements became faster, and defensive formations held more firmly.
Finally, Reidar activated Gaze of the Pariah, directing its effect toward the Behemoth. The skill inflicted a debilitating curse that made the creature more vulnerable to damage from beings it considered "beneath its notice"—which, conveniently, described its entire army.
The combined effect of the buffs and debuffs was significant. The Behemoth's movements became even slower, its attacks less devastating, while Reidar's forces fought with renewed ferocity and coordination.
<It's working.>
However, it was not enough to stop the creature, but it was enough to keep it from reaching Kingsgate and to start taking Reidar seriously.
The Behemoth took another step, and this time, its foot came down at a slightly different angle than before. The combination of corrupted ground, joint-targeted ice, and gravitational distortion from the void demons had altered its trajectory by another few degrees.
Reidar kept the pressure on. Every debuff that could be maintained was maintained. Every damage-over-time effect was reapplied the moment it faded. The Behemoth was covered in marks, auras, fields, and corrupted zones, making it look like a walking disaster of magical interference.
Which, Reidar supposed, was precisely what it was.
Below, the last portal in the central plaza was surrounded by demon lords and the undead. The Spectral Army had found the magic circle buried beneath the plaza's fountain, and the Inferno Tyrants were already pouring fire onto it.
The magic circle cracked. The runes split. The portal above the central plaza flickered, dimmed, and then collapsed inward with a sound that echoed across the city.
<All portals closed. >
No more monsters would come from other worlds. The threat from the portals was over. But the Behemoth still loomed on the horizon, moving toward the city as Reidar's forces kept it occupied.
The forest monsters were still flooding toward the city, and there were still thousands of portal monsters alive in the streets of Kingsgate. The battle for Kingsgate was far from over.
Reidar allowed himself a breath when the last portal collapsed. That was all he could handle.
His army had taken losses. The Behemoth alone had cost him thousands of summons—crushed, vaporized, or erased by the sheer gravitational distortion the creature's body produced.
The portal monsters had claimed thousands more before his forces closed the rifts; of course, that was because the number of creatures around was simply abnormal. The streets of Kingsgate were littered with dissipating mana where creatures died, but among them were thousands more eating the corpses.
Out of the roughly fifty thousand creatures he had commanded at the battle's peak, fewer than 20 thousand remained. The Spectral Army had been hit the worst. The Eternal Death-Host had fared better; their armored undead bodies were more resilient, but even they had lost nearly 40% of their number.
The Behemoth was still moving northwest, drawn along by the constant harassment of his remaining forces. The redirection was working, but it was bleeding him dry.
<I need to summon again before—>
He couldn't even complete the thought.
The air behind him split open. A tear in space, no wider than a doorway, rimmed with energy. This was not a portal; this was teleportation. Something just came here on the battlefield.
Reidar turned around, and his hand went to his Ignis Cinder-Core Wand. Through the Overmind Consciousness, he sent a flash command to the nearest summons—a squad of Shadow Specter Kings and a dozen Demon Lords—to converge on his position.
A figure appeared. Tall, grey-bearded, wrapped in robes that crackled with accumulated magical energy.
<Jorik.>
[Jorik Malden—Level 440]
The man looked up at Reidar with an expression that held no warmth, no hesitation, and no fear. His eyes swept across the depleted army, counted the gaps in the formations, and measured the distance between Reidar and his nearest summons.
<This fucker was waiting! >
Jorik must have seen the battle. He must have seen Reidar throw his forces against the Behemoth and the other monsters. He had counted the losses. Not only that, but he had timed his move for when Reidar's army was at its weakest.
"You look tired, Miller," Jorik said. "Your pets took quite a beating."
Reidar didn't reply. He was already issuing commands through the overmind consciousness. The Shadow Specter Kings materialized around him. The demon lords descended from above.
"You have some guts to come here!"
Jorik raised one hand. "I didn't come to fight you myself. I'm not stupid enough to think I can take you alone." The grey beard twitched. "But I brought someone who can."
Jorik didn't give Reidar time to do anything because, once again, another teleportation occurred. Reidar felt it in his ears, in his chest, and in the way the mana in the atmosphere bent and warped around whatever was pushing through from the other side.
Something stepped out.
It had been human once. The shape was still there—two arms, two legs, a torso, and a head. But everything else was wrong.
The body stood over 9 feet tall, and the muscles beneath the skin had swollen and hardened into plates of dense tissue that looked more like chitin than flesh.
The skin itself had become pure white, veined with lines of raw mana that pulsed like exposed arteries. The face was the worst part.
The jaw had elongated and split at the sides, revealing rows of teeth that grew in overlapping spirals. The eyes—there were four of them now—burned with a light that held no recognition, no thought, and no humanity.
The Progenitor.
Or what was left of him.
[Mutated Human—Level 650]
Reidar's blood went cold.