The eastern horizon of the Jiuzhou Borderlands didn’t simply break. It tore open like wet butcher paper under a dull cleaver. Through the smoking rift in the earth, twenty thousand armored Vanguard Fiends surged upward in an unbroken tide of chittering black glass plates, serrated jaws, and oily green ichor. Their heavy clawed limbs struck the trembling soil in a rhythmic, ear-splitting rhythm like millions of iron sledgehammers pounding a hollow bronze bell.
Up on the castle low roof walls five miles to the rear, sect elders of the Great Sun Valley dropped their sword sheaths. “The Iron-Shelled Swarm of the Underground Trench!” an elder shrieked. “Their back shell is infused with deep-sea black-iron! Even a flying sword at full golden radiance will merely ricochet off their skulls! Fall back to the mountain pass!”
“There’s no retreating!” Commander Zhao roared, gripping the stone castle walls. “The civilian transport wagons have only cleared Sector 4! If that vanguard breaches the plain, three million souls will be ground into paste!”
Down in the dust of the forward outer edge, Frank didn’t look up from his metal folding camp chair. He reached into his canvas lunch cooler, pulled out a thick fine china jar of pickled mustard greens. Then he unscrewed the lid with a dry pop. He chewed slowly, studying the approaching demonic blast wave through a pair of scarred brass measuring tongs.
