Hadjar looked to the east and firmly believed that the Islander wouldn’t let him down. And she didn’t. The wyverns, which had been showering Lian’s squad with acidic flames, suddenly fell silent. When the sea of blue fire dissipated, the Moon army cried out in triumph.
Hundreds of thousands of different birds attacked the wyverns. They swirled around them like a swarm of mosquitoes. Each of them was harmless individually, but they were a formidable and powerful force when working together.
Nehen stood with her hands pointed toward the sky. Her dark eyes had rolled back, revealing slightly bluish whites. She chanted and blue hieroglyphs flashed around her.
Her magic was very different from Serra’s, who stood slightly apart from her. Golden hieroglyphs flashed above the desert witch. Nehen exuded water and cold while Serra embodied the drought and flame.
A moment later, red spheres flashed into existence around the thousands of birds and they rushed in for a suicidal dive. They fell upon the huge serpents, golems, and gates like a meteor shower.
The sky turned red from all the explosions and smoke and ended up with a scarlet veil, making it seem like the sun was just now rising. Or like one of the gods had decided to set fire to the distant horizon in celebration of the fierce battle.
“Admit it, you were hoping we’d fail.”
A mad smile appeared on Hadjar’s face. He fastened the numerous straps around himself, settling into a ‘chair’.
“Great!” Nero yelled so loudly that even the Patriarch could probably hear him. “We’re doing one of your weird schemes again! Why am I stuck with a crazy brother? Why do I always have to be a part of these adventures?”
At Hadjar’s signal, a dozen men cut through two very thick cables. Nero’s last word was drowned out by the wind.
They flew across the sky together after being launched by catapults that had been designed for this very purpose. Hadjar had come up with this plan after he’d remembered a children’s book from Earth.
Had they not been practitioners, they wouldn’t have survived.
The wyverns could do nothing about the two strongest warriors of the Moon army. They were too busy dealing with the exploding birds diving at them. The serpents couldn’t do anything, either. They were being bombarded by arrows, and if they’d dared to use their blue flame, they would’ve lost their defensive barrier and died on the spot.
The landing was rough.
When he struck the parapet, Hadjar rolled forward and managed to grab the edge of the wall by some miracle, keeping himself from falling off. He jumped up and looked around to see if Nero was nearby.
They stood on the wide parapet together. The golems were hurrying toward them. The walls shook with each step the constructs made.
Chapter 173
The golems looked human. Except for the fact that they were about 15ft tall and made of yellow stone. Half-naked, they were so muscular that even the best practitioners following the Way of the Body would’ve envied them and Dogar himself would’ve been in awe of them.
[Analysis of the object! Threat level:... error. Too little data. Proceed to re-analysis]
Fortunately for everyone’s self-esteem, their creator had made some pants for them.
With their massive mouths, broad foreheads, and a complete lack of emotion, they looked like dangerous opponents. They shook the gates as they ran.
Above Nero and Hadjar, the two gigantic steel sickles were still spinning. The Moon army was waiting for them. Now, like never before, everything depended on the two of them.
“Why does this seem even more insane than all our previous adventures?”
Hadjar felt his back press against his friend’s. He didn’t even comment on it since it had become such a familiar sensation.
“You can try your luck over there,” the General offered, nodding toward the horseshoe-shaped gorge.
They could now see that the sect wasn’t planning to sit around. Their forces were gathered at the gates. Many practitioners, ready to fight, waited at the numerous training grounds. Each of them had undergone rigorous, brutal training meant to turn them into weapons for the sect.
Among the many ordinary disciples, there were also some inner circle ones. They were the strongest practitioners, the people that the Patriarch would depend on in the future.
“Damn!” Nero shouted, interrupting Hadjar’s train of thought.
The golems had reached them. Hadjar blocked a stone hand. He hadn’t expected the attack to be ten times stronger than Stone Robarg’s had been.
The General was flung off the parapet. During his impromptu flight, he managed to notice Nero’s stunned expression. He’d also been launched a good 30 feet, just like Hadjar.
Rolling away from a golem that had tried to jump on him, and whose feet left two big holes in the parapet after it landed, Hadjar unsheathed his blade. Spitting out some blood, he nodded grimly. He was now more aware of his opponents’ strength.
“Scan,” Hadjar ordered.
With a familiar click, the neural network gave him the information:
Name
Unknown
Level of cultivation
Golem (Artifactor Construct)
Strength
5
Dexterity
0.9
Physique
4.3
Energy points
2
Hadjar cursed the man who’d sold these constructs to the sect. Perhaps these golems were an insignificant tool in Darnassus or Lascan, but here, on the outskirts of the Empire... It didn’t matter that these creatures were slow and lacked maneuverability and energy. Them landing just one blow had been enough to make Hadjar’s life much more painful and difficult.
The golem obscured Hadjar’s view, so he couldn’t see how his friend was handling things. However, he wasn’t worrying about Nero right now. His friend wasn’t a child. He could take care of himself.
Hadjar dodged another stone fist that knocked a large chunk out of the gates. The golem waved its hands, swinging them wide. It didn’t care about Hadjar’s counterattacks as they were like mosquito bites to it.
The General, avoiding the golem’s strike once again, slid over the parapet and hit the construct under the knee with his heel. Such an attack would’ve dislocated the knee joint and broken the bones of an ordinary person or a practitioner, but the golem just ignored it. Hadjar cursed. Only some stone crumbs fell from the construct’s leg.
The construct didn’t waste time turning around like a human. Only its upper body did so. As if it had several rotary mechanisms instead of a waist and gears instead of joints.
“All the demons curse you!” Hadjar shouted angrily.
He turned away and ran. The golem raced after him, shaking the parapet beneath it and trying to reach for the collar of the red armor with its stone hands.
At the very edge of the parapet, Hadjar jumped, kicked off the battlements, and flew over the golem like a swallow. According to the laws of logic, physics, and nature, the creature should’ve fallen off the parapet because of inertia, but it stopped instantly. The inertia wasn’t enough to even make it tilt forward a little.
Hadjar swung his sword without hesitation. His blade was enveloped in a glow that turned into a misty dragon silhouette, which launched itself at the golem’s back. Such a strike had nearly buried Master Robarg in the rock, but it couldn’t even shake the golem.
The construct brought its hand behind its back, bending it at an absolutely abnormal angle. Then steel met steel when a long sword materialized in the golem’s stone hand. It was much larger than the one that Nero used, and it easily parried Hadjar’s strike with it.
After the collision, the General took a few steps back, while the golem didn’t even move. Turning around, the construct once again rushed to attack. It compensated for its lack of speed and maneuverability with its monstrous strength.
Each clash of their swords threw Hadjar several yards back. The General didn’t have time to come t
o his senses and use any Techniques as the golem pounced on its target, fighting him relentlessly.
Noticing a gap in the unending stream of titanic strikes, Hadjar crouched down. The blade flew over his head, cutting off several long strands of hair. At the same time, the golem staggered for the first time during their fight.
The sword-dragon had cut its knee, which had recently been struck by Hadjar. For a fraction of a moment, the construct had lost its balance, and its sword had stopped being a threat. It was enough for Hadjar to win.
He ran up the stone creature’s chest and pushed off. After getting behind his foe, he sheathed his sword and then drew it again. The fangs of the dragon bit down between the golem’s shoulder blades. They lifted it over the parapet and carried it a few yards through the air, then threw it against the sickle that was spinning around its axis.
The huge sickle sliced through the golem as easily as it had cut through the siege tower, and it collapsed on the parapet. Despite the damage, it tried to pull itself together, quite literally, and get back into the fight.
Hadjar was ready for this. He ran up to the construct’s remains and plunged his sword into its chest, under the stone growth where the golem’s core was. If not for the sickle, the General would’ve had to spend almost all of his energy to break through the golem’s defenses.
As soon as Moon Beam pierced the shimmering core, the golem crumbled.
Wasting no time, Hadjar turned around abruptly, ready to help his friend, but Nero had won his fight as well. Copying the General’s maneuver, the white-haired commander had used his second Technique. He’d summoned the ghostly prow and it had launched the golem into the giant sickle, easily killing his foe.
“We need to move on to the second part of your plan.” Nero said the last word mockingly, but Hadjar didn’t dwell on it.
They saw five more constructs running toward them from the other parts of the parapet.
The friends weren’t confident that they could kill them without expending all of their energy.
“Agreed.”
Wordlessly, Hadjar and Nero turned away and ran to the heavy mechanisms that turned the sickles. After planting the explosives on them, they returned to the edge of the parapet. Thousands of disciples were rushing up the stairs. Their Masters had apparently learned of the danger only after the destruction of the two golems.
That was the main problem of old fortifications: it was too easy for the defenders to get complacent as they were considered to be impregnable.
The rest of the golems almost grabbed the two officers, but they managed to jump down in time. The infantrymen stretched out huge canvases. This was the reason they’d been sent to fight a ‘pointless’ battle at the gate.
The serpents tried to snatch up the falling warriors, but they were protected by the diving and exploding birds.
Hadjar had planned everything out with the help of the neuronet.
Two explosions sounded. The huge sickles began to fall directly toward the gate. They easily crushed and sliced through the strange stone. An odd, green rain fell on the Moon army.
With a desperate, piercing shriek, the two fire-breathing serpents both writhed and fell, buried under the collapsing gate.
Hadjar landed on the canvas, rolled down to the ground, and immediately ran to the side. He was just in time to witness the thousand-year-old gate, considered to be more impregnable than the Heavens themselves, crumbling.
Well, he’d proved that belief wrong.
“Warriors!” The Mad General roared. “Attack!”
The Moon army, numbering in the millions, rushed through the gap. The cavalry thundered down the hill, led by Helion, who was hungry for battle.
The fight raged on.
Chapter 174
Hadjar was one of the first to rush into the breach. Nero was right there with him. Swinging his gigantic blade, he sent out ghostly images of his sword. Hadjar only smiled at that. He was glad to see his friend had reached the level of ‘One with the Sword’.
Nero’s attacks, easily covering a distance of seven steps (as opposed to the maximum of five steps that he should’ve been able to do at this stage), were so devastating that Hadjar began to worry about the safety of his soldiers. With one swing of his heavy blade, Nero sent three or even four sect disciples to their forefathers.
The concern lasted until they broke through the gap and found themselves on the other side of the gate.
The battle raged on.
Hadjar lost sight of his comrade as he plunged into the thick of it. The outlines of people became blurred and unclear. Hadjar rushed around the battlefield like a demonic avatar of death.
He would appear in different places almost simultaneously, turning into four separate ravens as far as the ordinary disciples could discern. The Masters saw him as a black lightning bolt, shredding people like paper. His sword, wrapped in energy that took the form of a dragon, didn’t show any mercy.
Each slash of his blade covered a distance of 53 or 54 steps, and took the lives of dozens of disciples. They were helpless before the fury of his sword.
After all, the practitioners at the ‘Bodily Rivers’ and ‘Formation’ levels were no more than annoying ants to the practitioners at the ‘Transformation of the Mortal Shell’ stage.
But the General’s rampage couldn’t last forever.
Once again using the ‘Ten Ravens’ Technique, Hadjar moved a hundred feet to the side to help the cavalry advance. He swung his sword, sending a powerful slash into the air, one that would easily rip through armor and flesh alike. But to his surprise, Moon Beam smashed into an exposed staff.
His sixth sense warned him that the staff was dangerous, so Hadjar abruptly stepped to the side. To the soldiers, it looked as if the General had turned into a flock of ravens, but to his foe, he looked like a dark shadow.
Turning around, Hadjar assumed a defensive stance.
There was a beautiful girl in front of him. She wasn’t as insanely gorgeous as Nehen, but, like any strong practitioner, she could still make any man’s pulse quicken.
In this realm of blood, steel, and screams of agony, she looked like an island of serene calm. Her long, white hair peeked out from underneath the rim of her helmet. She held a long, steel staff covered in hieroglyphs and runes. She was wearing a simple breastplate and steel boots. Her luxurious white cloak looked out of place on her, considering her otherwise humble appearance.
“I’ve been waiting for you, General,” she said. Her voice was as soft and sweet as honey.
Hadjar tilted his head to one side and looked at her face, which seemed familiar to him.
Oh for heaven’s sake…
The gods had decided to play a trick on him because this girl was the daughter of the Master who’d almost killed Nero. Was this some sort of condemnation of his life choices? Was he going to be stuck fighting the relatives of people he’d killed until the day he died?
“My name is Rina,” she said, “and I’ve come to take your life.”
Name
Rina
Level of cultivation
Transformation (Mortal Shell)
Strength
3.1
Dexterity
4
Physique
1.5
Energy points
5.2
She activated one of the hieroglyphs and a black flame flashed at the top of the staff. It was a huge pillar of black fire, three feet wide and fifteen feet long. She swung it as if it were a fly swatter and Hadjar was an annoying bug.
The General raised his sword, already covered in the dragon-shaped energy. The steel met the fire, sending out black sparks and silver petals of flame. When they landed on the warriors around them, they turned them into living torches, screaming with fear and pain.
Out of the corner of his eye, Hadjar saw that this was affecting not only the sectarians, but his soldiers as well. He deflected the flame to the side and slashed, aiming at her hips and belly.
The staff whirled, making a sound like the wind playing atop the water. Hadjar’s sword crashed into the black flame again, which was now the size of a small halberd’s blade.
After their clash, Rina took a few steps back, but that was just what she needed. Putting some distance between herself and Hadjar, she got lost in the crowd for a moment.
Hadjar also had to contend with two disciples. He struck the chest of the first warrior and sent him flying, his ribs shattered. Turning around, he decapitated the second fighter and a rain of blood washed away the soot and dust on his armor.
Hearing the agonized cries of people around him, the General realized that Rina was about to attack him. He turned around just in time to see a wave of black fire coming toward him. The flame easily turned people into ashes, melted the earth, and turned sand into black glass.
Hadjar dropped to his right knee and plunged Moon Beam into the ground in front of him. The steel blade flashed and met Rina’s Technique like a breakwater. Instead of cutting the wave in half and letting it pass by him, Hadjar grabbed the hilt of his sword with both hands and pulled it out of the ground with a roar. He stopped the wave of flame, swung his blade, and sent it right back at Rina.
The girl raised her staff, which was glowing with a dark, menacing energy. She was ready to deal with her Technique that had been turned against her. What she didn’t realize was that Hadjar’s ghostly blades were hidden inside the black flame. He’d used them to control the wave and redirect it.
By the time she figured this out, it was already too late. Instead of just one Technique, she ended up facing two. One was solid, crushing and burning everything in its path. The second one was more ephemeral and elusive, like the wind, but at the same time capable of cutting through solid rock.
Dragon Heart: Iron Will. LitRPG Wuxia Series: Book 2 Page 50