Let's Start a Great Honkai Eruption!
"My King, what is that in the sky..." Siduri looked at the strange, white demonic beasts surging across the sky toward the Persian Gulf like a torrent, and she felt thoroughly uneasy.
If nothing else, the sheer number alone could bury the people of Uruk alive. Although Uruk was the last human city-state in this world, its total population was only tens of thousands at most—a population that wasn't even enough to fill the gaps between the teeth of those strange demonic beasts in the sky.
It was truly and literally blotting out the sky. The number they had seen in just this short moment already surpassed the population of Uruk... If a fight really broke out, Siduri estimated that a single citizen of Uruk would have to fight more than a dozen demonic beasts at the same time.
Even people of the Age of Gods couldn't endure such intensity.
"Interesting, so this is Honkai?" Gilgamesh watched the Honkai Beasts continuously surging past, crashing down onto the land of the Persian Gulf like meteors, and knitted his brows.
That woman has finally started to make her move.
"Send men to the Northern Wall to receive those from Chaldea who raided the Blood Temple," Gilgamesh ordered. "They must have run into trouble. I need to obtain their intelligence at the fastest speed possible!"
"No need," just then, a dark shadow descended from the sky. It was Quetzalcoatl, riding her pterosaur to bring Ritsuka, Mash, and a pale-faced Ana back to the Ziggurat, while Ishtar followed behind them with a sour expression.
"Our apologies, my King," Fujimaru Ritsuka said to Gilgamesh. "Merlin, he..."
"Hmph, I am already aware of his exit," Gilgamesh sighed. "He was a Servant I summoned, after all."
"What I need to know is everything you encountered!"
"How hideous," Xia Yu looked down at the Lahmu locked in a death match with the Honkai Beasts and frowned.
Although she had known beforehand, seeing it with her own eyes was still an eyesore. Sighed, after Tiamat's rationality underwent a Self-Seal, this was the kind of monstrosity she pinched out based purely on the instinct of a Beast... It lacked even a shred of aesthetic sense. In comparison, her own Honkai Beasts could be considered packed with premium design.
Right now, directly beneath her, the black Lahmu coming from the sea collided head-on with the Honkai Beasts descending from the sky. Looking down from high above, one could see the two torrents—one black and one white—clashing directly with the coast of the Persian Gulf as their battlefield.
At every single moment, broken limbs were being torn off; either a Honkai Beast was torn apart, or a Lahmu was impaled.
Honkai Beasts are one of the forms of the agents of the Will of Honkai (which include Herrschers, Honkai Beasts, Zombies, the Black Death, etc.).
The birth of a Herrscher will trigger an increase in the number of Honkai Beasts in their area, and Honkai Beasts are also incomparably loyal to the Herrscher who governs them. Even if two Herrschers exist in the same area, they cannot command each other's Honkai Beasts.
Lower-class Honkai Beasts are classified by form, with the Honkai Emperor as the ceiling. Above the Honkai Emperor are the upper-class Honkai Beasts, which include Emperor-class Honkai Beasts and Judgment-class Honkai Beasts.
Lower-class Honkai Beasts mainly include the Seraph-class, Knight-class, Ballista-class, Chariot-class, and Templar-class, as well as the highest-ranking Honkai Emperor. Of course, these Honkai Beasts are named based on their form rather than their actual strength. After all, Honkai Beasts are fundamentally energy creatures shaped by Honkai Energy, so there is no absolute rule that a Seraph-class must be weaker than a Knight-class.
Of course, the latter few types of Honkai Beasts are indeed generally more powerful than the former few; after all, size is power.
Furthermore, the size of the same type of Honkai Beast can vary drastically. For instance, there was the five-meter-tall Chariot-class that Kevin faced in the Previous Era, and later, Ellie mentioned she had encountered a twenty-meter-tall Chariot-class.
The Stats of Honkai Beasts could also be described as being written haphazardly. Even against the most basic 'mosquito', a Seraph-class Honkai Beast, ordinary bullets couldn't even break through its defense. Cocolia had already tried this during the Second Great Honkai Eruption; firing a whole magazine at it was just like giving it a bath.
To cause damage to these low-level Honkai Beasts, one would at least need an anti-tank rocket launcher to pierce their outer shells.
Of course, that would at most work against low-level Honkai Beasts. Dealing with a Chariot-class would be very forced, and by the time it reached the level of a Templar-class, even a rocket launcher would start doing scratch damage.
These powerful Honkai Beasts, holding a lance in one hand and a shield in the other, could flatten everything in front of them like bulldozers. They were distinct A-rank gatekeepers, and Valkyries below A-rank needed to form squads just to subjugate one.
Moreover, spawning Honkai Beasts in mass was incredibly simple. On the battlefield of the Second Great Honkai Eruption, Sirin created a total of 500,000 Honkai Beasts, driving the Valkyries of that time to utter despair. After all, compared to the number 500,000, Schicksal could deploy fewer than 500 Valkyries into battle at the time...
If they hadn't desperately carried out a decapitation strike, Sirin could have dragged human civilization to death just through sheer numbers.
The main reason Xia Yu could spawn such a massive army now was that Tiamat's Authority of Potnia Theron was incredibly potent. When combined with a Herrscher's ability to summon Honkai Beasts, it completely surpassed the Sirin of the past.
Right now, on the battlefield below alone, dozens of Honkai Emperors were distributed across the entire coast as nodes. The moment the Lahmu showed any sign of breaking through the defensive line anywhere, they would directly lead their personal guards to crush them.
As for the personal guards, those were a minimum of twenty Templar-class Honkai Beasts that Xia Yu had assigned to each of them. Across the entire battlefield, Xia Yu had summoned over 500 Templar-class. Aside from those stationed around the Honkai Emperors as mobile forces, the rest were basically deployed into the frontal slaughter.
Various Chariot-class and Ballista-class were even more beyond count.
The Seraph-class literally blotted out the sky, flaunting their power in the air with their ability to fly. Under Xia Yu's command, they continuously harassed the rear of the Lahmu with their superb speed.
Did this display seem massive?
No, compared to the Lahmu, Xia Yu's scale of a million-strong army was completely nothing. There were at least 200 million of those damn Lahmu, and their strength was by no means weak. In the original plot, even the older sister who had most of her divinity sealed away by Merlin couldn't kill one with a single sword strike.
A Servant with relatively average strength would find themselves in a bitter struggle when facing even a single Lahmu.
By true standards, every single one of them possessed the strength of a Knight-class, and they also held an absolute numerical advantage. Right now, Xia Yu's defensive line could only hold out entirely because her high-end combat forces were crushing the enemy.
Under the onslaught of the powerful Honkai Emperors and Templar-class Honkai Beasts, those Lahmu died in massive waves. But it was useless. As long as the primordial ocean—which was this Black Mud—remained, there would always be as many Lahmu as needed.
After all, the Lahmu were the 'new humans' given birth by Beast II, and Kingu had once viewed them as his mass-produced successors.
In the Enuma Elish, Lahmu was the male deity among the first pair of a man and a woman born to Tiamat and Abzu, the first son.
At the same time, Lahmu was also one of Tiamat's eleven children. But now, the Lahmu born from the Goddess Tiamat—who had once been killed and finally underwent Regression—consisted of only one species.
They had even obtained a hive intellect and were ordered by Tiamat to learn from humans as so-called new humans. Unlike the demonic beasts born from Gorgon, humans were completely incapable of defending themselves against a single Lahmu.
Furthermore, compared to Gorgon's demonic beasts who harbored clear hostility toward humans, the Lahmu, who killed humans because they found it 'fun', were far more terrifying.
But in contrast, Xia Yu's Honkai Energy was not infinite. There was nothing she could do about it; she couldn't connect to the Sea of Quanta here, making it impossible to draw Honkai Energy so conveniently. Right now, what she was using was all the stock inside her Elden Ring.
'Tsk, next time I return to the Honkai world, I'll have to find Mei and siphon some more Honkai Energy,' Xia Yu sighed as she felt the Honkai Energy inside her Elden Ring gradually depleting.
This energy really doesn't last... If not for the Authority of Potnia Theron, this wave of a million-strong army alone would have consumed half of her stored Honkai Energy.
Even so, it had still cost her a quarter.
"Ereshkigal, for the sake of your nation of the dead, I'm taking a huge loss here..." Xia Yu looked at a mirror beside her. "You better pull your weight and coax all those people down there!"
"Mm, mm, mm, I got it!" Ereshkigal looked at the grand scene below and nodded cheerfully.
"Also, is that Mother?" She looked up at the colossal, shadowy figure in the distance of the Persian Gulf. "Why... Mother's aesthetic sense shouldn't be this ugly!"
Ereshkigal felt disgusted just looking at the deformed Lahmu below. "Mother was once the existence that created all things in the world... Looking at everything from humans to the gods to all kinds of life, I think Mother's aesthetic sense should be quite normal."
"Didn't I tell you already?" Xia Yu shook her head upon hearing this. "Tiamat loves her children, so to prevent her hatred from destroying everything, she firmly bound herself with her rationality, forming a Self-Seal."
"If it weren't for Goetia, she wouldn't even manifest in The Living World. Right now, the Tiamat you see only has her instincts as the Beast of Regression, so don't expect too much from her aesthetic sense."
"Alright then," Ereshkigal nodded upon hearing this, then looked at Benares behind her with envy. "Your army looks much better than those monstrosities!"
"Thanks for the compliment," Xia Yu reached out to stroke Benares's head. This was a Judgment-class Honkai Beast she had shaped using pure Honkai Energy, prepared to deal with the powerhouses that would evolve among those Lahmu in the future.
The strength of those damn Lahmu relied entirely on Tiamat boosting them. In the later stages within the Underworld, Tiamat—sensing her life was threatened—even directly pulled out twelve Lahmu whose strength was comparable to Demon God Pillars, which was the intensity of the things fought in North America.
Although it was just their physical traits reaching that level and their Divine Authority certainly couldn't compare, that was still the strength of a divine level, and it had almost beaten Ishtar to death.
Their names were the Baal Lahmu (the eleven newborn children), a total of eleven Lahmu that Tiamat gave birth to in the Underworld.
Every single member possessed divine-level power, with strength at the Demon God Pillar level, and their speed and power were extremely great. At one point, they relied on their strength to brutally beat Chaldea's Servants. Their arms could transform into swords or whips, and they could reconsolidate from a state of Black Mud to launch instant sneak attacks.
Chaldea only managed to defeat them with the help of the Grand Assassin, the Old Man of the Mountain.
This ultimately wasn't a Herrscher's home ground. When it came to competing in mass-producing troops with the local Goddess of Creation, Xia Yu could never win no matter what. After all, she no longer had the support of the infinite Honkai Energy from the Sea of Quanta behind her... It couldn't be said to be completely gone; there was still a small pipe connected, but that flow rate could at most support her in unleashing her Herrscher strength. If she wanted to whip up a Great Honkai Eruption like the Second Great Honkai Eruption, she couldn't do it.
To the extent that Xia Yu had to dip into her old savings.
"Two factions of unidentified demonic beasts are engaging in a fierce battle in the Persian Gulf!" Inside the Ziggurat, a soldier of Uruk was reporting. "They are like tidal waves; the quantity of either side could directly submerge the entirety of Uruk!"
"King Gilgamesh, what should we do next?"
The hall was crowded with people. The commotion of that million-strong army crossing the border just now had instantly thrown all of Uruk into turmoil. After all, they were a generation that had survived under the attacks of demonic beasts, making them all too sensitive to such scenes.
In this era, who hadn't had nightmares of Uruk being breached by demonic beasts?
Therefore, not only the soldiers but even the citizens of Uruk gathered together, seeking a sense of security from the King who had protected them all this time.
Hearing this, Gilgamesh glanced at the panicked soldiers and citizens' representatives below, and then looked at the Chaldea group to the side.
He then stood up and said loudly, "Destruction is finally arriving. There are probably about two days left."
This single sentence shattered everyone's wishful thinking to pieces.
Even King Gilgamesh, who had always protected Uruk, had said that Uruk was going to be destroyed!
"But you do not need to collapse along with Uruk!" Gilgamesh looked at the panicked and uneasy crowd below and said, "If you want to seek survival, go to the Northern Wall. If you want to seek a fight, then turn yourselves into the foundation of Uruk!"
"The time limit is until dusk. Go and bid your final farewells to your families and friends."
Hearing this, the people of Uruk did not make a massive racket, did not question, and did not break down.
They merely left the Ziggurat in a silent and orderly manner.
Perhaps in this damned era, they had long since prepared themselves psychologically for the fall of Uruk.
"Even the Northern Wall cannot protect them," just then, a stone mirror rose from the ground. Ereshkigal looked at Gilgamesh and said, "You should know that it's impossible for them to survive."
Gilgamesh merely remained silent, uttering not a single word.
"So, do you want to consider my nation of the dead?" Ereshkigal spoke up. "Even if Uruk is destroyed, I will protect their souls forever."
"Not considering it," Gilgamesh glanced at her upon hearing this. "An existence without a free self is nothing but torment for humans. Your cage of spears is merely a prison that humans can never leave."
"I don't know what she promised you, but Ereshkigal, stop dreaming your unrealistic dream. Your Underworld cannot carry the lives of everyone in Uruk."
"As a god, you will never understand the thoughts of humans."
"...Then what if my nation of the dead can carry everything of theirs? Including their lives?"
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