“In the air!” someone shrieked. “They’re above us!”
Right then, a huge net swept down out of the sky to wrap itself around a hapless numerical. The latter wriggled and twisted, though that just served to get him even more tightly bound. Suddenly, the net shot upward, pulling the poor guy with it, only to stop on a level with the temple spire and drop like a stone. The numerical howled as his life flashed before his eyes. But that was when Tailyn stepped in.
Boo.
The boy’s telekinesis arrested the numerical’s fall just meters from the ground. But while he tried to let the man down gently, his efforts were to no avail—the net simply shot back up into the sky.
“Hold me down!” Tailyn yelled as he felt himself being pulled upward. Between the boy and the numerical was a tight connection, and their invisible assailant was trying to scoop them both up. The first to react, Ka-Do-Gir threw his arms around his master’s legs. Another couple lixes joined him, and Tailyn felt his arms practically tear out of their sockets. But they weren’t what gave first. A clap rang through the air, and the net froze in place, the rope holding it having snapped.
It was only then that Tailyn saw the thick cable wound tightly between two opposite ends of the cliffs surrounding the city. Right in the middle, giving no thought to the danger of falling, was someone operating the machine shooting the nets. He was too far away for Tailyn’s perception to kick in. But that didn’t matter—unlike his cards and ordinary crossbows, Valkyrie’s range was two hundred meters. That was more than enough.
Yet another net flew toward the ground, but right then a deadly bolt launched itself from the Mean Truk head’s wrist. While his opponent died instantly, he remained held in place by the cable. His backup plan had worked. A couple moments later, his body began easing its way toward one of the cliffs. Someone out of sight from the ground below was hauling over both the dead attacker and his machine.
“Hold this!” Tailyn instantly knew what to do. After buying a rope two hundred meters long in the store, he tied one end around his waist and soared into the air without even bothering to check if anyone had heard him. The wind immediately grabbed him and sent him flying toward the Gray Lands, though the rope quickly went taut to hold him back. The boy's Talarii could only get him up to 140 meters, not enough to reach the rope. But it was close enough for him to do something about it. While back on the ground, Tailyn hadn’t even thought about it—the fact that the rope wasn’t a living being meant neither his anatomy expert nor his monster knowledge were any help. Of course, his shooting attribute suggested he give it a try, but it still couldn’t push his chances of success above 5%. The range of 180 meters was tough for the crossbow. But with each second the boy spent rising in the air, the odds of a hit increased until they got to 100%.
Tailyn was as high as he could go. The rage he felt toward his hidden opponent completely overwhelmed his fear, and instead of going pale and looking to head back down to solid ground, he took his shot with Valkyrie. And while the wind had pushed him farther away from the rope, it wasn’t enough to miss. One shot sent the body dropping to the ground. The rope holding it in the air had been cut in two.
There was no reason for Tailyn to touch the cable itself—the store worked perfectly well in midair. After spending another few coins, he found himself with a second rope, only that time with a hook attached to one end. A quick twist wrapped the hook around the hanging cable, letting the boy pull himself closer.
Valia, tell them to let go of me. I’ll take it from here, Tailyn thought, afraid the enemy might hear him if he shouted. Immediately, the rope around his waist slackened. Pulling a couple times, the boy found himself higher than 140 meters and lost his support as his named sandals gave out. But that wasn’t a problem. Arm over arm, he pulled himself over to the tightened cables. There were two of them, as it turned out, and they were even at different heights, letting him move along one while holding the other.
Ding!
Something smacked lightly into Tailyn’s back. It was an armor-piercing bolt shot from a level three crossbow that could have pierced a wooden block a meter thick, only it was powerless against Vargot. The boy’s armor deadened the impact that should have turned his insides into mush. And that told him where the enemy was. Turning around, he caught a glimpse of a shadow ducking behind a rock. The latter didn’t prove to be the shelter the attacker thought it was—Valkyrie cut right though it before piercing the foe behind it.
Opponents remaining: 71
The rope jerked. Spinning around, Tailyn found himself with no time to react to his assailants. They weren’t shooting, jumping in close, or anything else that would have ended badly for them, with just one hefty character swinging a two-handed axe to cut straight through the two cables. But Tailyn didn’t even have long enough to aim Valkyrie at the new opponent before he was left with nothing below his feet. As the boy plummeted downward, the target disappeared out of sight.
It was only once Tailyn’s nerves had well and truly been shaken that his Talarii kicked in at a hundred meters. For just a second, he’d resigned himself to crashing down onto the rocks, though that fate was avoided. Instead, he had to quickly drop down as the wind caught him and pulled him away from the city.
Valia, I need your companion! Tailyn wasn’t about to give in. While he still hadn’t figured out who’d ignored the god’s warning and attacked the city, he was sure they were about to think up some new trick to play on the population of Mean Truk.
Cloud is good to go, Valia said as soon as she’d saddled her lizard, an instant later showing up where her betrothed was about to land. But the animal wasn’t going to make it that easy. As soon as Tailyn got close enough, it snorted and raced off, refusing to carry the dragon’s master. Valia brought it back over, a task that took some doing on her part, and Tailyn went to work. The lizard was their only way up the mountain. Taking its enormous face in his hands, the boy wrenched it around to face him, surprised both by his own strength and by how easily the animal gave in.
“If you don’t help the city, I’ll destroy you. You’ll be dragon feed! And that’s my promise as head of the city,” the boy said as he stared directly into the companion’s eyes. A moment later, the lizard shocked the pair by submitting. Tailyn could tell he wasn’t going to have any more problems with the creature despite the lack of any external change.
“He can only get fifty meters high,” Valia said, though Tailyn wasn’t about to stop. He pointed the girl toward the cliff.
“That’s all I need. Just make sure it stays in one spot.”
Tailyn’s gloves modified to sprout small suction cups on his fingertips. The mountains surrounding Mean Truk began with nearly sheer cliffs 180 meters high, and the boy had always assumed they represented an insurmountable obstacle to anyone considering an attack from that side. Magic cards only had a range of a hundred meters. Getting something powerful and deadly up that high was presumably impossible, too. Unfortunately, the boy was facing the bitter consequences of his lapse of judgement, and he was going to do everything he could to make up for it.
Cloud quickly got up as high as it could go, and Tailyn activated his vertical flight ability from there, using the lizard as his initial takeoff point. That gave him another 140 meters. Using the suction cups on his fingers to fight the wind’s efforts to pull him away, he headed up the cliff without much difficulty.
Stones! he suddenly heard Valia think. They’re throwing stones! Who is that?
It was true—enormous boulders had begun rolling off the edge of the cliff above the pair. Judging by their trajectory, some kind of mechanism was being used to give them a heave, since Tailyn didn’t think the enemy had anyone strong enough to throw rocks the size of Ka-Do-Gir. And that meant they had a catapult. A named one, judging by the fact that they’d been able to get it up the mountain.
There was a crash below. The boulders were being aimed right at the middle of the cluster of roofs, breaking through and putting the structural integr
ity of the buildings themselves in jeopardy. Howling in frustration, Tailyn saw a Destruction bar appear and climb higher with each new boulder. The description was anything but cheering—as soon as the bar reached 100%, the homes in the first residential quarter were going to disappear without a trace. But that gave Tailyn an idea. If the group on top of the cliff was throwing something down, he could throw something back up at them. Absorber, for instance.
Five flasks full of the black substance went hurtling up one after another, landing right at the top of the cliff. And while that was too far away to hear the glass break, the screams of people being absorbed alive rang through the air. The barrage of stones stopped. Tailyn went back to climbing.
Opponents remaining: 66
The thirty seconds it took the head of Mean Turk to get to the top of the cliff felt like an eternity. Boulders once more began whooshing past. Apparently well-trained, the attackers were showing an impressive ability to adapt to the situation, the loss of five comrades having done nothing to dampen their spirits. Tailyn slipped a few times. Even though Valia was doing her best to hold Cloud in one spot, the animal could sense the danger above it and jerked a few times, leaving Tailyn hanging by the suction cups on his fingertips. It took the girl getting her lizard back to its post before the boy’s Talarii resumed pushing him upward.
Raptor only showed Tailyn thirty-two opponents on the side he was climbing up. Not a single name was familiar. Their levels were scattered widely, too, from six to thirty-eight, ruling out nothing but imperial guards. Even with his limited experience, Tailyn knew the guards were always at around the same level. Could Crobar have sent some liquidation groups after all? But it didn’t matter. The boy was focused on defending his city—there would be time to worry about the attackers later.
Boo!
Five waves of fire rushed forward as soon as Tailyn reached the top of the cliff. The area was fairly even, with just a few large stones scattered around, and that meant the boy could see almost all his targets. That was their undoing. The fire was so powerful they didn’t even feel pain, just disappearing as soon as it hit them. Ten seconds later, the suffering undergone by those at higher levels finished. Just two survived, both having hidden behind rocks. But the rocks couldn’t save them from Raptor.
Tailyn paused for just a few moments—he couldn’t decide if he needed a prisoner or not. While he needed to find out where the attackers were from, it was the destruction bar that forced him into action when it jumped another 2%. The group on the other side was still raining boulders down on Mean Truk. And if there were people over there, they also had the answers Tailyn was looking for. A shot, three seconds to reload, and another shot. Tailyn spun around and dove off the cliff, the first threat having been eliminated. For the moment.
Valia, head down. We need to do the same thing on the other side of the city!
Opponents remaining: 32
Just like the time before, Tailyn’s Talarii kicked in a hundred meters above the ground, only the boy was expecting them to that time. All his attention was fixed on the cliff opposite him as he tried to pick out just one of his targets. Even from that distance, Valkyrie could have hit home, but the attackers learned quickly. None of them poked their head out even as the boulders continued hitting the city every twenty seconds.
Three catapult shots later, Valia’s companion froze fifty meters up the cliff. Tailyn aligned himself to the lizard and began his own ascent, only that time his opponents were ready. Something flew by before he’d made it a few dozen meters.
“Ah!” Valia screamed as she pulled Cloud away from the boulder plummeting downward at them. The attackers had called a halt to their assault on the city, turning their fire on Tailyn, Valia, and Valia’s lizard. Without sufficient protection, the latter two were in serious danger of a direct hit. Cloud shivered and ducked to the side.
“Stay there and press yourself up against the cliff,” Tailyn called as he fired his grenade-launcher. A few Absorber flasks flew upward to buy him a couple moments of safe climbing.
Opponents remaining: 30
Tailyn was in a hurry, which was why he didn’t take a closer look at the red dots right away—he was less than a hundred and forty meters from his remaining opponents. Stretching just a little to check Raptor, he almost lost his grip on the cliff. He had finally found out who they were up against.
“It’s Berad Gor!” he said, his tone betraying his shock, as he took a closer look. Mean Truk was facing one of Tailyn’s greatest foes, the crystal fence who always happened to be hanging right around the boy. And while they might have even worked together, there was just one problem: it was Berad who had taken Valia’s life. That was unforgivable. Having somehow made it all the way to level fifty-seven, the bandit leader was standing far away from the edge of the cliff with two other high-level fighters. Tailyn could have cried in frustration. He might have hacked Berad once upon a time, triggering the cleaning system in the latter’s suit, only the god had stepped in to meddle in the planet’s affairs.
Yet another boulder flew past Tailyn, yanking his attention away from Raptor. Coming right at the boy, it forced him to throw an arm in the air to deflect it away, only his force shield shattered like it wasn’t even there. Tailyn’s arm was just about jerked right out of its socket. With the boulders as big as they were, Vargot wasn’t able to completely absorb the impact, and Tailyn’s regeneration told him it was going to need thirty minutes to get his arm back in working order. Snarling, the boy pushed his Talarii to the maximum and nearly forgot about his suction cups. That added danger to his ascent—the wind was threatening to pull him away from the cliff. But the red dots once again appeared, grouped together, and began pulling over another boulder. Realizing he wasn’t going to be in time, Tailyn shuffled through his cards and paused. Grenades weren’t an option. He only had three left, and his Absorber wasn’t going to work against a crowd that size. There was something else, however...
Boo...
It took five seconds to activate Icy Rain-I. That gave the boy enough time to drink a yeti potion and warn Valia about the coming cataclysm. Selecting the target, Tailyn went for the edge of the cliff thirty meters above him, right where the next boulder was set to appear and knock him down to the ground below. The attackers were just a few seconds late. Tailyn could already see part of the boulder appearing above him when sharp icicles began raining down from the sky, cutting holes in the bandits before they had time to react. Valia escaped unscathed—the impact radius was just a hundred meters, and that went for depth as well as width. Neither the city nor the girl with her lizard were harmed by the terrifying weapon.
But the bandits took it right on the chin. The red dots disappeared one after another, with no time to hide behind rocks. Although, to be fair, even that wouldn’t have saved them from the death hitting them from the air. There were just five left thirty seconds later: the three commanders farther back in addition to two level thirty-five fighters. Judging by the names, they were brothers.
Tailyn kept climbing even as the onslaught continued. Half a minute later, he’d made it to the top, training Valkyrie on his opponents as soon as he crested the cliff. The brothers were hiding behind a powerful wooden shield that had been broken nearly in half. Still, it had held back the icy attack. The three leaders, judging by the shimmering field, had protected themselves with a dome. Berad pointed at Tailyn, and one of his accomplices activated an enormous mechanism shaped something like a ballista. Before the boy had time to so much as gasp, wooden shards exploded around his chest. Sparks flew. A salty taste filled his mouth. Most unpleasantly, the urge to go to sleep suddenly washed over him.
Tailyn! Valia’s hysterical scream sounded like it was coming from another world. Stunned, the boy threw forward the arm with Valkyrie attached to it, not even sure why he was doing it. All he wanted to do was rest. One shot sent the first of the two bandits hiding behind the shield off into the great nothingness. And that in itself seemed like such a tempting idea tha
t Tailyn collapsed onto his back, his eyes training themselves on the clouds above in surprise. They’d never seemed so beautiful. A strange sound picked up in the boy’s ears, drowning out the rest of the world. But just as his eyes were closing, his subconscious began to fight back. Vargot kicked in automatically, sticking a tube into the boy’s throat and dumping a regeneration potion down it, the kind capable of pulling him back from the very border between life and death. After all, that was where Tailyn had unexpectedly found himself.
The spear launched from the level three Angela wasn’t able to pierce Tailyn’s Vargot. The difference in levels was enormous. Still, the boy’s armor couldn’t completely deaden the impact, and even that small percentage was more than enough to turn his insides into well-marbled meat if not complete mush. It was only Tailyn’s armor that saved him. A fiery sensation exploded in his leg—another spear had just hit him. That spun the boy around and threw him off the edge of the 180-meter cliff.
Tartila Mine (The Alchemist Book #5): LitRPG Series Page 3