"Not good!"
Bellamy's expression twisted; the sheer velocity of the beam left no room for evasion.
"Shield me!" he snarled, violently seizing a Fifth-Order defensive mutant beside him. He shoved the creature into the path of the beam as he retreated in a frantic blur.
Poof.
The pale blue streak struck the mutant without resistance. There was no explosive sound—only a chilling silence. The zombie didn't even have time to shriek before its entire form was encased in crystalline ice. A heartbeat later, the statue shattered, and a fan-shaped wave of absolute-zero air swept backward, instantly flash-freezing the earth for hundreds of meters.
"Go! Tear them down!" Bellamy roared, his patience at an end.
Boom!
A sickening, blood-red aura erupted from his body, washing over the entire battlefield.
[Sanguine Frenzy]
Roar! Roar! Roar!
Stimulated by the frequency, the already ferocious zombies developed bloodshot eyes. A mist of crimson steam rose from their pores as their muscles swelled, their speed and strength forcefully elevated by the King's command.
"Steve, do you truly believe my only gift is accelerating evolution?" Bellamy laughed wildly. "Bring that dragon down!"
Rumble!
The horde surged toward the Obsidian Great Wall like a pack of starved hounds. Over four hundred Fifth-Order generals led the charge, pouncing with a momentum that seemed capable of leveling mountains.
High above, Steve narrowed the dragon's eyes. "A mass frenzy? That's quite the amplification." But his tone remained bored. "It's time. All forces, engage."
Steve banked the Ender Dragon into a steep climb, the thousand-plus purple healing chains trailing behind her like the tail of a comet. Below, the Endermen clutched their crystals and began teleporting in synchronized leaps to maintain the link.
On the ramparts, Randy's voice boomed over the comms. "All divisions, attack! Legion, crush their vanguard! Specialists, follow me to pin down the Fifth-Orders! Drink up—let's show them how we fight!"
Following the order, the soldiers on the wall pulled out pre-prepared vials and downed them in unison. Multi-colored light flared across their ranks as buffs for strength and agility were stacked to their limit.
Boom!
The army of a hundred thousand leaped from the hundred-meter-high wall like a cascading waterfall of steel. Sovereign Yor and the other high-level masters from the southern bases rushed to the front. Despite their lingering nerves, they swung their blades with desperate precision at the rampaging Fifth-Order mutants.
Bang! Bang! Bang!
Upon contact, Sovereign Yor was immediately swarmed by three Frenzied Fifth-Orders. He hadn't expected the enhancement to be so potent; a set of jagged claws tore through his energy shield and raked across his chest.
It's over, Yor thought, his heart sinking. The wound was deep enough to be fatal.
However, in the next microsecond—Bang!
The golden icon in his pocket shattered. Speckles of celestial light poured into his body, sealing the wound instantly and replenishing his drained energy reserves.
"I... I'm still standing!" Overjoyed, Yor spun his blade in a wide arc, decapitating the stunned zombie in front of him. "Hahaha! It's true! We're immortal! Charge with me!"
In an instant, the nature of the battlefield shifted. What should have been a tragic meat-grinder turned into a one-sided display of tactical audacity. Purely on raw numbers and brute strength, Bellamy's frenzied horde was technically superior. But the immortality mechanism rendered their strength irrelevant.
A Frenzied Fifth-Order would roar, piercing a soldier's chest. In a standard war, that was a casualty. But here, a flash of golden light followed every "death," and the soldier would use that split second of the enemy's confusion to drive a blade into their eye socket.
The defense line was like a strip of reinforced rubber; it stretched under the impact of the tsunami but never broke, slowly pushing the horde back by sheer attrition.
"This isn't a war," Yor shouted over the din, gasping for air. "This is just throwing money at the problem until it dies!"
Meanwhile, in the skies...
"Tactical adjustment," Randy's calm voice cut through the channel. "Don't try to duel the Fifth-Orders. Form squads of five hundred and pin them down. You don't need the kill—just restrict their movement. The roamers will handle the harvesting."
The Aerial Specialist Legion shifted formations instantly. Spatial-type zombies flickered through the air, and while their individual strikes couldn't breach the hide of a Fifth-Order, the constant spatial harassment infuriated the frenzied monsters. Whenever a general tried to break the encirclement, hundreds of synchronized abilities would hammer them back into the kill zone.
Sovereign Yor and Gabriel shuttled across the battlefield like ghosts. "There—the Strength mutant has exposed its flank!" Yor's eyes sharpened. He became a streak of light, his blade wrapped in a concentrated aura. He slashed through the neck of a Fifth-Order that was currently being bogged down by five hundred Tier 4s.
Pfft!
The massive head spun into the snow. Yor didn't linger, immediately pivoting toward the next target. "This is incredible," he laughed. Before, a single mistake meant a cold grave. Now, with a thousand 'extra lives' backing him, he felt like a god of war.
High above, the Ender Dragon loomed like an aerial fortress. Steve hovered directly over the center of the fray, his maw acting like a Gatling gun of infinite frost. Every blast of Dragon Breath turned a segment of the battlefield into a frozen graveyard.
"ROAR!!!"
The horde below finally reached its breaking point. Under the command of their remaining generals, a hundred Fifth-Orders specializing in ranged attacks locked onto the dragon.
Boom! Boom! Boom!
A torrential downpour of corrosive acid, bone javelins, and dark energy spheres surged upward, aimed directly at the dragon's heart. An attack of this density would have stripped the scales off a Fifth-Order peak powerhouse.
Steve didn't even flinch. "Dodge? Why would I dodge?"