Many of the creatures broke through the line of magical machines and reached the formation of the goblin chariots at the mid-rear end of the army. They turned the place into a mess.
For a moment, the offensive firepower of the goblin chariots’ cannons stalled severely!
Just as the strange tigers went unchecked deep in the defensive lines of the Crimson Clan, dragon roars could be heard from Pinecone City in the distance. Several majestic dragons covered in green scales beat their wings and took to the skies, descending upon the battlefield in the blink of an eye.
Most of the dragons that had appeared were the green dragon subordinates that Iritina had brought with her from Faen.
Though they were only at First or Second Grade, their dragon’s aura of might and their natural predatory instincts allowed them to reign superior over these modified beasts.
Indeed, it was undeniable that these alien tigers were not a native species that had naturally evolved in a planar world. Instead, they were modified beasts that the Fabres adepts had bred and cultivated using several different but powerful alien magical creatures.
Even if the adepts had employed various methods to give them powerful defense, offense, and regenerative powers, they could not change the fear of dragons that had been etched deep in their souls.
When the overwhelming dragon’s aura of the seven green dragons spread across the field, it wasn’t just the tigers that started faltering. Even the Frost Giants began to show restraint in their attacks, lacking any of their former courage or bravery.
The seven Third Grade adepts were all watching the battlefield on the floating wooden ship far behind the lines, either through their crystal balls or through the use of Eagle Eye.
When the green dragonflight charged onto the battlefield and incited chaos among the foreign armies, two of the Third Grade adepts let out a disgruntled grunt. Clearly, the Frost Giant Army and the Modified Beast Army were managed by the two of them!
The subordinate armies they were responsible for cultivating for the clan might have decent offensive power, but they had massive flaws as well. A severe light gleamed in the eyes of the two adepts. They were obviously thinking about more ways to further strengthen their soldiers once this war was over.
“Since the enemy has released the dragons, it’s about time we send out the Gargoyle Army!” The one in the lead was an elderly Third Grade in a gold-lined robe. He turned his face, and his gaze landed on a young female adept wearing a golden headband, “Triumph, it is up to you next!”
“Don’t worry, Lord Kagan!”
The young adept smiled sweetly before turning and walking to the edge of the ship. She touched her headband, and several mysterious mental waves transmitted through the air.
Five kilometers behind the battlefield, a group of elite adepts were secretly stationed in a hidden valley. The Second Grade adept leading the party immediately gave an order when he received the instructions from his superior. Black-armored guards ran through the valley and opened a series of large wooden boxes engraved with mysterious and profound magical runes.
There were many of these wooden boxes. As many as two to three hundred, in fact!
As the seals on the boxes were undone, the magic-sealing boxes exploded as green and gray creatures charged into the sky from within, screeching as they approached the battlefield.
The appearance of the strange creatures immediately drew the attention of everyone on the battlefield. In particular, the Crimson Clan’s forces quickly adjusted the eyeball machines hiding in the sky to look at the true forms of the new approaching enemies.
“Gargoyles.”
“They are gargoyles!”
“They must have prepared them for our dragons.”
The leaders of the Crimson Clan cursed in frustration, but there was nothing they could do.
Supposedly, gargoyles were not particularly powerful animated creations. There was no reason to be so concerned about them.
However, these gargoyles were different from the usual variety. That was obvious from the strange stone they seemed to be made out of, as well as the magical patterns that had been carved onto their hard stone bodies. Moreover, as animated magical creations, they had no souls or intelligence to speak of. They would not need to worry about the effect of the dragons’ aura of might.
Two hundred and seventy advanced First Grade gargoyles beat their heavy stone wings and flew across the battlefield. The two green gemstones embedded on their ugly, ape-like faces gleamed with a sinister light.
They headed straight for the green dragons upon appearance. Their large numbers and their two-meter-tall bodies practically allowed them to blot out the sun.
Faced with the approaching army of gargoyles, the seven green dragons reared their heads and roared. They once again took to the skies. After circling above the battlefield once, they folded their wings and dived down upon the gargoyles.
The gargoyles were made entirely out of a large and strange rock. The odd magical patterns carved on their surface made their bodies as tough and sturdy as golems of steel. However, while steel golems couldn’t fly, they could.
Though their speed in the air was extremely slow, and their maximum altitude reasonably low, they were still able to fly.
When the green dragons formed into an assault formation and dove downwards, the gargoyles continued flying slowly under the control of the adepts behind the scenes. It almost seemed like they had no intention of dodging the dragons’ attack at all.
The seven green dragons dived at high speed. When they reached within three hundred meters of the gargoyle army, they opened their mouths in unison and unleashed thick breaths of green smoke. Their bodies then tilted to the side and glided away from the rear of the gargoyle’s formations. While they did so, they made sure to sweep their heads over the gargoyles and smother most of them in green smoke.
It was the poison breath of the green dragons!
Unfortunately, all the adepts of the Crimson Clan started frowning when they saw this. Meanwhile, the Fabres adepts were chuckling coldly.
Were gargoyles afraid of poison? Of course not! What a joke that was!
These green dragons were uneducated peasants from a rural plane, after all. They had obviously never seen an animated construct like a gargoyle in their life. As such, they chose an utterly erroneous method of dealing with them.
On the battlefield, a price had to be paid for every mistake made!
Green and gray chains suddenly shot out of the thick poison mist.
The green dragons were caught entirely unaware due to the short distance. Three of the green dragons were immediately wrapped up in a web of chains.
The other four dragons managed to return to higher altitudes with a few beats of their wings, but the three dragons could not fly any higher, no matter how they tried. During this time, the horde of gargoyles had jumped onto them and instantly covered the three dragons.
The green dragons might have uncontested flying abilities, but even they could not remain in the air when their wings were wrapped in chains, and a swarm of stone weights grabbed onto their bodies. The three dragons cried out in horror as they crashed from the skies.
Dong. Dong. Dong.
Three distinct thuds could be heard as three massive craters appeared on the plains below.
The sound of the dragons fighting with the gargoyles could be heard before the massive pillar of dust had even dispersed.
Emerald Dragon Iritina flew into a rage when she saw this. She roared and prepared to charge onto the battlefield to save her subordinates, but Mary stopped her.
“Those three subordinates of yours are finished! Even you cannot save them now,” Mary said coldly, “If I were you, I would hurry to notify the remaining idiots to stop fighting with those gargoyles! Otherwise, the rest of them will probably die in the same place!”
Iritina was livid when she heard this. She beat her wings, fully intent on giving Mary a furious scolding.
However
, in that one moment of delay, the other four dragons had dived down to the ground as well, simply because they saw that their companions were trapped.
Chapter 1008 - Bitter Battle Against the Gargoyles
A flight of three Second Grade and four First Grade green dragons were exterminated silently, just like that!
In a small plane, a flight of dragons like this would have been enough to rob the entire plane before taking over a kingdom as their personal hunting grounds. Yet, a force of nature like this had been extinguished without a hiccup by a pack of gargoyles during a civil war between two clans.
Of course, as apex predators, the seven dragons were not so easily wiped out.
The gargoyles paid the price of ninety-eight ‘fresh’ lives, all of them torn, bitten, or tackled to death by the desperate green dragons, turned into massive pieces of stone scattered across the ground.
The remaining hundred or so gargoyles once again rose to the skies after piling on the dragonflight to death with their sheer numbers alone. They started to move in the direction of the main battlefield. If these stone monsters with incredible magical and physical resistance were allowed to break onto the battlefield, the already weakened army of the Crimson Clan would probably fall apart in an instant.
Thus, under the commands of the higher-ups, the two Motherships rushed towards the gargoyles, escorted by over a hundred goblin skyships and thousands of eyeball machines.
The first to come into contact with the enemy was naturally the shocking number of eyeball fighter machines.
Even the previously ever-successful eyeball machines couldn’t do anything when faced with these animated stone gargoyles. The gargoyles simply had no weak spots or organs throughout their bodies.
The thousands of eyeballs were like buzzing flies, quickly weaving between the gargoyles while firing Scalding Rays all over the statues.
Unfortunately, the gargoyles had no flesh and no weakness. The Scalding Rays could not scrape off a single piece of rock from their bodies and only left imperceptible tiny dots instead.
Many of the eyeball machines were turned into little fireballs from a single swipe of a gargoyle’s sturdy claws and stone wings due to being too close. Their scattered components rained down from the skies.
Any thoughts of going head-to-head with the fierce gargoyles were unwise. The Mothership and goblin skyships took full advantage of the gargoyles’ slow speed to hover outside their range while bombarding them with their magic energy cannons.
Magic energy fireballs the size of human heads erupted amid the gargoyles, disorienting them and causing them to fall toward the ground. Stone dust also started flaking off their bodies from the impact of the attacks.
However, the magical resistances of these gargoyles were truly shockingly high!
They managed to stabilize themselves after falling for only ten meters. They then flapped their stone wings and once again flew up into the sky.
Moreover, perhaps realizing that the enemy’s weapon couldn’t hurt them, the gargoyles stopped flying in a tight formation. Instead, they split up into a dozen different groups and spread out like a giant net, lunging at the two Motherships from several different angles.
If they were able to board the Motherships, a brutal melee would probably break out again!
The Motherships slowly retreated while mobilizing the magical machines on board. A large group of Shield Defenders charged onto the deck and got into formation, standing by in wait for a possible enemy boarding.
Adept Locke, who was aboard one of the skyships, was also fighting with all he had. Under his instructions, his personal magical machine, now at Version III, transformed into a sniper. An extremely long magic energy cannon extended from within its body and aimed explicitly for the base of the gargoyles’ wings.
Unfortunately, all three shots it fired accomplished nothing other than blasting some dust off of the statues.
The gargoyles weren’t idiots either. Seeing that the enemy was attacking their only weakness, they quickly switched their direction of flight, using either their bodies or claws to block any incoming fireballs.
The speed of the gargoyles shouldn’t have allowed them to catch up to the skyships, but when they were so spread out, the room for the skyships to moved gradually decreased.
The gargoyles had visibly boarded three or four goblin skyships at the edge of the battlefield. They quickly exploded into giant fireballs after an intense and grueling battle.
Naturally, no adept, goblin, or apprentice aboard those skyships could survive such an explosion. Yet, the gargoyles emerged from the flames. Their entire bodies were now black from the smoke and fire. They continued to join the ranks of their comrades in exterminating the Crimson Clan’s aerial forces.
Neither the goblin rifles and their metal bullets, nor the magic energy cannons and their fireballs could inflict sufficient damage upon the gargoyles. The entire air force could only retreat as they fought, chased across the whole sky by the hundred gargoyles. It was a chaotic scene, indeed.
Magic Archer Sandor shot out an arrow from her skyship, blasting a gargoyle and forcing it to tumble through the air several times before it stopped. It temporarily spared her ship from being boarded by the animated creature. However, seven or eight other gargoyles still slowly approached her vessel.
If any of them were to break into the ship, she would have no choice but to have the vessel self-destruct while she fled.
“Little Locke, aren’t you always boasting about being the smartest? Hurry up and think of something. Otherwise, we are all going to die here!” Sandor continued to fire explosive arrows, knocking back the gargoyles and preventing them from boarding. She screamed at Adept Locke, who was on a nearby ship, as she fought.
“What idea could I possibly have? Our weapons and attacks can’t even hurt the gargoyles. Am I supposed to try biting them with my teeth?” Adept Locke was sweating beads now. He continued to give commands to his magical machine while thinking as quickly as he could.
“Hurry up…hurry up and think of something with your smart little brain, or I’m gonna ditch this fleet faster than you all! If we can’t kill them, can’t we just stall?”
“Stall, stall…yes, stall them!” Reminded by Sandor’s panicked words, Locke’s green eyes suddenly gleamed with light, “Mocha, stop using the sniping cannon. Use the alloy webs instead.”
Upon receiving its master’s orders, the transforming magical machine known as Mocha creaked and turned into an odd launcher. It aimed at one of the gargoyles and fired a fist-sized metal ball at the monstrosity.
The metal ball was still sailing through midair when it broke apart, turning into a three-meter-wide alloy web that thoroughly wrapped up the gargoyle.
The gargoyles’ bodies were immovable even with the fiercest of fireballs. How could they be afraid of an alloy web that was no thicker than a single finger? However, contrary to everyone’s expectations, once the gargoyle’s wings and body had been entangled in the web, its body started spinning uncontrollably and crashing to the ground, even after it managed to struggle out and tear up most of the web.
Dong! A muffled boom rang out.
A massive pillar of dust rose from the ground. The gargoyle’s body created a one-meter deep crater when it smashed into the ground. It had to struggle for a long time just to get up from the hole. Though most of the alloy web in front of its body had been shredded to pieces, its wings were still entangled in the mess of steel threads. It had an incredibly difficult time reaching back to tear off the alloy threads with its clumsy and stubby limbs.
The gargoyle remained grounded even after fumbling about for a long, long time.
“Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god! You’re the best, Little Locke! This idea of yours is brilliant,” Sandor couldn’t help but start cheering out loud, “I would give you a big, warm kiss if you were beside me now.”
“……” Locke’s face blushed all of a sudden, and he quickly hid his embarrassment with the heat of bat
tle.
Little Locke started reporting his plan to the Crimson leaders in the Mothership as he continued to fight.
In just fifteen minutes, the small factory in the Motherships had managed to rush production on a surprising number of alloy webs.
All of the goblin skyships stopped their pointless attacks. Instead, they started tossing out alloy webs, alloy chain hammers, and alloy threads. In the blink of an eye, all one-hundred of the gargoyles were wrapped up and tightly bound in metal chains and webs of all sizes.
They began to crash down from the skies, smashing massive craters into the ground as they landed.
Naturally, the Fabres Clan witnessed this ridiculous scene unfold. The Third Grade adepts abord the floating wooden ship couldn’t help but frown in unison.
Creating these powerful, magically and physically resistant gargoyles had spent much of the clan’s resources. They had hoped to turn them into heavy aerial infantry that could rule the skies. If the enemy could restrain them with such a cost-effective method, then the clan’s efforts would completely go to waste.
In particular, the young Third Grade witch with the golden headband, who was directing the gargoyles in battle, was not looking good. Her face flashed green and white, furious at the clumsy performance of her subordinates.
The other adepts could stand by and laugh, but as the commander of the gargoyles, she had to do her best to save her useless underlings.
An instruction was sent out through her invisible mental waves, and an elite party of adepts on the backlines charged onto the battlefield. They headed straight for the grounded gargoyles that were clumsily climbing around on the ground. It seemed like they intended to free the gargoyles from the webs.
Naturally, the Crimson forces in the sky could not allow them to do as they wished!
A large group of eyeball machines swarmed forward, drowning the adepts with a violent rain of Scalding Rays. Even more magical machines launched out of the Mothership and the goblin skyships. These machines lunged wildly at the rescue team the moment they landed, absolutely refusing to let them get close to where the gargoyles had crashed.
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