The Arden Fortress had not fallen yet. No, it was still bitterly defending itself. After receiving that message from Dylan, Teresa Hussey whipped her soldiers even more and increased the marching speed.

As they mounted the steep slope, they were soon greeted by the part of the mountain standing tall all by itself. It was the peak of the mountain, dyed crimson by the setting sun. It was the Dawn Peak.

Suddenly, the atmosphere had changed. Seol Jihu had been running forward in silence until then, and when he ran past a certain, intangible 'border', he sensed the air becoming much hotter than before.

It was a bit difficult to put it into words, but he found it harder to breathe and his body felt lethargic, as well. It was as if he was subconsciously sensing the presence of something just past the peak.

He stopped momentarily and that delayed him just for a second or so. When he got to the peak, he found Dylan shaking his head while looking over the edge.

“It's a sea of 'Bugs'. 'Cockroaches' are flying everywhere, and…. even a 'Medusa' is present, I see.”

“A Medusa?”

Chohong's face crumpled in an instant. Seol Jihu sneaked to the peak and peeked over the edge, only to freeze up stiff in place. His jaw fell to the floor from the sheer astonishment.

“Oh, my god.”

“What in the world….”

That was someone's gasp of lamentation that also happened to perfectly capture the feelings of everyone present.

The fortress was built along the undulating bedrock and was an enormous structure that boasted the walls as tall as eight meters high, but right now, its current status had fallen to the sorry, devastated shell of its former glory.

The once-smooth, pristine walls were now destroyed in several places, and most noticeably, the front gate, or what remained of it, was scorched jet-black and had been split into countless pieces, making it hard to tell what just happened to it.

Although it was blurry, the black dot-like things were in the middle of trying to rush past the now wide-open gateway. Besides those, one could also see countless large flying creatures spread around to every part of the fortress to hasten its destruction or to simply fly around in confusion.

Within this confused maelstrom, the soldiers of the fortress were desperately defending that gateway with everything they had.

Every second mattered...