Chapter 857 857 They're Still Trying
If they hadn't been watching everything on the screens, it would have been easy to miss the point when the spell dropped over one of the attack sites, disrupting communications for a moment. It would have been hard to miss the radio announcement that there was an invading army of magic using humans coming toward the city, but they definitely would have missed the activation of the Dungeon Spell.
Watching it activate in real time gave Wolfe and the others a clear view of how it was being done, and the flaws in the activation of the spell. nove(l)bi(n.)com
They still hadn't put up an outer barrier around it to keep the area isolated, and they hadn't made any attempt to block communications. But with his sense of mana manipulation already on alert, Wolfe was able to feel the change in the distance as one city to the south of them had a point in time marked by the spell, right before a portal to another world opened.
"I think that it's better if I don't appear right away. If they believe that the spell is glitched to target me, we won't be able to learn how they're doing it. But we need to make sure that they do not succeed and leave with a bunch of technology from the mundane armies." Wolfe declared.
"There is a protector and his retinue with that group. How strong are these enemies going to be?" The Grand Dutchies Guardian asked.
Wolfe shook his head. "There is no way to know. But the last time, they had multiple Rank Four and Rank Five magic users with them. The humans are limited like the witches, in that their style of magic requires them to draw mana from the surrounding area, so it takes time and too many mages fighting at once will deplete the area for a moment.
Male Demons have the advantage in that way, as they can use their abilities instantly, but these humans should be excellent at working together.
Can we adjust the drone to see how many there are in this group?"
The Guardian shook his head. "Not really. The drone controls have a limited range from the battleships, and they're not magical. Should we go watch and make certain that they are not going to win?"
The Demon nodded. "Rank Four and five. Weak enough that they're not covered by the rules of engagement for powerful beings, but strong enough that they can deal with most temporal magic as a group."
The Kingdom of Magic really had thought of everything when they prepared their army, Wolfe decided. He had seen the complex regulations that they held their troops to in the battle against the Fallen, and generally agreed with them. When beings at his power level squared off against each other, the damage to the surrounding environment could be extreme.
If it happened regularly, as it very well could in the Demon Realms, thanks to their abundant population of powerful residents, it would quickly destroy their home beyond repair. A single incident would be enough to create their own version of the Frozen Wastes, with layers of broken spells that wouldn't fade for centuries.
It would either be a cleanup nightmare, or turn the entire Realm uninhabitable.
But that gave Wolfe an idea.
In the Lumix Household, there was a group of butler spells, complex constructs made of hundreds of layers of spells. Instead of sending troops to battle, he could create an army of constructs and send them instead. Even the third Familiars that the first Pentacle had summoned were constructs that had taken on a life of their own.
Making more of them, at a lower power level, should be allowable by the rules of war.
They worked together exceedingly well, and with a specified power, Wolfe could assign them as Protectors of small villages instead of relying on the Fae and Demons to keep sending more people as the population of the Frozen Wastes settled new areas.
The conditions were getting better, and with the monsters more under control now, the villagers were thinking of creating surface farms to compliment their underground operations. They would require less magic and work to grow, and they could increase the variety of crops with all that extra space.
But that meant more villages, and many of them in remote areas not linked to anywhere else, with only a handful of families who had clustered their farmhouses together to work the area. That was hardly worth sending an actual person to supervise.