Chapter 48

The moment I entered the passage following my mini plant fighter jets, my chest was penetrated where my heart would have been. Well, my heart wasn't there because I didn't have one. But still, it was painful and part of the backup for Smoothie was damaged.

The passage was sloped downward with fifteen piles of neat sandbags acting as barriers for the soldiers. Not only were there snipers but also archers. Their defense formation was formidable, so much so that I doubted my grenade earlier actually reached anyone.

Following the snipe, five arrows struck to my chest, legs, and one on my neck. They weren't deep thanks to my chitin armor but I hated pain.

"Guufu..."

To think they had archers too...

Before I had time to think of the next step, someone shouted, "Fire bolt!"

From behind one of their sandbag blocks, an orange jet of fire was hurled my way. Now, if I was a superhero, I would punch it and make it dissipate but I was an amateur.

A strawberry was synthesized on one of my bombers, or rather S-16's. While their attention was on me, the S-16's had breached their defenses from above. I quickly swapped my position with that of the strawberry to evade the fire bolt.

What remained at where I just a moment ago was only a crispy strawberry. Somehow the arrows came with me.  

Rawrrr! Now it's my turn! Missiles away!

Even though I couldn't see well in the dark, it didn't matter with carpet bombing. I was still able see some of them. And to help me see better, I added a bit of bioluminescence properties to my little darts. This way, when anyone moved, I could easily tell. At the same time, I remained in the dark just under the ceiling to absorb the arrows.  

Of all the darts, only two soldiers fell. As for the rest of these enemy soldiers, I had redirect my darts to hit the vulnerable areas after I had gained sight of them. Synthesizing and injecting lethal poison was only a simple matter. Within merely a minute, the area was dead silent. All of the soldiers here, about fifty of them, had completely lost their consciousness.

As a bonus, by using absorption on all of them, I had finally leveled up to level 52. In addition, aside from regular stats improvement, I gained a new trait |enhanced resistances|. This might be related to poison resistance now that I became an avid poison user. If I remember correctly, poisons could be used to counter other poisons in some circumstances.

In the first place, I doubted this fey body could be poisoned. Since that new trait also included resistances to other things, it might not be related to poison resistance.

I waited a bit but it seemed that no reinforcements was coming through this passage.

Alright, my job is done here! I don't want to go any deeper. Yeah, let's leave things to the professionals. I'm just a nobody here.

I returned to speak with that commander, "The coast is clear. All yours."

He understood the gist of it after a few seconds before giving command to seal the passage.

These fun little airplanes stayed with me the entire time. The cost for maintaining their flight wasn't expensive so I figured it was easier than to recreate them later. There was nothing wrong keeping toys around. I considered myself underage by my standard!

When I returned to the upper inner city, the mountain suddenly began to shake and rumble. Dusts and debris rained down each time there was a rumble. Unlike the explosions that took place earlier, I could tell this one was on a much bigger scale and it came from the outside.

Due to the earlier disruptions in the tunnel system, many were not able to evacuate from the city of Vera. I wasn't sure what the enemy strategies were, but if they really wanted us dead, they could have done much more like collapsing the entire mountain. They probably couldn't pull it off which was why they did this half-assed invasion to seal our escape routes. They kind of failed, kind of. Currently, we had pushed them back but there was no telling what they had planned next.

I didn't know. I had no information. Fighting in the fog of war was the worst.

If I was the human commanders, I'd probably try to collapse all the tunnels. That might be easier than invading and killing everyone here. A long siege would ultimately be a detriment to those stuck inside the inner city with nowhere to escape. The humans would try to maintain status quo. If they could keep it that way, then it would be game over for us.

I headed toward the palace where I had audience with the king.

I needed information. If I could teleport in and out of the barrier at will, then I could probably sneak behind enemy positions and neutralize them. Well, that was assuming they were much weaker than me and I could locate tunnel entrances from the outside. Anyway, I must be sure that I could return inside at any time.

On my way to the palace, several messengers or scouts were rushing past me.

Oh right, maybe I should hold a card and rush too. I want a priority fast lane!

Thinking that, I chased after a scout holding a yellow card while holding my orange card. After all, I could still report something like how I participated in the battle. That was super important, of course!

"Eh? Ehhhh?"

"Yo, what are you staring at?" I rebuked a ferretfolk who was my chase target. It was for fun but when he saw my orange card, both his jaws and his speed dropped.

As I outran him, I taunted, "You snooze you lose!"

Eheheh... My daily dose of fun!

On a side note, no matter how cheap the mana cost was to keep S-16's around, prolonged usage was bound to waste my mana pointlessly. Therefore, I parked them on the roof of a local residence on my way here. No one had ever said anything about them so I didn't see an issue with that. They couldn't possibly give me a parking ticket or something.

Once I arrived at the palace, as I casually strolled in, I noticed there were significantly less guards. No one asked me anything. Then, while I was wondering where I should report to, a hand laid on my shoulder.

"Wuah!" I leaked out an embarrassing cry.

"Wah? What are you doing here? Do you have something to report?" She turned to look at the card held in my hand.

"Kanoko, don't scare me like that! I have a weak heart you know?"

"Orange card, what is it? I see you have this crystal armor on you."

"Oh, a bit. I helped secure two tunnels: one small and one big. I want to ask, what was that rumbling about earlier?"

"There's no point hiding it from you so let me be blunt. They took down our main defense barrier around the city."

"Say what? How did they do that? Did they break the obelisk?"

"How did you know that?" She asked as she dragged me into a nearby room arranged as an office space. The office had one large desk stacked with paperwork and crystals. Bookshelves and cabinets lined the walls. Behind the desk was a window displaying the back garden of the palace. To the side, there was another door which was likely a private room.

"Eh, my guess?" As she sat me across from her with the desk in between us.

Ah... It's her temporary office? I wonder what rank she is?

"Since it's not a big secret or anything, I guess it doesn't hurt to tell you. It's a composite magic barrier that didn't require user to input any mana. The obelisk has many functions. In this case, one of them was to gather and condense mana and the other was to act as an anchor to stabilize the barrier. It was basically the centre piece of the magic barrier."

"Neat. It got destroyed then?"

"No, they wouldn't and couldn't destroy it. The issue is that the foundation of the barrier was destroyed, that being the magic inscriptions and formations within the rings of tunnels beneath. While some parts are built to deceive and confuse enemy invaders, it wouldn't matter if they tampered or destroyed enough of them. Just for your reference, our scouts first shot flares the moment they entered to destroy outer tunnel formations. It was the red ones from outside the city. However, just moments ago, enough damages were caused that our grand magic collapsed."

"Ohhh... So after they failed, they tried to collapse some tunnels and buy time to destroy for the real one? I wonder why they didn't collapse our inner city tunnels first."

"We can only speculate their real intent. They likely want to wipe all of us without anyone escaping while diverting our military strength to fight both inside and outside of the city. Those folks who made it to the other side of the tunnel were likely pursued and killed. We wouldn't know until the debris are cleared. Things could be even worse on the other side but that responsibility doesn't lie with me."

They certainly didn't need a lot of troops to kill civilians. Even here, regular unarmed folks here were only around level 10. Though, I didn't understand why humans wanted to kill these furry ones.

Was there some kind of old grudge? I had no clue. It made me wonder if there was no concept of slavery here.

"That's unfortunate... But that makes sense! I thought the ones I fought under there was quite weak for their main force."

"Humans are too cunning. The underground routes to other cities are either completely blocked or unsafe to use. It'll take some time for them to be restored and secured. If only our elite troops aren't all being preoccupied with the reptilians..." She said with a defeated look.

Elite troops, huh. So if this was chess, it'd be equivalent to a pin.

Basically, the super powerful barrier around the city was no more. Our troops was fighting enemies below the inner city, in the main city, likely both on the ground, and below the ground where their main force likely was at some point. It really wasn't looking pretty.

This was why I hate fog of war. The lack of information is the worst!