Parallel (A Virtual Gamer's Story) [Vol.1 - Vol.4 Complete]

Chapter 130: Battle of Assassins

At the Southern End, a resplendent smile spread across Kashi's face as Lunette's song came to its end. Taking full advantage of the army that had faltered in their steps due to the mana imbued in the music, Kashi issued a low order, "Rise."

Two sets of walls, roughly sixty meters apart, shot up from the earth, impaling many Chaos Order soldiers in the process.

The Chaos Order, which had split its troops into three to attack the drakul, suddenly found themselves short nearly three thousand men in one swoop.

The soldiers outside the wall panicked and unleashed their strongest skills against the barricade. However, the wall rebuffed all attacks with nary a scratch to its frame.

Kashi shook his head, a condescending look in his eyes. Did these idiots think they could break these walls? Pfft! The real reason he considered this city an artifact was neither the fancy interconnections, nor was it the walls hidden beneath the earth controlled from the throne.

In fact, in truth, the thin walls were not as hard as they appeared.

No, what truly made this entire city an artifact was that every inch of it was lined with invisible runes powered by the massive crystal at the heart of the city. Aside from miscellaneous tasks like opening and closing doors and verifying auras of Kings, the primary function of the crystal was to strengthen any section of the city.

The crystal accomplished this function by feeding mana to runes that hardened a section beyond human comprehension for a set period—usually four to six hours.

The major downside was that such strengthening activities used up a lot of mana. Aygor designed the crystal so that its mana absorption was quite slow (most likely to keep the balance) and only left enough mana to handle miscellaneous tasks.

Strengthening the first set of raised walls consumed most of the crystal's accumulated mana from the past three weeks. Afterward, dozens of tired dwarfs then offered up their mana to replenish the crystal, but even with that, it still required two hours before it could charge enough to be reused.

From this, it could be imagined just how much mana the crystal consumed. When one considered all that mana went into strengthening a wall; hehe, trying to break down such a wall was indeed a momentous waste of time. It was apparent Aygor wanted this to be used only for strategic, emergency, or war-time situations.

By the time Lunette's song reached its conclusion, Larsial was beside herself with rage. Eyes looking like they could spit fire at any moment, she roared, "Bards! What are you doing!? Get our men out of that spell!"

"Too late." Across the battlefield, Kashi issued a crafty smirk as he stabbed an arrow into an enemy's helmet. "Do it."

Beautiful, evoking piano keys rung through the battlegrounds as the Choir of Maggots began their second number. The lead Chaos vocalist suddenly found his throat seemed to have grown a steel blade. Two drummers blanched as a massive black wolf appeared on their respective drums, cold red eyes holding no room for mercy.

Kira slapped the head off the first drummer. The second, paralyzed by the splatter of blood on his face, surrendered his head to her massive jaws, bronze helmet meaningless to the set of perversely sharp teeth. The direwolf spat out the head as she descended upon the defenseless war bards like an irreversible force of nature. Close-by, Shadow seemed to flit in and out of existence, becoming visible only for the short time it took for his blade to sink into an enemy's skull.

Panic erupted among the warbards. Their profession demanded they lightly dressed in garments that boosted charisma and mana instead of physical defense or attack. As a result, all it took was one well-placed back-stab to end their lives efficiently.