Blaze also had Explosive Shot, allowing him to pepper the area with craters with Rugrat as Erik and Storbon cranked on the wheels of the repeating ballistas.
“Reloading!” Erik called out as he pulled out a new magazine of bolts and slapped them into place.
The raiders were firing at them up on the hill, but they were far away and their bows didn’t have the same range as the ballistas.
Storm clouds gathered in the heavens, the skies darkening as Mana quickly gathered. A spell formation appeared in the clouds as another appeared on the ground.
Underneath the bandit army that was gathered together, the spell formation on the ground activated. Four-foot spikes shot out of the ground and pierced through the raiders. They died not knowing what had happened. Hundreds of them fell in seconds.
The skies raged before rain and lightning fell. The lightning struck down toward the raiders, repeated blasts hitting the ground.
“Reloading!” Rugrat tossed the old magazine to the side and pulled out a new one. He slapped it into place, his legs moving again as another Explosive Shot fired out.
“We’re in position!” Yao Meng said.
“Get set up and fire on the raiders,” Erik said.
Yuli used a spell, redirecting the rampant Mana into the raiders.
Erik grit his teeth as he only saw Yao Meng and Setsuko joining in afterward. Instead of dealing another blow to the bandit’s minds, the spacing of the attacks gave them more confidence.
The ground had turned into a hellish scene with lightning, ground spikes, and explosions. The terrain’s difficulty had only increased.
Just over a third of the raiders had been killed by the spell scrolls and the attacks that fell on them.
The people in the village, seeing that they had allies, fought back against the raiders, taking every chance they had to inflict more damage.
The raiders had secured two victories and were just about to enter four more compounds when the first attacks hit. They hadn’t had time to recover from the first shots when the large-scale spell scrolls activated. The poison spread among their ranks and their reinforcements were torn apart.
The elites had been in the rear, letting the weaker raiders act as the vanguard to soak up the arrows.
Bolts and spells rained down on them. They tried to fire back, but their range was insufficient for the task. They could only be killed and not fight back, sitting ducks for sure and certain!
A portion charged off toward the south; the north and the west were firing on them; and to the east was the village. The south was the only safe path left to them.
Some were still fighting it out as George dove out of the dissipating Mana clouds, unleashing a fire breath along the front of the compounds. The fire spread across the ground and burned heavily. Anyone who wanted to get to the remaining compounds needed to rush this line of fire.
The raiders started fleeing the village in a rush. The sudden violent attacks caught them off guard. With the bodies around, they couldn’t tell how many died. The noise, spells, and sights had made them unable to communicate effectively and allowed their fears to overrule their minds.
They were raiders, after all—not a fighting unit.
They were chased with ballista arrows, Yuli’s spells, the arrows from the village, and George’s attacks.
They fired on George, making him have to back off. Erik loaded and fired more poison glass jars until the raiders left the ballistas’ five-hundred-meter effective range.
“Reload everything and we’ll move into the compounds.” Erik got up and reloaded the ballista. He contacted Tian Cui, who was with Ian and Delilah, rushing toward the village. “We’ve secured the village. Watch out for bandits.”
“Understood,” Tian Cui replied.
Erik pulled out a crossbow; the others grabbed their ranged weapons as they advanced on the village at a run.
George circled above, watching for threats as they moved to the village and the compounds that had been under attack last.
The map Erik had was updating from the one that Delilah had shared with him. Still, the marked compound was located in the same place.
Rugrat and Erik moved through, their weapons at the ready as they looked for threats. Storbon and Blaze looked around, but their weapons didn’t move with them.
Because Erik had been thinking about training, their flaws jumped out at him. He didn’t have time to pay attention to it.
“Cover me.” Erik walked up to the compound Delilah had marked.
A man appeared on the wall, holding a bow.
Rugrat snapped up to him, ready to put him down in a moment.
“My name is Erik. I am a friend of Delilah Ryan!” Erik yelled out.
“Delilah?” The young man lowered his bow.
Rugrat looked away and scanned for more threats.
“She is my student,” Erik said.
“Student?” The man’s grip on the string tightened.
“She went to Taeman city. I met her there and she became my student. I’m an alchemist,” Erik said.
The man lowered his bow. “Can you help my family?” the man asked, pleading in his eyes.
“What happened to them?” Erik’s tone turned serious.
“My father was cut with a sword. My brother and sister were hit with an arrow. My mother—she has one in her chest.” His voice was rough and raw.
“Let me look at them.” Erik jogged forward and jumped, landing on the wall beside the young man.
He looked at Erik, who scanned the compound.
“The rest of you, on me. Blaze, Storbon—security. Rugrat, help me stabilize them,” Erik said.
The others moved, jumping or climbing up the wall with ease. Their Strength and Agility stats meant they didn’t even raise a sweat doing so.
Erik already saw the mother, then he looked over to the brother and sister. “Focus on the sister,” Erik told Rugrat.
“Storbon, get the brother, get some healing potion into him!” Erik raised his voice as he was already running toward the mother.
She was looking pale with an arrow halfway down her body. She was coughing as a young boy held her, looking at her, in a panic, not sure what to do.
“I’ve got her. Go find me your father, okay?” Erik didn’t know where he was; he hadn’t seen him scanning the inside of the compound.
Erik poured the healing potion in his hands directly on the woman’s arrow wound and held the back of her head. Using Simple Organic Scan, he could see that the arrow had shattered her ribs, piercing her liver and leaving bone fragments inside her.
“Hi, my name is Erik. What is your name?”
“Amelia,” the older woman said.
“All right. Can you smell this for me? It’ll help your wounds.” Erik held opened a container of paste.
She took a few short breaths before her body relaxed, falling unconscious.
Erik quickly turned her to the side and pulled out a knife. He used the Clean spell on the blade, cutting away the woman’s jacket around the arrowhead to see the wound.
He pulled out a bag of Stamina fluid hooked up to an IV rig and inserted it into the woman’s arm. He pulled out a syringe of healing potion and stabbed it into the area around where the arrow had entered.
The two potions worked together, not affecting each other. He put the needle away and used the Clean spell on the knife again. He cut off the back of the arrow where the fletching was; then he turned her onto her side, pulling the jacket to the side and using his legs to brace her so she wouldn’t roll forward or backward.
He put the knife away and pushed on the arrow; it came out of her back. He pulled out the barbed head. Pulling it out the front would have only increased the damage.
He pulled out tweezers and used the Clean spell. He rested one hand against her back; using Simple Organic Scan, he checked her vitals and located the bone shards that had blasted into her body.
Erik put the tweezers down, and then used healing spells to pull
together the wound that went through Amelia. He didn’t heal it fully as he didn’t know how low on Stamina she was, allowing the healing potion and Stamina potion to do their work.
Yao Meng, Setsuko, and Yuli appeared, having advanced through the compounds that the raiders had overcome.
“Yao Meng, watch over this lady. Make sure to check her vitals. Name is Amelia. Yell if anything changes. You two are under Blaze’s command,” Erik said.
He moved off toward the brother.
“He’s okay. Healing potion will sort him out,” Storbon reported.
“Good job.” Erik ran toward the sister with an arrow in her gut.
“Arrow is out. Nasty bit of damage. Healing potion and Stamina drip. Shouldn’t take long,” Rugrat said.
“Internal?” Erik asked.
“Focused Heal,” Rugrat shot back.
“Okay, where is the father?” Erik asked.
“He’s in the main house.” A lady with a sword on her hip pointed to the largest house.
Erik took off at a run and he opened the door. “Hello!”
“Back here!”
Erik moved through the house, going into a bedroom where a man was lying on the bed. He looked delirious. The boy who had been with Amelia looked up at Erik.
Erik saw the large bandage on the man’s chest.
“Who are you?” the man asked, rising.
“I’m Delilah’s teacher and you need to lie back down.” Erik easily pushed the man back down firmly but gently as he pulled off the bandage on his chest.
“What are you doing?”
“I’m something of a healer.” Erik pulled out a healing potion and poured it on the wound.
The man let out a hiss of breath as he laid back into the sheets.
In the space of just a few minutes, his muscles started to knit back together. Veins connected once again; the dead and rotten infected tissues were pushed out. Erik put it into a storage ring and wiped off the man’s chest. He looked at his chest; there wasn’t even a mark left.
“Drink this,” Erik said.
The man nodded and took the potion, drinking from it.
Erik’s healing potions and concoctions, unlike his healing spells, didn’t need the patient’s energy as part of the fuel. It only needed the power of the concoction to help the patient, creating less strain on the body.
The man finished off the potion, taking deep breaths of air as his eyes started to clear.
Erik checked him with Simple Organic Scan, seeing that even old injuries were being healed in his body. A life of labor had not been easy on him.
The healing potion was forcing out the infection from his body, creating a layer of filth.
Erik didn’t mind.
“Thank you,” the man said.
“No problem,” Erik said. “I’ve got others to check on.”
He headed out and went to the other compounds, checking on the people there and healing those who had been wounded.
As morning turned into afternoon, anyone who had been injured was healed and the remaining three from the party headed over, leading the sand rays.
Delilah met with her family, tears in their eyes, confirming Erik’s words and bringing them all back together. Amelia was still asleep but Delilah’s father Joseph was able to move around.
Erik and the others left them to talk, checking on the dead raiders. They left the gear for the village; they could use it to buy supplies and protection while they tried to recover their burnt growing fields.
They were invited to dinner but they declined, giving the Ryans time to be a family as they took over watching the walls.
Rugrat found Erik sitting on a crate propped against a wall, looking out at the night beyond the wall.
“They need more training if we want to take them to the Fourth Realm.” Erik’s gaze moved over the landscape, using the ability of his marksman skill to zoom in and look at different regions.
“It will take time. We only trained them for a couple of weeks and then pointers here and there,” Rugrat said.
“Which means we’re going to have to break them down all over again as they’ve got bad habits, remind them of being those people in the spear unit or the archery units. Get them uniform gear, weapons, your repeating crossbow, make more rifles and train up snipers. None of these things can be rushed and all of them have to be done properly.” Erik glanced over to Rugrat before he continued scanning the ground beyond.
“I thought my time of being an instructor was behind me,” Rugrat grunted. George drifted down from the sky and landed on the wall, moving up to Rugrat, who patted him absentmindedly.
“We train up the NCOs first, give them a month and a half long crash course. Then we work on the rest of them together. What about Mana Gathering and Body Cultivation?”
“They will all have tempered blood, bones, and organs; the skin and muscle will be on them to complete as it is easier to heal in battle than the others. For Mana Gathering system, we should make sure that they all have at least six of their Mana gates open,” Erik said.
As Alva matured, they didn’t need just people who could fight; they needed people who could fight together as a part of a military. If one wanted to just fight and earn money, they could go to the Adventurer’s Guild. With the two, it created a break between professional soldiers and mercenaries.
“Those who join the military will be allowed to quit at any time during training, but as soon as training is over, then they will be in a three-year contract. They can opt in for a five-year contract as well,” Erik said.
“The special teams?”
“They will go through training, but we’ll make them prove that they’re meant to be in the special teams. The top thirty will make up the special teams. We will also move around the special teams to augment their strength and make them more balanced.”
“They’re not going to like it,” Rugrat said.
“They don’t have to. They have to learn to adapt. We have a small military so everyone has to know how to do two or three different roles. They have been given a long leash—now let’s see what they’re capable of,” Erik said.
“Here I was hoping for some vacation time,” Rugrat said.
“Maybe in the Fifth Realm?” Erik said.
“It would sound better if you sounded a bit more confident.” Rugrat laughed.
“Well, isn’t the Fourth and Fifth Realm where one can start to find formation masters?” Erik asked.
“Supposedly, though with the books from the battlefield dungeon, I’m able to get some more background information on formations. Julilah and I have been working on breaking down formations into components. I guess something clicked for her. She’s breaking them down into seperate systems, testing them out, and then building up formations with changeable formation components. It’s a time-intensive task but we’ll soon find out if it works.” Rugrat frowned as he patted George’s side.
“With everyone trying to hide their own information, it makes sense that powerful groups would try to hide how their custom designed components work. It’s like technology back on Earth: some governments abide by copyright and others don’t care—as long as they can get plans, they’ll build it. Formations here are built with confusing information to make it harder to recreate them.” Rugrat let out a sigh.
“It’s my watch—you should head back. Delilah is looking for you,” Rugrat said.
“Okay.” Erik stood up and stretched as Rugrat pulled out his rifle and looked out over the surrounding area.
“See you in the morning,” Erik said.
Rugrat waved him good-bye.
Erik headed down and checked his notifications.
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Skill: Marksman
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Level: 55 (Apprentice)
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Long-range weapons are familiar in your hands. When aiming, you can zoom in x2.0. 15% increased chance for critical hit.
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Skill: Riding
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Level: 27 (Apprentice)
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Melee attacks while riding are 10% stronger
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Upon advancing into the Apprentice level of Riding, you will be rewarded with one randomly selected item related to this skill.
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You have received the training manual: Beast Mount 101
+10,000 EXP
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Skill: Stealth
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Level: 20 (Novice)
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No bonuses at this time. You must prove your skills first.
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Skill: Healer
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Level: 58 (Journeyman)
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You have become familiar with the body and the arts of repairing it. Healing spells now cost 5% less Mana and Stamina.
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1,082,943/1,215,000 EXP till you reach Level 33
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Erik shook his head. Even killing nearly one hundred raiders, he had only earned two hundred Experience. If he was to be in a fight, he didn’t even need to use any techniques. Using his brute strength, he could have run through the raiders with little difficulty—due to his Agility, his Strength, the state of his body. Even the weapons would find it impossible to break through his armor. They had all been under level twenty, not even a real threat to Erik.
He had just come down from the wall and was walking toward the house that they had been given by the Ryan family when Delilah saw him.
“Teacher!” she called out, running over to him.
He turned to face her.
She cupped her hands and bowed deeply. “Thank you, Teacher, for saving my family.”
“I wish that I was able to save the other people too.” Erik tried to get her to rise with a gesture but, stubbornly, she kept on bowing. He mussed up her hair making her rise with a frown as she sorted out her hair again. Erik felt his heart become a bit lighter. “We’ll be leaving in two days, make sure your family is ready to leave.”
The Third Realm Page 56
