Level 1 Fallen

Chapter 196: MOAB

Looking at the towering pillars of energy up ahead, I couldn’t help but start feeling nervous. The longer they charged the attack, the more devastating it was bound to be. At the moment, we couldn’t even see the nature of their attack, so there was no way for us to prepare our own countermeasures. “Should we go and interrupt them…?” I asked hesitantly, but Kelly shook her head with a serious expression.

“No. Their attack is sure to be ready to launch at any time. The only reason that they haven’t done so yet is because they know that they have extra room to pump energy into it. If one of us leaves to try to stop them, they will launch immediately, meaning that only one of us would be back here to defend. Similarly, if we try to go somewhere else, they’ll know through their army.”

“So we’re just stuck here, waiting for them to burn out their mana?” I asked, clenching my fists at my sides.

“Pretty much. Given their specialties, we can make some deductions on what they’re going to launch. One of them loves meteors, one is all about storms, and the last is poison. Cyranir is probably going to play a relatively small part of this attack, because they don’t want to risk wiping out all of the NPCs in the city behind us. That would give Erebus a valid excuse to send the League after their hometown.”

“It will probably end up being some kind of exploding projectile that pollutes the ground, I’d wager,” Kelly remarked from atop my shoulder.

I pursed my lips thoughtfully. “Is there any way that we can use World Walker to divert the attack to their own city? I feel like that would be poetic justice.”

Kelly glanced over at me with an amused smirk. “If we had a third person with the skill, we could try. But, I wouldn’t recommend it, because then you’d have the League after you for killing all of their NPCs. They’re bound to have more than just monsters in their city, since dragons love to capture people for more delicate labor.”

I let out a sigh of resignation when I heard that. “In that case, can we divert it somewhere else, like the fire spirit dungeon? There wouldn’t be any NPCs there.”

“That could work,” Kelly agreed. “But, anyone who diverts the attack is going to be at ground zero when the thing explodes. I doubt either of us would survive that kind of attack.”

As she said that, I called my Ki General over to my side, together with his subordinates. They could each use my skills, so theoretically they all had access to World Walker. Seeing what I had in mind, Kelly’s eyes widened significantly. “That’s just plain cheating…”

I simply chuckled, summoning my Fire and Water Generalas as well. Although their subordinates were little more than trash mobs, the generals themselves could also use my skills. “If I’m not relying on you to coordinate everything, I’ll need the extra numbers, won’t I?”

Kelly pursed her lips, but seemed to agree. “If I’m not part of this, I still can’t guarantee anything, but it should work with this many. Especially if you add in that other clone trick you pulled before.”

As soon as she said that, the three pillars of light vanished abruptly. Apparently, one of the trio had finally burned through the entirety of their mana, forcing them to conclude the attack. High up in the sky, a magic circle took shape, with glyphs that appeared to be made out of flying dragons circling the outer ring. From within the circle, a massive, egg-shaped rock began to fall.

This meteor was nearly as wide as the entire city. Even with my titan form, I felt insignificant in comparison. My eyes widened in shock, glancing to Kelly. “I don’t think we have enough people to transfer that…”

Even Kelly seemed surprised, this attack far outstripping what she had imagined. “Well, think fast, kid! That thing’s not going to give us time to lounge around all day!”

Gritting my teeth, I did the only thing that I could think of, activating Dragon Shifter while focusing on my Forest Titan skill. My already colossal body grew by an order of magnitude, reshaping into a massive plant dragon. But, even this was not enough to rival the sheer size of the meteor.

Still, it was all I had, my projected generals following suit to transform into equally large dragons, though two of them were made of either water or flames. As we rose up to meet the falling meteor, I let out a roar, summoning a dozen projected hands of fire, water, ki, and shadow.

When we crashed into the meteor, it felt like we barely slowed its descent at all. Trying to stop this from hitting the ground would be like a normal person standing below a boulder and hoping to catch it. With their face.

However, we had slowed it, even if only just. My head was already pounding from managing so many skills at once, but I couldn’t stop just yet. Walking Fortress activated, analyzing the meteor. If this was considered a natural resource for building, I had a dozen ways to solve the problem.

Unfortunately, this magically created rock was not natural. Moreover, I scanned deep and saw a reservoir of poisonous liquid at the core of the meteor, so destroying it would spray the entire area anyways.

“Kid, the ground’s getting real close now!” Kelly’s voice called out from below. The fact that she was close enough for me to hear her was already worrying.

A thought suddenly struck me, and I directed my Fire and Water generals to the top of the meteor. World Walking was out of the question, but there was another way that we could divert the attack… I hoped.

Briefly dismissing all of the projected hands, I felt the weight of the meteor crushing down on me again. With a thought, I teleported away, leaving my generals to enact the plan.

As the rock neared the ground, silver wisps of energy began to spread out from the three projected entities, rapidly wrapping around the entirety of the meteor. My eyes narrowed in focus, focusing on combining Wraith Zone and Beyond the Veil in the same way that I had originally created Ghost Zone in the first place.

Almost as soon as the meteor was wrapped in the silver mist, it seemed to collapse in on itself, fading from view together with the three dragon generals. Immediately, I felt my connection with the trio severed, but kept my focus on the skill that I had channeled through them. If the explosion escaped the spirit realm, this would have all been for nothing.

Thankfully, perhaps because they had seen how easily I could absorb flames to strengthen myself, they hadn’t included fire in their explosion. If they did, I wasn’t sure that it wouldn’t cross over, like how I could still be hurt by fire attacks while using Beyond the Veil. As for poison, wind, and stone, those were all things which I was essentially impervious to while in that state. Meaning that the same attacks in that state would also not reach the physical realm.

“What exactly did you do, kid?” Kelly asked, appearing on the back of my neck with her eyes locked onto the site where the meteor disappeared.

“I just made a lot of trouble for myself later,” I responded with a grunt. I didn’t know how I would clean up the polluted land in the spirit layer later, but if I didn’t do so, I might not be able to use Beyond the Veil near the city again. “Think you can deal with the leftover work?”

Kelly glanced down at me for a moment, before jumping off my neck. “You got it. Let me guess, surrender won’t be accepted?”

“Right,” I confirmed. “Destroy their respawn anchor before you kill the weakened grandmasters. Let me know when you’re done. I’ve got to recover from this mental injury…”

In the corner of my view, I could see that I had overexerted myself, much like when I tried to replicate the effects of Martial King with lower-tier skills in the past. This injury would only take a few minutes to recover, since I didn’t maintain it for as long as I did at that time, but it was too risky to have me personally handle the cleanup right now. Better to recover until time to move on to stage two.

As I was thinking about that, Kelly disappeared, and Bella ran over together with Diane. “Are you alright!?” Bella asked, her gaze looking almost panicked.

“He does stuff like this,” Diane answered calmly, almost glaring at me. “Mental injury?”

I gave a small nod, and Diane huffed, looking around. “All of the dragon soldiers cleared out to avoid that attack. We’ve got a moment to breathe.”

Bella quickly nodded her head as well. “That’s right. Why don’t you go into the city to rest? It looks like Kelly went to finish things off?”

This time, I couldn’t agree so easily. “We’re not going to accept their surrender this time,” I answered firmly. “Once they try to do so, we’re going to attack their city directly.”

Bella froze at that, her eyes wide. Even Diane looked surprised. “Even after all this?” she asked. “After they respawn in their city, they’ll have all of their energy back. They’ll be within a properly made city with a barrier, and you won’t have an army.”

I cracked a small grin when I heard this. “Maybe not, but I’m very good at breaking things.”

Diane pursed her lips, before closing her eyes. Shadows rose up from the ground, condensing into countless runes that all packed themselves tightly together. “Then at least take this.” she said, her face suddenly pale. Just a glance was all I needed to know that she burnt out her mana to make this orb. “Throw it hard enough to break it, and make sure that you’re not close to where it lands. I don’t know if it will break their city shield, but it should at least make a dent.”

My eyes widened slightly, and I created a small ki hand to accept the item. Meanwhile, Bella placed a hand on one of the vines of my claw. “Are you sure that you have to do this? You’ll be in enemy territory.”

“I know. It’s not going to be easy, and I doubt we’ll actually take down their capital. The goal here isn’t to defeat them. It’s to send a message. They keep waging these wars, hoping to get more power for their own kingdom. They think that as long as they are on the offensive, they can’t be touched. If we can inflict some damage to them like this, they’ll be more hesitant to put their full power into any war in the future.”

As I explained this, I spotted Kelly running over from the distance. Given that she didn’t simply teleport back, I could guess that she burnt through most of her own energy. Just as I was preparing to teleport, I felt Diane and Bella both climbing up my leg.

“In that case, we’re going with you,” Bella said firmly, having gathered her resolve. “You’re not leaving us behind this time. Besides, my new skill might be effective against their barrier, and Diane has her shadow dragon stuff, too! We can help.”

I wanted to refuse, but seeing their determined looks, I ultimately relented. Without further ado, I teleported the three of us away, appearing high in the sky above the Black Scale nation’s city. This was the same city that we had flown over on our way to the Black Flame Arena, making it a valid target for my World Walker.

It was time to put this war to rest.