At the choke point leading to the temple, the middle-aged priest raised one hand.
Beside him, fifty warriors locked into a five-layer shield wall, long spears braced over the top.
Ahead, the monster horde surged like a tidal wave, crashing toward them.
The priest's face stayed calm as he lifted his longsword high.
"O GODDESS INANNA, GUARDIAN OF URUK—GRANT US THE MIGHT OF THE MORNING STAR!"
The golden radiance of Venus—glittering in the sky beyond Uruk's southern wall—suddenly split, a single beam dropping into the warriors' formation. In an instant, gold light wrapped their weapons and armor, and the pressure they gave off climbed higher and higher.
Then, as though his faith had calmly decided to ignore the shout that came riding down with the same gold—something that sounded an awful lot like 'Holy—who the hell stole my power?!'—the priest drew his sword in, and the remaining light coiled around the blade.
"Hah!"
With a sharp cry, he brought the sword down in a brutal slash.
BOOOOM——
A strike infused with Venus's power flashed through the air. The first wave of monsters was erased in a heartbeat.
The priest's brow pinched faintly as he glanced at the Uruk buildings blown open by the aftershock, then he shouted again.
"Ready!"
The next moment, countless monsters burst out of the rolling dust, shooting straight down into the formation.
Demonic Beasts or these things—it was the same irritating trait: they didn't have to stupidly ram themselves into a shield wall. With their powerful leaps, they could simply vault right into the ranks.
On an open battlefield, Uruk had numbers and could patch that weakness with other methods. But this—just fifty men in a tight square, getting hit from above—would make ordinary soldiers collapse in an instant.
Worse still, as the monsters leapt in, more of them scrambled up the buildings alongside the route to bypass the formation entirely—some pressing onward, others jumping down into the square from another angle.
Thankfully, these warriors were the elite of the elite.
Under the priest's command, in the span of mere seconds, the shield wall reshaped into a hedgehog formation—spikes bristling outward—holding fast against attacks from every direction.
But their attempt to stop the monsters' advance with a shield wall had still failed.
The priest watched the portion that slipped past with cold eyes.
In the next instant, countless streaks of golden light—each a shade weaker than his earlier slash—cut across the street. The escaping monsters melted away inside the glow, vanishing without a trace.
Several priests vaulted in from the rear, landing at the front of the formation. Swords rose—and they plunged into the swarm.
Using the warriors' formation as their anchor, the priests unleashed a storm of sword-qi, carving through monsters in a frenzied harvest.
Even so, vast numbers still flowed around them, surging toward the temple.
...
At the temple's main gate, eight temple guards stood ready in tight formation.
They had no idea why the hundred who'd claimed they would help defend the temple had all vanished, but duty kept them here all the same—ready to live or die with the temple.
Now they could feel it: a presence racing in, utterly out of place against the very air of Uruk and the temple.
Golden radiance flared along the guards' spears, faintly resonating with the engraved magic patterns carved into the temple itself.
In the next moment, countless monsters burst from the road leading into the plaza—and almost at the same time, eight thick beams fired from the spearheads. In a blink, the first wave was annihilated.
The monsters seemed to have no concept of fear. Even after taking that opening blow, they showed not the slightest hint of retreat, still surging forward in a reckless tide toward the temple guards.
Facing monsters numbering hundreds—no, thousands—of times their own, the guards showed no fear either.
In truth, after the harshest training and long immersion in divine power, these eight alone were enough to match one of Ophis's elite units—setting aside their captain, of course.
After three more blasts of the sacred spears, the remaining distance was too short to charge again. The eight guards tightened together, bracing for close combat.
And then—the anomaly struck.
The gigantic Ouroboros spell circle in the sky, which had faded to half-transparency, flared to life once more. At the same time, the magic patterns on the temple behind the guards answered like an echo, exploding with fierce crimson light.
The next instant, the monsters at the very front were crushed into black sludge by a massive object dropping from above.
Less than half a second later, several more came down in succession, each impact shaking the ground.
The temple guards stared at one another, surprise flashing in their eyes.
Those "massive objects" were the golden suits of armor Ophis had deployed across Uruk months ago.
Then an even heavier tremor erupted beneath their feet.
All across the plaza, the ground split open. Countless identical suits of armor began pushing up from underground.
Each stood roughly three meters tall, with formidable defenses—at minimum, the monsters could only leave shallow scratches across their surface—and every one carried an axe-spear forged from the same material as its body.
And then, to the sound of perfectly synchronized footsteps, two ranks of those same suits filed out from within the temple——only then did the guards remember: the temple held the greatest concentration of armor units.
The armor's attack speed was slow, but every swing of an axe-spear smashed at least three monsters back into black sludge. Coupled with their overwhelming defense, the monsters could barely do a thing against them.
The guards exchanged another look, shoulders loosening. They returned to their posts on either side of the gate, but the resolve in their eyes—the readiness to die—had been replaced by something else.
Hope.
Uruk… would be saved.
Similar scenes unfolded throughout the city.
The middle-aged priest cleaved a monster clean in two and watched it collapse into a lump of black sludge. Then, with a deliberately showy motion, he sheathed his sword at his waist, turned, and walked away at an unhurried pace between two advancing suits of armor—leaving the armored force behind to reap what remained.
His troops and the other priests had already withdrawn under the armor's cover. He was the last one left to hold the rear.
At the tail of the evacuation line, the young priest saw the fifty sword-bearing warriors who'd rushed to help—previously struggling on sheer lack of numbers—suddenly freed as the armored force joined in. He let out a breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding.
Once every armor unit had activated, the Ouroboros spell circle overhead gathered a strange violet haze. From within it, lightning fell without end—each strike cleansing a wide swath of monsters. Across Uruk's walls, countless spell formulae appeared, firing beams of magical energy in relentless volleys to harvest the enemy. And atop the southern wall, more than a hundred Magic Cannon spell circles manifested, taking over most of the pressure that had been bearing down on Ishtar and the others.
This—this was the true shape of Uruk as Ophis had designed it.
A fortress-city.
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T/N: HEH LETS GO OPHISSSSS