***

  One of the diamond ranks went high up in the sky and started to conjure huge lightning bolts that rained down in a large area away from the other fighters. Every time one of those lightning bolts hit the ground, it killed thousands of ants in a large area. Soon, those corpses started to disappear, but not before the entire place that was filled up with the endless wave of ants that never stopped moving toward the defensive lines.

  These attacks, along with other attacks by other diamond ranks, were still helping the defenders. It eased the pressure just enough that the generals could direct their fighters into more advantageous positions.

  Whenever they tried to use already existing fortifications for defense, everyone soon found out that for the ants, those fortifications meant nothing, as they were literally designed to move and destroy hard stone. This caused many breakthroughs of the line and the highest amount of casualties before things started to stabilize.

  Now all the defensive lines were made up of multiple levels of platinum-ranked fighters. The first level of defenders stood on the ground, the next on wooden structures behind the first line, and so on until they reached the height of the approaching ants.

  Almost everyone who had made it to platinum rank and used melee skills had a skill that allowed them to project their strikes, which was the only reason this configuration was able to hold against the wave of ants.

  Yet these lines were not perfectly held, as this was still not a good way to fight. Usually, what should have helped them was the huge amount of corpses left behind, but these were dungeon monsters, and soon after their death, they started to disappear.

  They didn’t even leave any loot, as ETG never assigned any to these monsters. The amount of ants, however, even if still only gold rank, was helping the defenders increase their strength. They would need to kill tens of billions to actually reach diamond rank so in the end it did not matter.

  More and more diamond ranks joined the fight, which allowed the platinums enough rest to gather their mana for another shift on the defensive lines. When the tenth day went by, mana was no longer the only problem—it was pure exhaustion.

  Platinum ranks just didn’t have the endurance to keep fighting for so long, even if they got small breaks to recharge. Only about 1,000 had lost their lives, while they had killed about 150 million, yet the flood of ants never stopped.

  When the death toll started to climb more steadily, diamond ranks no longer just went out and killed as many as possible—they actually started to coordinate as well. The generals, however, knew that even with the help of their strongest, there were simply too many ants coming at the same time. They would eventually fall, but that was only if the ants never ran out, and that should not be possible.

  ETG disagreed with that notion, and if he wanted to, he could actually just keep making gold-rank ants to maintain the same amount of pressure literally forever. Days started to go by faster, and the lines of the defenders kept shrinking.

  So many were killed that eventually their lines were so short that even ETG could no longer push the territory disruption devices back. There were now multiple pockets of defenders completely safe from the ants, and everyone was taking a breather after having fought for so many days and killing a bit over a billion ants.

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  Even the diamond ranks were a bit exhausted. They had lost so many more than they expected, but most still didn’t understand what the dungeon was trying to do. They knew it could never truly get rid of them even if the dungeon had basically destroyed all of their facilities, and so many platinums lost their lives that it would be hard to regain the strength they had lost during this battle.

  The fighting had stopped for about 10 minutes before everyone started to notice something weird. It was a sunny day with no clouds in sight, but all of a sudden, more and more shadows started to appear on the ground.

  Almost as one, everyone looked up to see a horrifying sight. Thousands upon thousands of large and small birds were being spawned, all of them holding sharpened sticks of stone in their talons. Almost as if this was the signal, they came to life and started to swoop downwards, aiming their payloads at the territory disruption devices.

  Commands were yelled out. Mages started to put barriers above the devices, while everyone who could use ranged attacks turned their attention upwards and started killing as many as they could.

  Some of the birds were truly massive and were carrying stones that must have weighed tonnes. The defense was frantic, yet confusion broke out when the first barriers failed. But the stones didn't hit their targets; instead, they disappeared like the ants did, although they made it further in. They were never a threat to begin with.

  Of course, the diamond ranks were the first to realize that this must be a diversion, but it was already too late. The territory-disruptive devices almost all in unison shuddered as the ground underneath them cracked. Ants rushed to the devices to bite them to bits. The diamond ranks did what they could to save those devices, but their panicked attempts only helped the dungeon finish this mission.

  Many were still confused as to how anything could get so close to these devices, as their disruptive nature should have also extended downwards. The battle commenced again, as the monsters could now once again surge forward.

  The ones investigating the holes underneath the devices realized that these ants, while quite similar to the ones in the wave, looked different. More importantly, they weren’t monsters but creatures that could live outside dungeon territory.

  The monsters surged forward, but this time, the defenders found their positions in the air no longer as safe as before. ETG never stopped spawning new airborne monsters that continued to deliver their payloads of rocks, which now did hit the defenders.

  The battle quickly devolved into small groups of resistance, while hundreds died in just minutes. The defenders were still making a good account of themselves in small pockets of defense that had enough different types of defenders to keep them safe from all threats.

  Their diamond ranks did all they could, but soon the only people they could keep safe were the ones around them. There were hundreds of diamond ranks, all protecting their own pockets of resistance.

  Only an hour had passed since the territory devices were destroyed, yet all of them now knew this battle was lost. Still, they wouldn't stop fighting. They would show this dungeon why diamond ranks were so feared, and if needed, they would kill another ten billion ants.

  Five hours later, the situation changed once again as pillars started to rise all over in set distances from one another. They were quite thick, and all of them were perfect squares. They continued to extend upwards until their growth stopped at 100 meters.

  Everyone was confused as to what was happening until flashes that looked like gateway activations notified everyone that they were now going to be fighting truly dangerous opponents. From the gateways, smaller parties emerged, all diamond rank, striking against more isolated diamond ranks, either capturing or quickly killing them by overwhelming them.

  Other diamond ranks rushed to help, but before they could get there, the attackers had already disappeared into another gateway. The ones who rushed away from their pockets now had nowhere to return, as the flood of ants quickly overran the people they were protecting.

  It only took a few more of these types of attacks before all the diamond ranks started to move closer together. What followed next was truly monstrous. More and more diamond ranks appeared as the dungeon brought out more and more of its elite forces. They started with ranged attacks, and while the defenders could still fend those off, these types of attacks were tiring as they were coming from opponents near to their strength.

  At first, all of those diamond ranks were humanoid, but as time went on, more and more diamond ranks appeared that were truly monstrous, truly scaring the defenders. They were no longer certain if abandoning their people and rushing the diamond ranks would allow them to truly come out victorious. And even if they did, they would lose so much.

  A decision was made that no one expected to have to make. The ones who started this siege, the ones who had been defending their position now for nearly seventeen days, called for a retreat.

  Slowly, they started to make their way out of the dungeon territory, but they were never truly safe as they were constantly hounded. Before they got out, a few more diamond ranks, along with many more platinum ranks, lost their lives during the slow retreat from the dungeon territory.

  ETG had won his battle; he had driven his enemy, who had hounded him for years, away. But he didn’t stop to celebrate. Instead, he went to work to turn the surface into a fortification that could defend against any attacks, especially from those beam attacks he had seen in Vix’s premonition.