Chapter 479: Besieged and the State of the Battle
Mordekian hovered at the periphery of the high-altitude battlefield, his bloodshot eyes locked unblinkingly on Clark at the center.
While continuously unleashing offensive witchcraft, he rapidly issued attack commands based on every shift in the battlefield situation.
Through the mental network, orders stabbed into the minds of every besieging wizard like needles:
âSecond, Third, and Fourth Squadsâmaintain continuous âElement Overloadâ release! Do not stop! Drain his computational capacity!â
âFifth Squadârelease âSpatial Stasisâ curses at 0.5-second intervals to disrupt his spatial witchcraft model construction. Do not give him any chance to escape!â
âSixth through Ninth Squadsâkeep the âLaw Interference Fieldâ at full coverage! Especially prioritize Fate, Time, and Causality domains!â
âAll remaining unitsâunleash your strongest single-target attack witchcraft in rotation according to the timed nodes Iâve marked! Remember!! Sustained, saturating bombardment. Even if he blocks one wave, the next must follow immediately. Give him no opportunity to breathe!â
The besieging wizards executed the commands like a precision killing machine.
More than one hundred seventh-ring wizards and nearly two thousand sixth-ring wizards were divided into twelve attack echelons.
Each echelon, after unleashing one volley, immediately withdrew to recover while the next echelon seamlessly took over, and the one after began charging in advance.
The attacks came like an endless tsunami, wave after wave crashing toward Clark.
Light, darkness, fire, ice, lightning, poison, space, time, emotion, soul, matterâŠ
Dozens of different attribute attacks exploded, annihilated, distorted, and recombined wildly within a three-hundred-meter radius around Clark.
That zone had become an absolute death domain. Any existence below seventh ring that stepped inside would be torn to shreds by the chaotic elemental turbulence in an instant.
Yet Clarkâs response remained suffocatingly simple.
He simply stood there.
Hands hanging naturally at his sides, his black wizard robe remained utterly still amid the violent energy storm.
Every incoming attack vanished silently the moment it entered the hundred-meter range around him.
It appeared effortless and composed, but Mordekian noticed that in Clarkâs calm eyes, extremely faint streams of silver-white data began to flicker in and out.
That was the mental manifestation produced by high-load computation.
âItâs working!â
A surge of excitement rose in Mordekianâs heart.
Though the cost had been grievousâin the past three minutes alone, more than eighty sixth-ring wizards had fallen on the spot due to calculation errors or being caught in the residual backlash of Clarkâs counterattacks during attack transitions.
But at last, they had found a way to suppress Clark.
The principle was simple, in truth much like how eighth-ring wizards faced ninth-grade existences: overwhelm the opponentâs computational ceiling with sheer volume of output.
No matter how powerful, when a wizard wielded power in normal conditions, it ultimately came down to âusing mental power to lever elements.â
Mental power was not infinite.
Computational capacity was not infinite.
So long as the intensity, frequency, and complexity of attacks exceeded the opponentâs simultaneous âinformation flow limit,â even the strongest wizard would be suppressed.
Clark was strongâstrong enough to gravely wound seventeen seventh-ring wizards in an instant, strong enough to casually erase the combined assault of fifty seventh-ring wizards.
But he could not infinitely process more than three thousand differently attributed attacks per second.
âMaintain the pressure! Do not stop!â
Mordekianâs voice carried an irrepressible trace of exhilaration.
After sacrificing the lives of over a hundred sixth-ring wizards, the balance on the high-tier battlefield had finally been restored!
But in the next instant, that trace of excitement vanished from his face.
Because he had diverted a thread of consciousness to check the situation on the battlefield below.
And then his expression darkened completely.
Below, on the battlefield between the cannon fodder legions and the fortress defensive line.
From high above, the cannon fodder flood of the Chaos Secret Cult and Tower of Annihilation alliance still surged like a black tide against Noren Workshopâs steel defensive line.
Yet where the tide struck the line, what splashed up was not sprayâbut swathes upon swathes of corpses.
Noren Workshopâs defensive line was far too solid.
The colossal composite defensive array formed by over a hundred steel fortresses had now completed more than 40% of its energy circuit connections.
The pale golden shield was more than three times thicker than at the start of the battle. The number of runes flowing across its surface had increased fivefold, and its self-repair speed had risen sevenfold.
Even more terrifyingâMordekian could clearly sense that the array integrity of these fortresses was still rising slowly but steadily at roughly 0.3% per minute!
What did this mean?
It meant that Noren Workshopâs logistics wizards were continuing to construct and reinforce defensive fortifications even while the battle raged!
âThese lunaticsâŠâ
Mordekian ground his teeth, pus and blood seeping from his rotted gums.
He had long known that Noren Workshop possessed a large number of logistics wizards.
But this was the first time he had personally witnessed what kind of terrifying âinfrastructure capabilityâ could erupt when hundreds of thousands of logistics wizards gathered together under a unified command system.
Who could have imagined?
On one side, hundreds of billions of cannon fodder legions madly assaulted the line. On the other, enemy wizards unleashed relentless witchcraft bombardment while simultaneously dealing with harassment and sneak attacks from enemy high-tier wizardsâyet amid such ferocious battlefield intensity, Noren Workshopâs logistics wizards still had spare capacity to continue âconstructionâ!
And with such horrifying efficiency!
âThis can only mean one thing.â
Mordekian forced himself to calm down and began analyzing.
âThe current battlefield intensity has not yet reached the âbearing limitâ of Noren Workshopâs defensive line.â
âThe fact that their logistics wizards still have surplus capacity means their defensive system retains redundant computational power, redundant energy supply, and redundant construction personnel.â
âAnd as the defensive line continues to complete itself, this âbearing limitâ is steadily risingâŠâ
His heart sank.
There was a simple logic to positional warfare among wizards:
If the attackers failed to breach the enemyâs line at the outset, then as time passed, the attackersâ chance of victory would decline exponentially.
Because the defenders held positional advantage, pre-set rune arrays, stable energy supply, and layered protective formations.
And the attackers?
Every attack had to be constructed from scratch. Every ounce of mental power had to be drawn from within themselves. Every movement consumed additional computational capacity.
Not to mention that Noren Workshopâs tactic of âfighting while buildingâ was practically a mockery of the attackers:
âYour attacks are too weakâweak enough that we still have time to reinforce the walls.â
So why had it come to this?
Mordekian closed his eyes. His consciousness rapidly retraced every critical node since the battle began.