Dorothy’s Forbidden Grimoire

Western Addus, Desert surrounding Karnak.

At the break of dawn, sunlight had just begun to spill over the horizon, its faint glow tinting the eastern sky with crimson hues. The land was waking from slumber, and a new wave of scorching heat was poised to sweep across the desolate expanse.

Across the vast wilderness, trenches stretched in rows, sandbags piled high. Most of the Savior's Advent Sect soldiers stationed in these defenses remained fast asleep. In this moment between night and morning, even the few on night duty were yawning endlessly. Some slouched lazily at their posts, while others had already found a corner to doze off. A few gathered in twos or threes under lantern light, still finishing their overnight card games.

Though the threat of war loomed close, the frontlines surrounding Karnak were loosely guarded. Partly due to lax discipline, but primarily because the soldiers weren't truly responsible for defense. That task had been handed to the ten-kilometer-wide undead surveillance zone. It was the undead who were the real sentinels here.

Thousands of undead, tireless and sleepless, wandered the desert day and night. Any suspicious entity, anything larger than a dog, would be detected and reported. For the soldiers in the trenches, active vigilance felt unnecessary.

In fact, even basic combat readiness was lacking. The surveillance zone's sheer size guaranteed early warning. If the enemy attacked, soldiers would have ample time to return to their posts. Without scouts, enemy artillery couldn't find their targets. Meanwhile, friendly artillery, guided by undead sightings, could bombard attackers with impunity. When the battle started, it was almost always a one-sided suppression.

Indeed, the Revolutionary Army from Dorsa had launched several attacks on Karnak over the past days. Each time, their troops were intercepted by undead far from the trenches, triggering indiscriminate bombardment from the defense lines. The attackers were routed before even reaching the fortifications. The defending soldiers didn't even need to see their foes—just fire blindly and repel them. Under such conditions, it was impossible to remain motivated or alert.

Although commanders repeatedly urged vigilance, the soldiers, protected behind a curtain of undead, found it hard to maintain tension.

And so, in this atmosphere of slackness, Karnak's frontline welcomed a new dawn—until a sharp and piercing trumpet echoed across the defenses, startling every sleepy soldier upright.

Upon hearing it, the sentries sprang into action, ringing bells, shaking awake comrades, and rousing the entire outpost into a combat stance. Despite the urgency of the alarm, their movements remained relaxed. They were, after all, confident that the enemy was still ten kilometers away. They believed there was time.

But just as the camp sluggishly began preparing…

A strange whistling pierced the morning air.

Some soldiers looked up in confusion, "What's that sound?"

The whistle grew louder and louder, then suddenly surged into a deafening boom.

BOOM!!

A massive explosion erupted without warning across the trenches. From the direction of the artillery emplacements, a fireball tore through the earth. The shockwave and flames surged outward, clouds of sand flung into the air. Soldiers and cannons in the blast zone vanished in an instant. Those slightly farther were thrown to the ground, bloody and screaming. Even more distant soldiers dropped flat in terror, dirt raining down over them.

In moments, fire bloomed across the entire line. Shouts and curses rang out. That one explosion did more to wake the soldiers than any alarm ever could. Men scrambled to understand what had just happened. Many wondered aloud.

"Was it some idiot in logistics who blew up the ammo stockpile?"

But what came next left no room for doubt.

BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!

One explosion after another echoed across the desert. Red blossoms of flame erupted across the trenches and surrounding sand. The thunderous blasts shook the entire earth. Countless soldiers, still outside the bunkers, were caught in the open and killed outright.

It was only then that the defenders finally realized.

This wasn't an accident. They were being shelled. The enemy was bombarding them!

Panic surged. The troops scrambled to organize a counter-bombardment, but it was already too late. The initial enemy salvos had already suppressed their defenses. Several of their few remaining cannons had been destroyed. Retaliation was near impossible.

As casualties mounted, the survivors could only hunker down in their bunkers, trembling. And the same question echoed through their minds.

"How did the enemy artillery hit us?Wasn't the undead surveillance zone supposed to stop their scouts?!"

…

Meanwhile, on the far side of the desert, over a dozen cannons had been arranged in rows, their black barrels aimed toward the sky. Under the hands of skilled artillerymen, they roared relentlessly, hurling shell after shell toward the distant enemy.

This scene repeated itself across the wilderness. At the edges of the undead zone, multiple artillery positions rained coordinated fire onto the Karnak defenses. The quiet dawn was shattered by a wall of thunder.

These cannons had been gathered from all across Addus. Over the course of more than a week, heavy guns, ammunition, and elite forces had been transported from every front, assembling for the final battle of the Addus civil war.

The artillery came in many models. Low-grade cannons built in Addus were aimed at standard fortifications. Imported precision weapons from major powers of the Central Continent were reserved for artillery nests and command centers.

After years of war, Addus had accumulated a considerable arsenal. The Revolutionary Army's combined artillery force now outnumbered the Karnak defenders' by more than tenfold.

…

As the barrage pounded the frontlines, the undead inside the surveillance zone began to respond. Ghosts, zombies, and skeletons rallied under some kind of control and launched a countercharge.

They raised their rifles and charged the artillery positions, firing as they ran. But their bullets were stopped by a massive wall of ice, conjured in an instant.

In the heart of the desert, such solid ice should be impossible, yet here it was, blocking bullets and shielding the soldiers behind.

From behind the frozen wall, General Shadi, clad in full officer's uniform, vaulted forward.

Facing the horde of undead charging at him, his expression did not waver. He raised a hand and released a massive undead repulsion spell. Instantly, the lesser-controlled undead recoiled in terror, dropping their weapons and fleeing.

Some zombies and skeletons were so deeply affected that their spiritual cores were directly expelled. The skeletons collapsed into bone heaps. The zombies dropped lifeless to the ground.

Other undead were blown apart by grenades lobbed from behind the ice wall. The attack formation was utterly shattered.

Seeing such a terrifying undead army collapse before General Shadi, the surrounding Revolutionary Army soldiers erupted into jubilant cheers. Witnessing the dead fall so easily filled their hearts with courage.

And at that moment, Shadi raised his voice and roared.

"Go, warriors of Addus! This is the final battle—for Addus!"

Amid Shadi's rousing call, the advance trumpet echoed from among the soldiers. Spurred on, the Revolutionary Army surged forward. As they approached the ice wall, the barrier ahead of them vanished without a trace, clearing their path toward the land of the dead.

Standing still, Shadi watched his troops march ahead. Seeing no counter-barrage from the distance, he finally let out a long breath. Then, he reached into his uniform and retrieved a folded sheet of paper.

Unfolded before him was a complete map of Karnak's military deployment, marked with every frontline position and artillery emplacement. It was based on this intelligence that Shadi's artillery had accurately suppressed Karnak's defenses with their first volley, knocking out enemy artillery before they could retaliate, and allowing his army to advance unhindered.

"No counterfire at all… Their intel was spot-on, uncannily so…"

Shadi murmured in awe as he looked at the map. At this moment, he was sincerely grateful he hadn't stood against the Heaven's Arbiter Sect.

Armed with such detailed intelligence, combined with overwhelming firepower and manpower, losing this battle would be almost impossible—so long as no high-rank Beyonder interference occurred.

And that possibility… wasn't zero.

…

After the first blast of artillery, from multiple directions beyond the surveillance zone, Revolutionary Army forces, over seventy thousand strong, began an encircling assault on Karnak. The battle ignited on all fronts. Waves of soldiers advanced into the undead perimeter, clearing a path under the leadership of specialized Silence Beyonders, using rifles and grenades to blast through the undead ranks as they pressed toward Karnak.

In mere moments, the massive undead zone was lit with conflict. Everywhere was fighting. From every direction, multiple forces simultaneously breached the surveillance barrier. Undead scouts began flooding intelligence back to Karnak, directly into the Nether Coffin Order's intelligence center.

But the problem was, these undead messengers lacked the judgment to prioritize intel. All reports were transmitted indiscriminately: raw, unfiltered, and in overwhelming quantity.

Seventy thousand troops, attacking from over a dozen directions, covering miles of front line, with varying intensity of skirmishes and artillery fire…

The sheer volume of reports overwhelmed the intelligence center, crushing the analysts under a mountain of data. No matter how hard they worked, it was impossible to keep up. Chaos erupted.

The small intel center simply couldn't handle the workload. This was far beyond what human cognition could process. In less than an hour, the system collapsed. Messages from the undead could no longer be accurately relayed to the appropriate frontline units, throwing the defenses into further disorder.

In the chaos, many critical alerts were ignored. Among them, one read:

"At a location 20 km east of Karnak, a small flying object is moving rapidly northward—appears to be two individuals riding a flying carpet…"

…

On the chaotic battlefield, far from the front lines, a blur shot through the sky.

It was a flying carpet, gliding meters above the ground at high speed. Upon it sat two figures clad in robes and turbans: Dorothy and Nephthys.

"Miss Dorothy… the fighting's already started. Are we really not going to help them?"

Nephthys asked nervously, gazing into the distance where artillery boomed. But Dorothy responded coolly.

"Don't worry. Let Shadi handle the front. What we're doing is no less important. If anything, they're the distraction. We're the key."

As she spoke, Dorothy accelerated the flying carpet beneath them. The two of them looked like something straight out of an Arabian fairytale, but the truth was less magical: the "carpet" was an ordinary rug, and the actual flying mechanism was a large magnetic steel plate hidden beneath it, which Dorothy controlled using her magnetism abilities.

Their destination: the Dead Eagle Valley, nestled in the Longblade Mountains, now visible ahead.

Thanks to careful timing and path selection, they approached Rachman's Royal Mausoleum undetected.

…

North of Karnak, nestled in the tall peaks not far from the city, was a lifeless, jagged valley. Among the cliffs was a massive, pitch-black cave mouth. In front of it were stockpiled supplies and several open tents.

Deep inside the cave, murals adorned a tall interior wall. And within that wall appears a large opening, blasted through. Beyond it were a series of destroyed corridors, and at the far end—a spacious underground hall.

Six towering stone columns, arranged in two rows, held up the vast chamber. Between them lay a wide tiled floor, and in its center, a faintly glowing Silence-path ritual array.

At the heart of the array hovered an iron goblet, engraved with swirling skulls. At the far end of the hall, a massive door, nearly ten meters tall, was engraved into the rock wall—cold, dark, and foreboding.

Beneath the door, wooden crates had been piled. Inside the opened boxes, one could see neatly stacked explosives. Several soldiers were approaching, shouldering more crates of explosives to add to the pile.

This scene was witnessed by Mohn, who had just arrived in the underground chamber. He frowned sharply and barked.

"What are you doing?! Drop that stuff! It's not time for explosives yet!"

Startled, some soldiers paused. After seeing Mohn, one of them answered.

"Mr. Mohn, there's been an emergency. Shadi has already launched a full-scale offensive. The situation is critical. His Excellency Shihab ordered us to blast open the Sepulcher immediately. We can't wait any longer!"