Upon waking up from her sleep six hours later, Ria left for the mess hall and grabbed a quick bite to eat before heading for the Void Pylon.

Up at the Void Pylon Control Center, Selene was already up and awake, performing the finishing touches on the preparation for the Void Pylon's activation.

Noticing Ria's arrival, Selene looked away from the control terminal and turned towards Ria. "I hope you got a good rest, Ria. The activation procedure can be started in a few minutes."

"How is the status of our forces?" Ria asked as she leaned over the railings that surrounded the top of the command center, overlooking the entire open plains.

Selene walked up beside Ria and looked over the open plains along with her. Combat Droids alongside their support vehicles were being deployed to their respective defensive positions. "Our defensive lines have been set up, and the walls have been reinforced as best we can with the resources and technologies available to us down here."

Ria looked upwards towards the sky and could barely make out the silhouette of the Failnaught Battleship. "How about the Failnaught?"

"Everything is fine up there. Production has been ramped up in order to supply our extensive battle lines. Ammunition is at max capacity. The Failnaught should be able to provide support throughout the battle."

"Seems like there is nothing else left to do. I will contact Irene and see whether she is ready for the activation." Ria brought up her portable terminal and prepared to contact Irene, but Selene stopped her. "There isn't a need for that. I already did so earlier. Irene has already stationed the Combat Droids and Cobra Tanks in the spillway. She and Maya would be participating in the battle alongside some guards that have been taken from the wall to man the mounted gun emplacements."

"Where is Inanna, anyways?" Ria asked.

"She is currently in the Combat Information and Control Center, making last-minute checks for the battle ahead."

With everything set and nothing left to do, Ria waited atop the Command Center with Selene as she looked over the open plains now completely illuminated with searchlights and the soft glow of the energy shields being projected. In complete contrast to the dark starless obsidian skies that blanketed the entire world from above, a cool breeze blew through the area; a nice calm before the impending storm.

"Ria, it is ready. We can begin anytime," Selene informed as she interacted with the Void Pylon's Master Control Terminal.

Ria looked towards Selene and nodded. "Let's begin."

With her command, Selene began the Void Pylon's activation sequence. The Void Pylon hummed as the energy ball suspended within changed into a vibrant green color with a black center, as it began drawing in nearby void energies.

All awaken within Thule could feel a tug pulling at them as the Void Pylon interacted with the active void energies within their bodies. Those further away would have barely felt anything, but for those closer like Ria, Selene, Inanna, Irene, and Maya, they experienced a short sudden bout of vertigo, which soon faded away like nothing happened.

After the vertigo subsided, Ria and Selene made their way to the Combat Information and Control (CIC) Center to meet up with Inanna and monitor the battlefield situation.

Rumblings and screeches could be heard throughout the city as the Revenants became increasingly agitated by the activation of the Void Pylon.

From the bird's-eye view provided by Aerial Reconnaissance Drones, scattered groups of Revenants began approaching the choke points leading towards the open plains. As planned, the corrosive mist dispersers did their jobs exceptionally well. As the slow and weak lesser revenants attempted to breach the walls, their bodies were slowly being melted down into a pool of red goo by the corrosive mists lingering in the air.

They did not even manage to approach the walls, and not a single shot was fired to take them down. But that was only for the lesser revenants; greater revenants and above, with their more durable and faster bodies, would be unlikely to be solely taken down by the corrosive mists. It could work, but it would take a prolonged exposure to be effective.

For now, there wasn't much opposition, as only small groups of lesser revenants had shown up, but it wouldn't be the case for long. Once the Revenants rallied together in larger, more effective groups from both outside Thule and those from the bases in the fallen 7th to 10th Haven, along with titled class revenants, that's when the battle would truly begin.

Minutes turned into an hour as nothing else but scattered groups of revenants approached the forward fortifications. Ria, Selene, and Inanna still monitored the situation from the CIC center, waiting for any changes in the revenants' movements.

Soon the slow trickle of lesser revenants stopped completely, and silence enveloped the battlefield. Just as the tides recede before the appearance of a tsunami, a massive wave soon approached. A horde was sighted approaching the three forward defensive fortifications by Early Warning Observers stationed further out from the base's immediate perimeter.

The streets were completely blotted out by the bodies of shambling revenants. They were so tightly packed that the horde seemed like a singular entity. As the observers moved further away from the base, the revenant horde did not cease; it seemed to continue on ad infinitum.

Before the horde even entered visual range of the fortifications, the Medium-Range Phase Destructor Field Artillery activated and began lobbing their munitions over the walls. With deadly pinpoint accuracy, the shells detonated within the city streets, decimating large swathes of revenants. But before the next shell could land, the hole created within the revenant flood was immediately filled once again.

The sounds of explosions echoed throughout the city as the Phase Destructor Artillery constantly fired without rest in an attempt to thin out the revenants before they arrived. But no matter how many revenants were killed by the bombardment, their ranks would be immediately filled up once again.

Eventually, the revenants arrived at the doorstep of the forward fortifications. Automatic laser fire from the Laser Pulse Repeaters lit up the streets below, the laser pulses piercing the bodies of the revenants easily, like a hot knife through butter. The Concentrated Plasma dispersers opened up as large streams of plasma rained onto the revenant horde below, the heat itself even melting the streets into molten metal.

Despite the overwhelming firepower, the revenant horde was not impeded and constantly made ground towards the walls. The revenants piled themselves onto the walls and began trying to batter them down. However, the walls weren't so fragile as to be damaged by such weak physical attacks. However, the sheer number of physical bodies piled up, creating a mountain of revenants. This allowed other revenants to climb over each other in an attempt to scale the walls.

The Laser Pulse Repeaters began trying to chip away at the mountains of revenants, starting to form a scalable pile that threatened to crest the top of the wall. The Concentrated Plasma Dispersers would normally be the perfect weapon for a situation like this, but with the revenants now too close to the walls, Inanna manually made sure the Plasma Dispersers did not fire at the growing revenant mountain

 but further out instead. The issue was that the highly energized and volatile Plasma would slowly wear down the structural integrity of the walls themselves.

The prospect of Revenants cresting the wall was considered less of an issue than the destruction of the walls. The trickling of Revenants over the top of the walls, where the fall would likely kill them, was preferable to the destruction of the walls, where it would be like a dam being busted, letting through all the water at once.

"Inanna, is there anything we can do about the revenants scaling the walls?" Ria looked away from the monitors and asked Inanna.

"No, anything we try will be too destructive and might damage the walls. It's too risky. We could send in Specter Gunships to strafe the walls with Laser fire, but even then, I doubt it would put a dent in their numbers. And if the Laser hits the wall, we have the issue of damaging the walls," Inanna pointed out, rejecting ideas that would compromise the structural integrity of the walls.

Which means until the walls were completely breached, any method of effective intervention would not be allowed. Already an extra hour had passed since the sighting of the horde by forward observers, with a total of two hours having passed since the Void Pylon's activation sequence had been started. Avalon had to only hold on for around three to four more hours.

Whether the walls fell or not had no bearing on the actual success of the mission.

The turrets on the frontline did their best to thin out the herd piling onto the walls, the weight and pressure being placed on one face of the wall already starting to threaten the wall's balance.

Eventually, the walls could not bear the extra weight being constantly applied at the top, and they began collapsing. "The northern wall has collapsed. We have a breach. Revenants have begun flooding into the outer base zone. The Western and Eastern walls are holding, but it won't be long before they too will fall," Inanna reported as the battlefield footage played in her mind, sent from the Aerial Reconnaissance Drones.

Even with only lesser and greater revenants, they managed to breach the walls just from their sheer volume and weight of numbers. The titled classes hadn't even made an appearance yet. Even if the titled classes showed up, the ammunition used by Avalon had trace amounts of void energy infused into them, allowing them to effectively damage the weaker ones.

"Multiple species of Earl and Viscount Class Revenants have been spotted. They are coming through the breach."

"Selene, Havoc Missiles, 6 shots airburst, trailing north from the northern breach." Ria turned to Selene and ordered. Once again, Inanna handled all battlefield control on the ground, from the static defenses to ground troop movements and aircraft deployment, while Selene handled anything regarding the Failnaught. "Confirmed, Havoc Missiles 6 shots airburst, trailing north from the northern breach. Fire."

From aboard the Failnaught, six missiles were launched from its various vertical launcher systems at the bottom of the ship. The Havoc missiles were high-yield chemical explosive missiles meant for use against ground targets, due to their slow speed.

The six missiles streaked through the air as their afterburners illuminated them against the dark backdrop of the night sky, like beacons in the dark. As the missiles approached the ground, they exploded in the air, spreading their destructive energies over a large area of land.

Even without the void energies within the missile and thereby the explosion, there was enough destructive force to eviscerate the Viscount Class revenants. While the Earl class were able to survive the explosion, they were heavily injured and were easily finished off by void energy-infused small arms fire.

The explosion managed to cleave through a large number of revenants, but soon, the revenants flooded through once again, now making their way towards the main base and the Void Pylon. The only thing between them were squads of Combat Droids along with support vehicles such as self-propelled artillery and tanks, with lines of static turrets also supporting the troops.

The tide of revenants approached the Combat Droid battle lines and was met with small arms fire. The tanks and artillery behind also started rapidly firing their main guns, pounding the revenant's frontline into the ground. With the battlefield terrain now shifted to that of open plains, the revenant swarm was allowed to disperse across a wider area. Though they weren't packed together so tightly that they seemed like one big entity any longer, the wider area they now existed in made explosives not as effective as before.

"The eastern and western walls have fallen. The revenants are breaching the perimeter. Forward observers have also reported seeing revenant flyers approaching from the northeast." Inanna reported, also bringing up the surveillance footage from one of the forward observers.

In the video, many small lights could be seen flying through the air. The revenant flyers seemed to have some sort of bioluminescence causing them to glow brightly against the dark skies. It was not known why they glowed this way, as such a light against the dark skies would allow their targets to spot them from far away.

"Inanna." Ria called out. "Yeah, I know. Deploying Phantom Air Superiority Fighters (ASF)." From within the hangers in the Command Center, fighters were being deployed en masse from the installed gravitational catapults. As soon as they left the hanger, the Phantom ASFs circled the base, waiting for the rest of the Fighters to be deployed.

Once all the Phantom ASFs had been deployed, they all made their way to the northeastern skies to intercept as many of the revenant flyers as possible before they could approach the base.

The group of Phantoms approached the group of revenant flyers. While they were still a ways away, they locked onto the signatures of the revenant flyers and fired their hellfire missiles. The missiles flew through the air towards their targets.

The flyers, noticing the approaching missiles, took evasive maneuvers and dodged them. Only for the missiles to turn around once they missed their targets and chase them. The flyers scattered into random directions, attempting to avoid the missiles. Occasionally the missiles would hit their marks causing a large explosion to occur in the air. The flyers, their wings now too damaged by the explosion, fell towards the ground to their deaths.

However, the engagement did not continue from extreme ranges. The two groups slowly closed the distance between each other. The Phantoms switched to their Particle Lance Autocannons and prepared for a dogfight.

The Phantoms were much faster than the flyers, but by virtue of being aircraft, they were less maneuverable than the revenant flyers. The flyers, albeit much slower, were able to perform very tight turns as they hovered in the air, giving them great advantages in a dogfight. Even so, the Phantoms were able to put up a strong fight and managed to occupy the attention of many of the revenant flyers.

Still, not all of them bothered with intercepting the Phantoms, and the rest simply bypassed the fighters and headed on towards the base.

"Damn, that is good enough, I suppose. Much better than I expected," Inanna commented on the aerial engagement being watched through the various monitors in the CIC Center. "But still, if this is all the revenants can bear down on us, even with a couple of Marquess and Duke

 Class Revenants, we would still be able to hold for the remaining time."

Just as Inanna mentioned that everything would go well, the ground suddenly started shaking violently. "What the hell? Seismic disturbance detected. This is an ecumenopolis, the entire ground is a shell casing surrounding the entire planet. How is there seismic activity?" Inanna frowned as she quickly looked over the data presented to her over the console.

The violent shaking in the ground got worse and felt like something was getting closer to the surface with each passing second.