As the giant flying gauntlet grabbed the watchtower like a kid taking a piece of lego brick, the defenders reacted by attempting to annihilate the source of trouble, Duke Vepar.
However, knowing that their commander was now in a vulnerable state because of the size of the gauntlet, Vepar's personal regiment of Fallen Angels proceeded to protect him at all costs.
Royal Snake Snipers attempted to remove Duke Vepar from a distance, but those pesky Fallen Angels were always blocking the view to the target. Furthermore, killing one only exacerbated the situation as more and more Fallen Angels grouped together.
Alone, they were like a one-man army, but that title was quickly stripped off after a hail of bullets lead them to either a watery grave or bleed to death from the fall into the barricades. (If unlucky, the cultivators would take the chance to accelerate the fate of those Fallen Angels who landed near them.)
As a group, their odds increased thanks to their innate trait of chain healing. It allowed them to improve their healing potential exponentially the more of them there were. Even Duke Vepar's previous injuries were slowly being healed, making him healthy enough to wreak further damage on to the sky bridge while making sure the demon army was able to pass.
\"You think you could give it a shot?\" Yue Han asked after they managed to regroup with Bin Yong and Luo Bo as the giant flying 'gauntlet' was moving to break the watchtower it had grabbed and break it in half.
\"I'd love, but I fear I do not have the energy! Half of my squadmate AIs have been killed trying to block the attacks for me.\" Luo Bo answered. She took a deep breath and exhaled quickly just to have a chug of chi potion.
\"I'm no better. I also lost all my squadmates to delay the enemy's advance as best I could. Without their sacrifice, we would have been unable to retreat safely.\" Bin Yong recalled how dangerous the Wights were, especially the Soldiers of Ruby who possessed the fire affinity.
Their heated swords cut down his squad mate's buckler into two and proceeded to kill them. Needless to say, his squadmates were still able to inflict some form of payback before death since their tolerance to pain was almost non-existent as an AI.
Suddenly a loud sonic boom came from above, and one of the Fallen Angels got stabbed through so furiously that it was dragged along. Together with his Wyvern, Wyvern Goblin Knight Tomas had pierced a Fallen Angel through its chest while his buddy bit down on his torso, not allowing him to move as they sped away from the main group.
Without the chain healing from his comrades, the bitten Fallen Angel lost blood quickly, but Tomas had to ensure that his enemy died, thus with a command in goblin language, his long spear changed into a shotgun. He aimed and lodged his barrel at the Fallen Angel's neck which fit tightly, Tomas pulled the trigger.
Its head was blown off and pieces of its brain mixed with a lot of its blood splattered on all him due to the speed they were travelling in the air. Even his wyvern crunched the armour of the Fallen Angel before letting go and dropping it into the sea. After which, the Wyvern Goblin Knight turned and tried to make another pass against the group once again.
The Fallen Angels had watched how their comrade got eliminated, and they did not plan to allow Tomas to succeed another time. Some of them angrily aimed their spears towards the incoming threat, shooting energised beams at Tomas as his wyvern evaded as many beams as possible. However, they seem to have forgotten that Tomas was not the only threat in the air.
While their concentration had been on him, another Fallen Angel bit the dust through the very same method that Tomas had just used and a second later, there was the third casualty. Wyrstriker and a few brave Wyvern Goblin Knights zoomed past Duke Vepar's gauntlet to hit the Fallen Angels while their backs had been facing them.
\"You think you will get praised for doing something this reckless?!\" Wyrstriker shouted in the System subchannel dedicated to their command unit.
\"Sir! No! Sir!\" Tomas replied as he and the other Wyvern Goblin Knights intersected and flew past each other. With the decrease of fallen angels, their healing output was not as powerful as before, giving Luo Bo a chance to shoot back while lying on the ground.
She was directly beneath them after attempting to hide from magical energy attacks and arrows with the barricade in front of her. Her shot spiralled upwards with chi, hitting one of the Fallen Angels from below, causing them to fall straight to the ground.
Duke Vepar somehow managed to see one of his regiment troops killed and since the enemy was within his radius of attack, he spun his large gauntlet and aimed at the cultivators on the sky bridge.
\"Holy shittttt!! Incoming!!\" Yue Han shouted as he and his other squadmates AI tried to grab anyone near them and jump out of the area before the place got flattened. However, even as he tried to grab Luo Bo, the girl was surprisingly reluctant to move because she had literally expended the last of her chi on the shot to kill.
\"So heavy!!!\" Yue Han complained as he attempted to maintain his hold by her armpits and moved out with a shadow phasing technique with his Blind Bat style.
\"EXCUSE ME! So RUDE!\" Luo Bo retaliated by hanging her bow over Yue Han's neck and used her strength to pull.
\"Oh my god!\" Yue Han exclaimed and held his other comments. He now only cared about coming out of the attack area in time before the gauntlet fell on them, but they were too late. They had underestimated the incoming speed of the attack, crushing the two Pandawans and a few other Pandarens with them as well.
The barricades were also destroyed by the impact, and the rest of the cultivator could feel that the sky bridge shook a little from the impact.
\"Huh, Duke Vepar's gauntlet attack should have no problem flattening an entire village with one punch, and yet our sky bridge is still holding with relative ease.\" Moloch wondered out loud as he tried to quickly assess the damage.
\"Because most of the concrete we used came from Sandy's almighty sand products. I doubt there will be anything that could destroy the sky bridge. As for the construction of watchtowers, not so much. After all, Sandy can only do that much.\" Qiu Yue revealed.
\"Seriously, we could make a killing in the construction business if we ever used her magic sand, but Jin forbids it. He even ordered the System not to do it at all cost.\" She sighed as she threw in the next batch of Pandarens into the fray straight after Duke Vepar released his gauntlet in order to prevent the demon army from taking advantage of the gap.
Lord Moloch could see where this was going and understood the possible negative implications of selling such sturdy material. \"No wonder you did not hesitate to throw that much defences into that sky bridge.\"