The whole nation is trying to survive on the cable car; I'm choosing one of three options at ea

At this moment, inside Ash City.

Ash City's inner city defenses have reached their limit.

One by one, the white lights on the tower went out, like a row of overturned candles, extinguishing in sequence from the outer circle to the inner circle.

Those white pillars of light that once supported the city's defense in the night sky are now reduced to just a few remaining, their light as dim as a candle flickering in the wind.

The professionals retreated to the last line of defense in the inner city... a wide street running east to west across the city, flanked by the ruins of collapsed buildings and stacked sandbag bunkers. Hundreds of people crowded onto this street, their hands gripping swords trembling, their arms holding shields spasming, and the faint light gathering on their staffs flickering.

At the end of the street, a black tide was surging in.

The strange creatures were countless, densely covering the entire street. Some climbed up the ruins on both sides, while others squeezed out from the gaps in the building remains.

They did not charge, nor roar, but silently advanced, like a layer of black oil slowly spreading up.

Above that black tide, the chimera still hovered.

Three heads surveyed the crumbling city... The lion's amber eyes were as indifferent as still winter water, the ram's pale pupils burned with a soulless flame, and the snake's vertical pupils were like two daggers stuck in their sockets. It remained still, made no move, and simply waited. Like...

It is waiting for a moment it deems appropriate, or perhaps observing whether the war is worth its own intervention.

Behind the street, several damaged supply trucks lay across the middle of the road, serving as last-ditch cover.

An elderly officer stood behind cover, his left sleeve hanging limply, the cut bandaged with blood. His armor was riddled with cracks, and a deep groove ran from his shoulder to his waist through his chest armor—a wound blasted open by a decaying monster.

There was no fear on his face, only a calm born of utter exhaustion.

He gazed at the approaching black tide, then looked up at the chimera hovering above the battlefield, surveying everything, and muttered:

"It's over, how could it be such a mythical creature? The idea of ​​getting a buff is completely shattered. Without the buff, how can we possibly survive against those monsters outside the city?"

The young soldier beside him heard these words, his lips twitched as if he wanted to say something in rebuttal, but his throat seemed to be blocked by something. He still held his sword in his right hand, but the blade was chipped and stained with dried, dark purple blood. He opened his mouth, but in the end, he said nothing, only gripping the sword tighter.

No one refuted the old man. Because everyone knew in their hearts that what he said was true.

There are less than 500 men left on the defensive line.

Only three towers remain operational. Yet the number of strange creatures continues to increase, stretching as far as the eye can see.

And that chimera, a legendary, mythical being, hasn't moved an inch. It's simply watching. Waiting. Waiting for this defensive line to collapse naturally, waiting for everyone to bleed to their last drop.

Then the sky cracked open.

It wasn't a crack torn open by something, but a slower, more subtle change, as if something was blossoming deep within the sky. On the distant horizon towards the city walls, a giant, dark purple flower was slowly blooming.

Each petal of that flower seemed to be formed from translucent light, with fine, flowing lines along its edges, like some ancient script being written and then erased. Points of light surged from the flower's stamen, spreading in all directions and scattering across the night sky, as if someone had shattered an entire starry sky and then scattered it back into existence.

It was silent and vibrationless, yet its invisible sense of oppression was clearly transmitted to everyone across a distance of tens of kilometers.

The old man's gaze suddenly froze the moment he saw the flower.

He stood behind the supply vehicle's cover, his tired eyes, almost devoid of any light, fixed on that direction. His lips parted slightly and then closed, as if confirming something, or perhaps digesting something.

The young soldier beside him also saw the flower and asked in a low voice, "What's that...?"

The old man did not answer immediately.

He stared at the flower for a long time, so long that the soldier beside him thought he wouldn't answer. Then his lips moved slightly, his voice extremely soft, as if he were talking to himself, or perhaps to someone he couldn't see.

"The demon general fell... in the direction outside the city."

There was a very subtle tremor in his voice... not fear, but something he hadn't felt in a long time.

He repeated it, as if to confirm that he wasn't being deceived by a hallucination. Then he turned around abruptly and took out a fist-sized transparent sphere from his pocket with his only remaining right hand.

The sphere's surface was as smooth as a mirror, with fine, silvery-white specks flowing within. He held the sphere in his palm, and the instant his hand touched its surface, the silvery-white specks inside began to spin, almost forming a screen of light. Then, a blurry image appeared within that screen...

Dense fog.

A steel cable.

A cable car traveling through the area.

Then a dark red beam of light descended from the sky, covering an area of ​​several hundred meters in radius.

The dense beams of light struck the horde of monsters with pinpoint accuracy. Lower-level monsters evaporated, disintegrated, and turned to ash the moment they came into contact with the beams. A monster dressed in a theatrical costume struggled within the beams, its silken shield shattering and its costume burning.

Then came the vines. Crimson vines surged from the void, weaving in a matter of seconds into a giant net covering a kilometer, tightly binding the monster.

Then came the missile, a dark red streak trailing a plume of flame that struck precisely the center of the vine net. A mushroom cloud rose, and the shockwave rippled the surrounding air into white rings.

The screen ends.

The silvery-white light spots inside the sphere dispersed again, and calm returned.

The old man's hands were trembling slightly.

He stood there, looking at the now calm sphere, something in his cloudy eyes being rekindled. He remained silent for a long time, so long that the soldiers beside him thought something had malfunctioned with the sphere.

Then he spoke, his voice deeper and steady than before: "He killed that theatrical-clad demon princess. A demon general level. Alone."

He turned around, looking at the defensive line being surged by the black tide, and then looked up at the chimera that was still hovering above the battlefield, looking down on everything.

"That person was on the cable car."

The soldier was stunned: "A cable car? Those people have only been in this world for a little over a week, how is that possible?"