Kain directed the one-of-a-kind Tier 3 construct to turn a bit. The massive, cursed artillery piece looked like it was a German Railway Gun that had been twisted by a more malign and occult force than even the Germans of WW2 themselves, and if you listened carefully while nearby you could almost hear what sounded like the groaning and moaning of a chained lunatic coming from inside the metal itself. This was Kain’s first focus now that he had, during the time leading up to the past week, finally unlocked the Tier 3 Undead, as what else could have such a profound impact on the battlefield against such technologically inferior beings?

The massive shells fired from the undead super gun were easily big enough to rend entire villages apart by the blast force alone if the structures therein were small enough and packed tightly together. And, with Kain being Kain, he had made sure that enough of the shells that were physical and not purely magical were packed with the corrupting compound known as Black Mass.

A single shell could pollute more than a kilometer of space with near 100% certainty, and that was to say nothing of the fact that a decent portion of the Black Mass compound was vaporized when the shell detonated and spread the agent through smog and a light drizzle of the life-twisting goo. While utterly inaccurate, it was not designed to hit the exact same place over and over again. It was designed to fire in a general direction and hit anything that was unlucky enough to be in the blast zone, and that was all it needed to do.

Of course, The Obliterator was nearly immobile, needing both the Dungeon Transport System and some very fancy magic to even get to where it needed to be. As it was not actually a true Railway Gun, it could not rely on train tracks to get it where it was supposed to go, instead traveling merely a few miles each day on slow but massive tank treads. Likewise, the thing was completely incapable of defending itself from any aerial attack or any close-range strike. It had no point defense, and it had no weapons smaller than its singular cannon to hold back any infantry or cavalry assault.

All it had was its absurd levels of durability and the fact that it was made of cursed and enchanted metal that was infused with a near-insane pseudo-intelligence. Despite those shortcomings, it was powerful and very good at its job, as it had already forced the oversized tree with an overinflated ego to quarantine several sections of the jungle after it had successfully lobbed a Black Mass shell over there.

Where it stood right now, though, was a dangerous position. Yes, it was surrounded by no small numbers of undead and even mortals, but it had not moved from its current firing spot in over five days, and that had given the Elves the ability to know what was going on and where their biggest immediate threat was.

While the shelling had gone on for four days (as it took the construct a whole day to settle and prepare for firing), there were still places that had yet to be touched by the aftermath of the rounds fired by The Obliterator. There were channels and gaps between the areas that were now sealed by the overgrown shrub that the elves worshipped, and it was painfully obvious to anyone in the area that the knife-ears were planning an all-out attack to permanently silence the massive gun.

Still, the gun kept up its work until it ran out of Black Mass shells to fire and began sending airburst shells filled with Composite Napalm through the air instead. More and more of the jungle caught fire, but those fires were quickly quenched by elven and tree-kin mages, though it did take them a bit longer than expected. That was not to say that none of the fires raged for very long, as the massive cannon could fire shells faster than the Elves and Tree-men could put out the fires that were set by the explosives.

Eventually, it seemed that the up-jumped bush that styled itself as a God had to get involved personally as large rainstorms formed and hung just over the top of the jungle’s canopy, drenching everything beneath and preventing aerial observers (which were unarmed Fel bats) from helping sight The Obliterator’s weapon. But all of that was within Kain and his Generals’ calculations, and the gun now began to fire without ever trying to hit anything in particular. No longer was it going to try and use gathered data to attempt to hit a certain area; now it was just going to fire blindly and know that it was still hitting something.

And so it did, and the forces gathered around the massive construct continued to dig in and prepare for what was certain to come, sooner or later. The elves had tasted trench warfare in the early days of the war, losing too many of their own trying to take trenches manned by cheap and disposable chaff. Now, however, they were to face a more serious and significant force that had dug in and fortified to a point that it would make the original ten or so lines of defense look like a joke.

Mages constantly cast spells that would twist the landscape beyond the trenches into something unfit for a melee charge and equally deadly for a formation of archers. Mines were planted, razorwire strung up, large metal tank traps were fused to the ground by blocks of concrete and pitfalls were dug and filled with punji sticks. To make things even worse for the attackers, the few places that were left (mostly) untouched were booby-trapped even more thoroughly. Bear traps were laid in tall grass, caltrops were scattered far and wide, and on the flatter parts of the no man’s land, the occasional pothole was dug so that there was a chance that a careless person running into melee distance would step a bit too deep and twist or even break their ankles.

The stage was set for another bloody battle, and this one would most certainly be enough to fully divert the attention of the so-called ‘Great Tree’ long enough for a second front to be opened up near the place where South Africa would have been. Once the militant hippies took the bait, hook, line, and sinker, the southern ranges would face a naval invasion the likes of which had never been seen before on that continent.

And who would lead the charge to lay claim to that portion of the map? Well, none other than the best amphibious forces that Darksol had at its beck and call. And these brave women would be led by none other than the most powerful of their kind, a being so powerful and so massive that the normal mortal mind would shatter like glass when facing it. While she could only go so far inland, her ‘daughter’ could go much deeper, leading the rest of the Naga into battle and lay the groundwork for the rest of Darksol’s forces to move in and capitalize on the beachhead.