Volume 12 Chapter 10
Translated by Tianic, edited by Grammarly
Maple City was a historical city. Its high and prolonged walls were covered with mosses, protecting the prosperity within. Behind the walls were magnificent structures' pointy heads. When I besieged the city, I could even hear priests' evening pray from the temple in the city.
Ancient drawbridge, turrets, evergreen trees on the side of the moat, comfortable night breeze that flew over my facial skin, all told me these bastards knew how to enjoy life.
Mounted on my warhorse, I grinned at Maple City's wall. My army has arrived here seconds ago.
Since Haric's new master hadn't had the guts to ascend the throne, only viceroy's flags were on the wall. I can tell the city has sunken into panic when my soldiers swamped to the gate. Out of flustering, the city's garrison could only have the time to lift the drawbridge.
I reckoned there were quite a few mages in the city considering its size and ranking. But I had no idea of what they were currently doing. They didn't even arouse the city's protective magic shield after I showed my force. This news made my army mages grew wild with joy.
When building every major city on this continent, a protective magic field device must be planted at the same time per the size of the city it's going to protect. Even, magical gems and other buff artifacts were put into the city's walls. Whenever war happened, the device will be activated by the city's mages to produce a huge protective barrier that will shroud the entire city from magical attacks. Based on the size of the device, number of gems embedded in city walls, number of mages to maintain the barrier, the duration of each city's magic barrier differentiated. A city as old as Maple should be able to keep its shield going for 2 months at least, or one month to counter my magic force.
As of now, whatever the reason was that prevented them from awakening the magic shield, I was happy they did not.
It was a once-in-a-lifetime chance, therefore I deployed all of my mage magicians.
More than 300 elf warlocks were standing beyond enemy archer's range. After a spectacular moment of chanting, dark clouds smothered the entire city. A chain of lightning arrived: thousands of silver bolts blasted down in the path resembled a thousand snakes. Enemy officers who wore magic resist armor aside, one lightning strike will at least bring down 4, 5 soldiers. In fact, I never expected anyone to survive a lightning strike. They were, after all, not me.
What a shame that I could only watch the show from a distance, never get a chance to see what a mess it was in the city. But I did notice several fires were going on there.
A burst of cheers erupted from my soldier crowd because no one, including me, has seen hundreds of elf warlocks casting spells at the same time.
After the lightning bolts grew weaker, the sound of chanting aroused once again. This time, the magic power was sent to create thick clouds. Time passed, pieces of cloud squeezed, swirled to form a giant, dark vortex resembled dense, thick, sticky syrup.
"Meteor Swarm!" A shrill came from the city wall.
Indeed, it was Meteor Swarm, a high-level fire mystery.
Technically, such a spell usually requires a very prolonged duration to cast. However, my quantity of warlocks was exceptional, and they were all elves who excelled in magic. Therefore the duration was cut by more than half.
Hence the enormous swarm of cloud began to distort, the vortex spun faster and the shape uglier.
"Pay attention to the elves. I don't know what enemies will do if they go crazy." I told my orderly.
Before I finished speaking, a booming noise came from the turret. The drawbridge dropped onto the moat's bank. Thick and heavy gate of the city opened with a jarring pitch.
"Shit!" I put away any intention to continue watching the show and yelled, "All units, fall in!"
"Sir…" I didn't wait till Malphite to finish and darted away.
Hell, this was not a big battle. I must seize a good chance at hand.
All 4 IGT regiments split into 2 and began to align in front of the warlocks.
A group of light riders pushed from Maple City's gate. Since the opening was rather small for them to take time and form an attack. To deal with such an easy enemy, my staff officers can handle.
I ordered a battalion to dismount and protect my mages with shields and lances. At the same time, all elf archers were approaching the city wall rapidly.
"Sir, you can't get over there!" Malphite drew the rein beside me.
"Bullshit!" I abruptly stopped him from continuing, "It's a small battle. I'm counting on it. I need the kill!"
He had no choice but to repeatedly signal my other guards to follow.
Elf marksmen drew their bows first with enchanted arrows that glinted silver light. These marksmen were very agile in movement, they hopped to adjust range. As a result, the number of people fell from the wall increased. No one could shoot back because my elf archers were out of human archer's range. So they could do nothing but to curse back.
Finally, the riders made themselves out of the gateway. Their total number was 2, 000, counted by eye. Though formation was messy, they rode desperately to my location and successfully maintained a sum of hundreds of striker riders.
"8 knots mark, loose!" My troops on the sides moved.
The rustle of arrows roaring skimmed over our heads. I could tell by the sound that they were firing arrows specially tailored for light riders. They were spike arrows which were designed long and tiny in order to pierce riders' thin armor, which was not made by dwarf artisans.
Men and horses were thrown off their feet. My enemy light rider's formation broke instantly. I saw hundreds of them fell, a burst of blood erupted from each of them.
"8 knots mark, loose!"
After a few rounds of arrows, only several hundred riders made close enough where marksmen no longer can handle.
"Good, attack!" Seeing that the riders were out of their archers' range, I closed my visor.
"Attaaaaaaaaaaaack!" All 4 IGT regiments pushed forward.
Malphite led 2 platoons of royal guards to protect me. He insisted on not letting me make too much contact with any enemies.
(Well, I just want to have a good fight.)
'CLANG' I drew my black blade when 2 hostile forces impacted.
Therefore we fought.
My long-sword slashed to break an enemy’s lance aiming my head. Then flipped my wrist, the blade's edge cut a poor rider into 2 parts. The rider behind him hurried to shield only found him so fragile that was split into half along with his horse.
I could never be this fast before. But now, I was astonished by my speed. Slashing my blade was too easy to even believe. My horse was fast so I easily overcome several enemies instantly.
I grew excited from the killing so I picked places where there were more enemies. Before I reached my climax, I've depleted my targets.
Seeing that it was relatively safe, Malphite loosened protection for me in order to indulge me.
However, I was destined to not enjoy myself today because, in less than a quarter, all enemies were annihilated.
(Hell, my elf warlocks are not even finishing chanting!)
I was not surprised because my guarding troop was an elite force that defeated AUF.
I looked up at the sky.
At this moment, many bumps bulged on the surface of the dark cloud and enlarging. Good lord, what a marvelous spectacular! As the Meteor Swarm came to form, a milky white shield dome extended from the center of the city and finally wrapped everything within the wall.
"Well… let's GTFO." I told Malphite.
He sincerely nodded.
My elves were still wrapping up the end of the spell as black bumps grew both in size and number and emitted red light.
(Please be quicker, damn it!)
Eventually, a huge, burning fireball broke free from the dark cloud and smashed into Maple City, then the second, the third.
The first fireball hid the center of the magical barrier. That mighty force dented the dome and bounced to a place where the protective barrier has yet to cover. After an earth-shattering boom, smoke aroused. God knew where this meteor hit.
"Get out! Get out of here or be toasted!" I urged the elves and other soldiers to retreat since I reckoned more meteors were going to hit and bounce somewhere and we could actually be hit and suffer damage.
Even as the sound of my voice died away, more impacts came.
I grew anxious so I caught an elf by the waist, kicked the horse and ran. The rest of my guarding troops quickly learned. They did the same to the remaining elves and soldiers without horses.
Only after galloping for 2, 3 miles did I released my cargo. She was terrified. I looked back to the city, countless meteors were smashing the city's magic barrier. Burning debris splashed the place where we stood earlier. Maple City was wearing an ignited cap. Since the dome was rising, my meteors can no longer fall into the inner town so only the city’s exterior was dismantled.
Maple's wall was in a disastrous state and more to that, a huge, red rock destroyed the gate, stirring huge waves in the moat.
Meteors caused fires to anything flammable adjacent to the city. The City of Maple had nothing but its interior parts left.
"Impressive, if they released the barrier a little slower, we would have taken down Maple City. Nevertheless, they'd be having a hard time since a few rocks smashed in by chance."
"So what's our next move, sir?" Malphite asked.
"We spend the night here." I spat into the soil.
I woke up very early the next day, summoned dozens of elf warlocks and asked them to copy an announcement for me. They couldn't be more reluctant to write a little more than 1000 copies.
"Bring my duty officer! Tell him to tie these papers on arrows and shoot all into Maple City"
"Sir, should we remove the arrowheads?" Young duty officer asked, "If we hurt anyone firing the paper…"
"Do you have any ideas on how much one of these arrows cost?!" I yelled out an oath, "You black sheep, tell them, shoot, kill as many as you can!"
"Roger!" He swiftly ran off to deliver the order. I was so bored and followed to watch.
An elf archer leveled up his longbow, nocked the announcement tied to the arrow, 'THAWNG' arrow away and went forthwith to the Maple City's dilapidated wall. My vision followed the trail and saw a black dot on the wall shook twice and fell.
"Good job!" I nodded in admiration, "Strike camp, GTFO!"