novelraw Chapter 234 : Continental Land Collapse
Chapter 234 : Continental Land Collapse
Chapter 234: Continental Land Collapse
The moment they witnessed this scene, everyone couldn't help but gasp.
"Hey, this is just speculation in the end, right?" Oleg said slowly. "The entire continent collapsing—just imagining it is terrifying enough."
Li Ye remained silent, his eyes fixed on Heath.
The latter pondered for a moment, then made his decision.
"Although the chances are high, it's still just speculation," he said slowly. "To seize control of the Underground World, the Human Forces have already invested too many resources. Pulling back now would be tantamount to handing it over to the Monstrous Forces for nothing."
Li Ye took a deep breath.
"Sending troops to investigate critical nodes for pre-buried Explosive Silk—surely we can at least manage that?" he couldn't help but speak up.
Heath and the others shook their heads repeatedly.
The collapse of the Polar Continent.
Just imagining such an event was hard to accept.
There were as many as twenty-three zones here, and the Human Forces had deployed considerably within the Polar Continent.
Moreover, the construction of the dungeon in the Tundra Zone had only just begun.
As they continued the discussion, Li Ye suddenly realized something, and a bead of sweat slid down his cheek.
The Wind Element Civilization had been advancing rapidly in the Underground World. It was likely that the Monstrous Forces had sent it alone to penetrate the Arachnid Demon Capital.
The moment the Wind Element Civilization entered the Capital and began its slaughter, the Web of the End project would activate.
This would probably happen within a day or two.
In the end, Heath chose to believe Li Ye.
He ordered the Level 0.5 Mobile Cities under his command to halt their advance and instead start searching for key structural nodes in the Underground World to check if the Arachnid Demons had buried Explosive Silk.
A few hours later, one Level 0.5 Mobile City made a discovery.
Inside the rock walls of a critical structural node, it found a large amount of pre-packed Explosive Silk.
Seeing this scene, everyone was stunned.
After a brief daze, Heath spoke in a deep voice.
"Leave behind a Level 3 Time Bomb. Detonate it after evacuating this critical node."
The Level 0.5 Mobile City immediately complied.
Through the screen, everyone heard an unprecedentedly violent explosion.
After the explosion ended, the city advanced back toward the node.
At this point, the node had already collapsed with a thunderous crash, even affecting nearby tunnels and caverns, causing them to collapse as well.
Everyone's faces instantly turned pale.
Heath let out a sigh and ordered all Mobile Cities under his command to evacuate the Underground World.
At the same time, he made an urgent report to the higher-ups.
As a result, the Cardinals of the Apocalypse Sect convened a temporary meeting.
"To think that a mere Level 3 Arachnid Demon Civilization could execute such a deployment," Viktor sighed.
Anthony fell silent in thought.
"If we send people now to dismantle the Explosive Silk, could we stop all this?"
Viktor shook his head and tossed a document to Anthony.
Anthony took it and found it to be the latest report from the Titan Throne.
The report indicated that, based on surveys from multiple Polar Continent research bases, the Titan Throne judged that the Underground Kingdom spanned the entire continent.
"Do you get it now? This Underground World is too deep and vast. We don’t have enough manpower at hand, nor can we find and dismantle all the key support nodes in a short time," Viktor said.
Still, Anthony was not willing to give up.
"Then what about deploying the Continental Shelf Stabilizer?" he proposed. "With that thing, even if the entire Underground World collapses, we could still stabilize the Polar Continent."
As soon as those words came out, the room fell silent.
"Anthony, are you sure you want to use a world-class weapon?" someone asked, word by word.
"Mm—" Anthony was about to nod, but as if suddenly realizing something, hesitation flashed in his eyes.
"To use it just to preserve an Underground World... it’s really not worth it."
With a sigh, Viktor casually added a line.
"You should know, the Continental Shelf Stabilizer has the power to wipe out an entire continent."
"According to the agreement, any world-class organization within the Human Forces must consult the other two before deploying a world-class weapon," a Cardinal stated word by word.
As the discussion continued, everyone involuntarily looked toward Cicero.
The latter focused on the table, clearly deep in thought.
After a long silence, he gently shook his head, a trace of a helpless smile appearing at the corner of his lips.
"This time, whether it's the humans or the monsters—we all lose."
With those words, the fate of the Polar Continent was sealed.
"To think a minor Level 3 Monstrous Civilization actually possessed the ability to bring down an entire continent," Anthony couldn't help but sigh.
Viktor stood up from his chair.
"Then let us begin the evacuation."
The fate of a continent was thus decided.
Two days later.
Underground World of the Polar Continent—Arachnid Demon Civilization Capital.
A deep howling sound came from several tunnels above.
The patrolling Arachnid Demon Guards raised their heads, nervously scanning the sky above the Icefield.
It was the wind.
Since the war began, they had become extremely sensitive to the wind.
Because of that Elemental Civilization.
A few seconds later, the central dome of the Capital emitted a sharp, glass-like crack.
The Arachnid Demon Guards were horrified to see web-like cracks forming at the top.
The next second, the ceiling shattered, and a howling storm swept in.
The Wind Elements had arrived.
The Arachnid Demon's tunnels and dungeons, coupled with traps laid using special silk, could repel most enemies—but not the omnipresent wind.
More and more Arachnid Demons were alarmed, looking up at the Wind Elements above.
The leading Wind Element General led its subordinates straight to the palace.
"Come out and die, Ozuma," it said coldly. "Along with your millions of kin."
Accompanied by a series of low chuckles, Ozuma slowly appeared.
"Is there truly no room left for compromise?" he asked softly. "If I told you that the fall of the Arachnid Demon Civilization would mean the destruction of the entire Underground Kingdom—would you still attack?"
The Wind Element General coldly reiterated the Monstrous Forces’ command.
Ozuma gently shook his head.
"In that case, the Arachnid Demon Civilization will face death with dignity," he said quietly. "And you—will die with us."
"What did you say?"
Before the Wind Element could react, it sensed explosions and tremors all around.
The Arachnid Demon Civilization's Web of the End plan had begun.
Triggered through Silk Resonance, the Explosive Silk planted in tens of thousands of key structural points throughout the Underground World activated.
A muffled, thunderous boom came from inside a structural pillar, followed by the entire column collapsing as if kicked by a giant.
Thus began a cascading chain reaction across the Underground World.
The destruction of each structural point precisely triggered the next.
Rock layers shattered like fragile glass, crumbling into countless fragments and dust, plunging downward.
The underground dark rivers had also become accomplices. The Arachnid Demons likewise detonated the infrastructure originally built around those rivers.
As the framework supporting the water veins collapsed and the rock layer structures were destroyed, the once-contained subterranean torrents found new outlets. The high-pressure currents tore through rock walls along the way, flooding into one yet-to-collapse zone after another.
The entire Underground World, like a domino formation being toppled, crumbled segment by segment under deafening booms.
The destruction of the Underground World soon spread to the surface.
Massive fissures appeared across multiple regions of the Polar Continent, and giant sinkholes tens of kilometers in diameter formed one after another. The land and ice around the pits slid inward as if pulled by an invisible hand, forming steep ice cliffs along the edges.
From the depths of the pits came the crackling of shattering rock. Occasionally, geothermal steam would erupt and instantly condense in the extreme cold, forming eerie whirlwinds of icy mist.
Scenes along the coast were even more terrifying. Ice shelves, having lost their underground support, began to collapse entirely. Glacier cliffs hundreds of meters high fell into the sea in slow motion. Each collapse triggered a catastrophic tsunami. Waves over a hundred meters tall surged across the surrounding seas, carrying chunks of icebergs with them.
Faced with the utterly enraged Wind Elements, Ozuma laughed lowly.
“We never belonged to the surface,” he murmured. “But the surface will be destroyed because of us.”
Then he closed his eyes, and was engulfed by the howling storm.
After killing Ozuma, the Wind Elements began a frenzied slaughter of the Arachnid Demons in the capital, as if venting their rage.
The leading Wind Element General, however, lightly shook its head.
“Enough. We have to leave now.”
Indeed, the Wind Elements were capable of escaping from 15,000 meters underground back to the surface—even while it was collapsing.
The Arachnid Demons’ Web of the End had indeed destroyed the Underground World. Its structures and rock layers collapsed like dominoes, trillions of tons of rock compressed, collided, and shattered, burying everything beneath.
But this collapse also created new fissures.
They pierced through the strata and underground structures like lightning, forming broken cavities.
These were the Wind Elements' escape routes.
Led by the General, the Wind Elements dashed along these newborn cracks. They squeezed through narrow gaps during each shift of the rock layers, sometimes rising with the vapor of the underground rivers.
Eventually, a massive pillar of air burst from a fissure in the Icefield, hurling dust and shattered ice into the sky, forming a gray-white tornado under the pale polar heavens.
The Wind Elements regained their freedom.
As for the other troops dispatched by the Monstrous Civilizations, they weren’t so fortunate. They would all be buried underground along with the Arachnid Demons.
By the time this geological catastrophe finally subsided, the entire Polar Continent had been utterly transformed.
The once-flat continent had become a jagged scarred landscape, with countless sinkholes resembling bullet wounds in the earth.
The once-towering polar plateau had become a twisted geological graveyard.
The surface of the plateau was no longer level. Massive subsidence craters pockmarked the Icefield like meteor impacts. The overall elevation had dropped by several hundred meters. The once-lofty ice peaks, having lost their underground support, had shrunk and tilted like melting candles.
“What a mess this continent has become,” Li Ye sighed.
He was now above the Southern Ocean.
Over the past two days, the Human Forces had urgently withdrawn all deployments from the Polar Continent.
Li Ye’s Tomorrow Alliance had regrouped and moved collectively onto the ocean.
During this time, the Dawn had also arrived at the Polar Continent.
Through the Resource Transmission Device, it sent the Tomorrow a series of Level 1–3 resources—Iron Ore, Coal, Saltpeter, and Rare Ore Veins.
What surprised Li Ye the most was the inclusion of 252 units of Level 3 Frost Ore.
With these, he could now build the Freezing Helicopter.
The Dawn didn’t need to return to the Alliance. It would continue serving as a Tourist City, traveling across the continents to gather wild resources for the Tomorrow Alliance.
Using the device, Li Ye transmitted a large quantity of grain, freshwater, and daily necessities to the Dawn.
After applying the Energy-saving Blueprint, the Resource Transmission Device's cost-effectiveness had greatly improved.
According to Li Ye’s plan, the Dawn would continue gathering resources on the Polar Continent.
As for the Tomorrow Alliance, they had been assigned a new mission.
Heath informed Li Ye that, according to intelligence from the upper echelons, a Level 3 Monstrous Mobile Island had appeared on the Southern Ocean.
The island hosted multiple Level 1–2 Monstrous Civilizations.
The reason for this setup was the abolition of the Silence Agreement, after which the Human Forces began indiscriminate strikes against low-level Monstrous Civilizations in the Wasteland.
They mainly targeted Level 1–2 Monstrous Civilizations, as their weak strength and small scale made them easy to eliminate.
In response, the Monstrous Forces had to employ various means to secretly protect these civilizations.
The Mobile Island was one such method.
Hearing this made Li Ye instantly excited.
If they could destroy this Level 3 Mobile Island, along with the Monstrous Cities and vehicles on it, the Tomorrow Alliance could acquire vast amounts of metal resources.
Not only that, but the monsters would also drop massive quantities of loot.
This time, it would be a joint operation between the Tomorrow Alliance and Heath’s Mobile City Battle Cluster.
According to reconnaissance, the defensive power of the Level 3 Mobile Island was not to be underestimated.
The island itself housed Level 3-scale firepower, and the Monstrous Civilizations, to be safe, had specifically deployed a Level 3 Monstrous Civilization force to guard it.
These troops came from the Blood Clan Civilization and the Ghoul Civilization.
Each sent a Mobile City Battle Cluster.
In addition, the Level 3 Mobile Island also contained Level 4-scale military power.
A squad of Level 4 Mobile Warriors.
And a unit from the Wind Element Civilization.
“This is turning out to be quite a headache!”
Hearing this, Li Ye couldn’t help but shake his head repeatedly.
It seemed this Level 3 Mobile Island wasn’t some easy prey—but rather a porcupine.
“Bishop Heath, how many Mobile Warriors are in a squad exactly?” he asked.
“Four,” Heath replied.
“Do we have reinforcements?” Li Ye asked again.
The answer was yes.
The Iron Oath Brotherhood and the Titan Throne would provide military support.
The Level 4 Mobile Warriors would be handled by the Iron Oath Brotherhood, while the Wind Element unit would be dealt with by the Titan Throne.
Li Ye and Heath’s primary mission was to destroy the enemy’s Level 3 Mobile City Battle Cluster and the Level 3 Mobile Island.
As they conversed, Heath suddenly looked toward Li Ye.
“I heard from Whiteman that you’re not particularly fond of Mobile Warriors,” he said slowly.
“Huh?”
Li Ye was stunned.
“It’s best not to hold that kind of prejudice,” Heath said seriously. “Mobile Warriors are the primary external combat force for Level 4 and above Mobile Cities.”
As he spoke, he suddenly realized something and added:
“Once the operation against the Mobile Island is over, the Human Forces’ conscription of the Tomorrow Alliance will be complete.”