“Drop pad down,” Malsour said.
“Here as well,” Jung Lee said.
The ono in Deia’s castle connected to the teleport pad. It seemed that the moment it did, people flowed outward.
A man at the front looked around, locking eyes on Deia before he jogged over. “Esa told me to tell you to move to the next location.”
“Thank you,” Deia said. She switched back to the party chat. “Once you have people coming out of your onos, then go back to Terra. We’ll regroup and head to the next location.”
“Got it. We’ve got Ooinfa coming out of our portal. What you got over there?” Lox asked.
“Xelur,” Gurren spat.
“Lovely,” Lox said in a dark tone.
Deia passed through the ono and entered Terra once again. The rest of Party Zero did the same, quickly meeting up. It didn’t take them long to find a new location to head toward as they repeated the process over again.
Chapter 2: A Change Overnight
Josh hadn’t slept in hours. Thankfully he didn’t need much of it with his high Endurance. However, the matters that had gone on in the last couple of hours weighed heavily on him.
There were a total of nearly thirty portals that had opened up across Emerilia. For twenty of them, the Terra Alliance had been fast enough to get a command of the surrounding citadels. Two of the portals had two of the invaders holding two citadels and the Alliance or people from Emerilia holding the other two. There were five with the invaders controlling three and one where the invading species had taken all of the citadels around the portal.
Nearly all of these citadels were under attack in some form or would be shortly.
The people of the Terra Alliance had come together. A few kingdoms had opted out at this time; it was expected that there would be a number that would leave as soon as things got tough. However, the great majority stayed, seeing that the Alliance would make them stronger when dealing with these threats.
Soldiers had swarmed through Terra and into these citadels that appeared all across Emerilia.
The various citadels fought against the forces in the areas around the portals, or fought other citadels that were quickly becoming strongholds for the invaders.
The invaders didn’t just stay in the area around the portal. A great number of them, like the Galis, a race that lived in the air, only used the citadels to rest before they sped off across Emerilia.
People who had stayed outside of the defendable cities were now in a rush to create their own defenses or move toward the overpopulated cities. Anything that wasn’t a city or town with defenses in place was being left behind.
He looked around the room there was the Stone Raider leadership as well as leaders from all of the major powers in the Terra Alliance.
Everyone was too tired to stand on much ceremony as they took their seats, looking to Lucy she started talking as the last person entered the room.
“It’s clear that this is just starting. We’ve got nearly a dozen aggressive species pouring through those portals, and we’re finding more and more creatures and sub-quests from the Myths and Legends event that are undermining our strength in various cities. We’ve got to build up Terra to feed, clothe, and house more people,” Lucy said.
Koza cleared his throat. Everyone in the room looked to him with a questioning glance.
“The Aleph have many areas that we can’t fully man. We have hired people in the past to work with us and seeing as we have this room and need more people, we will open up these opportunities to more people. We are also willing to help with the design and building of more places,” Koza said.
There were relieved and agreeable murmurs from around the table.
“Thank you, Koza,” Josh said, with a slight smile.
Koza simply nodded, as if it were nothing.
“We have also hired a new group of Dark mages who will be able to increase our ability to expand Terra and any other facilities that we make. I had other Dark mages work to place down drop pads in different locations around Terra. We need resources, crops—all those kinds of things to keep us going,” Lucy said.
“It looks like this is going to turn into a battle of attrition more than anything,” Dwayne said.
The other people in the room had bitter looks on their faces. If their people had to hide in cities to survive, then resources were going to get a lot scarcer. The production from farms would greatly decrease. They had plans in place but they hadn’t thought that something on this scale would happen.
“The dwarves will also open their mountains,” the dwarf from the dwarven war council said.
This was more shocking than the Aleph. Although the Aleph hadn’t had really anyone new go into their cities, they weren’t as well known as the dwarves.
They rarely let people into their cities other than for the dwarven tournament that was held in specially made arenas; the stores and various places around the tournament had been built by them. Few actually passed into the mountain.
“We also have a list of people we would like to meet and talk to.” The dwarf shared a list to them all. There were names across the paper: famed blacksmiths, Dark mages, Earth mages, warriors, and battle mages.
“What do you want them for?” Josh asked.
“The blacksmiths we want to train higher if at all possible and give them a place to work that allows them to push their limits. Same for the Earth and Dark mages. We have an even deeper understanding of these two magics than the mage’s college and guild.” The dwarf looked to the representatives of these institutions. Both of them nodded in agreement. “The warriors and various other mages, we have many Weapons of Power—now is the time to use them. If the weapons agree with them, then they will be gifted a Weapon of Power to defend Emerilia and its people.”
There had been rumors and talk that people in the dwarven tournament were pulled aside and given Weapons of Power. A great number of people, upon returning from the tournament, had greatly increased in their strength. Not many were willing to declare that they were holding Weapons of Power. Jealousy and greed were deadly sins. If someone who wanted these items heard that a weaker person had a Weapon of Power, they might kill them off to gain it.
A few had said they had Weapons of Power but out of respect for the dwarves they hadn’t said where it had come from.
Now the dwarves were confirming these rumors. All of those around the table were a little stunned at the turn of events.
Josh secretly looked to them all. There seemed to be a sense of unity, of drive in the room. That they were in this together. After the dwarven war council leader spoke up, some other groups started to talk about their ultimate weapons. Instead of holding onto these trump cards that they might use at a later date to get greater standing in the Alliance, they were using them now to show their dedication to see this through.
Looks like this Alliance might work out.
***
“Get those cannons mounted!” a Beast Kin yelled over the roar of battle. People from all races ran around. Dwarves with their artillery cannons to the top of the inner citadel, getting mages to assist them in taking them to the roof of the central tower.
The walls had mages and warriors on them, unleashing their attacks on the writhing mass of green caterpillar-looking creatures.
These creatures were from the Erach race. Their nickname in the Jukal Empire was world devourers. These creatures had eaten everything that was on their home planet, from planet matter to other creatures and then once they had eaten everything on their planet, many went into hibernation and underwent a metamorphosis to absorb sunlight and various energies to support themselves.
They were about as large as a baseball and a foot long. They spat out a numbing and stunning agent, and they could burrow through the hardest of materials with enough time. They were currently coating the walls of the citadel that the Terra Alliance held, eating their way through as the defenders tried to lay down as many area of effect spells as possible.
>
There were hundreds of thousands of the creatures that had come through the portal like a flood, but they had been so focused on eating everything around the portal that the Alliance had been able to make a decent foothold in the surrounding citadels.
With all of the stored energy within them, the more mature Erach were able to unleash a green beam of light that could burrow through shields, barriers, and materials that lay in their path.
However, this energy, once burned up, would take days or weeks to regenerate; by killing these creatures with explosion spells, their power would actually erupt, destroying a large area. Otherwise, the soul-capturing runes across the walls would light up, capturing this potent power. With the death of every Erach, their power was unleashed on the world.
This, in turn, was drawn in by the hastily made runes, powering the few vault soul gems that the people of the Alliance held.
There weren’t many soul gem constructs made by the Pandora’s Box team. Their resources and time requirements for the constructs weren’t small. However, it was clear that they couldn’t let the Erach spread across Emerilia. The soul gem constructs at every citadel were growing faster and faster with all of this power being drawn into them.
Artillery spells howled overhead, raining death onto the Erach or creating spells that trapped the creatures for other spells to wipe them out.
It was chaos looking out upon the green caterpillars that charged toward the citadels. They fed off a person’s energy—eating plants was good, but eating a Level 200 person? There was nothing that could compare to this treat.
Bob watched this and countless other battles even as he was within the moonbase, working on his own Altar of Rebirth. The other projects were all automated. He had even set up the asteroid mining facilities, shipping drills that had been used to create Terra through the portals and to the ice planet and the asteroids. There were factories and repair bots that would help to create the bases on both of those planets, as well as Jeeves, who was managing it all and moving resources between all the various locations to keep them running at optimal conditions.
“How did it come to this?” Bob asked himself. He had hoped to keep humanity alive, maybe to sneak them away and allow them another chance. With Emerilia becoming the entertainment of the Jukal Empire, it had become impossible. Now he had put all his hopes and dreams into Party Zero and the people he had come to know in order to overthrow the Jukal Empire. There was just no other option. However, with this goal in mind, all of these hardships had come up, from the event to the opening of portals across Emerilia.
This wasn’t a game; it was genocide.
Just as it looked as though the citadel besieged by the Erach would fall, a rain of fiery arrows came from the sky, killing thousands of the tightly packed Erach.
Runes along the walls were changed, the stone and metal moving into the new formations. The Erach let out pained shrieks as the walls became cursed and acidic, burning and weakening the Erach.
Party Zero had arrived just in time; Gurren and Lox flew out of the inner citadel, rushing to the walls to help the defenders who had come face-to-face with the Erach that had made it inside the citadel.
With all of this killing, the power to the soul gem construct increased as it grew out of the inner citadel and spread to the walls.
Induca formed a massive fire wall that covered the worst fifty-meter-long stretch of the outer wall. Anna called down a storm spell that formed multiple tornadoes that covered a hundred-meter square area, moving across the battlefield, pulling Erach from the ground and cutting them apart with the sharp blades of air.
The other mages within the citadel unleashed their spells. The Erach’s attack was held off and actually pushed back under this combined pressure.
It gave the dwarven artillery enough time to get into place. Their guns bellowed as they unleashed area of effect spells that would clear a fifty-meter area of Erach.
Bob was powerless in this battle, but he felt a bit of hope after seeing the Terra Alliance working together to save Emerilia.
***
Dave, Malsour, and Steve were all at the first southern citadel around Goblin Mountain. They were in the central castle underneath the main tower that extended into the sky.
None of them were talking as they worked. The rest of Party Zero was off acting as a reactive force: they would rush through teleport pads and onos, laying down massive damage to give the defenders or the attackers trying to take citadels some relief and hopefully allow them to hold on or enter the citadels to capture them.
It was madness, with the dozens of battlefields changing constantly. The Alliance had lost some citadels and gained others. Some were simply watching to see what the enemy would do, or were stuck in a chaotic battle for survival.
The Pandora’s Box crew didn’t pay attention to the outside world. A number of craftspeople stood around them, ready and waiting to get whatever they needed.
Dave once again went into the Mirror of Communication. He quickly shared out his problem to his class of coders. Creating a coding think tank focused on the problem. Nearly three hundred people were here, from all across Emerilia. Some were part of the Alliance; others worked in Grahslagg Corporation and others were simply helping out. Among those helping out there were hidden figures of people from the Deq’ual system.
Dave would simply go in, share a problem he was getting stuck on and leave once again, or pass out a simulation to run. He’d also drop off Malsour and Steve’s questions and work.
This sped up the process of working on the citadels’ new systems immensely. They never stopped working, always turning from one roadblock to another question that they could solve.
Malsour turned from their work and looked to the forty or so Blood Kin that were off to the side and back to Dave. They might need blood in order to display their power, but they weren’t bad people. With a large supply of blood crystals coming in, they were stronger than ever, allowing them to become a small but incredibly powerful building force.
“It’s time.” Dave nodded, seeing the question in Malsour’s eyes.
Malsour stood, cleared his throat and moved to the Blood Kin. “All right, listen up because time is of the essence. We’re going to form the basis of the new system that will be running through this citadel. Here are the plans,” Malsour said as a person ran up with a bag to the Blood Kin.
The haughty Blood Kin glanced over the plans. Their normally indifferent faces turned alarmed at the plans while one of them took the bag and opened the top.
“These…” the one who had taken the bag said, looking into the bag.
“There should be a few hundred blood essence crystals in there. I have someone who is working on making something more Mana-potent than these simple crystals. Now get them in you and let’s get to work!” Malsour said.
The Blood Kin pulled on their masks and their hoods. Blood essence crystals were distributed to them all as they moved out into the citadel. They quickly moved to the various cardinal points.
The citadel that they were in was no longer a simple Level 1 citadel. As it had been under the Terra Alliance’s control for so long, it had actually progressed to a Level 3 citadel and was about a week away from making it to Level 4.
Level 2 had taken the simple outer wall and inner citadel with a large town in the middle of it and expanded everything. The wall had expanded outward, becoming taller and thicker. The inner citadel had risen up as well, its walls becoming thicker and adding two new floors so that it looked out over the outer walls. Four small towers at the cardinal points had grown from the inner citadel and reached upward. In the center, the main tower had doubled in size and also grown four more stories. A second outer wall had risen around the first, increasing the depth of the defenses.
With the third change, the second outer wall became as thick and strong as the first wall in the second stage and moved outward. From it, eight small towers had appeared at the eight combined cardinal and inter-cardinal points.
The biggest change was the original castle and walls. The walls became thicker as the ground rose up, creating a hill underneath the walls and the castle.
Now, instead of being flat, the different layers of defense were stacked. The inner castle didn’t grow outward but instead in places the stone was covered in sections of metal to defend against possible attack and shore up weak positions.
The towers became more refined and actually held their own Mana barriers instead of just the Mana barriers created by the soul gem construct.
Soul gem constructs were still growing. The area was so large and power was at a premium that the Alliance hadn’t wanted to spend much of it on the citadel to begin with.
Now they needed something to help turn these battles.
Pandora’s Box had been secretly supplementing the power needed for the project, running their reactors to charge vault soul gems.
Bob was overlooking the soul gem factories while he worked on his own projects. There simply weren’t enough vault soul gems to keep everything powered continuously. They had to be dumped into the soul gem construct and whisked back to a recharge point.
Still, the growth had been immense.
Within the inner castle, there were multiple storage crates that had been dropped off by the automated carts for the next part of what was needed for the citadel.
Malsour stayed in a hidden room within the center of the citadel, trying to clear his mind of all distractions. He changed into his dragon form as much as possible. Power surged through him as he sensed the ground underneath him, overlaying the ground with the plan that Pandora’s Box and their coding helpers had come up with.
“This is going to be difficult,” Malsour said to himself, feeling the Blood Kin reach the various positions across the citadel and its defenses.
They all took a few moments to get into a comfortable position, consume their blood essences and submerge themselves into the ground under their feet.
Of Myths and Legends (Emerilia Book 9) Page 2