[The Snow Valley Camp, Lucian’s POV]
Lucian expected Bloodedge to react somehow after the massacre of the black pigmen that she and her companions, along with the newly motivated pigman warrior army, had carried out during the last two days of constant fighting. But the battle continued eerily similar to how it had been for the past two years for the Pigmen warriors.
Their scouts noticed no changes in Bloodedge’s camp, where daily duels to the death continued. Sometimes, it felt like more than a method to make stronger troops—it was a charade, a convenient excuse to kill off the weaklings for food to sustain his savage army.
Even though they had fought with overwhelming might and even pushed the battlefield back a little within the narrow snow valley, according to the two transcendent pigmen, they had undone months of the black army’s work in just two days. In every pre-battle meeting, they never stopped praising them. To them, it was the first time in two years that the constant, tiresome battle had shown any signs of change. Even their casualty count had dropped to below fifty for each battle, which was already a huge deal for the pigman warriors.
But it just didn’t feel right. Bloodedge wasn’t acting like someone facing any real obstacle. The scouts confirmed that he already had over a million emperor-rank troops and more than three million king-rank black ones. If those attacked together.. The defense of the valley wouldn’t last even half a day.
Outside the valley, there were hundreds of traps set up exactly as countermeasures for such a scenario. But if it really happened, this army of thirty thousand pigmen.. wouldn’t survive either.
It wasn’t enough. They needed a plan. Something that would reduce their numbers by a large margin, all at once.
Lucian walked toward the tent where they had all agreed to meet. Sam, Maelor, and Alex were already inside. They nodded at her as she sat down on one of the iron chairs. The tent was cramped—Sam and Maelor were even sitting on Sam’s bed; this was his tent, after all. Lucian knew Sam was a powerful individual with his prime esper abilities, but only after seeing him decimate hordes of black pigmen did she truly grasp how powerful he really was. He was even stronger now compared to when they had fought together in the Highsword dungeon.
They all were, actually—she herself had leveled her second job as a Second Ranker halfway through. She hadn’t told anyone, but this wasn’t her first continuous fight of attrition. She had survived a long time fighting an entire nest of lizard monsters in that barren land. Others had been dealt far worse hands—like Damian, who had faced a goddamn Fourth Ranker. Twice. And come out alive. So it wasn’t worth mentioning—but still, she had gained a lot of experience there and had mastered her new skills expertly. It had been harsh, but now that she thought about it, it had been quite good for her as a fighter.
Soon, Einar and Evrin entered after washing their faces and cleaning their armor and clothes a bit—their turn of fighting had just ended.
“So what do we do?” Evrin asked.
“We’re just waiting for Bloodedge to slaughter us all whenever he wishes if we continue..” Alex added.
“Suggestions,” Sam said.
“We could use the waygate bracelet Damian gave us for a quick exit after a surprise attack..” Einar wondered aloud.
“To deal a decisive attack in the middle of their elite army camp?” Maelor asked. “It would have to be quick and explosive, doing maximum damage.”
“No, that won’t be enough damage. At most, a few thousand will die.. and it could trigger a violent counterattack against the Pigmen,” Lucian said. Anything less than a half-million death toll wasn’t worth such a reckless attack just to reduce a few enemy numbers.
“Even with all this mana, our spells can’t reach the ridiculous scale of Damian’s spells..” Evrin muttered, thinking aloud.
“We could use their laser cannons.. Charge them endlessly with liquid mana until the steel pillar gets damaged beyond use,” Alex added.
That was a good use of the abundance of mana they had, but even runic weapons needed time to be used continuously, and the damage done still wouldn’t be enough. But.. If used cleverly, in the right conditions, it could indeed deal a lot of damage.
Lucian thought about the possibilities. The others kept offering ideas and discussing their validity, but her mind had completely tuned out, thinking again and again about the idea that had popped into her head. At last, she spoke up.
“We need to gather them together.”
All discussion stopped as everyone stared at her. Lucian tried to explain her plan to them. It was hard to say if they fully understood it, but after a bit of discussion, the others gave suggestions and made some improvements to her idea—and they all agreed to use it. Sam and Maelor went to the usual pre-battle meeting to inform the two pigman commanders of their decision, while the rest worked out the finer details and got to work.
The only way to force Bloodedge to send his elites was to deal heavier and heavier damage to the black army in each attack rotation.
Fighting together and using their individual skills would also work, but there was a quicker, more efficient way to do this. They would need the rolling steel laser cannons for that—and there was a way to get them quicker.
Lucian, along with Einar, Evrin, and Alex, climbed the high snow mountain using Grace’s air step spell. When they reached a sufficient height from which the stone shrine in the distance was somewhat visible, and the path to it was clear in sight, they flattened their side of the mountain a bit. Together, they created a hundred-meter-wide square platform in the middle of the mountain using Einar’s Firebird aura slashes and Lucian’s own ice spells.
Then, pointing the flat side of her blade toward the stone shrine, all four of them extended their mana threads from their personal mana containers and touched Lucian’s blade to pour as much mana into it as possible. The black wormhole runic circle on Lucian’s blade flared to life with blinding radiance.
Lucian knew Damian’s runic tools always had the feature of using the environment’s mana to charge themselves. In fact, there were two wormhole runic circles on the sword—one that used the user’s mana and could be shaped any way the user wished, and another that absorbed environmental mana but could not be controlled, opening only in a straight line as far as the mana poured in the sacrium metal allowed.
The wormhole spell on her, Sam’s, and Einar’s swords was also the same—and sacrium could really, really store a lot of mana.
The analysis of their sword’s info window, which Damian had shown them, described that when fully charged, this wormhole spell could cross over two hundred kilometers. They only needed it to do half that—just eighty—to reach back to the pigmen city.