Blacksmith vs. the System 279

The moment I noticed the size of the team targeting us, I was tempted to act, whether to move to support Maria, or to alert the city.

In the end, I did neither. My presence was already suspicious enough, and if I moved the moment they moved out of their camp, I would alert them further. I needed to wait until the first team had gotten far away before I tried to breach their defenses.

I didn’t plan to wait until they engaged with Maria, even though it would make my task easier.

Once the first team had gotten far away, I moved behind a rock, and cast an invisibility spell around me. As far as spells went, it was a simple one, relying on my tight control of mana more than anything. Risky, but I'd rather take the risk than let Rosie and Maria face that team without further warning.

To my pleasant surprise, my approach went unnoticed while I moved rapidly, approaching the entrance. Maybe they had sent their members with Perception for the ambush, or maybe we had overestimated their precaution. It didn’t matter.

What mattered was my successful approach at the entrance.

This time, I didn’t limit myself to passive observation, but actually started probing the wards. The outer shell was surprisingly elegant. Yet, it didn’t fully fit the landscape, suggesting it was not cast on location.

Good news. It meant I didn’t have to deal with a mage specializing in defense and protection. But, that didn’t mean the ward suddenly turned into a trivial challenge. I carefully examined its structure, my mind running full speed to decipher the weight of every line of mana, and the function of every rune.

I was tense. Without a mage on the other side, I could take it down safely in less than ten minutes. The problem, I didn’t know if I had ten minutes before the ambush started, as it would mean risking Maria’s life.

I decided on a wilder approach. One that had worked on my students well enough … and that was with me not using my biggest assets.

“Let’s give you a test run,” I said as I unraveled the pack on my back, and pulled my warhammer. The masterpiece I had forged for myself.

Before my latest class upgrade, the sword had become my preferred weapon, as the advantage of Radiant Flame was unmistakable. But, Radiant Flame was wholly dependent on its superior edge, capable of cutting flesh and spells alike.

It didn’t mesh well with my latest skill, Runic Craft, neither in terms of weapon, nor in terms of concept. It was why I had forged a new warhammer for myself. I raised the hammer and reached for a skill I had not used for some time.

[Hammer of Avalanche (Epic) - 300 [Shattering Strike]]

However, I didn’t just pump it with mana and bring it down. That was an inelegant way to use an external skill. Instead, I let the invisibility spell around me drop, and used my full mana to imbue a set of runes around the hammer, each reinforcing the concept of the Avalanche, the spell defined, Shattering Strike Perk creating the center of it.

I brought it down.

[-10000 Mana]

The ward, designed for concealment rather than defense, shattered.

So did the underground of the base, folding like a tower of cards.

I had to respect their discipline, as even under the collapsed rubble, they were moving together. Also, I had realized another unfortunate detail. There were not just ten ascended in the camp.

There were twenty of them.

My eyes widened as the realization hit, wondering if I had been too arrogant like Rosie had implied. But, that only lasted a moment, as I could sense that their movements were not equal. It looked like not all of them were wearing armor when I attacked. Then, some of them burst out of the rubble, showing that even the ones wearing armor took some damage.

Too bad they were already recovering.

I didn’t have much time. I charged forward, ignoring the hurried strikes from the first few to move where the unarmored ones were buried. From this distance, two seconds weren’t enough to refill my mana. It merely reached a thousand.

Still, it was worth it.

While several attacks bounced off my armor, I focused on my dungeon connection. This time, my target was not decay, but the unrestricted, chaotic fire, one that was created by the memories of a dragon. My hammerhead burned while a set of runes appeared on its face.

I brought down the rubble, the flames exploding like an angry volcano. Underneath, I had felt two lives expire. Ascended they might be, but unarmored and unprepared, there was precious little they could do.

[-1200 Mana]

“Coward!” one of them shouted, but that was not an insult I cared about. I wasn’t the one who moved to someone else’s house to ambush them. I could have retreated. Instead, I brought down my hammer once more, taking down a wound that poked out of the rubble to escape the fire burning through the rubble.

Three down. Seventeen to go.

Unfortunately, taking down the three gave the rest enough time to gather around the rest, their weapons pulled, while the others hurriedly pulled on their armor; Health did its job as their injuries disappeared.

I switched back to my sword. My hammer was by far the most devastating weapon at the moment, the spear gave me the greatest mobility, but the sword was more fitting as a defensive tool, slashing repeatedly to deflect their ranged attacks … a process that went far smoother than I expected.

A part of it was the improved Dexterity, but Perception helped greatly as well, allowing me to pick the paths of their ranged attempts perfectly, and Intelligence helped me to calculate the minimum amount of Mana I needed to put at the attack, allowing me to retreat unscathed from their hurried salvo.

Once I put some distance, I was about to turn to cut the path of the second team. My attack had made enough noise to alert them about the change. If I could pin them down, Maria would devastate them. But that plan relied on one fact. They wouldn’t be following me.

The seventeen remaining Ascended rushed toward me, some not even bothering to put on their armor, instead using their bows to pin me down from range. I would have understood if it was anger, but all I could feel was determination, mixed with some impatience.

Weird emotions toward someone that had just killed their friends … unless …

“So, how does it feel to get attacked by your target?” I declared even as I dodged several more attacks. The number of archers they had on the mix suggested they were geared for ambush; a team that was excessive even for Maria, especially from an ambush. Compared to melee fighters, archers were too rare, they would be extremely valuable in a siege battle.

Yet, they had moved them to attack us, I noted even as I parried another salvo, my blade barely catching up with them despite all my stats. A few of them also used the mysterious white light that was supposed to block my External skills.

Too bad I had the ability to disperse them as well. I just needed to add a dose of decay to the mix and counter the attack.

My declaration earned several angry exclamations, the cacophony of sound difficult to decipher. But, no one showed even the slightest shock at my declaration, confirming my guess.

It all made sense. Baiting the initial attack, the number of archers they had, yet leaving them behind them while they were going out to ambush a flying mage. I could imagine their next step. They would engage and retreat, drawing Maria away from the town, likely capturing her to gather reinforcements.

Thirty Ascended was too much for her to take, especially when she was already exhausted from a patrol.

From there, they would harass the city until I finally left, which would be the point at which the archers would reveal themselves. They were not giving me too much trouble right now, because they were all attacking from one direction.

Things would be different if they had been able to set up a kill zone. I would have survived, as even the current layout underestimated my improvements. But, it would have been a tough, long battle, one with many casualties for the city. Their plan was simple, but effective.

None of our precautions expected them to commit thirty Ascended against us, certainly not without an army to accompany them. I shivered. Things would have been far worse if I hadn’t been able to identify their safehouse.

Worse, I didn’t know if it was the full extent of their attack, or if they had even more, ready to join the fray once the first attack was completed. If they had already committed thirty Ascended to a decapitation plot, what else might they have ready?

I had a decision to make.