Chapter 63: Roarrrrrrrrrrrrrrr
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Casualty calls hit Shao's earpiece like hammer blows.
"Bear Army north rampart—down to forty percent. Holding secondary fallback!"
"Tiger armor—five tanks lost, crews dismounted and fighting on foot!"
"Crane air wing— last gunship has fallen, crew MIA!"
"Deer Army scouts—two hover units gone, no survivors!"
"Eagle battery—ammo reserves at critical, fallback to final shells!"
It didn't matter how clear the reports were.
The real truth was in the Wall beneath Shao's boots: it shuddered like a living thing.
Each impact felt like a heartbeat of something colossal, something orchestrating the slaughter.
He knew what it was—the King.
Beneath the sand, hidden from every eye, drumming that rhythm that kept the horde moving as one.
Beside him, Lin Mei leaned against a parapet, blood streaming down her forehead from shrapnel.
"This isn't a battle anymore," she gasped.
"It's a massacre."
Shao didn't answer. He tightened his grip on the railing, eyes locked on the storm.
Through the haze, he could see it—a shape far too large to be any beast they'd faced so far.
A shadow moving behind the second wave.
The end was coming.
And they were running out of men, guns, and time.
Shao drew a shallow breath through his clogged rebreather, the taste of blood and sand thick on his tongue.
"Hold the Wall," he said quietly, mostly to himself.
"Until the last man."
The second wave broke against stone and iron again, and the fortress bled to keep it standing.
By now, the field was soaked in blood, both human and beast.
Smoke curled across the desert. Bodies lay torn, some still twitching.
Fire spread uncontrolled where fuel tanks had exploded.
The air stank of ozone, scorched meat, and sand.
And yet, the battle showed no sign of stopping.
There were no longer clear lines—just shifting pockets of resistance.
Units fought sector by sector, platform by platform.
Soldiers moved by instinct, drawing on training, blood, and fear.
Explosions never stopped. The sand never stopped. The beasts never stopped.
And through it all, one truth echoed in every soldier's mind:
If the Wall fell today, everything behind it—millions of lives—would be next.
There could be no retreat.
No surrender.
Only the Wall… or oblivion.
Dark clouds loomed overhead, heavy with soot and dust.
What little daylight remained was snuffed out by the massive sandstorm that still churned across the northern skies like an airborne beast.
It had transformed the once-crisp horizon into a suffocating haze of brown and red ash, blood, and dust mingled as if the heavens themselves had joined the war.
Shao Yong, Lin Mei, and the other three generals stood atop the highest beacon tower, surveying a battlefield teetering on collapse.
The war between the Nameless Order and the Taotie clan had raged for several hours, and still, there was no end.
The Great Wall—battered and smothered by sand—trembled beneath their feet with every distant artillery shell, every pounding claw against its aging stones.
Wang added, lowering his voice.
"The sandstorm's receding… but we all know what that means."
They looked northward, just as the dust began to settle.
And then they heard it.
"Huff… huff… huff—!!"
A chorus of unnatural whistling surged through the air like a rising tide.
From beyond the horizon came a second wall of dust, not dissipating, but returning.
With it came a new cacophony: snarls, howls, guttural roars—and the unmistakable tremor of something massive approaching.
From beneath the sand, the ground exploded.
Dozens—then hundreds—of Taotie burst from the earth, their claws dripping with blood and soil.
Their eyes glowed with madness, and their charge was not erratic this time—it was coordinated.
"By the heavens…" whispered General Wei of the Deer Army.
"They were waiting for us to lower our guard."
From the farthest dunes, a monstrous wave surged forward, dwarfing anything seen before.
Taotie as far as the eye could see—twice the size of the earlier waves.
"That's no storm," Wang whispered.
"That's a tactic."
It was clear now.
The sandstorm was not natural. It was a weapon.
A low murmur of horror spread through the generals.
"If they can manipulate weather…" Lin Mei began.
"…Then they've evolved beyond anything we prepared for," Wang finished.
Panic threatened to fracture the chain of command, but Shao Yong raised his voice above the chaos.
"This is no time to break. We stand here, or the world behind us burns."
But even he, iron-willed and steeled by war, began to feel the weight of inevitability.
"Estimated force size: over 200,000!" shouted a signal officer, clutching a comms headset.
The number hit them like a hammer.
Two hundred thousand Taotie.
Half a million claws.
Hundreds of mouths that devoured with no remorse.
And they were all charging the Great Wall Fortress.
"Activate Sector V railguns!"
"All Bear units, switch to anti-armor rounds!"
"Deer Army—detonate fallback explosives! Collapse tunnel flanks!"
Explosions erupted across the outer fields.
Napalm rained from Crane Army drones, incinerating dozens of beasts at once.
Eagle Artillery howled across the sky.
The Tiger Army's surviving tanks, heavily fortified with sand-resistant plating, dug into defensive positions and unleashed direct cannon blasts into the oncoming swarm.
Still, they came.
Taotie overran multiple forward bunkers.
Screams pierced the comm lines.
Entire squads were engulfed.
A colonel from the Bear Army activated his exosuit's overload core and charged into the enemy line, detonating himself in a final act of defiance.
"We're losing Sector V!"
"Casualties rising—there's no stopping them!"
Desperation thickened. Several officers looked at Shao.
He didn't flinch—but the words came quietly.
"...Is it time to authorize nuclear release?"
Wang nodded solemnly.
"If the Wall falls, there's nothing else between them and the Central Territories. We've done everything else."
A silent beat passed.
No one wanted to give the order.
Because if they did… it meant surrendering the land behind them to death and radiation.
They were seconds away from issuing the codes.
Then—everything changed.
"ROOOOOAAAARRRR!!"
It was a sound that transcended species, technology, or language.
A thunderous roar ripped across the sky, echoing for miles in every direction.
It didn't come from the battlefield.
It came from above.
The very clouds split open.
The returning sandstorm, once relentless, was blown apart like smoke in a hurricane.
Dust vanished. Visibility cleared. Sunlight pierced the battlefield for the first time in hours.
The sky blazed gold.
High above, soaring across the heavens, a colossal silver silhouette emerged—wings spanning over a hundred meters, lined with lightning-charged scales.
Horns curled back along a regal, draconic face. White scales shimmered in the sun.
It flew with grace, but behind that grace was overwhelming power.
The air itself trembled.
All motion below ceased.
Even the Taoties halted.
Their snarls faltered. Their charge slowed. Their heads tilted, confused. Afraid.
A massive Dragon had entered the battlefield—neither beast nor machine.
A force of nature made flesh.
The creature opened its mouth—and from it burst a stream of concentrated nuclear plasma, bright as a sunbeam, vaporizing tens of thousands of Taotie in a single sweep.
"WHAT IN GOD'S NAME IS THAT?!" shouted a commander from the artillery post.
Shao's mouth hung open, then clenched shut.
"Ao Run, White Dragon of West," he muttered.
The dragon roared again, and this time, the shockwave flattened half of the first wave of Taotie.