March of The Dead (MotD)

The Northern Prince of Lissura, rightful king by birthright, stood atop the castle walls, watching the laborers dig the trench and fill it with spikes and oil. As he watched the Imperial Castle prepare for the Demon army marching ever closer, his aids relayed the numerous reports.

Everything from the inventory of weapons and armor, to the number of soldiers available and their Tiers, to the amount of food and how long it would last should the siege be prolonged, to even how much oil the castle had to fuel the lamps, even if it had been years since he had ever heard of a military force needing to use such mundane sources of light.

The Prince, who had taken it upon himself to guard the Northern Fortress of Lissura instead of ascending to his throne, guarding his country from the Barbarians of the City States and even occasionally against the Legions of the Empire, found himself blindsided by the Demons that had flowed out from within his own Kingdom.

The Northern Fortress was a mighty construction, quite possibly the most defensible fortification, even beating the Subterranean Dwarven Forts, even if only by the number and quality of enchantments placed on it.

It had withstood centuries of near constant assault and was constantly repaired and improved. No expense was spared. The soldiers guarding it were the most elite and battle hardened. The ground, mountain, and walls were all so heavily enchanted that unless one had the Magic Keys required, it would take years to change any of it.

And yet, despite all that, the fortress had fallen in a single day. And it was only due to the Prince that it had lasted that long. The fortress was so effective because it only had to defend from one direction.

While their frontal walls touched the sky and were so thick they could house an entire colosseum within, the rear walls were little more than retaining walls. Only a dozen meters tall and a few meters wide. While still imposing, against the surprise attack by a strange new foe in such large numbers, the rear walls had fallen in less than five hours after the Demons attacked the fortress.

Yet the battle had not ended with the fall of the rear wall. It had only begun.

The rear wall had lasted four and a half hours, and while the Demons had taken the entire fort in just one day, they only just managed it with two hours to spare. For seventeen hours, the Prince and the Lissurian Soldiers fought a retreating battle within the confines of the fortress buildings and within the frontal walls themselves.

Seventeen hours of cramped, chaotic, and bloody battle. There was no rest, there was no organization, there was no mercy.

Despite their experience, the soldiers were unprepared for the Demon capability to deactivate their System. Yet still they filled the tight corridors of their fortress and home with the Demon dead.

But the Demons kept coming, without end.

Prepared as the Lissurian Soldiers were to fight to their very last breath, the Prince realized that such an act, noble as it was, would mean nothing in the grand scale of things.

He broke a hole in the Frontal Wall, commanding the surviving soldiers under his command to escape across the very mountain pass they had sworn to protect and had covered in blood countless times.

He was the last to leave his oath behind. The last to step into the pass. The last to escape. But he was the first one to cover the retreat. And when they were far enough away, he was the one to activate the ancient Enchantment. The oldest Enchantment throughout the massive and intricate weave of Magic that was built into the fortress itself, down to the last brick.

The Northern Prince watched the fortress he had sworn to protect explode.

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Slowly at first, small explosions destroyed supports and any paths to escape. Buildings collapsed, crushing the Demons within. Towers tilted, sending their occupants falling to their doom. Fire erupted, filling the tight corridors and small rooms with such intense heat the air rushed in to feed it with such force it pulled Demons off their feet and melted the stone around it.

Finally, the true destruction started. The final Enchantment, meant not to kill any invader that had taken the fort, as the others were, but instead meant to ensure the fort could never be used against Lissura.

The Prince watched, almost in slow motion, as the base of the frontal wall ballooned outward for a moment before the chain reaction began, sending the reaction up the wall from the base, breaking apart every brick from its neighbors, sending them flying, and completely destroying the structure so completely, there was nothing but a pile of rubble spread out across three miles of the mountain pass.

The Prince ordered his men towards the very people they had fought against for years. The City States, having already received news of the Demons invading their enemy Kingdom of Lissura, took in the surviving soldiers with caution, listening to their first hand experience in fighting the Invaders.

All within the first three days of the Invasion. The information the Northern Fortress Survivors had provided had allowed the given the City States and the Empire time to prepare, however little they could. That little time had been enough that though the Demons that soon marched through the Mountain Pass defeated the City State army stationed there, it had not been a total bloodbath.

It had bought the City States enough time to amass their armies and fortify their cities, only managing to lose three instead of all before the Demon's momentum ceased and the true slog of war began.

The Empire had a much greater advantage in that area. With the distance they had from Lissura, and the City States being in between, the Empire had been given much more time to prepare their Legions, fortify their cities and castles, while also train their soldiers in how to fight without the System's aid.

But despite that boost to the initial stages of the war, the Empire still lost territory, and continued to do so. The Demons were simply too numerous, too prepared, too knowledgeable of their enemy, and too individually powerful.

With their own country now nothing but ruin and refugees, the Northern Soldiers, under the flag of the Prince, fought for Humanity without the constraints of a border. They went where they were needed, took what was given or won, and desired little more than more Demon blood to spill.

Nearly three years had passed since the Invasion had begun. The Northern Soldiers' numbers had only continued to dwindle, with each battle, but their power and experience had only continued to soar. Now, numbering only two thousand from the initial fifteen thousand that had protected the fortress, not one was an Adept. Not one was lower than Level Seventy. And over three hundred had advanced to become Masters.

Now, they had been asked to command the defense of Ophera, a large sized castle meant purely for military purposes, initially designed to train and supply the frontier, now the frontier itself.

The Prince watched as the laborers the Empire had given them worked while the Legions continued to train, as they would until the very last moment. He watched his own men and women drill the Gilaen Soldiers or oversee the construction.

Just five years ago, a force of nearly two thousand Experts and several hundred Masters would have sent ripples throughout the continent, threatening nearly any city just by itself. They would have been renowned and no one else would lightly risk angering them. Any who did would likely cease to be.

Now, the Northern Prince worried if they would be enough to see the new year.

The Demons were far from weak, and their numbers could not even be calculated. As the days dragged into months, they only grew more aggressive, more violent, more desperate.

Yet the Prince knew that had the Demons focused their full force on the Kingdoms, they would have fallen within the first year. He knew about the Deep. He knew about how it expended around the entire world, and not just their small continent. He knew it was filled with Monsters, both sentient and not. And he knew that if the Demons wanted to conquer the world, they would first have to conquer the world beneath it.

The Prince just hoped Humanity's unlikely allies beneath their feet could hold on long enough for Humanity to fight back. He hoped that the Three Kingdom Alliance to the East would not collapse. He hoped the Zalarians would continue to hold their ground. He hoped Tauras would not starve. And he hoped that Galmore would continue to serve as a beacon of peace.

For if even a single one fell to the Demons, the rest would quickly follow.

The end of Humanity would be swift, brutal, and bloody.

The Prince chuckled silently to himself in between reports.

'At least Humanity's end wouldn't be quiet.'