‘That’s… a Balrog…!’

Irahan didn’t make any connection with Ian since he was sick of what happened between them.

However, no matter how much he felt pressured by Ian, he had to connect into the game as it was the last day of the Dimensional War, so Irahan made his appearance on the battlefield.

The definite quest “Army of the Devil King”.

All thanks to this quest, Irahan was able to join the last day of the war by safely avoiding any confrontation with Ian.

As the quest of the Army of the Devil King was initiated, Irahan also had his quest triggered.

The quest given to Irahan was to lead the Balrog, and the other Magical Beasts into the battlefield.

This was a quest that Irahan badly needed at the moment.

The reason why Irahan was given this quest was because he was the only user of the top rank who was still in the war.

Even though he fell to the 7th level, he was still in the top 20 ranked Asmodians.

“This is an order from Lord Mahuma! To all the Magical Beasts here! You all must destroy the enemies in front of you!”

Irahan cries rang around the field, seven Balrogs along with thousands of magical beasts and Asmodians plunged into the battlefield.

And this was the beginning of a great catastrophe.

Kuahh-!

The moment a Balrog entered the battlefield, they began to run around wildly.

Kung- Kung-!

Every time the Balrogs stepped foot on the ground, a huge commotion would arise, and human users within a certain range would get stuck with ‘fear’ and magic damage at the same time.

[Magical Beast, Balrog’s unique ability ‘Vibrating wave’ skill has been activated.]

[Health reduced by 79809.]

[The state of ‘Fear’ has been induced.]

[Decreases ATK and DEF by 30% for 3 seconds, and reduces movement speed by 50%.]

[You cannot attack the ‘Balrog’ when within ‘Fear’ mode.]

‘Fear’ was a state that was the highest grade of debuff in almost all categories.

But fortunately, the duration was very short.

But the ‘Fear’s’ duration was all that was needed to get attacked by the Balrog.

[Lowly humans…! Disappear into Hell along with your cries!]

Grrrk-!

The Balrog moved both its hands and its body a little. At that time, flames flashed around him.

Bang- Babang-!

“Avoid it…!!”

“Euahk! It causes crazy damage!”

“Damn it! I was barely hit, but half of my vitality is gone!”

The users started to run away from it, but the users who were still affected by ‘Fear’ weren’t able to do that, they just vanished right from their spot.

It all happened in an instant.

“Euah- uh…! Someone deal with that monster!”

“We are done! We are so done! Who can catch this crazy monster!”

The morale of the human users who were in high spirits went down in a second, and at that moment the Asmodians managed to catch up.

The human users were overwhelmed with what was happening. A red dot appeared in the sky of the battlefield, and cracks began to appear in the atmosphere.

Woong–!

The dealer users who noticed it were all very nervous and aimed their attacks towards that place.

“Something will come out from there!”

From the distorted space, a man wearing a long dark cloak of darkness appeared, and at that moment, the human user’s ranged attacks flooded in the direction of the unidentified man.

Swoosh- swoosh-!

From the ranged magic users to the archer and sniper, they used all their strength to attack.

Numerous attacks were heading towards the man, but the man just smiled.

[Trivial men…]

Weik-!

The man who was floating in the air just waved his hand once, and flames created by magic absorbed all the attacks that were directed towards him.

The users who witnessed this couldn’t comprehend what just happened.

“What the f*ck was that?”

“You can’t hit that man! Change your target!”

The man—who appeared out of no where—looked around the field. He was very satisfied with what he was seeing.

[ I Harsein had come to this place. My horsemen believe me and destroy our enemies!]

The man who just introduced himself as Harsein closed both his eyes and extended both his hands towards his chest.

And in front of him, red energy started to appear. It was a sphere that was growing larger and larger with every minute.

Goo-ohh-!

A storm of magic was about to come in the battlefield.

The human users waited for someone to say what they were supposed to do.

“What’s that? What are we supposed to do?”

“Maybe it’s a wide-area magic attack! Wizards cast a wide-area shield!”

But then.

From the center of the battlefield, a man’s voice was heard.

The voice wasn’t that loud. However, it was clearly being communicated to the users with the use of an artifact.

[Everyone, move to the back! Let’s give out the Alpine plains! Move back to the Serrain Gorge!]

The moment the users heard the voice, they began to turn back in an instant.

The voice that resonated in the ears of the users was a voice that they knew very well.

“It’s Ian!”

“What kind of solution does Ian have for this!”

“Let’s leave Alpine plains at once! All! Retreat!”

And with that, all the human users began to retreat from the battlefield.

The huge sphere that was created by Harsein’s magic burst out, and it exploded behind the human users.

Kwang-!

It was a huge magic explosion, and one could tell that it was dangerous just by looking at it.

“Avoid!!”

Most of them predicted that the users in the back would get wiped out from the wave of pure magic, so they created white shields to protect their rear.

Weing-!

“Blessing of the Sky!”

“Levya!”

“It’s Levya!”

“I’m alive!”

The ‘Blessing of the Sky’ was the highest ranked skill among the powers of a Priest class for protection.

And it was widely known that the only user who could use this was ‘Levya’, the prized ranker.

Kwang-!

The storm of the red magi and the white spirit came into contact.

It was a sacred shield with enormous durability exceeding 1 million.

However, as the explosion continued to push forward, the white shield began to crack.

Crrk- crrrrk-!

Though the shield absorbed a large amount of Magic, the Blessing of the Sky didn’t manage to block the wide ranged spell.

And within 5 seconds that the Blessing of the Sky was able to hold, the other users went into action.

Weing- wheing-!

Priests and wizards from every direction started to create a shield which eventually prevented the storm.

The damage that came in through the cracks of the shield was all recovered by the quick response from the priests.

“Phew.”

“We avoided a great disaster.”

Once Levya was done blocking the storm of magic, Ian along with Remir, Fiolan and a few other ranked wizards launched a wide range attack.

Along with Karceus’ Breath and Pin’s smash, and Remr’s Ignition and Fionlan’s Hell of Ice.

A large number of simultaneous attacks burst out which made the enemy’s attacks towards the human users to be stopped.

So far, there was a wide gap created between the Asmodians and the Human users. At that moment, a purple light began to glow in the human faction.

Weing- weing-!

It was a wide-range magic Scroll that was being cast by the wizards from all over the field.

The scene produced a spectacular sight, and the light eventually disappeared into the air. Numerous human users left the Alpine plains without leaving a single one behind.

If the activation of the scroll was even 10 seconds late, the Balrog would’ve cleared out the whole filed.

It was a situation that was dealt with very quickly.

And the lips of Harsein—who had seen everything—went up.

[This is fun. It’s more fun than I imagined.]

Harsein glanced to the direction of the human users and gave out his orders.

[All my horsemen, follow me…!]

* * *

“Harsein could be a Devil king probably under the rank of 90.”

Yankun’s words made Ian frowned.

‘Devil King… he should have been. There’s no way anyone could have done that apart from a Devil king.’

The human camp was able to overcome a disaster due to Ian’s commands and the ranked wizards.

They gave away a whole map, and arranging the present land will take some time.

But even then, it wasn’t like a lot of time would be needed.

‘Maybe 15 minutes at best. Those Magical beasts will soon be here.’

Ian looked closely at the terrain of the Serrain Gorge.

Fortunately, the Serrain Gorge was a narrow and long map.

No matter how they were pushed, defending was going to be easy.

This was going to be a favorable terrain for the human users who have relatively wider-ranged attacks compared to the Asmodians.

In the Serrian Gorge, there wasn’t any space to avoid the wide-range attacks.

“Ian, what should we do? Even if we manage to pull this off… the difference in our powers is way too much.”

These words from Fiolan made Ian turn his head.

It could be because the appearance of the Balrog and the Devil king was too overwhelming.

Even though the Balrog was 100 ranks lower than the Devil King, it was still a beast that was different when compared to the Noblesse.

‘If we don’t block them in the Serrian Gorge… then we won’t be able to stop them anywhere else.’

Ian briefly explained how Fiolan and the rankers could work together.

“If we are on a map like this, there won’t be any odds. But you know this already, this a narrow canyon.”

Ian swallowed his dry spit and said.

“We need to make the most of the wide-area spells we’ve got. We need to calculate the cooldown time for each user very accurately, and we need to do it without shutting down the shield cycle. If wide-area spells are constantly used, the defense won’t be so easy to penetrate, may it be a Balrog or a Devil King.”

Ian looked at the time and spoke again.

“We have around four and a half hours more. We don’t need to fight them in order to win. If we can hold them back until the time comes then that’s our win.”

Remir nodded then responded.

“That part is right. I don’t know if the strategy is viable or not, but…”

The general cooldown time for a wide-area chilled skill was between 10 to 30 minutes.

What Ian meant was to know the cooldown time and make defense shields that wouldn’t get penetrated.

But this was a strategy that was theoretically impossible.

Firstly, this was a strategy for which it was necessary to grasp the waiting time of the shield skill of all the wizards and priests in the field.

Ian looked around and spoke again.

“If we don’t use our abilities in this manner, no matter what option we choose, we won’t be able to hold them off given how strong they are.”

Ian’s gaze went to Remir.

“Remir take down the attacking order and get it done. I’ll run the shield cycle once.”

Remir then nervously asked.

“Is it really possible? Even if you The Ian…”

Ian smiled and replied.

“We have to try. No, we need to make it work.”

Ian asked Remir of all the cooldown time for the basic shield of the mage class.

He also asked Levya about the priest class.

‘Phew, I’m getting a headache, but these are all the skills that I already knew.’

Ian was nervous.

It was difficult to control the skills of over a dozen people, even if it was Ian, who was in a hurry to memorize the cooldown time of all the skills and run them in a cycle.

Besides, this situation wouldn’t go well if there was any mistake.

Ian opened his mouth for the users who were waiting in the Gorge.

“All the users, share the 2 icons for each of your flagship skills.”

Sharing the icon of the skills meant, talking to the party members about the cooldown of the skill and the attack attributes.

“Other skills can be used at your own discretion, but you will have to activate your wide-area protection and restoration skills according to the given orders. I need to check the cooldown time right now, so I would appreciate your cooperation.”

This wasn’t a function that was used so profoundly when party hunting. That was because a user showing his or her information to others was like being completely naked.

But this situation called for it, and everyone began to share their skills without refusing.

And with the information of the users gathered.

From the entrance of the gorge on the other side, Ian saw dust rise.

Horsemen: by horsemen he meant the Asmodians and monsters.