Blacksmith of the Apocalypse

---Epsilon, Northeast Urth---

"Are we still walking in the right direction?" he asked the men in the back as he pulled his sword from the corpse of a beast.

"Yes, but are you sure the information is true? We have been traveling for days without finding a trace of living people," one of his companions complained.

"Right, the best thing we came across were those abandoned ruins..." another added annoyed.

"Shut up, we aren't just looking for that ominous settlement. We are primarily looking for the source of the demonic beasts that keep attacking the camp," he scolded them.

However, he couldn't help but agree. One of the other sects with connections had gotten a quite detailed map of the land from some of the locals. According to it, there was another of the settlements they called Districts to the northeast of the connection between this world and the Voracious Cloud Continent.

Originally, they planned to make contact after their bridgehead in this world was fully set up and the connection between the continents was stabilized. Things changed when their construction efforts were under the constant threat of weird monsters attacking them from this direction.

Wave after wave, they kept coming without a pause. The delegation of the allied sects was able to withstand, but their construction was halted. Finally, he and his men were sent to find the source of these creatures.

" We still have no clue about that either, Captain." someone called from behind.

"Stop whining, I thought I was traveling with the Silver Sparrows Squad, not a bunch of chirping chicks."

Using stealth techniques they had been mostly evading the groups of beasts they met on the way, only fighting those that managed to detect them. One thing became clear, the waves that hit their base were not targeted attacks but were owed to the fact that this place was overflowing with monsters.

"Okay, stop whining. We will keep going for another few hours before setting up camp," he ordered the squad.

With light steps, they traveled through the treetops further north, but they didn't get far before the leader suddenly heard a scream. He quickly turned around, his sword had already left the sheath. Before he could see it, the stench of sulfur wafted at his nose.

Ont he ground below, knowing at the neck of the corpse of one of the Silver Sparrows was a red dwarf. A deformed creature, like a shaved monkey with a crooked nose and goat horns, was ripping a chink of meat out of the man's throat.

"Kill that thing!"

His order was unnecessary, the group of Sparrows had already attacked in a sword formation, but the red monkey managed to evade their coordinated attack, fleeing back into the treetops. To its misfortune, the Leader already waited for it, beheaded the smelly thing with a sword ray. Its corpse fell to the ground, lying beside the man it had managed to kill and his grim-looking companions.

"Just what is that thing?" one of the men asked while pushing the corpse with his sword.

This was already the third man they lost on this trip. They had seen a bunch of outlandish beasts on their way, but none had been covered in such a dark aura. He bend down to examine the head he cut off and it still emanated this kind of power which reminded him of demonic energy.

"Leader, watch out!" he heard and a saw a blade coming in his direction.

The moment the man called him, he elegantly stepped to the side, evading the blade and the attack of another red monkey that had suddenly emerged from the shadows. The blade that was aiming at him passed by and slashed the monkey.

"Whatever these things are, they have some kind of stealth in the darkness, even I can't sense," he admitted calmly. "We should stay in the light from now on, even if it makes us more easily detectable."

Since these things had better stealth than them, it was better to risk something than being picked off in the shadows. Carefully, everyone watching each other's backs, they continued their journey. More and more creatures emitting this weird aura appeared in the forest. Not all of them were as bothersome as the red monkeys, though each was a deformed insult of nature on its own.

A herd of creatures shaped like a ball, with two legs and two giant bullhorns passed below them, as they hid in the trees. They saw spindly things, like tall slender men but gaunt like corpses died of starvation. They witnessed those things fighting a group of boars using a breath of dark fire and illogical strength.

Their worst experience, they had with a humanoid covered in ugly bulging muscles, it too had a pair of twisted horns on his head and a misshapen face not even a mother could love. A child like this, he had no doubt anyone would rather drown it than see it grow up.

Aside from its face that posed a challenge to look at, its physical prowess was tremendous, comparable to a body cultivator in the late stages of the golden core stage. They all had to fight in formation just to keep it in check. Some of them lost their weapons when they started covering their hands in the same fire that the other creatures had breathed.

After a long perilous fight, they managed to kill it with a thousand cuts. Exhausted they had no other choice but to rest and recover their energy afterward. They found a small hill and dug a cave in its side to rest. He used his formation flags to set up a basic illusion formation to keep them from being found while resting.

"I will take the first shift," he said, allowing the other to sit down and meditate. He on the other hand kept watch on the forest outside, in case something able to see through his formation would appear.

During this time he saw many more groups of these creatures pass by. His heart started racing when another of those bulky monsters stopped right in front of their cave. For several seconds he stared right into its beady evil eyes, but the thing didn't stare back. After a while, it turned back round and left.

Watching the outside he finally knew the reason for the waves of beasts. Everything was running from these monsters clad in demonic energy. He started to worry about what would happen to the base if these things reached it. They could deal with the beast, but he wasn't sure whether they could deal with these exotic foes unless the fortifications were finished. For now, he had to hope that the few Nascent Soul powerhouses would make a move when the base was about to fall.

"Are we really continuing? Shouldn't we better return and warn them about these things?" One of the men asked when he told them that they would continue forward.

"We aren't marginally faster than those things. By the time we arrive, they will probably already know about them. Contrary, we should look for the place they came from. The beasts running from the monsters is one thing, but why are these monsters migrating?"

Only silence answered him. Obviously, none of them knew why, so they agreed that finding out the reason was more important now than to try and return to the bridgehead. As such they continued moving in the direction of Epsilon until, finally, the skyline of man-made structures appeared on the horizon.

But that wasn't all, in the sky they saw a huge airship floating above the vast city. The architecture was weird and foreign, but it could compare in size with some of the provincial capitals in their home.

They stood with their mouths wide agape, watching the scene. Not because airships and high structures were imposing to them. No. it was that the airships were carpet bombing the city with terrifying explosions that even swallowed the massive buildings.

Each explosion has the power of a foundation stage or early golden core expert self-destructing. On the ground, they saw the hordes of monsters fleeing from the city like rats from a sinking ship and flowing into the woods.

Now they knew why they were migrating...