Defiance of the Fall

.
If it was completed it would span a greater area than most kingdoms, its lines running thousands of miles.

She needed to report this to Lord Atwood and Ogras immediately.
This was too terrifying a prospect, something of this magnitude could never be allowed to be unleashed on a planet.
She was no expert on arrays, but judging by their pathing she guessed that they would have drawn out the whole fractal in just a month.
There was no way they would be able to grind down the main horde within that time.

The worst thing was that she had a pretty decent idea of what the goal of the undead was.
The Undead Empire always aimed to take full control of any planet they encountered during an incursion, turning the world into a land of death.
But how would that be possible when they faced the constant oppression of the planet itself, which was constantly generating new Cosmic Energy?

Perhaps the goal of the massive array was to kill the very planet itself.

Alea hurried out of the town hall and immediately headed for the teleportation building.
But she stopped in her tracks when she saw the large group of people standing in line outside with confused faces.

“What’s going on?” Alea asked the nearest demon with a sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach.

“Something is wrong the array,” the demon warrior said with a slight frown on his face.
“We got the instruction to start moving the base, but the array suddenly shut down again just a few minutes after it was activated.”

Alea immediately nodded in thanks before she hurried into the building to find out what was going on.
She didn’t have Lord Atwood’s supernatural sense for danger, but she grew up fending for herself, which awarded one an instinct for survival.
And her instincts were currently screaming at her that something was terribly wrong.

’

“What’s happening?” she asked when she found Ilvere, standing together with a few non-combat personnel.

“I was just about to call you,” Ilvere said with a somber face before he walked closer and continued with a soft voice that only she could hear.
“Our array is being blocked.”

“How is that possible?” Alea said with shock.
“Those siege tools shouldn’t be available on a baby planet.
We haven’t prepared any countermeasures.”

“I have no idea.
What do you want to do?” Ilvere asked.

Ilvere was a strong military leader, always fighting in the vanguard to bolster the troop morale.
But he wasn’t the best-equipped demon to handle this sort of unclear situation.
Alea bit her lip for a second, before looking up with determination.

“Get everyone ready and immediately recall the army.
Have them return within 6 hours even if they have to run until their feet bleed.
Also, send out scouts to investigate in all directions,” she said.
“We need to get away from here, something is wrong.
If the teleporters are down we can only leave on foot.”

Ilvere nodded and walked out, immediately starting to bark new orders to the gathering crowd.
Alea also left the teleportation room after asking the stationed guards to keep trying.
They had no experts in arrays so there was no one that she could ask to figure out a work-around or a way to dispel the blockage.
They were currently at the mercy of whoever was running interference.

Various thoughts swirled in her mind as she walked back to her own residence.
She quickly put away all her possessions before walking down into the massive room in the basement.
It had once been a luxurious spa with two pools, but Alea had turned it into something else completely.

The larger pool was half-filled with a deep green liquid that emanated small puffs of smoke at regular intervals.
Alea sighed when she looked at her creation.
She was lacking time, and the purification wasn’t completely done.
But her specially modified [Corpserot Poison] should at least be concentrated enough to make most of the elite zombies fall apart in seconds.

Her mood improved noticeably when she walked over to the smaller pool, whose jets kept the liquid inside in constant motion.
The electrical pool was truly a marvel, and she had already decided to get her hands on one of these things for her house after the war was over.
Imagine watching the stars in one of these things, perhaps even with a companion.

’

Alea quickly snapped out of her daydreams and put her hand into the warm golden liquid.
It was as though her hand was a vacuum or tear in space, as the potent poison rushed into her body without leaving a drop behind.
After the first pool was cleared out she did the same with the second pond.

The hours passed as a subdued atmosphere spread across the small town and its 3000 temporary residents.
The human barkeep had tried to enliven people’s spirit by offering his energized concoctions, but it barely helped.
They all knew that something was truly wrong.

The teleportation array was still out of order after four hours, proving that it was not just some odd coincidence.
But worse yet, their scouts had recently found out that their retreating army was harried by a swarm of almost a million elite zombies.
The undead had kept pace with them since the soldiers of Port Atwood left the main horde of the zombies.

“Have everyone returned?” Alea asked as she stood in the command center once more for a final meeting.

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“Three scouts haven’t returned.
They were all supposed to scout northwest so I fear they have met some trouble in the passage,” the scout leader said with a sigh.
“There’s nothing else in the other directions, apart from the beasts.”

Alea looked down at the map with a frown.
Northwest was the direction that she had wanted to move in.
Northwest had a reasonably safe path between two mountain ranges that led to a large settlement after a week’s travel.

If they moved north or east they would have to travel twice that distance in extremely hostile terrain before reaching any town with a teleporter.
And even if managed to get through to the towns they would face catastrophic losses during their flight.
Alea and the other leaders weren ’t like Lord Atwood.
They couldn ’t keep the whole army safe from the continuous onslaught of rabid beasts.

South and southeast were right in the direction of the Zombie horde, and that was to head straight into the maw of the beast.
Especially now that the undead seemed to actively fight back for the first time since the conflict started.

“We’ll head northwest,” Alea said as killing intent started to leak from her body.
“Someone wants to trap us here, but the people of Port Atwood are not so easy to contain.
Prepare for all-out war, we ’re breaking out by force.”