The sea boiled.
From the cliffs of the coast, the children watched in silence. Waves churned unnaturally, foaming as if the ocean itself rejected what was coming. And then they saw it.
Tens of thousands—no, hundreds of thousands—of figures surged from the depths. Serpentine tails. Scaled warriors. Colossal worms with gaping maws. Grotesque amphibians with gnarled limbs and croaking battle cries. And among them, towering, monstrous creatures of the Tidehunter race—hulking beasts with coral-armored hides, wielding tridents the size of trees and hurling watery shockwaves that crushed stone.
They didn't sneak.
They marched.
A tidal army surging toward death.
Atop the Necropolis wall, Vanthelis stood silent, one hand on the ledge as the map burned behind his eyes. He had seen it. He had known they were coming. And he had chosen this place as the killing field.
Beside him stood Ishlar—now reborn in dark armor, his once bright eyes now dull blue, the holy energy in his veins corrupted but alive.
"How many?" Ishlar asked, scanning the horizon.
Vanthelis didn't blink. "Too many to count. Doesn't matter. Hold the line."
And the line was ready.
Towers. Dozens upon dozens. Spirit Towers flanking every path from sea to shore. Their tips glowing with death energy, their skull-carved peaks humming in a low, pulsing chant. The coastline was a fortress—unforgiving and prepared.
When the Naga wave reached the shore, they let out a collective roar—shrill and guttural, ancient and alien.
The Spirit Towers fired.
A beam of pure necrotic energy struck a Naga warrior in mid-leap. She screamed, dissolved, and exploded into rotting steam. Dozens more followed, burned down by the overlapping fire of towers. The beach turned into a charred graveyard.
But they kept coming.
The worms tunneled under the sand, erupting beneath the towers and attacking the Acolytes who dared repair them making the acolytes retreat. Croakers hurled blobs of shield bubbles, making the other croakers more durable to battle. And the Tidehunters—they slammed their tridents into the sand, calling forth geysers that shattered tower foundations.
One tower fell.
Then another.
But for every death, for every crumbling wall, fifty Naga bodies fell in return. Ghoul packs, now nearly a hundred strong, darted in from hidden trenches and tore into the injured. They did not care for glory. They were but claws and teeth, fueled by undeath and hunger.
From behind the frontlines, the gnolls watched.
Seventy of them. Crossbows in hand. Spears sharpened. Ready—but not moving.
The Naga Queen, floating above the sea on a chariot made of writhing eels and bone, hissed as she saw those gnolls that is like a dog to her.
"Traitor," she spat looking at Vanthelis.
Vanthelis looked at her and met her gaze from atop the cliffs. Then slowly, he raised her hand and gave a mocking grin—a salute of his middle finger.
The Queen screamed in fury, her voice echoing across the water.
"I will turn your kind into collars and chains!"
But Vanthelis did not move.
The tide of battle swelled.
Tidehunters breached the second wall of towers, smashing their way through and unleashing roars that shook the trees. A few Acolytes panicked and fled.
A third wave surged behind the Naga frontlines—elite warriors, armored in black coral and enchanted shells, their weapons glowing with forbidden magic.
But the fourth tower line automatically fired.
"Now," Vanthelis whispered.
The ghouls that has been waiting for ambush jump to the nagas as rhey bite and tear their flesh killing them. Making them a pile of bodies.
It was not a victory.
Not yet.
More towers fell. The beachhead was scorched black. Smoke and fire mingled with salt and blood. But the line still held. Bodies littered the ground. Thousands of Naga corpses choked the shore—but tens of thousands still waited in the deep.
From a distant cliff, Dorothy who was a cripple can only watched with worry.
This was only the beginning.
And Vanthelis knew it.
"We need your strength Ishlar, after a few more minutes i want you to use the scroll of invulnerability again with the gouls and gnolls to attack and after 6 seconds retreat" he muttered. "We need more towers but we dont have enough gold now."
Ishlar's blade glowed faintly.
"We need more," he replied.
The sky darkened further—not with clouds, but with war.