“Yeah, not the best way to be fighting, that’s for sure. That powder was supposed to have started working last night. They’ve had it in them for nearly a day now.”
“Shit.” Lukas shook his head. “Think they know?”
“It should just look like dysentery at first.”
Salyn stood off to the side, listening to Aras and Ikeda hissing at one another.
“That should have depleted their morale. They must be ready to break by now!” Aras said.
“Where did they get a mana barrier that strong, and the power to support it?”
Salyn stepped up. “The Beast Mountain Range and the King’s Hill Outpost generate approximately ten Mortal grade mana stones per day, I’d estimate. Traders from the Second Realm have come down in the past and there are known traders from the Third Realm, or at least those that had connections with it.”
Ikeda and Aras turned from Salyn to one another.
“I have been out of touch. I did not know they could create that much per day.” Greed flashed even in Aras’ eyes.
“With that wealth, I wonder what other things they’ve purchased. If one has a mana barrier, then they must surely have spell scrolls.”
“They could have used them under the cover of their mages’ spells,” Ikeda mused. “It seems like they have a lot more mages than I would expect.”
A horn blew, calling for the advance of the formed-up army.
Twenty thousand fighters, broken into five squares of four thousand, moved forward. The formations gained spacing with two up front, one in the middle, and two at the rear.
Cannons and trebuchets fell silent as they passed, building up speed into a run. Fire pots crashed into the ground, occasionally landing among the formations or on the armored siege weaponry, their flames licking at the sky. Stones came in low, hitting the ground and bouncing, crashing through those unfortunate enough to be in their path.
They slowed as they reached the thick carpet of bodies and flies before the outpost. Spells, arrows and then crossbow bolts reaped lives.
“Not as many dying in these smaller formations. The first will collapse,” Aras observed.
“Agreed.” Ikeda watched all through his glasses.
Salyn squinted, imagining what was happening rather than watching.
“Simple, but effective,” Pan Kun said, looking at the planks the enemy threw out, covering the pits and creating a bridge across.
“Get the mages to hit the pits. The wood looks fresh, be hard to burn.”
“Sir,” Nasreen used her flags.
“Their other formations are coming in,” Lukas said.
The first formation close to crumbling surged in number as its two supporting formations ran through the path they had created. They’d added their own planks at different pits to create passage across.
“They’re moving a second unit into place,” Pan Kun said, watching a group of five formations pushing forward.
“They’ve got more equipment for the walls in the last groups,” Lukas’ voice rose.
Pan Kun studied them intently, seeing what looked like massive pikes and mounting devices. “Damn, that’s going to be annoying. Target them first.”
“Spells to the walls and pits, Brigadier General Nasreen!”
“Sir!”
The spells ran along the walls and over the pits, tossing over the new planks, slowing, but not stopping the tide.
Yells reverberated off the outpost walls as ladders were thrown up.
Hundreds were dying, but the fourth and fifth formation of soldiers appeared, pouring more bodies into the fight.
A ladder reached the top of the battlements with a man wielding a sword on top of it. Lukas jabbed out with a spear, punching through the man’s leather armor. The man’s yell died in his mouth as he looked at his wound drunkenly.
Lukas flipped the spear, using the butt against the top of the ladder, and heaved, throwing the ladder off.
“Draw spears!” Lukas yelled. Soldiers put their crossbows to the rear and readied their spears as ladders arrived with fighters already on them. Their ladders were spread out so they couldn’t hit so many with spells.
Pan Kun pulled on his helmet with a blue fringe at the top. Nasreen and Lukas wore helmets with white fringes.
Pan Kun’s guards jumped into the fight, keeping the area around the trio safe to command the battle.
“The second unit is here,” Lukas said.
Pan Kun saw a battlement collapse. The pike-looking siege weapon was akin to a battering ram and drove its hardened point into the wall. The hooks around it grabbed on, pulling the wall apart.
The BMRA engaged the enemy on the walls. More ladders appeared as fresh forces moved in. The second unit’s forward two units crossed the pit bridge.
“Third unit preparing,” Nasreen yelled.
“Mages, focus along the wall,” Pan Kun said and raised his green flag. Lieutenant Lee’s people hurled out poison pots, covering the sick and lethargic-looking enemy. They sent the ones showing the worst symptoms at us first. Trying to pass it on to us, perhaps?
Pan Kun grabbed his war hammer, taking several steps forward, and drove its spiked top forward, throwing a fighter off the top of a nearby ladder.
“Push!” he yelled at a soldier who had blood running down his armor.
The soldier gritted his teeth, turned his spear, and threw the ladder off as another fighter’s head appeared. They reached through the rungs, grabbing thin air as they swung backward and away from the walls.
“Sir,” one of Pan Kun’s guards said, as the group moved closer.
“Get that seen to,” Pan Kun said to the wounded soldier.
“Sir.”
Pan Kun looked up and down the wall. People engaged in fights all along it. Reserve forces ran up, supporting those on the wall as runners carried away the wounded.
He moved to the edge of the battlements and looked over. The pits were bridged. Arrows cut down from overhead, causing fighters to drop to the ground as spells lit up along the wall, taking out ladders and those waiting below.
More ladders were raised. Fighters ran up as they started to tilt forward to get to the top of the wall.
Shit. The new ladders in the fresh units had wheels and a supporting base. They wouldn’t be able to push those off, just hack at the wood.
Pan Kun turned back to his position on the wall. He couldn’t use the lightning scroll, either. They were wearing more armor than the enemy and were too close.
Air Scythe scroll it is.
“Hold things here. I’m going to the right flank to use a scroll.” He grabbed Nasreen, who was closest.
“Yes, sir!”
Pan Kun waved to his guards and hefted his war hammer, taking off at a jog that broke into a run.
Four ladders hit the wall ahead of him. Fighters jumped off and bowled over the two soldiers on the wall. The attackers’ blades found openings in their armor, coming out red. Other fighters poured up and over into the battlements as the soldiers on either side turned to fight and cover their own section of wall.
The team leader yelled orders to the reserve below and charged in.
Pan Kun picked up his speed, just five meters away.
Three attackers went down, but new ladders appeared.
Mages attacked the bases of the first four ladders, dropping them from the wall, but more ladders replaced them.
Pan Kun let out a yell as he swung his hammer. “Air Blade!”
His hammer crushed a man’s breastplate, tossing him over the wall as the air blade created with his hammer sliced through two others behind him. A man stabbed out at Pan Kun’s side, but his guard’s spear punched through their side before they could make contact. Pan Kun brought his hammer around and, using momentum, he crushed the skull of one of the attackers atop his downed soldier.
Another swing took the other in the chest as he raised his sword. The fighter crashed into the wall, looking at his caved-in chest.
Pan K
un stood over the two downed soldiers facing the wall.
“Air Blade!” The spell wrapped around his warhammer as he swung it. The blade of air cut out across the wall, striking ladders and attackers.
Reserve forces pushed to the wall, stabbing at the fighters, and regaining control over the wall.
Pan Kun looked at the two beneath his feet. Their tombstones floated above them.
Medics moved to the downed soldiers, tearing off their armor and stabbing needles into their hearts before sticking rebreathers over their mouths. Some lost their tombstones. They were alive, barely. Others gained more attention as the medics turned back fate on the ten realms.
“Let’s go!” Pan Kun waved his bloody war hammer forward. “Move out the way!” Pan Kun barked, clearing a path as they rushed past supply runners and moving soldiers.
He reached the limit of where the United Army was attacking. He grabbed onto a ladder with one hand, holding his hammer in the other, and climbed up one of the wall’s towers. An archer turned with an arrow ready.
“Sorry, sir!”
“As you were.”
Pan Kun looked from the tower over the battlefield.
He dropped his warhammer next to him and pulled a spell scroll from his storage ring, staining it with the blood on his hands.
Pan Kun aimed the scroll’s attack into the enemy below and ripped it. The paper burned, releasing the spell within.
A spell formation appeared beside the main wall, running parallel with it as it gathered power. The wind surged, pulling at Pan Kun’s gear and the blue fringe on his helmet.
The spell formation stilled and flared with power, then raced along the wall.
Air blades nearly a meter wide shot out from the spell formation. They sliced through the packed-in enemy lines, sometimes two or three blades striking a single person before they fell.
It cut a bloody path ten meters wide right through the enemy formations.
The archers paused for half a second at the stunning loss of life before they started picking out their targets and firing as fast as they could.
Pan Kun pulled out another spell scroll as the first formation was dying. He could feel the enemy on the edge.
He aimed and tore it.
The air blades cut through the wooden bridges over the pits, setting the flies off and covering the battlefield with the stench of death and decay.
Pan Kun activated a medallion around his neck. “Kill them all! For the Beast Mountain Range!” he yelled, his voice ringing over the battlefield.
Yells and roars responded from along the wall, driving back the small footholds the United Army had gained.
The front lines of the United Army fractured, turning and fleeing across to where the air blades had just torn their people apart.
The new First realm forces were just beyond the pits. Having seen the horror of the air blades first-hand, they were slowing their pace even as officers and horns ordered them forward.
The fleeing front-liners were attacked by the leadership of the second wave, only to find themselves hacked up for getting in their way.
The archers slowed their attacks until finally stopping. Siege weapons hurled fire pots out at the United Armies.
Pan Kun looked at the tombstones that littered the ground. Ladders and broken siege equipment lay between them.
The wounded cried out; some were trying to make their way back to their lines.
Others walked around the battlefield with blank expressions before crossbow bolts dropped them to the ground.
Soldiers tossed bodies from the defenses and threw off the ladders. Wounded were carted away as reserves took their positions. Sections of battlements were broken where the siege weapons had struck. Craters lined the wall, showing where the damage had been done.
Pan Kun stood on the edge of the tower, grabbing onto a roof pillar and holding out his bloody hammer. “Beast Mountain Range!”
Cheers dotted among the lines returned.
“I said, Beast Mountain Range!” The cheers doubled.
“I don’t think they can hear you all the way back in their camps! BEAST MOUNTAIN RANGE!”
The cheers rose across the wall and in the outpost, chasing the enemy back to their position.
“See to your duties and be ready!”
The mana cannons fired.
“Looks like they want to play with their expensive toys!”
Pan Kun turned off the medallion as his people laughed. “Good work,” he told the archers and headed down the ladder.
Pan Kun, Lukas, and Nasreen patrolled the walls. They’d been cleared, reorganized and prepared for the next wave. Stone from inside the outpost had been scavenged from buildings to reinforce and repair the walls.
Many in the army had leveled up or increased their skills, though it was secondary to surviving.
“One hundred and fourteen dead, four hundred and twenty-nine wounded. Most will recover by the end of the day. Some are being shipped back due to missing limbs or healing that will take longer,” Nasreen reported.
“The survey of the walls?” Pan Kun asked.
“They punched some nasty holes in it with those super-sized hooked pikes. I’ve got teams gathering wood to mount on the walls. Slow them down so they can’t get so deep.”
“How are the walls?”
“We repaired them, but they were the worst hit.”
“The loot?” Pan Kun asked.
“We collected it all and sent it to the rear with carts, no issues. There were fewer casualties on the enemy side than last time, probably because they spread out more.”
Pan Kun looked over the wall. “If you were the enemy commander, what would you do next?”
“Under pressure from all sides, including Dryfall decimating their forces and Vermire remaining a thorn in his side?” Nasreen gave Pan Kun and Lukas a knowing look. “Hit us with everything he has. Damn the cost and drive us into the range. Colonel Yui advises that sixty thousand of the Kingdom’s army are coming from Vermire. They should arrive by tomorrow afternoon. They brought their siege weapons.”
“He’ll wait them out, send them first so he doesn’t lose people,” Lukas said.
“Lukas, it’s your turn for night work duty.”
“Sir.” He managed to just keep the sigh out of his voice.
“Pour that napalm, as Rugrat calls it, over the pits. Take the siege weapon and hand pots, remove the flint starters and bury them under ground, ahead of and behind the pits. Pierce holes in the pots and connect them with napalm so if one goes up, they all go up. Go no further than one hundred meters past the pits. Take two more groups and have them lay more pots out to our right and left flanks. I want to make a wall of fire so that when we pull back the enemy can’t chase us, or at the very least, it slows them.”
Pan Kun looked at the body-covered, smoking ruins in front of the outpost. A smoking siege weapon collapsed in the distance.
“That’s a lot of digging. I’ll use the bodies as cover.”
“Good, start once the sun is down.”
The atmosphere in the planning tent was stale and dark as many drank themselves into their cups. Quite a few of the leaders had retired as early as possible. Salyn didn’t have that luxury.
“Tomorrow, Lord Fletcher will arrive with his forces from Vermire. With their siege weapons in support, we will attack the outpost until we defeat their mana barrier and open their walls. We have the numbers, but they have that wall and powerful spell scrolls,” Ikeda said.
“At least our fighters proved themselves. We lost fewer people than yesterday, and they kept pressure on the enemy,” Aras said.
“Can you think of anything useful, Salyn?” Ikeda said.
“Once we defeat their barriers, they will only be able to hide under the attacks. What if we are to send mounted forces in?”
“Mounted forces?” Ikeda chuckled. “I do not have the coin that the queen would tear from me if we lost those mounted forces. They are our most expensive for
ces. Fighting in cities is not their strength.”
“We could move some forces up behind the siege weapons with the ammunition carts,” Aras said.
“Give them less time to react?” Ikeda thought it over. “They’ll be a small force, and we’ll have to stop attacking with our siege weapons for them to advance. Better to go with a larger force to crush them.”
“What if we sent people out under the siege weapons fire?” Aras counter-proposed.
“Under it? The possibility of hitting our own people would be high,” Ikeda said.
“It so happens that there are a group of deserters in the stockades. Why don’t we give them a chance to redeem themselves? There are also some criminals turned slaves. What if they were to earn their freedom?”
“Clear their names and accept them into the army again?” Ikeda nodded. “That should motivate them. We’ll send Fletcher in after them as the second wave.”
A messenger came in with a small scrap of paper from a bird carrier. Ikeda took it and read it before passing it to Aras.
“Lady Talan has had more trouble at the Dryfall Outpost. They created a false wall. Combat is hand to hand most of the time, but the enemy has proved themselves capable, and any attempt at breakthroughs have been thoroughly halted.”
Aras finished reading the slip and looked at Ikeda.
We have to break Hunter Frontier. The cost at the other outposts will be too high.
“I want to know how they found out which damn outposts we were going to attack.” Aras muttered, casting a glance at the nobles in the back of the tent.
Salyn saw Drev enter the tent and walk toward him. Salyn tilted his head to the side.
“Our forces are sick,” Drev whispered. “Forty thousand were claimed by their wounds, another four thousand by sickness.”
“See that it does not spread. Make sure the sickness doesn’t come near my personal guards or our mounted fighters.”
“Yes, sir.”
“If need be, cut out the infection.”
“Sir.” Drev lowered his head with a knowing look.
“Problem?” Ikeda asked.
“Just some sickness. I will give orders to make sure it is dealt with quickly.”
Seventh Realm Part 1: A LitRPG Fantasy series (The Ten Realms Book 8) Page 53
