Reincarnated in a novel: I am the villain!-Chapter 306: Meat Grinder!

Welcome to Layer 6," Damien grinned savagely.

"Fire."

*BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!*

Fifty Magitech Cannons fired simultaneously. The recoil was so violently heavy that the reinforced concrete ridge cracked beneath them, sending plumes of dust into the air.

Thick, blinding lances of superheated blue-white plasma plunged down into the bleeding crimson mist of the chasm.

The sheer destructive force of the surface-world dwarven engineering was catastrophic.

When the plasma struck, there was no resistance only the instantaneous vaporization of flesh, bone, and carapace.

The shrieks that erupted from the pit were deafening.

The vanguard of the stampede, a writhing ocean of mutated horrors, giant centipedes, and weeping beasts was caught in the bottleneck.

Thousands of them were incinerated in the first volley.

Thousands more were crushed as the vanguard halted, only to be trampled by the sheer, unstoppable mass of the millions pushing up from behind them.

*Click.*

A massive, multi-jointed spider-demon, half its body already melted to slag, dragged itself over the ridge.

Its claw slammed onto the dirt.

*KRA-KOOM.*

A thermal mine detonated. A pillar of pressurized fire erupted, blowing the beast back into the pit and causing an avalanche of burning bodies to tumble down the shaft.

"Reload them now!" Ziriork bellowed through a magical megaphone, his metallic face slick with oily sweat.

"Keep the suppression fire going! Do not let a single one breach the perimeter!"

For the first three minutes, the Black Thread’s wealth seemed to be enough.

The cannons fired in volleys, and the thermal mines turned the precipice into an impenetrable wall of fire. It was a flawless, one-sided slaughter.

But Damien, standing at the edge with his twilight-purple eyes locked on the pit, didn’t smile.

His [Sensory Intent] was expanded, feeling the vibrations of the earth.

"It’s not stopping," Damien whispered, his knuckles turning white on the hilt of his sword.

"Master..." Isabelle stepped up beside him, her hands wreathed in violet gravity-flames. She looked down, and her breath hitched. "

The bodies..."

The cannons had killed tens of thousands. But the stampede didn’t care.

They were refugees driven mad by a primal, apocalyptic terror.

They didn’t retreat from the fire, instead surged into it.

The sheer volume of corpses piled up instantly, creating a grotesque, steaming ramp of charred meat, shattered carapace, and toxic green blood.

The living monsters simply climbed over the burning bodies of their kin, using them as a bridge to reach the top.

"The cannons are overheating!" a Drifter captain screamed from the gun line.

"The barrels are melting!"

"Keep firing!" Duke Ferro roared, venting a massive cloud of steam from his gears.

"If they breach, we are all dead!"

But the breach was inevitable.

A colossal wave of Abyssal Harpies, creatures with razor-sharp wings and rusted iron beaks burst from the mist, flying right through the plasma fire.

Hundreds were vaporized, but thousands made it through.

They descended on the gunners like a plague of locusts.

"Aghhh!" A mercenary operating Cannon 4 was lifted into the air, his screams abruptly cut short as three harpies tore him apart mid-flight, showering his blood over the remaining defenders.

"Hold the line!" Ziriork yelled, drawing a heavy revolver and blowing a harpy out of the sky.

The defense array shattered. The stampede crested the ridge.

It was absolute, unadulterated chaos. 𝐟𝕣𝕖𝐞𝐰𝕖𝚋𝐧𝗼𝚟𝐞𝕝.𝗰𝐨𝐦

A wave of Magma-Toads, each the size of a carriage, leaped over the barricades, crushing squads of mercenaries beneath their immense weight.

Acidic bile sprayed across the battlefield, melting the cheap armor of the hired guards and leaving them screaming on the ground.

Damien stepped into the fray. His newly forged Eclipse Core hummed, blanketing him in a seamless mantle of gold and black.

He swung the Pantheon Sword, decapitating two leaping toads in a single fluid motion.

He didn’t use flashy, large-scale after all the numbers were too overwhelming.

He became a blur of absolute efficiency, his blade drinking the blood of the abyss.

"Gravity Crush!" Isabelle screamed, slamming her hands down.

A singularity formed, flattening a dozen mutated centipedes into the dirt, but twenty more immediately scurried over the flattened remains to reach her.

To their left, the Dukes were fighting for their lives.

Duke Argent, the liquid-metal shapeshifter, had turned his arms into massive scythes, spinning like a top to hold back a swarm of weeping void-hounds.

"There are too many!" he hissed, his liquid form splashing as a beast tore a chunk out of his shoulder.

Duke Ferro swung his heavy hammer, smashing a charging behemoth, but the sheer momentum of the stampede pushed him back.

Three massive, multi-armed Asuras dog-piled the iron construct, their dark-matter weapons tearing at his metal plating.

Ferro roared, self-detonating a steam-valve to blow them off, sacrificing his own armor to survive.

"Fall back to the secondary trench!" Damien roared, his voice laced with the [Siren’s Chord] to cut through the panic.

"Do not let them surround you!"

Drifters, solid and liquid were dying by the hundreds.

The ground of Layer 6 was slick with a mixture of blood, and the toxic green sludge of the Primordial Wilds.

A young liquid soldier, barely older than a teenager, tripped backward as a towering, insectoid horror loomed over him, its mandibles snapping.

Before it could strike, an older liquid soldier threw himself forward, shoving the boy out of the way.

The insect’s mandibles clamped down, biting on the man in half.

"Run, kid!" the veteran gargled with his dying breath, his sacrifice buying the boy just enough time to scramble behind Isabelle’s gravity wall.

Death was everywhere. It was a suffocating, grinding meat-press of teeth, claws, and panic.

Damien stood at the center of the breaking line, his chest heaving.

He severed the leg of a towering beast, parried a stray bone-spear, and kicked a demon into a thermal mine.

His Celestial Life Physique was working in overdrive just to keep his muscles from tearing under the constant, relentless output.

He looked up at the sky.

The scars in the atmosphere were bleeding heavier now. And the noise from the chasm was no longer just the shrieks of the vanguard.

A low, tectonic vibration was beginning to rise from the depths. It was a sound so heavy it made the blood in Damien’s veins vibrate.

The weaker, frantic monsters of the vanguard suddenly began to panic even more, trampling each other not to attack the mercenaries,

but simply to get out of the way of what was coming behind them.

The true heavyweights of the Abyss were arriving.