In the tunnels under the abandoned section of the city and the vast killing field beyond the devastated wall, countless explosives simultaneously received a signal to detonate. To prevent the interference of the nearby Gates from influencing the execution of the scorched-earth protocol, all of them were connected into a labyrinthine network by simple, but reliable wires.
Even though the signal traveled through the wires with astronomical speed, there was still a slight delay between the detonation of those explosives that were nearest to the ramparts of the secondary defense line and those furthest away from them.
At first...
From afar, it looked as though a ripple had spread through the ground, moving outward. It rolled through the ruined streets of the city, with countless fountains of dust shooting up between the rubble. Some of the buildings that had withstood the furious fighting started to collapse, some seemed to have burst apart.
