“It matters little if they use their strength or not. Their aim, their coordinated skill across their entire front.” Feng Dan’s eyes thinned as she watched the Fifth Realm forces form up two assault groups per camp under their own mana barrier, preparing to march out. “From what we know, they have not called for support. They are using sixty cannons, which require three to five people to operate. Three hundred people.”
Feng Dan’s words hung there. She turned under that quiet. “A twentieth of their people manned those cannons. They have nearly seven thousand professional fighters and they coordinate like a family clan.”
“They have not used their repeaters, mages, ranged fighters, or their whistling weapons. The information that we got on them previously should be thrown away. Their defenses, this, they have a fighter’s mindset, not just a crafter’s.”
“It will be a slow process to take on their defenses. We will continue to use barriers as cover, attacking them in concert to open a path. I am interested in those metal bushes that cover the second part of their defenses.” Marino rested her hands on her whips.
“They should be getting into range now.” Marco grabbed the mounted viewing glasses and focused on the Fifth Realm assault groups.
They were broken into sects and individual clans, creating similar squares moving together, holding their own banners. Each group held one thousand fighters, making it eighteen thousand on the battlefield.
Flashes appeared in the darkened slits of the squat buildings.
The spells arced slightly, rising and then falling, igniting the mana barriers as they lit up, outlining their reach as they fought back against the attacks.
The guns paused, recharging and altering their aim as the Fifth Realm fighters increased their pace.
The next barrage came. Only half the guns fired, but with tighter groupings. The barriers that had faded flared up once more. Marco saw the streams of light underneath. The mana barriers were being carried by the strongest of the fighters. Around them, mages pulled out mana stones, feeding them into the barrier. Streams of light flowed like water between the mana stones and the barrier, drinking the power in greedily.
Mist fell from the streams, falling to the ground and being dragged away. A mist covered the barrier formation as well, power draining away slowly.
The second half of the cannons fired, their hits striking where the first half of their battery had.
The assault groups forged on.
“They are picking only six of the barriers to attack. They must not be confident to destroy them all,” Onam said.
“Or they want to find out how much our barriers can take before they fail,” Marino said.
“The activation speed of their cannons is precise. They are firing with the same lulls between each attack,” Hae Woo-Sung said.
“They fire precisely on time,” Feng Dan said.
“Is that coordination or necessity?” Marco asked.
The impacts on the barriers were gradually darkening it, like blood on white cloth.
“The barriers aren’t getting time to recover between strikes. I would say a mix between coordination and necessity. They could have fired rapidly and slowed. They are monotonous in their attacks,” Marino said.
One barrier collapsed, spells converging across the Sect fighters. It tore through their ranks and then stopped, having visited death and destruction upon the Sect fighters.
“They’ve switched targets. Look at the assault group from the second camp,” Feng Dan said as a new barrier started to color.
The previous thrill in Marco’s chest chilled.
“This isn’t a fight. It’s a slaughter, cold and calculated. Maximum destruction with the least work,” Marino spat.
Magar marched with the rest of his Takar clan, gripping his spear tight. Sweat covered his back and ran down his forehead.
He wiped it away as light appeared above. He braced like it would help as the mana cannon fire drowned out all noise. The barrier penetrating spells made the barrier darken, going from clear to blue and then darkening through yellows, greens, and reds—dependent on the barrier—until it would crack like glass and evaporate like a popped bubble.
“Just a city of crafters,” Ghazar spat.
“Prepare bridges!” The sect commander’s words fell on the clan’s ears before cannon fire washed away the sound once again.
They stored their weapons and pulled out their siege gear. Magar was at the front, looking down at the shadows in the grass.
“Ah!” The rolling booms, monotonous and chilling, were louder than any yell or scream. A man in front of Magar stumbled into a knee-high hole. The weight of his body, armor, and bridge broke his leg. The fighters holding the bridge tried to not step on him as they ran.
Magar turned his eyes to the ground again, doing his best to avoid potholes and obstacles.
They were well hidden and small. Sometimes a divot, enough to make one trip. Other times it was a hole with spikes to cut up one’s leg.
Magar didn’t have the time to glance up at the barrier now.
Vuzgal was still so far in the distance. Run! He held back his instinct with the experience of battles across the Fourth Realm.
“Make su—” The rest of the sect commander’s words were stolen as the cannon fire speed almost doubled.
Flashes of the mana cannon’s spells struck the barrier so close together the barrier had little time to recover. The bombardment paused, but the ringing in his ears remained.
They passed the dirt and stepped onto hard stone. Magar ran forward. To stop was to be trampled by those behind him. His animal instincts forced him forward like a rabbit away from a fox. If he broke down now, the clan would kill him for cowardice.
He slowed as he readied his bridge, a ten-meter plank of wood. Others carried planks in rings while some carried plants.
Magar tossed down the plank of wood. Those with plants summoned their magic. The vine plants grew rapidly at first, entwining their limbs around the planks, but the mages' spells and bodies weakened under Vuzgal’s formations. Mages that should have been able to grow a house from a tree in minutes struggled. Their brows dripped in sweat, and exertion marred their faces.
Come on, hurry up!
The different bridges spread out and fell to the side when they grew too heavy, falling on other planks and wrapping around them, creating a sturdy bridge of vines and planks.
Magar pulled out another plank and moved forward. He put it down on the bed of vines. Others did the same, rushing up as the vines grew up their new latticework.
Magar focused on his task, pushing up, placing more planks, letting the vines connect them, repeat.
Their speed was slower, but they advanced constantly.
Magar looked between the vines before quickly looking away with a shiver. The trench was filled with spikes and sharp edges. What sadistic bastard made this place?
The sound changed, and his ears popped. Magar rubbed his ears at the sensation.
He felt a punch in his side and glowered at the clan member responsible. The man had no mercy in his eyes. He glared at Magar and his plank.
Magar quickly judged if he could toss the clan member off the bridge into the spikes below, covering his own frustrations.
Too many eyes.
Magar threw down his plank in anger.
Vines sped along it as the terrain changed. They grew thicker and thinner in places. The bridges were up and over at odd angles, but they created a path forward.
Magar ducked as the sounds of the mana spells changed. The cannon strike fizzled against the barrier just meters above, causing it to darken like the coming night.
He grabbed another plank and forced his way forward, putting everything into his task. He still had his personal barrier, the best he could buy, and his armor was all charged. He had a defensive scroll, too.
He touched the piece of cloth that ran along his wrist and attached to a spell scroll as he watched the vines grow and curl forward.
The vines neared completion, and he threw down a new plank. It hit the vines and tilted forward. Instead of coming to rest on the other side, it tumbled into the chasm below. Magar looked ahead. It had to be at least twenty meters across.
He turned to the side. He was ahead of the main body of fighters, who were quickly catching up.
Another plank fell to his side and vines wove upwards. Mages moved up with fresh plants, putting them down near the edge of the bridge. They had archers with them.
The mages grew thin vines that the archers attached to their arrows. They checked the amount of vine they had, then drew back and fired their arrows across the chasm. They hit the other side, burying themselves into the stone.
The mages focused on the mana. The vines attached to the arrows grew over the wall and split, then burrowed into it or grew along it, covering the side in vines. The vines turned back on themselves as they weaved a bridge back toward Magar.
Magar looked down at the movement, shuddering with more impacts. They were stretched out more than the attacks on the main barrier, and it was a matter of time now. Not if, but when the barrier collapsed.
Spells struck the other side of the chasm, exploding and peppering the barrier with stone shrapnel.
“Extend the barrier!” he yelled, turning toward the sect commander, but his words were drowned out by cannon fire.
One of the lightning spells struck the vines on the other side of the trench and they exploded as lightning ran down them, falling in flaming ruins as it came toward Magar.
Magar drew his spear. Stepping to the edge of the chasm, he severed the vines that were growing out to meet the exploding vines.
The bridge fell into the chasm, the lightning running its course. The vines burst into flames as they dropped to the bottom.
Other vines exploded to his right as the lightning jumped from the vines to those standing on them. Sections of vines collapsed, sending them tumbling into the waiting spikes below.
The mage closest to him pulled out another plant, and the archer readied a new arrow. Retreat was not an option, and they repeated the process. Magar held his spear at the ready. He worked his jaw as his ears popped. The cannon fire and sounds of battle became clearer.
The barrier!
He fumbled with his necklace, activating his personal barrier.
Lightning spells crashed into the press of fighters. It smashed through them, tossing them like chaff in the wind. Tendrils of lightning continued to stretch out, too bright to look at directly, but searing an image of the bridges’ and vines’ destruction into Magar’s eyes.
Waves of mana and air buffeted him before it was suddenly his whole world. He was thrown aside, an inconsequential fighter among many. He grabbed his wrist and tore the spell scroll, his spear forgotten as he fought to survive.
His barrier collapsed under the energies as the spell scroll activated around him, throwing him up and back.
Magar struck stone and rolled. He felt his bones break and shift, causing him to hiss in pain, but he had to move—now—or risk being hit by the mana cannon spells.
He pushed up from the ground, facing away from Vuzgal.
Other groups had pushed ahead, unmolested and untouched.
Magar dove into a crater, away from the fire, flinching at the noises all around him. He curled up, trying to become part of the ground as a silence-spelled mortar rained down on him.
“Shift down fifteen degrees, drop one-five-zero! Fire for effect!” Acosta barked. She looked from the degree marker and through the periscope into the chaos beyond. Shit, the Colonel’s done messing around.
Three hundred cannons and one hundred and sixty mortars had left lines of dissipating mana trails, crashing into barriers, ground, and enemy fighters. Main barriers were darkening at a visible speed now, hit from several directions under constant fire.
Acosta tracked her target, a group that was attempting to bridge Deadman’s Fields.
“Should’ve called it Deadman’s Drop.”
The first of her mortars illuminated their barrier like the sudden onset of rain-turned-deluge. Other shells struck, revealing the boundaries of the barrier, and covering it in a haze of expelled mana and stone dust.
Shells continued to drop around them as her crews ran through their five-shot payload.
The barrier collapsed under withering fire.
“Switch to H. E! Switch to H. E!” she barked, with Staff Sergeant Neumann relaying her orders.
Their rounds hit the bridges. The barrier penetrators cutting through all that was in their way and diving into the depths below.
The high explosive struck, throwing out clouds of smoke. Stone shrapnel, metal and anything in the blast zone tore through fighters, turning bridges of different kinds into flying debris.
“Rounds complete!” Neumann relayed.
Acosta shifted her periscope. “Change in target. We’ll go right to fire for effect, five rounds B. P, ready on the H. E,” Acosta said, scanning her designated sector.
“Be ready five rounds B. P, ready five rounds H.E.”
“Make it three rounds H.E. No need to waste ammunition.”
“That’s one way to tell them to fuck off back home,” Rugrat said.
Han Wu grunted.
They were in a repeater pillbox looking out at the break in hardened stone and metal with the gun’s crew.
“Last of their main barriers,” Simms said in a dull voice.
“What was that, less than a minute?” Tyrone shook his head.
“The mortars are tearing apart whoever makes it into Deadman’s. The shrapnel is turning that place into a mess,” Rugrat said.
“Looks like they’ve realized what’s going on.” Simms pointed out to the west. Rugrat pulled out his viewing glasses. He saw glimpses through the smoke of different clans and sects falling into disorder and disarray. A complete turnaround from the segregated mass that had made it to Deadman’s Fields. Some tripped and fell but kept going as they left muddy footprints, straying from the hardened dirt paths they’d advanced on, trying to escape like the devil himself was chasing them.
Rugrat felt the slumbering formations activate through his connection to the dungeon core. The wind picked up, chilly and wet. Formations inside the pillbox fought to warm the pillbox against the wind.
“They activated area three,” Rugrat said as trap spells erupted from the ground among those fleeing back toward their camps.
The sky darkened as nearby clouds gathered over the battlefield, stretching out in a perfect circle six kilometers across. Lightning flashed through its depths as the thick white clouds turned gray, and finally black. Even with the mortar and cannon fire, all eyes shifted toward the massive clouds that had been gathered by spells.
Lightning ripped through the heavens and a gray sheet fell from the sky.
“Damn! That’s so much rain I can’t see more than a kilometer into it without spells,” one of the gunners said.
While the dark skies hung over the battlefield and all but the most westerly and easterly camps, it stopped just five hundred meters from Vuzgal which was still bathed in sunlight.
Light flashed among the clouds, pausing for a moment.
“I can’t hear the lightning over our own guns.”
Han Wu looked at him and then slowly back toward the battlefield. “I don’t suppose they can either.”
Klaus entered the Vuzgal Fighters Association main hall. There, three guards wearing the armor and helmets of Vuzgal stood, totally at ease with five unconscious forms at their feet. They stood there unaffected and seemingly uncaring at the mana the silent association members were gathering.
Klaus could tell a fight was a spark away. He hid his frown. The unconscious members looked like the spies he had sent out.
Not dead, thankfully. Klaus waved his arms at his unconscious fighters. “What do we have here?”
“These are your people. They were found in areas they shouldn’t be in. For your own safety, we ask that you only
visit the Battle Arena and the other Association locations. Any that are found lost or wandering will be exiled from Vuzgal. Have a good day.” The trio turned to leave.
“A moment of your time,” Klaus said, feeling his fellow association member’s anger building, hands silently creeping toward weapons.
The trio turned, greeting him with faceplates of blank armored metal.
“Even if we wish to leave Vuzgal, how could we? We have no totem anymore.”
The leader of the trio pointed to the north. “Through the front gate,” she said and turned once again. The other two waited for her to get close before they left as well.
“They think that they’re gods! No damn respect!” someone yelled, spitting into his tankard and hurling it.
Klaus punched out without looking, a wave of force shot from his hands, shattering the ceramic tankard in mid-air, covering the thrower in his own drink.
He turned without a word and looked at the unconscious five. “Bring them to the healers and don’t piss off the Vuzgalians. We already stepped on their honor.” Klaus’s footsteps rang through the hall as he walked into the rear of the association.
Klaus stood on the roof of the Fighter’s Association, looking at the dark clouds in the distance. The door to the roof opened as Nane walked out, one of the five that had been left in his hall.
“Feeling better now?” Klaus turned, asking her.
“Yes, Branch Head.” She bowed, embarrassed.
“We suspected the Vuzgalians had a way to track people. There were few disturbances during the fighting competitions. The Vuzgal police appeared at opportune times and the perpetrators were always found.”
“Wish I didn’t have to confirm it with my face,” Nane said as she rose.
Klaus laughed softly and indicated for her to join him. “So?”
“We didn’t get far, a few hundred meters to the outer walls.”
“There aren’t any people; the city is empty. Carts do not move to the front, or return.”
“They have to have a hidden system. We know as much from their defenses, but it must be larger than I suspected. The crafting workshops work day and night. They must have tunnels to the front. A smart way to prepare away from prying eyes. I wonder if they made the defenses beyond the gates before this and just raised them, or if they really did make them in less than a week.”
Seventh Realm Part 1: A LitRPG Fantasy series (The Ten Realms Book 8) Page 45