The Fourth Realm (The Ten Realms Book 4)

by Michael Chatfield

  “Storbon, do we have a time estimate on how long it will take for us to repair the breaches?” Erik asked.

  “Three to four hours,” Storbon said.

  “Well, looks like we’ll be meeting the Blood Demon Sect face-to-face soon,” Erik said. “Have Han Wu and Special Team Two pick out the holes where we can control the flow of the enemy as much as possible. I want to mine the ground to hell. Make sure that the commanders are ready to pull back to the inner wall.” Erik gave Storbon side-eye.

  “Understood,” Storbon said. Erik and Rugrat had taught them for months; he had learned how to fight and he had learned how to make others fight and the ways that their mind would work when fighting. No one liked to retreat, but sometimes the best option was to pull back and fight later. To others retreat might be embarrassing but it would lead to a greater victory later.

  The same couldn’t be said about the other two fighting forces working with them.

  Spells continued to fall on the Blood Demon army.

  “The spells haven’t worked yet,” Yao Meng reported.

  Erik checked his storage ring and then flicked through the spell scrolls that he had from Alva and then those that were from Vuzgal.

  “Try this.” Erik passed Yao Meng one spell scroll; he activated it as Erik pulled out another three spell scrolls, checking through the others.

  “Wish they made names that were a bit easier to understand,” Erik complained as he pulled out those that might counteract an illusion spell.

  The spell scroll in Yao Meng’s hands was used up as a spell formation appeared around the Blood Demon army. The advancing army seemed to be covered in shimmering lights before the spell scroll’s power was used up.

  The army remained the same.

  Erik passed Yao Meng another spell scroll, put away the others he had, and then used a spell scroll himself.

  More spell formations appeared around the enemy as they entered the true range of the mortars.

  The mortars fired. Their shells landed in the path of the Blood Demon army, covering the ground in poison that killed the bugs and the grass underneath.

  The mortars continued to fire, walking their fire across the front of the army and ahead of them.

  One of the spell scrolls created shimmering dust that fell on the Mana barrier of the Blood Demon army. The illusion was finally lifted; the army appeared in front of their eyes, nearly doubling in size and a full kilometer and a half closer than they thought—just three and a half kilometers away.

  The mortars had been hitting behind them. It was no wonder they weren’t being affected by the poison that much.

  Their illusion broken, the army started to break down into units, lining up with the different breaches.

  The mortars changed their aim and their rate of fire climbed. It looked as if they were pissed off at being fooled and wasting their shells.

  “Find out which groups contain Masters and Elites. Use the aerial assets if you need to,” Erik said to Yao Meng.

  “Storbon, inform the other commanders that they will arrive at the wall in ten to twenty minutes,” Erik gauged.

  “Sir, do you want them to move back their forces to the secondary lines?”

  Erik looked at the army, trying to think like their commander.

  “Move half of our forces back to the secondary lines. Make sure that all of our ranged assets are to the second line. I want the mages and the mortars to have at least one breach that we can’t repair covered. Wounded are to be moved as soon as possible. Make sure that there are enough people to cover the breaches—at least three formations, group of mages or two mortars. Tell me the ones that you have covered; I’ll have the undead cover the others.” Erik paused. “Anything that Special Team Two can’t mine, get the Crafter’s Association and the Blue Lotus to lay down traps. Those traps and the ranged fire will cover the second half of our forces pulling back.”

  ***

  Ulalas knew that she needed to get this fight over with soon. The longer her people had time to think, the more likely they were to try to get her to allow them to run and bend their oaths to stay back and request reinforcements.

  She had lost ten to fifteen percent of her people to desertion already, the others looking for ways to run.

  She couldn’t let them call reinforcements; if they did, then the Blood Demon Sect would know what was happening.

  She had sent forward Elites with breaching spell scrolls. They needed to be placed on a wall and then they could be triggered remotely.

  She knew that with time, the enemy would find out about the detonation spell scrolls. So she used illusion spell scrolls to disguise the camp and her army and started to advance as soon as the saboteurs started to die.

  The illusion had done well, as the enemy had fired at the area behind them and allowed them to get closer.

  “Have the Masters and Elites get ready to push into the breaches at their best speed,” Ulalas said.

  Her aide passed her message as she looked at the wall in front. The wall was large, but the holes in it were easy to see.

  “We have reports of people being affected by the poison clouds. It’s more effective than the previous poisons,” an aide reported.

  “Well, tell them to move faster and not breathe as much!” she yelled back, her nerves already on edge. What did she care about a bunch of useless soldiers who were only meant to distract from the real forces in her army?

  She watched the walls and the aerial forces above. Her own aerial forces had been dramatically thinned out, so she only had them moving above the army where the ground forces could support them. Thus limiting how far they could see into the enemy camp.

  Illumination rounds started to hit the ground. The light died down as more of them shot up into the sky. The attacks going between the two forces made one’s ears ring and leave light spots on their eyes.

  Trebuchets made by the dungeon released their payloads.

  A cold smile spread across General Ulalas’s face. To her, their actions looked like desperation; they were trying to throw out everything that they could to reduce their strength.

  More mines went off, killing hundreds.

  One of the barrier totems was destroyed by an IED but another totem activated, covering the group.

  Ulalas let out a breath through her nose in fury; others chilled and stepped away as it seemed that a true demon of vengeance had overtaken General Ulalas.

  Finally, her mind that had been balancing on a thread, teetering for days, let loose.

  “Soldiers are to use their cannons at point-blank range to open up breaches. Order the Masters and the Elites through the breaches.” Ulalas’s words ran through the Blood Demon army.

  Silence seemed to fall for a second.

  “Destroy them!” Ulalas’s words carried across the army and to the city itself.

  The groups who had been marching forward orderly now broke ranks and ran forward. Madness filled their eyes. Their anger, their anxiety, the fear that had turned their stomachs and drained them of energy—it was all channeled into their charge. Their desire to destroy their enemy created a powerful and domineering aura that shook the entire force of Vuzgal, making them take a step back.

  Suddenly, laughter reached the level of their charges. A single man on the battlements, laughed at them.

  It caused the enraged Blood Demon armies blood to chill and their eyes lose some of their red glow and made the blood of the defenders boil. They knew that voice.

  Erik looked at the Blood Demon army and smirked, “Come.” His voice rolled over the ground, defiant and bloodthirsty.

  Chapter: Drawing Them In

  Come. That one word sent the Blood Demon army into a greater fury, losing all sense of reason: They had walked through hell and made it this far, they were the proud soldiers of the Blood Demon Sect! Now they were being looked down on by a bunch of guards that were too sick to fight them face toi face, that had run from their own city and hid behind the walls of a broken capi
tal.

  Seeing the Blood Demon army coming, the defenders were scared, yes, but they were not filled with fear. Instead of looking at them as terrible beasts, the Blood Demon army looked more like savage dogs.

  Dogs that had dared to attack their home, where they and their families lived.

  “You dared to attack our Tareng! I will make you pay!”

  “Blood Demon sect! Your days are limited!”

  “You may kill me, but your sect will be removed from these Ten Realms!”

  The voices of the people from Tareng, the Crafter’s Association, and the Blue Lotus spoke out together, their fighting spirit surging.

  Hadn’t they been chased? Hadn’t they been poisoned? Weren’t they the people of Tareng? They might bend but they would not break! Come! Yes, come! They would meet them with iron, with spells, with their fists if they had nothing else!

  The atmosphere was enough to make one feel drunk on power. Erik looked around. His battlecry had been only one word but it had resounded in the hearts and minds of the defenders, regaining their composure.

  People worked harder at their tasks as people headed back to the second wall. Thoughts of retreating disappeared.

  They looked over to where he stood on the wall, looking at the enemy approaching as if everything was going according to plan.

  Erik saw the sudden changes in the Blood Demon army below.

  The army had split into three main groups: one headed straight on and the other two flanked.

  “Move our Masters to head off the groups coming in to sector twelve,” Erik said.

  He had broken up Vuzgal’s wall into twelve sectors like a clock. At the base was the valley at the six o’clock position. At the ten and two o’clock positions were the roads that came from the east and west. The army had come from the east but then they had moved their camp to the north, orientated on the twelve o’clock position of Vuzgal.

  “Mortars, switch to HE and be ready to fire on the breaches. Mages to do the same,” Erik said to Storbon without looking away from the fight.

  “Rugrat, you will be leading the quick reaction force. Have the aerial forces keep circling. The undead aerial mages are to head to the pillar and attack from there,” Erik said.

  “On it.”

  Erik was anxous, nervous. He had led men and women before, yes, but that had never been more than forty or so people. Now there were ten thousand people under his command and nearly four times that number charging at them. It was unlike anything he had seen before and certainly not something that he had trained for before.

  He had delegated as much as possible, leaving the Tareng force as the main defenders, he seeded the Alva forces among them. They operated the mortars, the different repeater batteries, they were the stretcher bearers and part of the quick reaction forces. They knew the capital better than anyone else so they acted as guides for the other units.

  Erik was coordinating the figthing, but the Tareng members were leading it for the most part. He agreed with this as he had been stuck in the rear while he firmly believed that the commanders should be up front with the troops knowing what is going on.

  The illusion spell scrolls had allowed the enemy to get in close, it wouldn’t be long for them to reach the breaches.

  Erik took out a big box and laid it on the ground. He pulled out spell scrolls that caused the mana around to move in agitation.

  “Rebuild,” Erik said as he activated the spell scroll.

  The spell scroll was one of the few remaining expert level spell scrolls that had been recoverd from the royal family’s armory.

  A spell circle appeared on the ground, where there were several breaches piled together.

  Blaack arms appeared in the broken parts of the houses and the wall that were touched by the spell circle.

  These arms were gathering up the rubble that was laying across the ground, the rubble solidified and the buildings started to repair themselves as a visisble rate, there were people in the breaches as the walls came in on them, bringing rock down on them. A pillar that had been damaged recovered and the shield solidified.

  The pressure on the area decreased as the mages and ranged had time to switch their aim, cutting into the would be breachers that were now hacking at the wall that was repairing itself faster than it could be destroyed even the ground was repaired, streets recovered and the ground formed into a ditch that had been worn away with time and fighting.

  Erik watched the force coming off of the wall as he got a call from Evelyn Moss.

  “It looks like they have mixed their normal soldiers with their strongest soldiers.”

  “Fortunatley we did the same,” Erik said. “How are things looking.

  “We can hold for some time, a few hours if we’re unlucky, a day if we’re lucky.”

  Trap formations went to work, spell scrolls that had been distributed were used like candy, using money to supplement numbers and save their fighter’s strength.

  Death filled the breaches as they were pushed back, but other areas were opening up.

  A group made it to the wall, being hit with rocks and rolling wood, without the protection of barriers as they took out cannons and set them next to the walls.

  Erik used the spell scroll fire trench, the ground underneath the wall and the feet of the attackers. The ground opened up as Erik traced out the trench, running along the line, flames from deep within the earth shot out.

  There were seven thousand people on the wall it wasn’t enough to cover everything as the first few groups failed, others suceeded.

  They activated the cannons, which shot through the walls and were hurled backward by the recoil and the force of the explosion.

  The Blood Demon army charged through the new breaches.

  “Glosil reports that he has handed over control of the mortars to Yui and is moving to meet up with the rest of the company,” Yao Meng reported.

  With him there he can keep things stabilized with Rugrat handling the quick reaction force

  “Status on the pullback?” Erik asked.

  “Second line is established,” Storbon said.

  Erik opened his dungeon interface. “Just a bit farther,” Erik muttered to himself.

  “Have the first line begin pulling back.”

  “We have forces that have entered in high numbers in sectors nine, twelve, and three. The most breaches are in sectors nine to twelve,” Storbon reported.

  Erik turned, looking at the fighting that was happening all around. Masters and Elites had rushed forward in their own groups and were opening up breaches all across the walls with magical cannons.

  “Focus on three and nine. We can’t have them cut off our forces that are pulling back.” Erik’s eyes flicked to the dungeon’s map, overlaying the city.

  A breach was blown open, into the side of a group of defenders. People were hit with the rubble as they turned to fight off the enemy coming from another direction.

  Erik pulled out an M32 and aimed; a Blood Demon soldier appeared through the breach.

  Erik fired six shots as fast as he could fire, tracing a line through the breach, lighting it up with explosions and killing anyone inside. He opened the M32 as Yao Meng waited until more people filled the breach and fired.

  Erik dumped and reloaded his M32 as he saw a group from the Blood Demon army pushing in.

  Storbon was faster as he dropped three rounds into the group, decimating them.

  Defenders rushed in from behind the wall, supporting the crumbling defensive line and pushing back those in the breach, allowing them room to collect the wounded and start pulling back.

  The defenders left the walls and reorganized down on the ground as they retreated through the streets.

  Erik, Yao Meng, and Storbon fired their M32s into groups of Blood Demon soldiers as they moved across the rooftops, leaving destruction in their wake and easing the pressure up on the defenders who were moving through preselected streets. It was organized mayhem at its best.

 
The enemy tried to flank and move through side streets only to find them filled with traps instead.

  Rugrat and the Alvan army had nearly two weeks to increase the defenses in Vuzgal, with the power of the dungeon to alter the landscape and the workforce of the tireless undead. They had turned it into a hellscape as attackers poured into the massive former capital.

  Even as they chased after the defenders, who were pulling back in an organized manner, they were cut down by IEDs and traps that activated after the defenders passed.

  Erik checked his screen again as he reloaded his M32. They jumped from the roof they were on to a watchtower overlooking an intersection. The local roads all crossed in front of this watchtower, becoming one road heading toward the inner walls. All of the roads were like this, meant to slow an enemy if they entered the city and to create choke points.

  “Fire!” the crafter guard yelled. Archers and mages in the back of the choke point or within the watchtower fired over the defenders in the mouth of the square.

  A Master in the group of attackers raised her hands; a spell formation appeared in front of her.

  An arrow tore through the air, breaking the air ahead of it and leaving white streamers in its path as it pierced her neck.

  Her spell failed as she dropped to the ground, pulling out a healing potion.

  “Focus your fire!” the commander called.

  Another woman stepped out. Her sword turned red as she moved, deflecting arrows with her own power and reaction speed.

  Erik, Yao Meng, and Storbon fired on her as more Masters charged into the battle.

  She tried to stop the rounds but cried out as one exploded and the two others were toofast for her to defend against.

  “Reinforcements are coming in!” someone from the defenders yelled out.

  Erik looked over to see a wolf covered in flames and wearing black armor charging down the road. Panthers flanked him on either side, dual repeaters attached to the top of their armor.

  The Alvan soldiers watched the enemy over their repeaters as they turned down side streets, spreading out.