728 Arrival of the Mad Gian

The gauntlet remained intact despite the detonation of multiple C4s and the Fortress Golems. The valiant Fortress Golem, who had been left with very little battery, exploded itself guaranteeing that it was useful all the way to the end. The detonation sequence of the Fortress Golem was also meant to break the golem into small unusable parts since there was a decomposition inscription hidden within the destruction ignitor.

By forcefully activating the decomposition inscription, it ensured that upon self-destruction, all the metal parts would rust and likely disintegrate. A sophisticated but surefire way to ensure that enemies would not get the schematics or reverse engineer any particular component.

These precautions had to be built in, in lieu of the Mecha World where their enemies would be smart enough to accomplish such a feat to learn more about their enemies. Jin and Qiu Yue agreed this was a necessary step until they found a cheap way to transport items back to the System's grasp without wasting too many resources.

The explosions did clear some of the debris away causing the colossal gauntlet sank further in, and the height to climb over it was lessened by a little. It wasn't much, in fact, it made it only slightly less tedious for the soldiers to climb over it.

Still, after the honourable death of Chucka, the Fortress Golems in the watchtowers were finally allowed to unleash hell on any soldiers that were climbing over the gauntlet. This forced the Wights to be creative in their defences so that the foot soldiers stood an actual chance in being able to push through.

At the same time, the cultivators had already dug in for the next round of defensive fighting, with some of them also shooting with their bows and guns against any of the foot soldiers.

Qiu Yue had also prepared a few surprises in the barricades for those melee cultivators. A variety of handguns and bolt action rifles were hidden behind the 'makeshift' defence barriers allowing the melee cultivators to take part in these shooting exercises with the foot soldiers as target practice.

While most of them missed because of the lack of training, it nevertheless applied pressure to the demon foot soldiers, causing them to be reckless and making them rather predictable in their ways. (Extra munition was sold through the Pandamonium App and would arrive by Spider Crawlers.)

Suddenly, distant loud trumpet noises came from the safe zone. A few soldiers in the backline turned to take a look, only to realise that Prince Stolas' reinforcements had arrived fashionably late. Trebuchets, Catapults and even mobile ballistae were coming out from the magical portal. The demon army finally had their very own long-range weapons in the midst of battle.

\"Hahahahahah! Yeah, I guess that evens the playing field a little.\" Qiu Yue laughed sarcastically at the sudden turn of events as she noticed that the siege weapons themselves were filled with mages.

Standing at the edge of the equipment, they were providing a spherical shield at each point, culminating in a four-layer magical defensive shield which was able to withstand the barrage of artillery strikes. Not only that, but there was also a staggering amount of mages behind those siege weapons, ready to further the protection whenever needed.

That was not all. Along with the siege weapons, Giants and Demon Trolls had begun coming out of the magical portal with a very special person which Moloch recognised almost immediately. A respected tutor himself and well versed in the art of war, Earl Barbatos, the Mad Giant, along with his army of monsters entered the fray. The demon army whose morale had been dropping ever since the fall of Duke Vepar cheered intensely with the arrival of Earl Barbatos and his Giants.

\"Hahaha! Oh, Prince Stolas! Of all the commanders, you are the only one here? Do you think this is a sign of Moloch giving you a chance to live? You should not waste it and return to the palace. This is not a place to earn any glory.\" Earl Barbatos had been earnestly following the development of the situation in the invasion of Moloch's city, Pandapolis.

A weird name to choose considering there were other things he could have chosen, but the problem did not lie with that. Instead, it was those humans which Barbatos saw that made him think Moloch was still hiding his trump cards.

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\"I guess that's the queue to release the Dragon and Pandjilla?\" Qiu Yue asked when she saw the giants and Moloch shook his head.

\"As menacing as they look, those giant statues only have high constitutions going for them. Otherwise, they have average defence and a rather average attack power...well power is quite debatable depending on who they are fighting with.

Against regular troops, they spell disaster but to Pandawans like Bu Dong? It would definitely be a walk in the park for him given that he now has access to squads too.\" Moloch stated further that those giants were just foot soldiers in the eyes of Barbatos. In his ranks, he still had more agile, smaller versions of giants and trolls that he had not taken out yet. Not even the armoured ones were present in the field yet.

\"So, should we just use the artillery on them?\" Kraft asked without looking up. The crafty fox seemed to be strangely occupied with his personal laptop.

\"No, they will continue to strike the soldiers at the gauntlet. We need to lower their numbers, shell shock as many as possible.\" Qiu Yue replied as she glanced through her options. To deal with siege weapons, she ended up calling Hou Fei, asking him to send in one of the Royal Snakes companies.

To get through their thick shields, she gave Weslie's prototype vehicle even though it was still in the testing stage. The so-called speedy land hover which was capable of hovering above land with the aid of a Lost Tech engine. It has been modelled after the steampunk motorcycle and helicopter the Farming Demon Rats had used.

As much as Qiu Yue liked to control the cultivators to keep them for further use, there had to be a balance for them to see some action. Thus, she had decided to send an unorthodox group into the fray to deal with the giants since regular Pandarens were not capable to stop them.

The Venus Four.