The Nerhoun’s barrier continued to change color, becoming weaker and weaker under constant attack. The ability of the Nerhoun to have this much of a Mana reserve was incredible. It was as strong as some of the barriers used by the dwarves.
Dave and Party Zero finally arrived. Malsour, Dave, and Steve were all on the roof. They moved to the artillery cannons and looked to the Nerhoun.
Dave had a quick talk with the dwarven artillery commander. Dwayne couldn’t hear it through all of the weapon fire.
Dave nodded, clapping the commander on the shoulder before he moved to the cannons where Malsour, Steve, and he had a conference.
Dwayne moved over to them and tapped them on the shoulder.
Dave saw him, quickly adding him to their private chat.
“Okay, so these rounds are pretty effective. If we were to use the grand working rounds that are sympathetic to the weapons, it will take maybe a hundred rounds to take one of these Nerhoun’s barriers down. Right now, all of the dwarves are testing out the new flame-plate attachments. I say it’s a good time for us to run our tests and see if we can improve them in any way.” Dave sounded calm despite the war raging around the Nerhoun.
“What are you talking about—the rounds taking apart the barriers in a hundred rounds?” Dwayne asked.
“Right now, the cannons are using the simple Fire-based plasma artillery shells. There are grand working plasma artillery shells that have been custom made for the magical augmentation you see on the cannons. With it, the round is a hundred times stronger than what you’re currently seeing. However, we only have a limited number of these shells. Making a grand working is more time-intensive than making a soul gem construct. You need to make the soul gem to hold the grand working, then you need someone to imprint their spell upon it. It’s not simple to imprint it, either. Then you shoot it out of a cannon and all of that work blows up in destructive forces,” Dave said.
“Whereas the simple shells that you see here, they’re made by a factory that can spit out a hundred of them in an hour and a half,” Malsour said.
Dwayne nodded. It made sense right now, even though there was a Nerhoun present. It was protecting the Nalheim, but it was moving slowly and wasn’t a direct threat. Using the less powerful artillery shells on it made more sense than their limited supply of much more powerful rounds.
If another Nerhoun showed up at a crucial moment and they had used their rounds on the first one, it would be a great waste.
The Nerhoun’s barriers continued to change colors before suddenly they disappeared. Rounds that had been intended for the barrier now hit the Nerhoun underneath.
It shuddered under the impacts against its armored top while tentacles that were struck by the plasma rounds were simply burnt through. The Nerhoun let out a pained screech as it pulled back and into Goblin Mountain, leaving the Nalheim uncovered once again but continuing on their path toward the south.
They were much faster than before and their formations were clear. The Nerhoun had brought order and allowed them to repel the attack from the undead.
Dwayne moved back to the citadel’s crenellation wall, using a far sight spell to see the Nalheim up close.
The dwarven artillery commander ordered the shell types changed once again as barrier busters and Mana-based artillery spells took to the air.
The Nalheim fell, but now, those who were left wounded or dead had a spear shoved into each of their heads to make sure that they wouldn’t rise again.
The tactic had worked once but it wouldn’t happen a second time.
After about ten minutes, the Nalheim stopped trailing out of Goblin Mountain.
“The Nalheim have all but stopped coming out of Goblin Mountain, but we’ve more Nerhouns coming out,” Josh yelled.
Once again, orders were passed among the artillery cannons as plasma rounds were readied.
Nerhouns tore out from Goblin Mountain, inflating to their full size. Hits smashed off their barriers as they slowly hovered over to the Nalheim, while their cone-like defenses covered those below.
The wounded Nerhoun sat in the middle of the four others, protected by them as it recovered its strength.
Each of the castles focused on just one Nerhoun but it would take another hour before they could take down its barrier. The Nalheim had found a way to resist the artillery attacks and now only had to deal with the traps of the ground.
Dwayne looked downward, his jaw working as the Nalheim front lines simply jabbed forward with their spears. It was similar to trying to walk through a minefield and shooting at the ground to make sure there was nothing there. Sometimes the magical traps were destroyed; sometimes they weren’t. Other times they blew up immediately and killed those within a large area.
However, the Nalheim’s losses weren’t as great and all of the sky screams, gryphons, and war lizards were in straight and clean formations instead of rushing out to attack the enemy whenever they could.
A group of aerial forces moved in close to attack the Nerhouns and those under their protection.
The tentacles of the Nerhoun in question whipped out faster than a person’s eye could track, cutting down dozens of the aerial fighters in just mere moments.
The aerial forces cut away hard and fast, trying to put distance between them and the Nerhoun. The aerial forces moved to attack from higher altitudes and drop Mana bombs.
“Josh, let’s pull back our forces in the field. If they’re under those barriers, they can hit the Nalheim, but those Nerhoun are just going to tear them apart,” Dwayne said.
“Agreed. We’ll move forces to reinforce the eastern castle,” Josh said.
Dwayne cancelled his far sight spell, his eyes heavy. “They should arrive within no more than three or four hours.”
The Nalheim had been largely gathering their strength; yes, they had trouble with advancing and most of their higher rank people were running around but now he saw what it was. They were scouting, figuring out what the people of Emerilia were going to do. With that information, as soon as the Nerhoun and its master came out, the army had started to move in a clear direction with a concrete strategy.
***
Within Terra, people stopped what they were doing to see as the forces under Esa’s command that had been waiting within the city now started to move.
They marched through a teleport pad, leaving Terra and entering Eastern Castle One.
The castle commanders organized the fighting forces. All of them watched the Nerhoun and their protected Nalheim advancing for the castle.
From another teleport pad, Party Zero moved to join with the Stone Raiders within the force. There was a sense of excitement with the Stone Raiders but also a feeling of careful preparation. These were elite gamers; they might be excited to play, but they hadn’t come here to lose.
The POE were stone-faced. They knew that they could die and that their opponent was strong, but they were here for the good of Terra and they wouldn’t shirk their duty.
Chapter 16: Face-to-Face with a Nerhoun
Eastern Castle One had been filled up with fighters. Artillery cannons had been firing for two hours but the Nerhoun was getting closer and closer.
Deia looked at the floating beasts and the Nalheim who marched underneath them. They had moved across the battlefield practically unopposed. A number of them had died from the traps that were placed across the ground outside Goblin Mountain, but their losses didn’t have a large impact on the Nalheim’s forces.
“Switch to plasma cannon grand workings!” The dwarven artillery commander’s words passed through the dwarven artillery and through the command channel.
Moments later, the first complete plasma round was fired off. It whizzed through the air. As it impacted the Nerhoun’s barrier, it rapidly changed color.
Party Zero added in their firepower as the DCA’s aerial forces moved all of their people from the ground and into the air. Mana spearheads projected from their hands as bombs dropped from their breastplates.
The Nalheim had been in the practice of rotating their weakest Nerhouns out of the outside of their formation to the inside, where they could regain their Mana and restore their barrier before switching out with another who was in the ring of four taking the majority of the hits from the castles.
It made it harder to destroy the Nerhoun’s Mana barriers, but throughout their advance, the Nerhoun’s average barriers had decreased in power. They were just prolonging the time they could stay active for.
Steve, Gurren, and Lox all raised their arms. The bands on their wrists rotated before Mana spears the size of Steve’s head tore through the air and slammed into the Nerhoun.
Deia pulled back on her bow Firecracker’s string. An arrow formed from the air; it glowed with blue and red fire but not even a bit of heat was released. As she pulled back, much like with the Mana cannons or her own plasma cannon spell, glowing panels appeared around her bow, conforming to it and extending along the length of the arrow. She released the arrow. It cut through the air, a blue-red streak. It impacted a Nerhoun with all of the force of Deia’s plasma cannon spell.
However, Deia only needed to imbue the bow with a small amount of Mana and then use her strength to draw the bow.
This was the effect of a Weapon of Power.
Deia pulled back on the bow’s string again. Her lips moved slightly; the blue of the arrow glowed brighter than before as she released it. With her increased strength of Fire spells when using the bow and their lower cost, she was able to increase her attack’s power to terrifying new heights.
It slammed into the Mana barrier in a massive explosion that sent a ripple of power through the Nerhoun’s barrier.
A black-looking magical circle appeared in front of Malsour’s hand. Moments later, a truly massive magical circle appeared above the Nalheim formation.
Out of that inky dark magical circle, meteors started to appear, racing toward the Nerhoun below.
The Nerhoun’s barriers shuddered under the incoming meteors’ impacts.
The air around Induca was filled with floating panels that overlapped one another, creating a plasma cannon over her shoulder.
Every other second, a plasma round flashed through the air, impacting the Nerhoun barriers, only slightly weaker than Deia’s own Fire arrows.
Suzy waved her hands. Her creations came together; there were just Air, Fire and metal creations. Above her, Lu Lu had expanded to fifteen meters in length. Her wings flapped to keep her hovering above the party as she unleashed blinding lightning attacks, one after another.
Suzy’s Air creations created a massive air tunnel that seemed to pull all of the air within the castle through it. Lining this tunnel, there were metal constructs held in place by the Air constructs as well as Fire constructs heating up the air inside the tunnel, increasing the speed at which air was sucked through.
Behind them, there were a dozen or so metal creations with Air creations holding them at the mouth to the air tunnel.
All of the metal creations at the mouth to the tunnel had changed into what looked like sleek metal darts, or were in the process of it.
The suction of the Air creations increased as the first metal construction dart was hurled into the mouth of the tunnel. The metal constructs within the tunnel changed their polarity, pulling and pushing the dart along at incredible speeds.
Suzy had made a massive hybrid railgun. The Fire creations heated up the air that was pulled within the tunnel, speeding it up to an incredible speed while the metal creations within the tunnel attracted and then repelled the metal dart constructs.
The darts as big as a person howled through the skies.
LuLu let out a pleased screech as she opened her mouth, spitting lightning at the metal dart. The lightning covered the dart, writhing around it as if it were alive.
Moments later, the dart landed.
The barrier fluctuated. The attack wasn’t as strong as Deia’s arrows or Induca’s cannon, nor was it as overbearing as Malsour’s meteor rain.
The lightning increased the attack power of the dart, before a multi-colored ball of light seemed to appear around the dart and obliterated it.
Wild Mana tore against the Nerhoun’s barrier, blasting in every direction. The Nerhoun’s barrier quickly changed color. Tentacles rose up in defense, sending disrupting attacks at Party Zero.
The Mana barrier of the first eastern castle took the impacts head on.
An order must have been passed down to the other Nalheim, as at extreme range, the Nalheim not in the front ranks started to release their disrupting attacks from the tips of their spears once again.
Dave looked to Suzy, who looked slightly paler. The control needed to have that many creations working at once in such a complicated manner was high.
However, with the creations having their creation cores to hold them together and support them, as well as her staff of Hecate, she was able to hold the spell together and quickly recover as she fired out another creation.
Tentacles waved in the air, unleashing disrupting attacks and targeting the darts.
There was now only five hundred meters between the castle and the Nerhoun.
Malsour had lowered as he staggered slightly, panting from his exertions. The magical circle in the sky disappeared; the last meteors fell through and hit the Nerhoun. Their strength dissipated quickly as they started to dissolve.
Malsour downed a Mana potion, his face pale from his attacks.
Anna stood calmly on the wall, watching the fight, ready to step in at a moment’s notice.
Dave tossed out grenades into the air. They flew off toward the Nalheim at great speed.
The true plasma round grand workings now started to impact against the Nerhoun, covering them in flames and destruction.
They were largely targeting the three Nerhouns who the eastern castle couldn’t hit. Eastern Castles One and Two both had true plasma round grand workings. The Nerhoun’s tentacles whipped out, sensing the power of these shells. The Nerhoun facing the eastern castles was able to cut down nearly a third of the shells while trying to fend off the various attacks from the mages and ranged attacks from Eastern Castle One.
Its barriers shuddered and turned a dangerous color. It was now within three hundred meters. More ranged attackers and those who had ranged weapons added their own attacks into the fight.
The other Nerhouns facing outward fared much better. They were able to destroy half to three-quarters of the incoming shells. Their barriers shook but they didn’t reach the color of the leading Nerhoun’s barrier.
Dave’s grenades paused before the barrier, slowing down. Fast objects and magical spells couldn’t enter a Mana barrier. The runes on the grenades seemed to turn off before hitting the Mana barrier. They passed through; once again their runes lit up as they descended toward the ground and spread out.
All at once, they dropped, reaching the Nalheim’s head height before turning into bright explosions that overlapped one another.
A one-hundred-meter area was cleared of Nalheim in just a matter of seconds. War lizards and dismounted were obliterated. With one attack, Dave had managed to kill nearly two hundred of the Nalheim.
Dave looked at a prompt that appeared within his vision.
Level 239
You have reached Level 239; you have 5 stat points to use.
He smiled to himself and dismissed the screen. He looked to his Weapons Master quest.
Quest: Weapons Master Level 3
One handed and shield 1000/1000
Two handed 138/1000
Dual wielding 27/1000
Archery 541/1000
Rewards: Unlock Level 4 Quest
Increase to stats
Passive skills from other weapons increase from 25% to 50% when designated weapon is not equipped. (Example: While using Dual wield blades, one is able to gain 50% of the archery skill’s abilities.)
Since he had been fighting much harder opponents, he had found that he was unable to greatly
increase his various skills. Increasing the passive increases from the various skills was tempting indeed. However, fighting such powerful creatures, it was hard to kill many. Maybe if he was able to find some smaller and easier creatures, he could rapidly raise the classes’ levels.
He dismissed the screen and tossed out more grenades.
Again they took off into the sky, turning off as they passed through the Mana barrier and descended upon the confused Nalheim.
Their barrier was still up but explosions continued to get in.
Dave watched as another hundred fell to his grenades. His eyes thinned as he threw out more of the grenades. The external defensive strength of the Nerhoun is impressive, but what about up close?
The Nerhoun was now within two hundred meters. Multiple explosions covered its Mana barriers as its disrupting tentacles blurred and flashed, attacking the castle’s Mana barrier as well as trying to take out the most powerful attacks.
Dave could sense that the Nerhoun’s barrier was quickly failing. Dave threw out more grenades that flew away.
Being so close to the eastern castle, the Nerhoun was unable to defeat many of the high-powered plasma cannon grand workings that were tearing its barrier apart with ease.
Still, it was capable of blocking Suzy’s darts, which she was now detonating away from the Nerhoun’s Mana barrier so as to at least affect it somewhat. However, that was becoming risky for her as the explosion of her creation’s core could also hurt the castle’s own Mana barrier. So many of her darts were being cut apart before they left the castle’s barrier and reached the Nerhoun’s.
Suddenly, the Nerhoun’s barrier disappeared.
Dave didn’t pause, increasing the speed of his grenades as the Nerhoun looked to retreat behind the center Nerhoun who had been waiting to switch out.
The unshielded Nerhoun took multiple hits. Its armored scale-covered head was able to take impact after impact. However, its powerful tentacles were easily cut apart by the high-powered attacks.
Emerilia Series Box Set 4 Page 20