Chapter 254 – The Battle for Frontier City Akela (2)

Chapter 254

The Battle for Frontier City Akela (2)

Date : Day 18 of Firstthaw 1024 Aethellgard Concord Year.

Hyoren stood at the very center of the formation.

In his right hand, he held Dawn Breaker. In his left, Étendard Sacré du Lys, its white banner snapping above him in the wind. Umbral Phalanx stayed in compact form, the black leaf strapped to his left gauntlet.

I'm the commander now. My job isn't just to fight. It's to watch the whole battlefield.

He glanced down at the folded shield.

The shield is only a contingency. I need Dawn Breaker to cast. And I need the banner to strengthen everyone who can see it.

He looked to his right.

Fits stood a few paces away, his thin greatsword glowing faintly, flanked by the stocky dwarf with her hammer and shield and the Lion-clan scout with her twin daggers. Beyond them, the line became a wall of steel—rows of Akela knights with square shields locked edge to edge. Somewhere among them, Captain Yugold’s plumed helmet stood out above the rest.

And at the far end of the right flank stood the Templar Knights. Fifty of them, their polished armor bearing Luminara’s symbol, standing so still they could have been statues.

He looked to his left.

Jackey stood closest, both axes in hand, his tail swaying in short, restless flicks. Beside him, Killa leaned on her pitch-black scythe. Then Jigor, his hammer on his shoulder. Beyond them, the line dissolved into a ragged mix of adventurers in mismatched armor—and at the far end, a flash of wolf-cut red hair. Fiona.

And among the adventurers near her, a familiar grey beard and a broad shield.

Hyoren blinked.

Ronald… He rode all night, and he's still here…

He followed the veteran's gaze. Ronald wasn't looking at the hill. He kept glancing back toward the gate, where the Wood and Iron ranks waited beside the stretchers.

He really is worried sick about his daughter…

Hyoren almost chuckled. Almost.

He let his eyes sweep along the line, counting without meaning to.

About a hundred adventurers out here… The rest are on the wall… or resting after the night raid…

Fifty knights… The others rode out last night too… And Sherine’s fifty Templar Knights…

Three hundred defenders, give or take… Two hundred of us on the frontline…

He looked across the plain.

Against eleven thousand…

On the distant hill, the goblin army had finished forming up. Its squads stood in ranks so dense the green blurred together, rows stacked upon rows until the hillside itself seemed to move. Crude banners of hide and bone rose above them. And now that the shuffling had stopped, a new sound rolled across the grass—a low, rhythmic thudding. Thousands of weapons striking thousands of shields. Slowly. Deliberately.

The wind shifted and carried the smell with it—sour sweat, rotting meat, old blood and filth, so thick Hyoren could taste it at the back of his throat. Somewhere behind him, an adventurer gagged.

On their side of the plain, there was almost no sound at all. Only the creak of leather straps. The scrape of a boot shifting in the damp grass. Someone's armor rattling faintly, because their hands wouldn't stop shaking. A young swordsman a few rows back muttering a prayer to Luminara under his breath, over and over, the words running together.

The second wall looked so thin. A line of people stretched across the grass, and behind it, nothing but stone. Before it, a hillside of green that didn't end.

Jackey's tail had gone still.

"Big Bro…"

His voice was quieter than usual.

"From down here… there's way more of them."

Hyoren didn't take his eyes off the hill.

"Same number as from the wall, Jackey. It just looks bigger."

Jackey's ears twitched. Then his grin crept back, a little crooked.

"More skulkers to whack, then."

To his right, Fits let out a short laugh. His knuckles were white around his sword's hilt.

"I've cleared two Bronze dungeons. Never had a whole hill stare at me before."

On the left, Jigor spat into the grass and adjusted the strap of his shield.

"Gyahaha. Let 'em stare. Staring never killed anyone."

Killa said nothing. Her drooping ears were pressed flat, and her fingers tightened and loosened around the scythe's long black shaft, again and again.

The thudding continued.

Neither army moved.

On the hill, eleven thousand goblins watched the walls of Akela. On the plain, two hundred and fifty defenders watched back. Between them stretched a kilometer of trembling grass, waving in the wind like a sea before a storm.

Hyoren drew a slow breath and tightened his grip on the white banner.

For a while, it was a staring contest.

***

Then a sound split the air.

A long, shrill whistle, like a horn carved from bone. It rose from the hill and rolled across the plain, raw and grating.

The thudding stopped.

And the goblin army began to move.

Hyoren narrowed his eyes, watching the first squads pour down the slope. He expected them to come straight across the grassland. They didn't. The leading squads veered north, away from the river, drawing the entire advance toward the cliffs. The stretch of plain along the riverbank was left completely empty.

Damn it… They're deliberately avoiding the river…

They were massing on their right flank. On the defenders' left—Fiona's side.

The Chieftain remembers Flash Flood… It's keeping its army as far from the water as it can…

And they weren't charging the way goblins should.

There was no mad rush. No seething tide. The squads came down the hill at a steady pace, spread wide, each goblin keeping space between itself and the next. And they didn't come all at once. Most of the army stayed on the hill. One squad descended. Then another. Then another, as if waiting in a queue.

They know charging blindly gets them killed… This is discipline... Real discipline...

His jaw tightened.

And the Chieftain knows Earth Fissure isn't something we can cast freely... Spread out like that… If Arianna casts it now, it won't take a thousand… Maybe eight hundred, like her second cast yesterday…

His gaze slid back toward the empty field along the river.

And with them avoiding the water, Oria can't use Flash Flood either…

He tightened his grip on Étendard Sacré du Lys.

I just hope the other mages can make up for it…

He could feel the eyes of the line on him. The defenders closest to him kept glancing over—at his face, at the banner, at the way he held himself.

I can't let them see me worried... Not now…

He drew a deep breath and raised his voice.

"Everyone! Focus! The battle has begun! Do what we came here to do!"

He paused, letting the words carry down the line in both directions. Then he thrust the banner high.

"WE WILL DEFEND OUR HOME!"

The answer came at once—a roar from two hundred throats, ragged but fierce.

All along the second wall, shields came up. Spears lowered. Blades lifted. The knights on the right locked their square shields tighter. The adventurers on the left shifted their feet, settling into their stances.

But no one charged.

That wasn't their job. Their job was to stand. To hold. To stop every goblin that survived the bombardment from the wall.

Hyoren guided a thread of Aethell up to the communication tool in his ear. The small orb warmed.

"Baron Guts. Begin the bombardment as planned."

The Baron's calm voice answered almost at once.

"Understood, field commander."

Hyoren glanced back over his shoulder at the wall.

Along the battlements, the mages had already begun.

Arianna stood near the center with Quadraflux Weaver raised high, her left fingertip already moving through the air. A few paces from her, Baron Guts lifted his red-orbed staff. Further along, Dennis stood with his slim wand extended. And near them, Reinora of the Tarasyl—Fits had told him her name earlier—held her shifting green-and-blue staff before her.

All four were building Branch Magic rituals.

Rune by rune, their circles bloomed into the air above the battlements. A brown Runic Array before Arianna. Two red ones before Baron Guts and Dennis. A green one before Reinora.

The other mages along the wall waited, staffs and wands ready. They couldn't cast Branch Magic. But once the rituals were unleashed and their casters needed to recover, it would be their turn to fill the gaps.

For a moment, the walls of Akela glowed with color.

Further down, near the end of the wall, Oria stood with her wand lowered. She had already finished her own ritual before the horn. Far to the south, a glittering figure glided across the surface of the river—Elsylua. The goblins were too far from the water for Flash Flood. But the spirit still had other spells.

Hyoren turned back toward the plain and waited.

The rituals grew more intricate with every passing second. The air above the wall hummed with gathering Aethell. Then, one after another, the casters finished.

Across the plain, the duplicate arrays appeared.

A vast brown circle spread across the grassland. Two red circles bloomed beside it. A green one unfolded further north. They overlapped, layer upon layer of glowing runes, carpeting the ground between the two armies.

The advancing goblins were walking straight into them.

Then the horn sounded again.

That same long, grating whistle rolled down from the hill.

The charging squads broke apart. They didn't retreat. They didn't stop. But they scattered—spreading even wider across the grass, goblins peeling away from one another, every squad fanning out into thin, loose lines. Still moving toward the defenders. But thinner. Harder to catch. Trying not to give the spells a single dense target.

Hyoren's eyes widened.

It saw the arrays and changed its formation on the spot…

His grip tightened on Dawn Breaker.

The Goblin Chieftain really is troublesome.

But it was too late to stop the spells.

***

Hyoren watched the goblin army flood across the plain.

The scattered squads came on steadily—thin, wide lines of green spilling down from the hill, rusted blades glinting, snarls rising as they ran. One after another, they crossed onto the glowing carpet of runes. The brown array. The red arrays. The vast green circle to the north. The goblins trampled over the light as if it were nothing at all.

A little more…

The leading squads reached the heart of the arrays.

Now…

He guided Aethell to the orb in his ear.

"Baron Guts. Now!"

Atop the wall, the mages had been waiting for exactly that call.

Arianna was first.

Her light blue eyes snapped open. She thrust Quadraflux Weaver toward the plain, its orb blazing pure brown.

"Earth Fissure!"

For a heartbeat, nothing.

Then the ground beneath the goblins screamed.

CRAAAACK!

A deafening crack tore through the air, so loud Hyoren felt it in his teeth. 

The earth split open across the plain in a single jagged wound, racing through the advancing squads. Shockwaves heaved the ground skyward. Clods of dirt, stones and goblins were flung into the air. Then the earth caved in, plunging into a chasm, and from its edges, jagged spikes of stone burst upward one after another.

DON! DON! DON!

The spikes impaling everything still standing near the rim.

The tremor rolled across the plain and reached the second wall a heartbeat later. The ground lurched beneath Hyoren's boots. Along the line, adventurers staggered and grabbed at one another to keep their footing.

Dust billowed up in a towering brown cloud.

When it began to thin, Hyoren narrowed his eyes.

The leading squads were gone. Goblins hung from the stone spikes. More had vanished into the chasm. The grass around it was littered with broken bodies.

Around eight hundred... Just as I predicted…

But behind the dust, the next squads were already coming. They didn't stop at the chasm. They split—streaming around its left and right ends, pouring past the jagged stone, still charging.

Beside him, Jackey let out a low whistle.

"That's Arianna's big boom… And they're still coming?"

On the left, Jigor's grip tightened on his hammer.

"Gyahaha… They're not even slowing down. Damn goblins."

A young adventurer behind them was staring at the chasm with his mouth hanging open.

"That was… one spell? One person did that?"

Then the air changed.

Hyoren felt it before he saw it. The wind that had been tugging at his banner all morning simply died. The grass stopped swaying. The banner went limp against its shaft. Even the snarls of the goblins seemed to fade, swallowed by an eerie, pressing silence.

To the north, the green Runic Array blazed—far larger than the others.

On the wall, Reinora of the Tarasyl swept her staff forward.

"Tempest Storm!"

The silence broke.

WHOOOOOOSH!

Wind erupted from the center of the green array. It began as a spiral of dust, then grew—wider, taller, faster—until a churning column of air towered above the plain, its top lost against the sky. It roared like a beast. The grass for a hundred meters around it was ripped flat, then torn out by the roots and flung upward.

WHOOOOOSH! WHOOOOOSH!

The hurricane itself didn't seem to kill many goblins outright. But it caught them. 

Goblins were lifted off their feet and spun through the air. Blades of compressed wind sliced through them. Stones, clods of earth and their own rusted weapons whirled around inside the storm, slamming into them again and again.

And the storm was moving.

Slowly, deliberately, it drifted toward Arianna's chasm—dragging the goblins with it. Those caught at its edges were pulled in, tumbling and shrieking, and flung into the waiting pit. Even the fresh squads pouring forward from behind were caught by its pull and dragged screaming across the grass.

Then the first red array flared.

Baron Guts raised his staff high above the battlements. The red orb at its tip burned like a small sun.

"Hellfire!"

The red Runic Array on the plain erupted.

ROOOOOOAAAAR!

A sea of flame burst from the earth. Fire rolled outward across the grass in a single, roaring wave, engulfing every goblin it touched. The heat struck the second wall a moment later, a blast of scorching air that made Hyoren squint and turn his face aside. The smell of burning grass and seared flesh filled the air.

Then the two spells met.

The hurricane swallowed the fire.

The flames were dragged into the spinning column and fed by its wind. In seconds, the storm turned from grey to orange to blinding white-gold. A towering pillar of fire spun across the plain, howling, scattering burning debris in every direction. A firestorm.

It moved through the goblin army like a living thing. Squads that had scattered wide to avoid the spells were sucked in from every side and incinerated. Goblins fleeing from the flames were caught by the wind. Goblins fleeing from the wind ran straight into the fire.

The defenders had gone completely silent.

The frontliners still held their weapons ready. But mouths hung open. Shields drooped. A knight on the right flank had lifted his visor just to stare. Somewhere down the line, someone laughed—a short, disbelieving, almost hysterical sound.

Fits stared at the inferno, the light of it dancing in his blue eyes.

"Reinora… When did you learn to do that combination…?"

Killa's ears had flattened against her head. She took a half-step back without seeming to realize it.

"That's… not magic. That's a disaster."

Hyoren narrowed his eyes, watching the firestorm carve its path.

Tempest Storm alone… maybe five or six hundred... Hellfire alone, about the same…

His gaze followed the burning pillar as it drew another squad into its flames.

But together… That's closer to fifteen hundred… They must have planned the combination beforehand…

A small smile tugged at his lips.

So two different Branch Magics can amplify each other instead of clashing… Reinora and Baron Guts... That's impressive…

Slowly, the firestorm began to die.

The flames went first, guttering out as the Hellfire's Aethell ran dry. The hurricane lingered a little longer, spinning ash and smoke into the sky—then it, too, unraveled. The wind slowed. The column thinned. And finally, with a last mournful howl, it dispersed.

Silence settled over a blackened, smoking plain.

And still, the goblins came.

New squads poured down from the hill, stepping over charred corpses, skirting the chasm and the jagged stone. They spread even wider than before.

Then the second red array flared.

On the wall, Dennis stepped forward. The quiet, lanky mage who barely spoke above a murmur raised his slim wand and shouted with a voice Hyoren had never heard from him.

"Infernal Constellation!"

For a few seconds, nothing seemed to happen.

Hyoren frowned. Then he saw it.

Tiny points of red light had appeared across the plain. Hundreds of them. They were scattered among the advancing goblins like sparks drifting over the grass—small at first, barely the size of a coin. Then they grew. With every second, they swelled larger and brighter. A fist. A head. Until each one hung motionless in the air, about a meter across, glowing a deep, pulsing crimson.

Like stars scattered across the ground.

The goblins didn't seem to understand. They ran past the orbs. Around them. One goblin, snarling, ran straight beneath one.

BOOM!

The orb detonated. The goblin vanished in a burst of fire, and the goblins around it were blown off their feet.

Another goblin brushed past a second orb on the far side of the plain.

BOOM!

Another explosion. More bodies thrown through the air.

The goblins finally understood. Their charge faltered. They began weaving between the floating orbs, ducking and swerving, trying to slip past without touching them.

But there were too many. And the goblins kept coming, more and more of them filling the spaces in between. Within moments, entire squads were threading their way through a field of crimson stars, surrounded on every side.

On the wall, Dennis raised his free hand and snapped his fingers.

BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!

Every orb detonated at once.

The plain disappeared beneath a wall of fire and thunder. Explosions rippled across the grass in a chain, each one setting off the next, a hundred blasts merging into one continuous roar. The ground shook. The shockwave slammed into the second wall and rattled shields against armor. Hyoren's ears rang.

Then the dust rose.

A vast cloud of smoke, earth and ash swallowed the plain from end to end, blotting out the hill, the goblins, everything.

For a long moment, no one on the second wall said a word.

***

Then the cheers erupted.

They started somewhere on the left flank—a single hoarse shout—and spread down the line like wildfire. Within seconds, the entire second wall was roaring. Adventurers thrust their swords into the air. Knights banged their spears against their square shields until the steel rang. Someone was laughing so hard he was nearly sobbing.

"DID YOU SEE THAT?!"

A Copper-rank spearman grabbed the shoulder of the man beside him and shook him.

"Four of them! Four disasters in a row!"

Further down, a young archer was jumping in place.

"They're gone! The whole front's gone!"

A Templar Knight in armor bearing Luminara's symbol clutched his hands together.

“Luminara will always help us.”

Among the knights on the right, someone began chanting.

"AKELA! AKELA! AKELA!"

The chant spread. Even some of the adventurers took it up, pounding their shields in time.

Jackey threw his head back and howled, both axes raised to the sky.

"WOHOOOO! Arianna's the BEST! HAHAHA!"

Jigor slammed his hammer against his shield with a grin that split his beard.

"Gyahaha! That's my mage! Did you see Dennis? Did you SEE him?!"

On the right, Fits let out a whoop and clapped the Lion-clan scout on the back. She staggered, then laughed with him.

But Hyoren said nothing.

He stood at the center of the line, banner raised, eyes fixed on the plain. He needed to see the damage. Not celebrate it.

Slowly, the dust began to settle.

And the plain revealed itself.

It no longer looked like grassland. It looked like the floor of a slaughterhouse.

The great chasm of Earth Fissure cut across the middle of the field, its edges bristling with jagged stone. Goblin corpses hung from the spikes, some still twitching. To the north, a vast stretch of earth had been scoured black by the firestorm, the grass burned down to ash, the ground cracked and smoking. Charred bodies lay twisted in heaps where the storm had dropped them. And everywhere else, the plain was pocked with craters—dozens of blackened holes torn into the earth by Dennis's explosions, ringed with scattered limbs and shattered weapons.

The smell reached the second wall a moment later.

Burnt flesh. Scorched hair. Blood soaking into ash. And beneath it, the sour reek of goblin entrails split open in the sun. It was so thick that Hyoren tasted it with every breath. Somewhere behind him, an adventurer doubled over and vomited into the grass.

And there were sounds, too. Out there in the smoke, not everything was dead. Thin, shrieking wails rose from the burned ground. Goblins with no legs dragging themselves across the ash. Goblins pinned to the stone spikes, still clawing at the rock.

The cheering along the line began to falter.

Hyoren's gaze moved across the craters.

Infernal Constellation… That was devastating… Jigor wasn't exaggerating... As expected of a former noble's court mage…

He began to count.

Arianna, around eight hundred... Baron Guts and Reinora together, around fifteen hundred…

Dennis… eight hundred... No... Closer to seven hundred…

His grip tightened on both his weapons.

Three thousand... Give or take…

He lifted his eyes past the smoking field, toward the hill.

That still leaves eight thousand…

On the hill, the army hadn't moved. Thousands upon thousands of goblins still stood in their ranks, waiting their turn. And from their front, fresh squads were already pouring down the slope—stepping over the dead, skirting the chasm, picking their way around the craters. They didn't hesitate. They didn't even slow.

Four natural disasters had just torn through their army. And they kept coming.

Hyoren glanced back toward the wall.

Arianna was leaning on Quadraflux Weaver, a Magic Potion already at her lips. Baron Guts had lowered his staff, his shoulders rising and falling heavily. Reinora had sunk down against the battlements. Dennis stood with one hand braced against the stone, his head bowed, a potion bottle trembling in his grip.

All four of them need at least an hour or two before they can cast Branch Magic again.

He grimaced.

The easy part is over... Now comes the hard part. We have to survive eight thousand goblins until they can cast again…

The cheers had died completely now.

Along the line, the adventurers had begun to notice what Hyoren had already seen. The laughter faded. The chanting trailed off. One by one, faces turned toward the hill. Toward the endless green still pouring down it.

The young archer who had been jumping in place had gone still. His bow hung loose in his hand.

"There's still… There's still so many…"

Beside him, an older adventurer gripped his shoulder.

"Steady, boy. Steady."

On the left, Killa's ears had pressed flat against her head. Her fingers tightened around the black shaft of her scythe until her knuckles went white. For once, she wasn't looking at Jackey at all.

Jigor's grin had vanished. He rolled his shoulders and set his hammer against his shield.

"Hmph. Of course. That Chieftain held most of them back. It fed us its weakest first."

Fits' bright smile had faded into something harder. He lifted his thin greatsword, and its pale light steadied.

"So that was just the opening act."

Further down the line, near the left flank, Ronald quietly lowered his visor. He set his broad shield into the ground and planted his feet. He didn't say a word.

Jackey's tail had stopped swaying. He stared at the hill, his golden eyes narrowed. Then he looked up at Hyoren.

"Big Bro… Now it's our turn, isn't it?"

Hyoren met his eyes and nodded.

Then he raised Étendard Sacré du Lys high above his head. The white banner caught the hot, ash-laden wind and snapped open, and Aetovacus spread its black wings over the second wall.

"EVERYONE!"

His voice rang out over the line. Every head turned.

"Our mages have done their job! Three thousand goblins lie dead on that field because of them!"

He swept Dawn Breaker toward the hill.

"Now it's our turn! We hold this line until they can cast again! Not one goblin reaches that gate!"

For a heartbeat, there was silence.

Then the roar came back—different this time. Not the giddy cheering of before. Something lower. Harder. Grimmer.

"YEAH!"

"Not one!"

"Let them come!"

Shields locked together. Spears lowered. Blades rose. All along the second wall, two hundred defenders braced themselves.

Through the earpiece, Fiona's voice cut in, low and fierce.

"Left flank, set. They're coming heavy on my side. Let them."

A moment later, Captain Yugold's steady voice followed.

"Right flank, set, commander."

Hyoren looked out across the ruined plain.

The great chasm. The jagged stone. The scorched black earth and the smoking craters. None of it stopped the goblins. Squad after squad poured down from the hill with guttural snarls, flowing around the obstacles, spreading wide, closing the distance step by step.

On the hill behind them, thousands more waited their turn.

Slowly, the charging goblins drew closer. Hyoren could see their faces now. Snarling mouths. Yellowed fangs. Hateful red eyes. Rusted blades and crude spears, some still smeared with blood from older battles.

Closer and closer.

He settled his grip on Dawn Breaker and Étendard Sacré du Lys.

Beside him, Jackey twirled his axes once and set his feet. Killa lowered her scythe. Jigor raised his shield. Fits and his party moved into position. Ronald set his shield. Far to the left, Fiona drew her greatsword. Far to the right, Yugold and his knights lowered their spears.

They were ready.

The sea of green came on—and Akela's second wall waited to meet it.