While the frontline Adepts mingled with the chaos on the battlefield and fed it to varying degrees and put their lives on the line, those in the forward base remained hard at work on putting the finishing touches on the tower.
Their colleagues might be slowing the knights down, and the numerous traps and voodoo beasts might be supporting their efforts, but they knew the truth. No matter what happened today, the tower would take a good beating.
The zealous knights had pushed forward despite the massive interference and were now less than three kilometers away from the base. A scant few, all of them regular, had even closed in on it.
They didn't achieve anything or than that though, the guards granting them swift deaths.
Despite the ease with which these intruders were dispatched, the fact that they got so close made the Adepts work faster. They hurried about the camp and within the tower, each of them ordering groups of robotic beasts about to complete the preparations for the inevitable clash.
Within an off-limits to everyone room in the towers, the two Third Grade reinforcements stood before Lord Sarubo's projection and conversed with each other and him.
"Lord Sarubo, let us join the battle and deal with one or two dragons. This will surely slow the knights' advance and give the rest time to finish the tower."
Her tone betraying desire and excitement at the mention of "dealing with the dragons," the female Third Grade, her body wrapped in a green robe and visage obscured by impenetrable green mist, said and looked to her mentor for his response.
At her side, her partner, the purple-robed Adept, shared her views on the matter. All his eyes—he was covered head to toe in them—stared (those that could anyway) straight ahead at Lord Sarubo while he voiced his assent.
"Sanazar is right my lord. Both of us joining the battle will allow us to destabilize the enemy even more. We can even kill some of the dragons. They shouldn't be a problem."
"It's not the appropriate time. You two haven't completed your analysis of the planar laws. Going out there with just your physical strength is not advisable. Tell me, how much of your power can you reliably use right now?"
The two eager Adepts looked at each other before giving the answer, the purple-robed one speaking first, his face and the eyes on it a mask of doubt. "45 percent, give or take."
Sanazar forced a smile behind her veil. "35 percent."
The projection shook its head. "You're peak Second Grades at best. Enough to deal with most of the dragons. However, revealing we have that kind of strength will force the Fourth Grade to act."
"Yes, about that sir. We've been meaning to ask. Why hasn't he or the dragons attacked the tower? Why aren't they charging forward with all their might? They know what will happen when we win, don't they?" the puzzled, eye Adept asked.
Lord Sarubo laughed, in a way that could only be described as smug and sinister. "You think he doesn't want to? I'm the reason he hasn't. I've been pressuring him with a portion of my Spirit ever since he entered the forest. He feels a great terror that intensifies anytime he looks at the tower.
To him, there's a powerful demon in here waiting to swallow him up. It's why he's so passive. Else with what he most likely knows about us he would have put everything on the line and charged the tower, losses and consequences be damned."
Sanazar and purple eyes shared a look before focusing back on the projection of their master, the respect and reverence they had for him making a new leap.
It felt unfathomable when they thought about it. The ability to implant an impulse that hampered integral decision making processes within the mind and soul of a Fourth Grade being without the latter catching the slightest wind of it.
Only a Sixth Grade being could do such a thing. Only a god could.
Reminded once again of their master's incalculable and obscure nature, the two reigned in their zeal and retreated back to their quarters, making themselves comfortable and resuming the arduous process of deciphering and removing the restrictive planar chains.
☀☀☀
It was true that the knights were slowly inching closer and closer to the tower, the interference by Greem, the other Adepts, the voodoo beasts and numerous magic traps unable to do much in the face of this.
There were simply too many of them. Greem and the others, try as they might, couldn't kill enough of them to deal significant and irreparable damage in such a short time. Plus, they couldn't man every point on the defensive line.
This led to numerous breaches that allowed scores of witcher knights through, their magic colts propelling them forward like the wind. Unfortunately for them and fortunately for the knights, there was a wall waiting for them.
The Adepts had been smart about the way they deployed the traps. If the forest was a sheet and the traps were red dots, the latter were arranged in a spaced out manner at one end and bunched closer and closer together the closer one got to the other end.
In the small, maybe more than a kilometer distance between the troops and the tower, the traps were densely packed. Seven out of ten knights that rode forward died to something, the remaining three falling back with severe injuries.
This didn't not deter them, the smarter knights shooting their elemental crystal tipped arrows into the forest to trigger the traps before riding their colts forward. It mostly worked, but it made things slow going, and Willis' patience was running out.
He stood on Aufreyr and let out an inhuman roar, three of the dragons he came with responding to his call and taking to the skies from their hiding places in the forest below.
He directed them towards the last stretch and they understood the assignment, their large leathery wings unfurling completely and their massive bodies casting huge shadows of the battlefield as they glided over the canopy.
They made sweeping passes over the target areas and unleashed their venomous and viscous dragon breaths each time, the dense mix of poison and elementium triggering and ruining the hostile environments engineered by the Adepts.
As for the voodoo beasts, their fates were even worse. The slightest contact with the mists that rose from the attacks would turn their bodies into magnets for it, the ruinous magical vapours rushing into them and reducing them to rotting and melting puddles.
The three dragons each made three of such passes, drastically reducing the danger of the last stretch between the knights and the tower. They didn't get all the traps, but they got enough. Enough that it wouldn't be long before things came to a head.
Naturally possessing the foresight to see where events were headed, Fügen rallied the Adepts on the battlefield to join him in forming a final defensive line in front of the base.
Many of them hurried and joined him, eager to escape the rapidly shrinking space on the battlefield. With how close the knights had gotten and the interference of the dragons, they couldn't move about as much as they did at the start.
Greem joined them about a minute after the rallying call, his wings disappearing and leaving him to drop at the forefront of this desperate formation. He was a body refiner. Being the tank that absorbed attacks was a no brainer.
Kiel and Hyde soon joined him, the former standing to his left and the latter to his right, their tank formation complete. Behind him, Fügen and the others arranged themselves according to the Second Grade's instructions, but his mind was elsewhere.
Hidden behind his mask, his brows were furrowed as he tallied how many golems were still active on the battlefield and called them all back save for the wind critters that served as his eyes and eyes.
They were currently the reason for his intense concentration. He was engaging their abilities to run a nose count of how many able bodied knights were left. Quite a lot, his preliminary findings showed.
Only two Adepts had fallen in the chaos he facilitated, eating another significant chunk of the acceptable losses stipulated by the clan. If another Adept died, it would hurt them greatly even if they won in the end.
They would need to shuffle their Adepts around, reassign them to and from other crucial places to ensure the supervision of their proceedings in their various planes were not affected negatively. They would also fall in the rankings back in Lethon.
They couldn't lose anymore Adepts. Though Greem couldn't care less about this. In fact, he imagined how things would become a tad difficult for them once he and Mary absconded, and boy did it bring a smile to his face.
He finished the headcount around this time and his eyebrows rose a little bit, a little bit surprised by the numbers.
Out of the six thousand knights, nearly three thousand of the regulars were gone, seventy two Spellbreakers had met their untimely demise, and two Radiant knights had joined them on the way to… wherever.
This was a massive and extremely horrible loss—for the knights, not them—and it made him understand why Willis called for the dragons to intervene, despite one of them nearly dying earlier.
Had the plague virus taken hold and done what it was intended to do, the battle would be over right about now. At least, for the lower leveled knights. Greem shook his head and clutched Allerdyce tighter.
Thinking about what could have been wouldn't change anything. This was it. This was the end. The moment that would decide if the clan would leave him to his own devices despite his obvious secrets or decide that it would benefit them most.
He looked down at Allerdyce, thinking about his intention when he crafted it. He wanted a long range option that perfectly blended his elementium and physical talents. He didn't expect to rarely ever use its spear form after trying it in battle once.
For some reason, he preferred drawing close to the enemy with it in sword form. He didn't know why, it just felt right. He didn't think much of it and resolved to craft a proper sword for himself once things settled down.
In fact, he planned to craft many weapons. But in his brief thoughts about it, he summed up his discomfort with the spear as his intention behind its conception and his approach to fighting.
All this while, he'd unconsciously put the elementium path on a pedestal higher than the body refining one. He blamed his past life memories for that.
The original Greem's exploits and prowess as he advanced in the ranks was burned fresh in his mind, and he found himself wondering at times how he could match up to that with mere strength and durability.
Such nonsensical self-doubt was not going to fly anymore.
He was definitely going to match up and exceed that. Why? Because many others had done it before him. Not in this multiverse maybe, but in other not-so fictional realities.
Hey, if this one was real and he ended up here, that meant the others too had to be right?
No matter.
He didn't have the answer to that question, but he had the answer to his doubts. Kryptonians, Viltrumites, Kherubims… they stood at the very peak of their universes simply because they could hit very hard, tank almost everything, and move as fast as they wished.
Why couldn't he do same? Especially with the special treatment he was getting as a reincarnator? Nothing was stopping him. Nothing but his own hang-ups and inability to tinker freely held him back. The first was gone, and the latter was soon to follow.
He laughed, audibly, and those around and behind him looked at him strangely. He paid their confused stares no mind and clutched his sword tight, bending his upper body forward slightly as he targeted one of the first group of knights to draw this close to the tower.
He kicked off the ground, the booster powering up slightly and adding a not so small increase to his movement speed. He arrived as blur before his targets, the colt of the knight in the lead colliding with his wall-like chest
The creature's momentum was immediately arrested, the force of the collision and his lifeforce pancaking its cranium and compressing its neck into its body, killing it instantly.
The knight seated on the beast's back shot forward, caught completely off guard by the sudden occurrence. He sailed over Greem, his body bisected from head to crotch as the latter simply raised his ultra sharp sword in his path and let him shear himself on it.
Before the bisected halves could land, Greem was already moving. He jumped, ending up above the rest of the Spellbreakers who finally stopped and made to surround him.
He spun like a top, triggering Allerdyce and sending life force into the blade. Ribbons of orange light flew off his blurry form and battered the knights and their shields, shearing through the armor and unprotected parts of the former and their mounts.
He landed amidst falling chunks and dying wails, not disoriented in the least by his wild spinning movements and unphased by the knights and colts dying horrible deaths around him.
He instead stalked forward and picked out a lone Radiant knight about 350 meters away. He paid the multiple crescent slashes slicing towards him no mind as he crouched down and released his wings, flaring them out fully and holding them horizontally.
He angled them and his body until they were both parallel to the ground, right after which he cranked the booster up to eleven.
The next thing everyone heard and saw was a loud, deafening bang followed by a long and sudden dust trail, the knights and colts along its length tumbling above and around it.
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Author's note:
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