"This really is troublesome."
Thresh slowly swung his hook and chain, his skull-like face empty of joy or sorrow.
"Leave at once!"
Janna showed him no courtesy either.
"Tsk... so many flavors of torment to choose from..."
Thresh looked at the people behind Janna and shook his head in dissatisfaction.
They were all supposed to end up inside his lantern. What a shame.
So the man leading them could actually reach Janna?
How interesting.
Judging by his features, was he descended from the Vastaya of Ionia?
Thresh had no way to confirm Caleb's identity, so he faded back into the Black Mist.
Janna, meanwhile, rose straight up to meet him without hesitation.
Caleb didn't dare relax for even a second, and another alert from Vi and Caitlyn went off.
"A feint to lure the tiger from the mountain?"
Caleb's brow tightened into a knot.
Inside the Black Mist, not only were the monsters difficult to kill effectively, they had another even more troublesome trait, extreme mobility.
Though the creatures in the Mist had no minds of their own, they instinctively searched for ordinary people nearby and attacked them.
On top of that, they would instinctively follow powerful beings, serving as backup and finishing off the wounded.
Thresh was taking advantage of exactly those two traits. The moment Piltover's defenses were stretched thin again, he launched another large-scale invasion.
The chem-flames wielded by the Enforcers were already growing weaker, and the undead with physical forms were dragging people straight into the Black Mist.
On top of that, the turrets that served as part of the city's defenses could not be restored once they were damaged.
So in the Upper City, which was already struggling to hold the line, the Enforcers were clearly running out of strength.
"What do I do?"
Caleb racked his brain for a solution.
Piltover's situation was grim, that was true, but Zaun couldn't withstand a strike from any one of those high-level threats either.
If they got toyed with like this two more times, both Zaun and Piltover would suffer massive losses.
What do I do?
Keep running back and forth across the Mist-covered Twin Cities?
Caleb drew in a deep breath.
Maybe... that living weapon...
He really wanted to reassure himself that with Kayn as a warning, and with his own strength already near the peak of what a person could achieve, he would be fine.
But the moment he thought of the massive sword in Aatrox's hands, his heart still started pounding wildly.
"I'm going up there. Protect them."
At this point, all he could do was gamble!
Caleb's eyes turned resolute. If he carried the title of Governor, only to fail because he was trying to protect one side and losing the other, then there had been no point in coming to this world at all.
He took a deep breath, stepped onto his hoverboard, and flew toward the Upper City.
...
"How about another grave?"
The tall, heavily built figure brought his shovel crashing down, and a spectral arm rose from the ground.
A moment ago, Vi and Caitlyn had nearly suffered badly because of that harmless-looking crack.
Not far away, the creature known as the Maiden of the Mist was preparing to draw out the souls of the living around her.
Caitlyn could only keep interrupting her with gunfire, but Vi was tied up fighting a pack of small Mist Walkers and had no way to reach her side immediately.
Jayce, now back on the battlefield, continuously used Acceleration Gate and his hammer-cannon weapon to hold off Yorick and his shovel swings.
Elsewhere, Camille used her Hookshot and the Hextech Ball at her side to move between the buildings.
Hecarim had taken quite a few wounds, but within the Black Mist, they healed again in no time.
His charges struck with crushing force, which meant that many times he couldn't turn in time afterward.
The woman before him looked young, but her spirit was exceptionally unyielding!
Hecarim liked opponents like that. He would not stop until he crushed them.
"No one survives!"
Hecarim's charge came with spectral riders in tow. Camille had nowhere left to evade!
But Camille leaped elegantly into the air, throwing off Hecarim's vision for a split second.
By the time he came back to himself, he was already trapped inside a hexagonal zone.
It was one of Camille's abilities, The Hextech Ultimatum!
"Damage. Impact."
Orianna's cold voice rang out from the side. At the same time the Hextech Ball released a pulse, an inward-dragging shockwave slammed into Hecarim's entire body.
However, when Camille's leg blades met the long-handled battle axe, she was sent flying out of the Ultimatum zone in a miserable arc.
And along with the vanishing Ultimatum, both layers of shield on the Steel Shadow disappeared as well.
...
"Damn it." Viktor's body had taken some damage, but he could still fight.
Warwick supported him from the side as the two of them rushed toward the people being attacked in the distance.
"Ekko, where did the Governor go?"
One brave Zaunite fired at the monsters emerging from the Black Mist as he shouted the question.
"He went to the Upper City."
Ekko answered while flashing through the monster horde.
"Is it bad up there?"
"You could say it's very bad." Ekko's face was dark.
Things on his side were still manageable for now, but the problem was this:
If you went to the Upper City and drove back the monsters there, then the same high-level threats that had appeared earlier would immediately show up in the Undercity.
And if that kept happening, if they had to run both ways, then the result would be heavy casualties on both sides.
"Can the Governor handle it alone?"
A woman looked a little worried as she asked.
"No..."
After spending so many days together, even if Ekko and Caleb didn't know every last secret about each other, they were still more than familiar enough.
The expression on Caleb's face just now had not been relaxed in the slightest!
"Then let's go up there!"
"Great idea!"
A sudden voice rang out, drawing a lot of attention.
"To the Upper City!"
The voices of the crowd gradually grew louder.
"Keep the old people, women, and children in the middle! Protect our sister city!"
Even Viktor felt stirred when he heard that.
Zaun rushing in to reinforce the Upper City?
That actually sounded pretty good.
Wasn't the enemy relying on the separation between the two places to exploit the difference in numbers?
If both cities were together, then naturally that opportunity disappeared.
In the past, people from the Upper City used to call them gutter trash. Even now, with the Twin Cities officially equal, plenty of people still clung to those deeply rooted prejudices.
Just think about it, what could slap Piltover harder across the face than having Zaun come save it in its hour of need?
Everyone was holding back a breath of frustration, and they needed to let it out.
"Move!"
At Ekko's command, the people of Zaun poured out in a dark wave from behind their cover.
Under the protection of the heroes and the Firelights, they pushed their way upward.
...
Caleb took a deep breath and strode forward.
Several flying spears came straight at him, and he narrowly slipped through the gaps between them.
"Betrayer, die!"
"That's rich coming from someone that green."
Even while taking on the heroes of the Shadow Isles by himself, Caleb still hadn't forgotten how to mouth off.
"Arcane Shift."
Though locked onto, Caleb remained calm and once again evaded the spears aimed at him.
"Lightning strike!"
A massive bear-shaped shadow appeared in the clouds, and a dense storm of lightning sealed off every path Kalista could use to dodge.
...
The bridge between the Twin Cities.
This place had once seen repeated outbreaks of violence, the main flashpoint of the conflict between the two cities.
Yet tonight, no one stood guard over it.
A vast crowd surged toward the Upper City that had once felt impossibly far away.
The heroes protected the flanks, shielding the running civilians.
Chemtech truly was simple and practical. With the mining carts modified by Viktor, the people, who would normally have been difficult to transport, charged straight across the bridge.
At such a special moment, the bridge that had once marked the boundary between the two cities was now packed with Zaunites from end to end.
"Hey, you high-and-mighty Piltover elites, Grandpa Zaun's here to save you!"
The roaring voices of the people seemed ready to echo through the entire city, and even the whole world!
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