Underneath the tower in the castle, the ono switched from Terra to Devil’s Crater. Wounded continued to be funneled through to the medical areas that Devil’s Crater had adopted after seeing the Terra Hospital and working with Jules.
On the other side, Efri and his forces rushed forward.
“Move it!” Efri ran through the ono and out into the inner castle. As soon as he was in the castle, he spread out his wings, taking to the sky in a few flaps. His speed increased, as he rushed through the corridors, out of the castle and into the open area between the castle and the outer walls. He tilted toward the heavens, seeing the sun coming over the horizon as he gained altitude. Behind him, DCA aerial forces followed in a stream.
They grouped together into their wings as Efri looked over the battlefield, comparing it to the real-time updates that he had been watching through his Mirror of Communication.
“Wing commanders, take over. Hunt the Xelur bastards down!” Efri’s voice had no room for mercy in it.
He and the DCA aerial forces had been all over Emerilia, supporting different castles’ groups around the portals. Many were thankfully under the control of the Terra Alliance but a number of them were being contested. But none of them had had the degree of fighting that these castles had gone through.
He banked to the side, watching as four Dragons whistled out of the sky, unleashing flames of different colors from their mouths, illuminating their polished scales as the ground and Xelur below were annihilated. Their wings snapped outward, catching the wind as they rushed over the Xelur. Four lines of destruction cut through the fleeing Xelur.
Efri’s eyes thinned as he looked at these Xelur Demons. It was after these creatures that his race had been created. The Dark Lord and his minion Boran-al were not able to make the demons of Devil’s Crater able to use soul energy to enhance their abilities but instead increased their physical abilities and made it so that they would grow stronger and faster than other races, at the cost of having a low ability with magic.
The Xelur lived to tear power from one another and their victims.
Esa watched that line of DCA aerial forces that took to the sky, spreading out like vengeful spirits. They rushed over the Xelur that were retreating or still within the outer walls killing them all with brutal efficiency then soaring away to look for the next prey.
From their chests, Mana bombs dropped. Their impacts made the ground rumble as Xelur were destroyed by the bombing runs. The DCA held out their hands; shooting out Mana bolts raking the panicked Xelur, who were now in full retreat, trying to get away from the northern castle that had turned into a death trap.
With the change of events, the defenders surged, retaking the walls and sections that the Xelur had held.
The Xelur that were still waiting to get into the castle were now running back toward their castles while the breaches were now the exits for the Xelur streaming away from the northern castle. However, these breaches were getting smaller and smaller as the conquest points were poured in to repair them.
The western wall, which had only been breached in a few places, didn’t know what was happening at the eastern side. One moment, they were still trying to gain access to the castle and had a few places where they had gained a foothold on the top of the walls; the next, the Dragons banked low around the walls, unleashing a combined breath that was four times their original power and size of their individual attacks.
They tore through the Xelur as if they were nothing, inflicting thousands of casualties in one pass.
The Xelur, stunned by this sudden attack, were thrown into disarray turning from an army into an uncoordinated mob.
Then the DCA wings appeared, their bombs and Mana bolts raking those below.
The Xelur attacked with their ranged soul-powered beams. But their ranged attacks were totally ineffective because of the Soul Draining beams that Dave had created.
The DCA’s Mana barriers took hits but with their speed and evasive actions, it was hard to get a solid hit on them long enough to take down their Mana barrier.
Mana bombs made the ground rumble as every hit killed tens of Xelur.
The eastern wall advanced faster and faster. The dwarves advanced at walking pace now, pushing over the cratered and broken ground and stepping over the fallen Xelur.
Players and POEs of all kinds hovered in the air, attacking with all their might, or along the walls above the breaches, raining down attacks on the Xelur.
The western group of Xelur broke and ran for their castle.
Esa watched as they retreated in a panic. “Repair the walls and hit those bastards in the back. Get the outer castles to assist where they can,” Esa said, not looking backward as her aide carried out her orders.
She wiped her forehead with a dirty hand, not caring as she looked over the ruins that was her northern castle. “Prepare the assault. We’re going ahead with it as soon as everyone is ready.” Esa turned and walked into the command room.
“Esa, we just won—shouldn’t we take a rest?” a player asked.
“The Xelur are in a panic. They have their people coming back scared and uncoordinated. If we hit them now, while they’re off-balance, our actions will have the greatest effect,” Esa said.
“But some of us need to deal with real-world things,” the player complained.
If it had been before Dave had told her and the rest of the Stone Raider leadership about the truth of Emerilia, Esa might have entertained the idea of waiting to let the players do their stuff on Earth to go ahead with their full strength.
Now—well, now she knew that real lives were on the line. She wasn’t willing to wait for anyone.
“Well, too damn bad! Those who are online or can get online will get the best loot for taking the eastern castle.” Esa looked to the other aides who had been listening and watching the byplay. “See that everything is ready as soon as possible.”
Chapter 9: Counterattack
Malsour landed on the wall of the northern castle and watched the Xelur flee toward their nearest castles. His fellow Dragons and the DCA wheeled away from them as they now came under attack from the castles’ Xelur defenders.
Malsour snorted, his eyes cold as he looked at the eastern castle.
“Well, looks like the Dragon’s out of the bag,” Steve said on the party chat.
Malsour looked to Steve and then the others who were on the walls, looking to the Xelur and Malsour.
“It was bound to happen sometime,” Dave said.
“At least this way I can use my full power.” Malsour looked at a breach, commanding the wall to repair itself. The rocks moved as if they were alive, coming back together as they filled the breach.
“Esa just passed down the order. We’re to prepare ourselves to counterattack the eastern castle as soon as possible,” Deia said.
“Looks like we’re far from done.” Gurren sighed.
“One thing at a time,” Lox agreed.
“I’ll help with repairing the wall,” Malsour said.
“And I’ll see what I can do about fixing Lox and Gurren’s armor.” Dave gave the two dwarves an unimpressed look.
***
Esa was once again in the command center of the northern tower. She had reviewed the plan with all the different commanders and Dwayne had even come over to personally lead the Stone Raiders who were a part of the plan to attack the eastern castle.
Still, she was stuck up in the command post, watching over all of it as people rushed into battles. She understood that she needed to stay behind in order to deal with anything that didn’t go according to plan. At the same time, she wished that she could be down there with everyone.
“Well, looks like you’ve got everything in hand.”
Esa jumped at the voice and her hand went to her sword.
“Seems I can still creep up on people.” Josh grinned. His face turned solemn as he continued to look over the forces that were arrayed within the outer walls and castle.
“Goddamn ro
gue types,” Esa muttered, also looking to the forces. “And yes, they’re ready.”
In the distance, Dragons and DCA aerial forces were well above the eastern castle, hammering the Xelur below with every attack they had. Artillery spells and cannons activated against Xelur soul barriers. Here and there, barriers would give way as sections of the walls would explode inward or Xelur would bear the brunt of the incoming attacks.
It was a hellish scene but neither Josh nor Esa had an ounce of pity for those within those defenses.
“Each time that we kill some of them, the others get stronger. It’s nearly as bad as fighting necros,” Esa said in frustration.
Josh clapped her on the shoulder. “Don’t worry. We’ll get through this.”
“I hope so.”
Commanders yelled out their orders. The time had come.
The sound of marching feet could be heard from the command post as players led the way, moving through the south and northern gates; Malsour, had completely sealed the eastern gate already.
The forces marched out of the gates, moving to the east and coming together.
Guild leaders organized their people into rectangular fighting formations, their long sides faced the eastern castles. Their lines were only three deep, with the tanks in front, ranged and DPS fighters in the second row; the third rank held ranged fighters.
The players moved forward at a brisk pace as more and more flowed out of the gates to join on the ends of the player groups. Each of the guilds were in separate fighting formations.
In the middle, the Stone Raiders were with other guilds, from largest to smallest, spread to the right and left side. Here and there, players moved faster forward than the other sections; the guild leaders snapped on them to stay together.
Players worked well together but they were also greedy when confident. They were in a massive fighting force of players, the biggest player versus monster fight that had happened in Emerilia thus far. They were excited, leading them to advance in front of the others and also wanting to reach the enemy faster in order to gain more experience instead of losing it to the other players.
While these thoughts were going on, they also wanted to win and they would do anything to keep one another alive so that they could continue fighting.
It seemed like the two thought processes were in opposition to each other, but with players, it somehow made sense.
Everything but experience they would help one another with.
The Xelur must have noticed their advance as they started to fire their ranged beam attacks from the eastern castle. They smashed into Mana barriers along the length of the moving formation.
“Looks like those Mana barriers are working well,” Esa commented.
“Well, after seeing how useful they were to Esamael’s army at Verlun, we made some purchases and then Dave modified them a bit so that they aren’t as easy to break as he did with the ones at Verlun,” Josh said.
The fighting heated up as the Xelur started to attack the airborne forces of the Terra Alliance as well as the approaching players.
The Dragons and DCA’s forces continued to stay high in the air, making it hard to be hit as their attacks continued to pressure the Xelur, not allowing them to devote much of their strength to attacking. Instead they had to hole up and defend themselves as artillery spells continued to blossom on their soul barriers, with Mana bombs and Dragon flames tearing at the energy constructs.
Josh and Esa stopped talking, looking down upon the forces that moved like an unstoppable juggernaut across that desolate rock and dirt.
The no-man’s-land between castles had been hospitable when the Dragons had laid claim to the Densaou Ring of Fire that spewed heat and magma into the sky.
Now, with the vicious fighting that had been going on for weeks, the ground had been split apart, forming craters and gouges in the ground. Weapons and items that the dead left behind rested there; tombstones that marked Xelur that had died in their retreat flashed here and there. People collected the loot from these tombstones as they advanced forward. Hits lit up their Mana barrier but it did not slow or deter them.
The players started to use ranged attacks as they got closer. The Xelur could only use their soul energy. Although they could regenerate their own energy, they couldn’t regenerate the energy that they used from others who had died.
Attacking them like this served to burn off more of their energy to make their assault easier and the Xelur a less ferocious target.
Their attacks reached up the large outer walls where Xelur fired down their own attacks onto the players.
Support mages and players cast out their spells and chanted their enhancing spells.
The fighting got more intense as the players reached past the range of the beam-like soul energy attacks. The Xelur within the wall were now able to attack with their arrows and physical weapons.
The players continued to advance. The commanders had a hard time keeping them in check instead of letting them rush the walls.
The distance quickly closed, and the fighting became so fierce between the two groups that the groups were torn apart, light from the intense magical attacks criss crossing from the walls were nearly blinding.
Just one hundred meters from the wall, the strongest players among the guilds and groups who were in front of the wall unleashed their own attacks.
In that dawn light, as the sun moved over the horizon, the brilliant light of ranged attack lit up the eastern castle’s wall.
Each of these people were not as strong as the Grand Demon Lords but they were all hitting the same areas and had much greater control over their Mana and their spells than the Xelur Grand Demon Lord. Their attack scarred and broke the wall in sections. Arrows whistled through walls as spells smashed apart rock; light based spell attacks left gouges in the walls as the real attack was thrown out.
Grand workings that had been held in reserve were activated and shot out by Air mages. They hit the walls of the eastern castle. Some were destroyed in flashes of light that made Mana and soul barriers shiver under the power of their explosion. Shock waves of air threw out debris and dust.
The first grand working hit a wall.
It was like a missile striking a battleship. An explosion of light and heat appeared where the impact had been. A section of wall was blown apart. The top section of the wall turned into flying boulders and shards of stone that peppered the inside of the eastern castle.
The artillery of the other castles had stopped as the players’ formation had got closer.
Now everyone watched the destruction of the eastern castle’s walls.
Recoiling from the first attack, the second hit. The wall exploded outward again.
To Esa, it felt as if time had slowed down, that eastern castle’s wall igniting with explosions that blew the wall in, like that attack by the Grand Demon Lord that had killed her.
Even in the dust and rock that was thrown into the air, the clear lights of magical spells were seen, lighting up the dust from inside and cutting through that destruction, hitting stunned Xelur that were trying to fight back.
Arrows and javelins came through the air, finding breaks in the Xelur’s armor and dropping them to the ground with ease.
The explosions moved away from the major breaches.
Dark mages solidified the rubble around the breaches, creating ramps.
With a yell, the players rushed forward into that mayhem as walls continued to be torn apart. The Xelur within the eastern castle lit up the sky with their soul energy, letting out their own war cries as they raced to meet them. Knowing that there was no room for them to retreat anymore after having faced them taking back the northern castle, the Xelur fought with everything they had to meet the players.
They came together in a flash of weapons and magic. As the forces connected, chaos reigned as people fought against one another with all they had.
The Mana barriers that had covered the players fell apart, the lines and area too chaotic f
or them to keep up.
Malsour unleashed his Dragon breath, creating a path in front of him as Deia called down a rain of her fire arrows.
The Stone Raiders formed behind them, forcing their way toward the main castle. Dwayne led the way. Steve, Gurren, Lox, and Jung Lee were beside him. Their blades tore through any that opposed them. Dave hovered in the air. With a wave of his hand, spikes would drop from the sky. A grenade would appear among the Xelur or a barrier would form around an ally.
With a wave of his hand, five grand workings appeared.
“What workings are those?” Esa asked.
“I don’t know. He had a factory that builds them but he makes a lot of things he doesn’t or can’t tell us about.” Josh also leaned forward.
The grand workings spread out at an incredible speed, activating as their power surged outward. They smashed into the ground, breaking their containment.
All around them, it seemed as if space had been ripped open as black shadows that seemed to connect to the abyss appeared. Affinity spirits started to step out of these portals. They looked from the players to the Xelur. With screeching noises, they raced toward the Xelur.
“He formed Affinity spirits?” Esa said in shock.
“Looks like he took a lot more from the Six Affinities Temple than others. Looks like that is some kind of conjuring formation he’s created and then pumped it full of Dark Affinity Mana; pulling from that, the Affinity spirits are formed and can go on a rampage. Unlike the shades Loughbreck used at Verlun, these Affinity spirits can use Mana,” Josh said.
Both creature types could only last for as long as they had energy and the Affinity Spirits used it faster than the Shades, but their attacks were much stronger. The Affinity spirits blitz attacks killed or weakened a ton of the Xelur and took a lot of pressure off of the Players.
“Dwayne is halfway through the castle,” one of the aides called out.
“Come on, get us that eastern castle.” Josh looked at the fight. Players were fighting Xelur all over the place. Dark Affinity spirits rampaged through the ranks of Xelur, not caring about injuries— only caring to attack the Xelur.
Emerilia Series Box Set 4 Page 53