Chapter 243: The Gate of the Abyss

The round ammunition made from molten lead flew, rolled, and whistled through the air.

In the dim Underground, they could be heard but not seen.

Their target was not the Dark Elf warriors already on the city wall, but the reinforcements climbing up the Force Field siege ladders behind them.

The ballistics of this kind of firearm were truly unpredictable, though not quite reaching the level of random Brownian motion.

However, relying on a single bullet to hit a target accurately was not reliable, so it was better to seek the guidance of Magic.

Therefore, when using firearms without Magic help, relying on dense fire to improve accuracy was the more sensible choice.

With this kind of attack, it was hard enough to aim at a Black Skin fighting among the Dwarves, let alone aiming at the reinforcements behind the tower who had not yet found their footing.

There was a real risk of hitting one’s own people with the projectiles.

So, the landing troops further away became their primary target.

Although the trajectory of these projectiles was not great, the range was still acceptable.

This was because their production was quite particular.

The process was simple if you looked at it one way, but very troublesome if you looked at it another.

You just needed to climb to the top of a 60-foot building and pour the molten lead into a ladle with a fixed hole.

In the weightless state of free fall, the lead liquid would naturally form a perfect sphere due to its surface tension.

One of the chimneys in Blindstone City was built a hundred years ago by Gnome engineers, and you could not tell from the outside that it was actually a military building.

“Bang! Bang! Bang!”

The sound was like a heavy hammer hitting pork, echoing constantly on the Force Field siege ladder.

As the Dark Elves ran at full speed, one by one they were knocked out of the air.

Their originally handsome black jade faces exploded like watermelons, scattering red and white fluids in mid-air.

Some Dark Elves suffered heavy blows to their chests.

Although they could not pierce the double protection of their Magic cloaks and Enchanted Chainmail, the huge impact burned them from the inside out.

Unable to keep their balance, they could not maintain the high-balance running required, so they fell like objects in free fall from the high sky.

Others were hit in their limbs, tearing open wounds far larger than the projectile itself in an instant.

Blood splashing into the sky was a small matter; worse still, some had their limbs completely broken, following the fate of their predecessors.

This happened because lead is soft, so when it hit a human body, it released all its kinetic energy.

Specifically, the bullet head deformed severely or even broke, creating a trumpet-shaped cavity in the biological tissue.

The wound area was hundreds of times larger than the cross-section of the projectile.

Added to the huge pressure it instantly exerted on the victim’s circulatory system, the damage was severe.

More importantly, the pain for the injured did not stop there.

If the fragments of the projectile were not all removed from the wound, it would cause lead poisoning.

Even if the fragments were few and luckily removed by surgery, the projectile would bring in fragments of clothing into the wound upon entering the body, causing infection.

Even with the help of Divine Arts, the treatment was incredibly troublesome.

This world was not like the world George was in before his transmigration, with hypocritical clauses like the Hague Convention.

There were no restrictions on the use of any weapons or spells.

Not only were the Dark Elves they faced the rats of the street that everyone shouted at, but even if a Priest of a Good God passed by, they would not stop them!

Because there was no need to follow procedural justice against these guys.

The Gnome musketeers on the front line were all wearing heavy armor.

The combination of steel plates and springs did not match the small stature of the Gnomes.

However, on this chaotic battlefield filled with flying arrows, it greatly increased their ability to survive.

Although most musketeers preferred light equipment for combat, many of them used heavy armor to protect themselves from traditional weapons and firearms.

These warriors, known as Armored Shooters, rushed into battle with gunpowder and heavy armor.

Under the protection of their impenetrable hard armor, they punished their enemies with their firearms.

Armored Shooters learned how to wear and use armor more efficiently and could skillfully deflect the heaviest blows.

In combat situations where movement was difficult, their effect was far greater than that of agile light-armed gunners.

The continuous shooting did not stop, although occasionally there were dull thuds amidst the crisp sounds of gunpowder.

This phenomenon, where gunpowder ignites but fails to fire, is called a misfire.

However, judging by the rate of misfires, it seemed higher than usual, of course, because the Gnomes used Alchemy pre-loaded cartridges.

A single Alchemy pre-loaded cartridge consisted of black powder and a bullet or a shot, sometimes with other special materials, wrapped in paper or cloth and sealed with wax, lard, or tallow.

In fact, there were many types of Alchemy pre-loaded cartridges.

The simplest was the paper-wrapped cartridge—a simple mixture of black powder and a bullet or shot.

Alchemy pre-loaded cartridges made loading firearms easier and reduced the time needed to load a firearm.

However, they also tended to be unstable.

When a weapon fired an Alchemy pre-loaded cartridge, the chance of a misfire also increased.

But in wartime, compared to the huge savings in shooting intervals, what did a small chance of misfire matter!

The Gnomes were seen pulling the trigger while rotating the barrels.

A dense fire poured out tons of damage, making the Dark Elves fly apart in blood and flesh.

The uninterrupted fire even formed a curtain of fire, clearing all the Dark Elves on the Siege Ladders in an instant.

After quickly firing all their existing ammunition, the musketeers began to clean the barrels and reload.

The reason they could project such fierce firepower in the first place was thanks to the firearm invented by the Gnomes—the “Pepper Pot”.

This strange firearm had six barrels, and the barrels could be rotated by hand between shots.

Although this required a free hand, it allowed the user to fire all six bullets without reloading.

The name “Pepper Pot” came from two reasons: first, the many barrels looked like the holes on a pepper pot; second, this gun was prone to misfires, and once it misfired, it sprayed like scattered pepper.

This weapon was not unique to this world.

In the world before George’s transmigration, the most popular weapon before the era of the Colt revolver was the Pepper Pot ignition gun.

And the Colt itself was a revolver invented based on the Pepper Pot pistol.

The Dark Elves, whose attack had been frustrated, of course could not just sit and wait for death.

A group of unique Spellcasters among them began to appear before everyone’s eyes.

Although these guys looked roughly the same as other Dark Elves, the demonic blood flowing in their veins gave them some features of the Abyss.

Their appearance might include small horns, pointed tails, or eyes of different colors.

They might also have fangs, thin wings, sharp claws, or smell of blood and sulfur.

Usually, if these creatures appeared on the Surface, regardless of which race their Prime Material Plane bloodline came from, they were all called Tieflings, or “Demonic Descendants”.

To survive, some Dark Elves had handed their fate over to Demon Lords.

Demon worship was very common among the Dark Elves, which led to the emergence of a class called Demon Apostles.

They used the magical insight given by those Dark Lords to guide demonic energy and crush the enemies of the Chaos Master.

Of course, this situation also had something to do with the Spider Queen, Lolth, who built her Divine Realm in a deep pit teeming with demons.

It was precisely because of these guys’ long-term contact with demons that the entire race began to communicate with the Lower Plane.

Later, this new group was born within the race.

No matter where their hellish blood came from, most Tieflings showed similar features and abilities.

It was impossible to predict how a hellish essence would combine with a mortal soul, making it nearly impossible for ordinary people to identify Tiefling bloodlines just by appearance.

However, a few Tieflings had stronger obvious connections to a specific type of hellish bloodline, and this type was the culprit that gave them their corrupting blood.

For example, the hermaphroditic Ugly race showed symptoms of various diseases, and the cruel race showed all kinds of sickness.

Whether they were fat enough to drip oil or thin enough to show bones, whether they were terrifyingly tall or shockingly short, these extreme appearances were the specialty of the Filthy race.

Two-colored eyes, asymmetrical ears, extra fingers, or birthmarks extending to half the face were the characteristics of the Abyssal race.

Of course, the chaotic essence gave them much more than that.

The previous features could be hidden or explained, but the more obvious deformities included uncoordinated limbs, the head of a twin left on the body, strange thorns, or scales covering only one side of the body.

These were traits that were hard for ordinary people to accept, and the latter were very hard to survive in Dark Elf society.

The Hellish race’s image was the closest to what ordinary people thought “should” be the look of a Tiefling.

Most had hard horns, tails, and eyes with two colors or abnormal pupil shapes.

The Grudge race’s skin often had obvious deformities, and in some rare cases, it was reflected on the tongue.

Rashes, unusual skin spots, and thick, fur-like hair subtly revealed their spirit bloodlines.

But true deformities showed more bizarre features, including movable lumps hiding under the skin like burrowing insects, or dry flesh constantly shedding ugly dust.

And the patchy, broken skin, covered from head to toe with complex patterns like embroidery woven from white and purple scars—these were the Shackled Ones with “Chain Devil blood”.

Pain had an irresistible allure to the Shackled Ones, forcing them to add more scars to their bodies as they grew older, gradually turning into brands, piercings, and tattoos over time.

Apart from the rare Matricide and the unique Tieflings of Hunger and Beast Children far in the East, the Dark Elves had sent out this team, which was like a grand garden of Lower Plane bloodlines.

These creatures with Lower Plane blood could survive in Dark Elf society not to be admired like giant pandas.

At the same time, almost all “Tieflings” were born Spellcasters, so they certainly would not become the cheap cannon fodder for the first wave to charge the city wall.

The Dark Elf camp duty officer brought out an altar made of Abyssal Blood-Forged Steel and Purgatory Iron from the Nine Hells of Baator.

The former was formed in the Abyss, where war swept like a storm and waves across countless eras, causing steel, blood, and magic to accumulate here.

The crystal ore of Abyssal Blood-Forged Steel gathered in this mix of blood and iron and preserved its unique power at low temperatures.

The latter was found deep in the mines of the Nine Hells of Baator, where starry green veins could occasionally be seen on the rock beds.

The altar was inlaid with Stygian Ice Crystals, these otherworldly crystals came from the fifth layer of the Nine Hells of Stygia.

After being tainted by the stubborn evil spirits of that place and washed by the River Styx water, the Stygian Ice turned black, with blue mist constantly rising from its surface.

Those Drow with Lower Plane bloodlines stood around the altar, which began to shimmer with a dark halo of black and blood-red at some unknown time.

They frantically chanted dark sentences and made various strange and precise hand gestures.

They kept casting spells, while nearby slave creatures were blood-sacrificed alive by other Dark Elves.

In this process, even the brave and good-fighting Minotaurs could not escape.

Under the suppression of iron chains and shackles, it could only struggle weakly for a moment before falling to the ground bleeding in a wail.

The difficulty of this spell seemed very high, and in an instant, sweat beads covered the foreheads of all the Tieflings.

The color of the Abyssal Altar in front of them became deeper and deeper as the spell progressed.

It shook at a slow frequency, each time meaning the death of a Troll or a Minotaur.

These creatures with strong vitality were completely destroyed.

When their blood was sucked into the altar, only a tuft of ash remained in the original spot.

It was a pity that among those sacrificed, not a single one was a willing devotee of demon worship.

Otherwise, the effect would have been much better.

The spellcasters chanted until their heads were about to burst, and people kept falling during this process.

New Tiefling spellcasters joined in to take their place.

After about a quarter of an hour, the energy that had been sitting on the altar was finally released.

This pure and unadulterated profane power shot out from the altar, turning into a long rainbow that cut through the void.

When they finally stopped their feet at a point not far from the city wall, the space at that point could no longer bear the power beyond the critical point.

So it slowly collapsed, turning into a breach to another world.

All nearby objects, whether stone, earth, vegetation, or creatures, were pulled in, sticking together around the breach to form a planar portal.

From that portal, the smell of sulfur and surging fire poured out.

They ignited the remains of the Undead, spreading the stench of burning corpses everywhere.

Then a foot like a cow’s hoof stepped out of the portal and landed on the demonic land.

It belonged to a cunning and strong Demon, and his arrival announced that the final battle had begun.

Because walking out of the portal was a powerful Balor, the highest existence in the evolution of demons.

Its power was even greater than that of most Ancient Dragons.

When all the Dwarves held their breath at the sight of the Balor, it scanned Blindstone City with its red eyes.

Then it roared, causing more portals to open nearby.

From those portals, an army of fully armed Demons walked out.

It included at least five ordinary Balors, twelve Nalfeshnee, and thirty Frostmaw.

They were enough to become the core force of the Drow army, helping them clear all obstacles on their path.

A new round of battle began.

Demons were the product of Chaos and Evil, not knowing mercy or compassion.

Unless they could expect greater destruction, they would not miss any opportunity to kill.

The twelve Nalfeshnee shrieked and cast a Blade Barrier, causing thousands of magical blades to swirl around them.

The Frostmaw spread their wings and shot straight into the air, then dive-bombed down fiercely.

Relying on their innate knowledge of high-level Teleportation, the Nalfeshnee arrived at the city wall almost at the same time as the Frostmaw.

They twisted their twenty-foot-long bodies and swung their longswords with all six arms.

When the diving Frostmaw knocked down the defenders of Blindstone City and tore them apart, the Nalfeshnee were cutting enemies into pieces with higher efficiency.

Amidst the flying limbs and broken arms, the excited hissing sounds never stopped.

Whether Dwarf, Gnome, or Dark Elf, all creatures on the city wall were their targets for slaughter.

The Nalfeshnee, surrounded by countless magical blades, walked slowly.

They did not need to swing weapons to shred approaching enemies into pieces.

Even if someone rushed to the side of a Nalfeshnee with their life, they could not cut through their scales with ordinary weapons, as they were stronger than iron armor.

Even the Dwarf’s Adamantine Battle Axe mostly left shallow marks when it hit them.

Occasionally, scales that flew up did not penetrate deep into the flesh.

But the Nalfeshnee’s casual counterattacks could make a Dwarf lose their fighting ability in an instant.

In most cases, the longsword in their hands would easily drill into the weak points of the Dwarf’s armor.

Like a hot knife cutting butter, they easily cut the Dwarf inside the tin can in half.

Even those Dwarves who were directly hacked on their breastplates, although not killed in one blow, were knocked flying.

They could not even get up for a short time, let alone continue fighting.

The Frostmaw, on the other hand, acted in small squads, taking turns emitting magical screams to intimidate enemies within thirty feet.

Occasionally, those who were lucky enough not to be affected still had to face razor-sharp claws.

When surrounded by too many opponents, the Frostmaw would release spores.

Those numerous and tiny evil seeds could pierce the skin of their victims and immediately sprout and grow, draining the host’s life force completely.

At this time, the Dwarf’s tightly wrapped armor played a big role.

On the contrary, the Dark Elves, who had exposed more of their bodies to maintain their own agility, suffered heavy losses for a time.

The crying and screaming sounds were chilling to hear.

“Boom! Boom! Boom!”

This was the sound of the Gnome cannons on the second layer of the city wall firing.