Chapter 680 – Protecting the Homeland

Wei Gan was a Dark Mage who had lived in Demon City for a long time. He wasn’t from the Calci Family, once can say that he had nothing to do with the Calci Family at all. However, one shouldn’t think that he’s just a simple character. More than a thousand years ago, Wei Gan’s ancestors were formidable Mages of a huge empire, their family even held the title of a Duke.

However, it was just a pity that the Empire that his family held loyalty to was extinguished by the Lyon Empire. Since their family were loyalists to their Empire, the Lyon Empire took their title away. Moreover, they were also suppressed everywhere. In the end, their family couldn’t endure it anymore and ran away to Demon City.

In every empire, there would always be a place where the strongest people gather. Take the Lyon Empire, for example, formidable characters would flock towards the town on the foot of Accra Mountain. For the Buddha Empire, that place was Demon City. Demon City was very suitable for Dark Mages to live in. Therefore, the Gan Family decided to settle down here. And even if Demon City was inside the Buddha Empire, the Empire’s power was actually weak here This made it possible for the family to find their place.

However, Demon City was just unsafe to begin with. About some hundreds of years ago, a dark creatures and undead suddenly ran out of the Demonic Abyss and made a large scale attack on Demon City. The city was close to being overwhelmed, and even if the defense was successful, a lot of Dark Mages had fallen in the process. At that time, the Gan Family wasn’t spared form the losses. In the end, the family didn’t manage to stabilize their footing and slowly lost its power over time.

In the current time, the Gan Family was reduced to a few dozen Dark Mages. But even so, Adventurers and other Dark Mages still didn’t dare to underestimate them. Because of the Gan Family’s long history, their dark magic spells were quite formidable. And most importantly, the Gan Family had always treated the Demon City as their home, greeting everyone in the city as though they were family members. Every single inhabitant of the city was very respectful towards the family. If ever some kind of conflict arises, the Gan family would even be asked to mediate.

Wei Gan was only an ordinary Dark Mage in the family. He wasn’t the Patriarch nor was he the successor. He was just any ordinary Dark Mage.

The Buddha Empire had already told the city about what would happen. At the same time, the Empire had also started to gather up some troops and sent them here. They also invited the Adventurers, Dark Mages, and Dark Mage families to stay and defend the city together.

This was where the Gan Family didn’t disappoint the Buddha Empire. They were the first ones to lobby the Adventurers and Dark Mages to stay inside the City and help with the defense. In the end, the majority of the strength of the City remained.

Not only this, the Gan Family also sent their members in order to help the army guard and patrol the walls. Because of the Dark Mages’ sensitivity to the dark element, the patrol went very smoothly, saving the army a lot of effort.

One could say that Demon City’s topography was very strange. When constructing Demon City, the main goal of its infrastructure was to defend against the Demonic Abyss. As for the Demonic Abyss, since it had the word ‘abyss’ in its name, then it was no wonder that it was very deep. As to how deep? Nobody knows. Everybody who came to deeply explore the area weren’t able to return to tell the tale.

So how big was the Demonic Abyss? If one were to look, the Abyss appeared just like a giant crack in the world ten thousand li(.5km) long, with the widest opening spanning more than 2000 li. There was also a gentle slope on the ground just outside Demon City, the other places were steep cliffs where magic beasts weren’t able to crawl on. Most importantly, a dark mist covers the Demonic Abyss all year round, making people unable to clearly see anything.

It was precisely because of this that Demon City existed. If one were to speak about the continent’s oldest cities, then Demon City would surely be up there. It was even said that the city had existed for as long as the Demonic Abyss itself. But in any case, whenever war erupts in the continent, almost nobody came to touch Demon City. This was because the city didn’t have regular armies defending it. Most who were inside the city were Adventurers, Mercenaries, and Dark Mages. This made the city something that looks like it didn’t belong in this world. For many years, the same composition of people were defending the city, Therefore, people from the continent had quite a complicated view towards this place.

On this day, Wei Gan was on the wall, staring blankly at the distance. His current position right now wasn’t in the city’s eastern wall, which meant that he wasn’t facing the Demonic Abyss. It was a wall that faced the continent, so it should be quite safe. However, Wei Gan still needed to inspect the place because the Buddha Empire had sent word that people from the Demon Realm had already infiltrated the continent. This meant that they might take the city at any time.

Wei Gan looked at the surrounding army. These troops weren’t the Buddha Empire’s most elite cavalry. These people knew why they were here so they all had a very serious look on their face.

At this time, Wei Gan noticed a dark spot in the horizon. It was flying towards the city, he even thought that it was a creature of darkness.

The Gan Family’s dark magic held some differences to the continent’s dark magic, this gave the members of the Gan Family much more sensitivity towards dark energy. Therefore, when Wei Gan felt the dark energy coming out of the dark spot, and that the direction of the spot seem to be heading towards Demon City, he immediately thought of the Buddha Empire’s warning. His heart immediately started to beat as he shouted, “Everyone, a dark creature that come from the mainland is heading here. Prepare yourselves!”

Although the army that the Buddha Empire sent weren’t the most elite Iron Cavalry, these people were still elites in their local military. Before these soldiers came here, they were also instructed to cooperate with the Dark Mages since these people were very sensitive towards dark creatures. Seeing that the Buddha Empire were giving high regard to the Dark Mages in the city, the army immediately stood up when they heard Wei Gan’s voice. The magic cannons were then prepared as well as the ballistas.

Just as they got ready, the dark spot in the distance suddenly flew faster towards them. These people became nervous, especially the artillery troops. They were anxiously looking at the dark spot. Since the magic cannons and the ballistas were their only defensive weapon, the flying enemy would surely target them first.

The dark spot continued to slowly grow larger, and as soon as the people on the wall recognized what the dark spot was, all of them were shocked. It didn’t matter if they were from the Buddha Empire’s army or the Dark Mages, their expressions were the same. The dark spot turned out to be a Bone Dragon, and on the skull of the Dragon stood a very ordinary looking Dark Mage.

But who in Demon City wouldn’t be able to recognize who this person was. Perhaps they might not recognize his face, but his reputation surely rang in their minds. This was Zhao Hai Buda, Lyon Empire’s Emperor, and the continent’s strongest Dark Mage!

Zhao Hai was now widely accepted as the strongest Dark Mage in the continent, every single citizen in the various empires already knew about this point. He managed to kill Dragons, unearthed the conspiracy of the Demons, and even became the Emperor of the Lyon Empire. Every single Dark Mage almost looked at him as a God. For them, Zhao Hai was a deity that was aloof as he overlooked them.

Zhao Hai had rested well inside the Space. After seeing Laura and the others, he immediately went out. He had already taken a look at the situation in Demon City. Seeing that there weren’t any serious matters going on, Zhao Hai decided to come out in a far away place and then rode a Bone Dragon towards the fortress city, enjoying the wind that was hitting his face.

Zhao Hai didn’t immediately enter the city, when he saw the wall, he had the Bone Dragon go down to the ground outside the city and walked down from it. After storing the Bone Dragon, he walked slowly towards the city’s wall.

The defenders on the wall immediately reacted. An officer shouted towards the soldier at the gate, “Quick, open the gate, hurry up!” Then just as the officer rushed towards the gate, he noticed that someone had come faster than him, it was Wei Gan.

Wei Gan, who was just a common Dark Mage, was actually quicker than him, a 7th rank Warrior. This made the army officer look at him in a strange manner, wondering if Wei Gan was both a Mage and a Warrior.

Naturally, Wei Gan wasn’t a Warrior, he was only a Mage. The reason why he was so quick was because he was too excited. When the army arrived, he had head that Zhao Hai would also be personally coming in order to take command. This made all of the Dark Mages excited, they can actually see Zhao Hai with their own two eyes. This was a very extraordinary matter. However, people were still quite doubtful about this fact. After all, who was Zhao Hai? He was the Patriarch of the Buda Clan and was also the Emperor of the Lyon Empire. Although they knew that Zhao Hai was able to kill Dragons, would such a person still risk himself in order to come to Demon City?

For the people in Demon City, Zhao Hai was a distant person, one who wouldn’t stain his hand in a messy situation like in Demon City. Most of the people in Demon City didn’t actually expect Zhao Hai to come, they just thought that the Buddha Empire only said this in order to comfort their hearts. The main reason why these people stayed in the city was because they needed to protect their home. No matter what words the higher ups say, these people would still stay behind.

They weren’t doing this in order to protect the Human Race, nor was it because of their dedication towards the continent. For them, waging war with the Demons was just a way to protect their homeland.