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Chapter 308: Continental Commander
🕑 Added 2023-11-10 17:36:01 +0000 UTCIf there is any character I've forgotten about that you'd like to see fight, let me know!
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The armies collided in a massive heap of weapons and magic. Colored missiles flew everywhere. Explosions resounded over the clang of swords and screams of the wounded. The two armies merged, discipline giving way to chaos.
The professor stood at the far back, protected by a small group of E-Grades. She had her eyes closed and her ears shut. Her senses were spread over the battlefield, watching from a hundred directions at once through the utility provided by her Class.
Continental Commander was an Elite Class. One of the best when it came to managing armies. It let her communicate with and observe through a number of assigned individuals, flooding her with a plethora of information that, if she could navigate, would heavily enhance the power of her army.
At times like this, her high Intelligence came in handy. She parsed through everything at an extremely fast pace. She absorbed information, filtered it, and fired out instructions faster than the situation could change. It was the most demanding job she’d ever done, but she’d grown accustomed to it by now.
This was the reason why she, Margaret Rust, was the fiercest army commander on Earth.
The Ice Peak had commanders of their own, but they had been too late to join the game. None had a pure management Class like the professor’s. They needed three commanders to mimic a fraction of her power. On that front, she had them completely outscaled.
However, the armies themselves weren’t equal. The Ice Peak had more and stronger people. Their projectiles covered the sky. The boots of their warriors thundered against the white stone. They were a flood of cultivators, swarming the alliance and attacking like a pack of rabid dogs. What they lacked in coordination they made up for with sheer firepower.
“To the left. Regroup. Step back in line. Don’t overextend. Now; chase! Good, now return. Keep goi— no, to your right! They’re flanking you!”
The professor’s rapid-fire instructions controlled the battlefield. The alliance forces advanced and retreated like waves, pressuring the Ice Peak incessantly while resting themselves.
Pugilists and other Physical fighters led the charge, roaring as they bulldozed through the enemy lines. The Forest of the Strong’s natural resources were Physical-oriented, and that was mirrored by their cultivators—not to mention their adoration of Jack Rust. Their punches filled the sky, their swords rent the earth, their roars shook the heavens. The brorillas led the charge, filled with righteous fury, while the gymonkeys catapulted poop deep into the enemy ranks. They’d eaten mexican food last night.
The strongest wizards of Flame River soared to the sky, riding wings of flame. They spread their arms and moved them smoothly through the air, working together to unleash a mighty red river that washed over the Ice Peak. A group of pale-bodied men and women rushed to the front, raising their arms in one sharp motion to draw one massive ice wall out of the floor. The river crashed against the wall, releasing a large cloud of steam that blotted out the clouds. Unfortunately, the Ice Peak wizards were more, so the glacier held. The river flowed back down to threaten a few of the alliance cultivators at the front before it was extinguished.
However, this mighty river had only been a distraction. A contingent of E-Grade Physical cultivators had mounted a sharp offensive, penetrating into the enemy lines and swerving around to attack the ice wizards from the side. Right as the wizards were celebrating their defense, a brorilla grabbed the head of one of them and smashed it into the ice wall, cracking it open like a watermelon. As the wizard’s lifeless body fell to the floor, the brorilla beat his chest and roared with fury. It was Oz, the strongest brorilla after Harambe, who’d come to take revenge for his big bro.
Another brorilla leaped and punched a wizard’s head so hard it exploded, while a human ducked under him and penetrated another’s chest with his fist. Before he could celebrate his success, five ice spikes pierced his torso, killing him instantly. The brorillas and Physical cultivators roared and kept going, following the professor’s instructions to the letter. They slaughtered their way around the ice wall and emerged from the other side to rejoin the ranks of their own army, the foreign blood on their fists igniting the battle spirit of everyone else.
The army roared.
Metal music still blasted over the battlefield, enhancing the violence and gore, driving them crazy. Vanderdecken stood alone on the concert stage and gave the performance of his life, pouring his entire soul into his guitar. The sound was magical, magnetizing, entrancing, driving the cultivators into a battle fury that enhanced their power.
However, he was not neutral. His music’s buffing effects were mostly directed to the alliance cultivators. The Ice Peak only heard an annoying cacophony that disrupted their concentration and wracked their nerves.
Thanks to his vantage point over the battle, Vanderdecken was contributing a great deal to the battle—until the Ice Peak discovered his interference.
Up in the sky, an ice bird and a fire phoenix were clashing repeatedly. They disengaged and rushed back into each other, clawing and unleashing powers of destruction that rained from the sky, occasionally cleaving the armies below. Nobody dared interfere in their conflict—with very numbered exceptions, no one could. However, it still seemed inconclusive. So far, the main front of this battle was the professor’s army against the Ice Peak’s.
Somewhere on the battlefield, a large group of alliance peak F-Grades pulled back, inviting in a squad of early E-Grades. However, the moment these E-Grades pushed forward, the surrounding sides of the alliance army closed around them, burying them in the bodies of heroic peak F-Grades. The E-Grades were individually stronger, but there was a limit to how many enemies they could handle. They quickly turned into a collection of loose limbs.
A group of Ice Peak, hard-faced assassins blended in. They wore attire that looked like the alliance’s—boxing shorts and t-shirts—but were unaffiliated. Unfortunately, nobody inspected them in the heat of battle, so they quickly arrived behind the professor, pulled out rifles, and started firing.
A large-bodied woman jumped before the professor. Her body shone with yellow earthly light. The bullets penetrated her skin and stopped there, but the assassins were still rushing in, revealing wicked knives with which they had extensive training. They were former special agents of the Russian secret services, from where most of the Ice Peak hailed.
The woman shouted for help, blocking one strike with her palm. A second found her in the thigh and a third under the armpit, quickly riddling her with holes. Blood spurted out. The assassins pressed on. More of the professor’s E-Grade guards arrived to fight them off, but the assassins were determined, and they sacrificed each other to keep running forward. They didn’t want to win—they just needed to kill the professor.
The professor didn’t move. If she broke her concentration now, the army would suffer heavy losses. She had to trust her guards, who were fighting tooth and nail to keep her alive.
One assassin blew past, blending with the shadows to slip through two E-Grade guards at once. “No!” they both shouted. His blade flashed true. A steel star came out of nowhere to strike his wrist, sending the dagger off-course, making it only graze the professor’s shoulder. An instant later, an old monk fell from above, crushing the assassin’s head under his knee. The other assassins were dealt with as well, as five more monks had appeared and swiftly destroyed them, not falling for any tricks.
The assassins may have had extensive training, but how could they compare to the old martial masters?
“Go fight,” the monk besides the professor said, glancing at the guards. “With us here, nobody will harm your leader.”
“Go,” the professor’s voice rang in their minds, and the guards, embarrassed by their failure, quickly scampered away to join the front lines. The six monks formed a perimeter around the professor, keeping their eagle eyes glued on the action. They could catch arrows, block warriors, and redirect magic. No assassin would get past them.
“Thank you,” the professor told them.
“Don’t worry,” one of the old monks said, his thin mustache dancing with his lips. “You are our hope. These old monks will gladly lay down their lives to protect you. Just focus on victory.”
The professor, still with her eyes shut in concentration, nodded slightly.
Small victories like this were achieved across the battlefield. The alliance army was trying their best, but the numbers of both armies were depleting at a rapid rate. It was an uphill battle. All the alliance could do was struggle to remain afloat and hope for a mistake on the enemy’s part—or, even better, Jack’s arrival.
But nobody had any idea why he was delaying, or why he wasn’t answering their telepathy messages. Something must have gone horribly wrong. All they could do was hope.
One of the only reasons the alliance still held was Edgar. The wizard was leagues above everyone else on the battlefield, holding off a dozen late E-Grades of the Ice Peak by himself. As he spread his arms, flaming meteors rained down from the heavens. Blizzards erupted from his palms, freezing people to the bone, while his eyes shone like the sun, preventing anyone from looking directly at him.
Thanks to the devil, Etsin, his magical powers of awe and wonder had transformed into ones of pure destruction. He delegated death. Any projectiles thrown at him crashed against blue shields and dissipated, while anyone who got too close was met with crowds of sand devils rising from between the cracks in the white stone. Moreover, beams of bright light shot out from over his head, forcing multiple wizards to combine forces to stop him.
His current magical abilities resembled the ones he possessed at the F-Grade, just magnified. It wasn’t the kind of power he could have had with his real Dao, but it was enough to steamroll the Ice Peak forces, single handedly making up for the gap in power between the two armies.
Of course, he took no joy in the destruction. It was the worst day of his life. Every life he took scraped against his soul, but this was why he’d joined the dark side, why he’d sold his soul to a devil. His friends needed him—and, no matter what, he would help.
Suddenly, however, his feelings of grief spiked out of proportion. The change was so abrupt that he stumbled, losing control of his arcane powers and letting an ice spike slip through to slice at his forearm. He grimaced as blood poured out. The shock woke him up. A storm of arcane energy erupted from his body, pushing everyone away as his eyes scanned the enemy crowd, looking for the new attacker.
He found them. From deep within a brown cloak, a pair of purple eyes met his own, shining with light that wasn’t human. The energy he’d unleashed hadn’t even fazed this person. Realizing they’d been spotted, the attacker pulled back their hood, revealing fair skin and hair of sapphire. Edgar scanned her.
Saphira, Level 124
Faction: -
He didn’t even bother with the fact that she wasn’t human. The Animal Kingdom had broken the rules so many times. What was one more?
Instead, he focused on her Dao. It was some form of Will attack, and it had reached far deeper into his psyche than any Will cultivator of the Ice Peak could manage.
This woman was strong.
“Leave him to me,” she commanded. The Ice Peak cultivators glanced at her, but seeing her non-human features, they quickly realized she was on their side and scampered away.
“Stay right there!” Edgar shouted, releasing a hailstorm that enveloped them all, but another Will attack hit him like a truck, disrupting his concentration and dispelling the hail. The Ice Peak cultivators ran away.
Edgar gnashed his teeth. If he couldn’t hold them down, they would slaughter his army, bringing them to an unbeatable disadvantage…but he couldn’t stop them. This woman was powerful enough to demand and receive his full attention. He could only try to defeat her as quickly as possible—and hope that the professor could mitigate the damage until then.
“Who are you?” he roared, charging up a beam of light.
“My name is Vlossana,” replied the saphira woman, staring him down. There was grief in those eyes, but also joy—and so much darkness. “And I am here to kill you.”
Comments
Jumping Flounder
it’s good to see vanderdecken sticking it to the iceman. i knew he had some true punk rock in his veins.
James Thomas
Can't wait for that. I like these side vignettes but Jack and Brock are why I read this story. :)
Namorat
The entry of Brock and Jack must be epic ^^"
