Chapter 36: Undetected And Unexpected
Metal Sect
The surrounding are is quiet for more than a week now, the animals in the forest have moved away from this area to another place. It has been said back on earth that animals have an extremely acute sense for dangers and would quickly move away the moment they sensed it.
And now on this world where even a simple looking animal has magical capabilities it would only be natural for them to detect oncoming dangers before they even arrive. Sera also noticed this trend in the surrounding forest and decided that she could wait no longer.
Even if she held the home field advantage it would still be best for her and the Metal Sect to strike first and then retreat to the safety of the Metal Sect’s inner perimeter. Her people on the Flying Fortress are already prepared to strike at a moments notice, unlike most of the training in this world Sera trained her people what little she knew of modern warfare.
One hundred Core Formation level cultivators trained like modern soldiers all these years. Sera never really like how efficient this world way of fighting. Most of the time aside from the occasional flanks and assassination grand majority of the time armies fight head on hammering each other out until the other side gives in.
Sera knew very well how modern warfare tactics and strategies are more superior compared to this world’s way of fighting. But despite this Sera does not intend to teach them to the Metal Sect and just orchestrate them on how the usual war is fought.
The reason being is that she just don’t trust most of these people very much. More people means they are a lot harder to control and some of these people if not most of them have agendas of their own that downright contradicts against Sera’s plans for the future and she is worried that if she improve them too much they would eventually bite her back.
Sera Hawke and the Metal Sect are in a symbiotic relationship. The refugees wanted to improve their cultivation and a shelter in this chaotic times while Sera wanted manpower and resources to attain her goals mostly to defend herself in this world where only the strong survives both metaphorically and literally.
In just a few months that passed the would be invaders have tunneled from the outer rim borders of the Metal Sect up to half way inside the territory all the while being undetected… or so they thought.
Sera inside Ashura and behind her the rest of her Sentinels have also dug underground and using the quantum computer’s super computing ability to predict where and when the invaders would meet them in their own tunnel, with fifty thousand Knight Golems ready and waiting to pounce at their opponents.
While Sera and her Golem army are already waiting on the other side of the tunnel the invaders are still oblivious to the danger that they are in. Still casually conversing amongst themselves as they make jokes with one another.
One of them asked “so, did you guys really believed that this Metal Sect would be defeated as fast as the leadership has predicted? As far as we can see they have too many disciples if they ended up joining the fight won’t we be in trouble then? He said in a concerned manner
“the Sect leaders know what they are doing all we need to do is just to follow their orders. As for the strength of the Metal Sect the grand majority of them are only Foundation Establishment level disciples only with only a few thousand at their peak. We have over a hundred Core Formation Sect Elders combined not to mention the Nascent Soul Sect Leaders!” another said reassuringly
“yeah well even if you say it like that we are down here at the front lines! I’m not too sure about this anymore. We are deep underground tunnel if a fight occurs right here right now we have no place to run but back”
“ha! How could they discover us we have sealed our cultivations they couldn’t detect it even if they have peak Nascent Soul experts!!” he said confidently
Of course that is true even if there were Nascent Soul experts they would not be able to detect people with sealed cultivations digging underground like mole people. But they could never have fathomed Sera Hawke’s technological capability, they were long detected from day one, all of this is just like a play for Sera.
While digging down underground and conversing amongst themselves suddenly an explosion followed up by a gust of powerful wind to blast away some of the soil that fell over.
“time to begin. ATTACK!” Sera said a she took command of the Knight Golems in the underground tunnel
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Even though the enemy cultivators have been stunned by the surprise attack they still managed to regain their composure just as fast as the gust of wind blew over them and unsealed their cultivation bases.
There were over a dozen of them Core formation level cultivatiorsdefending themselves against the flood of Knight Golems. Although the Knight Golems were no match against their strength they still took it like a champ and endured twenty blows before crumpling over to the ground.
“D-Damn it! We have been discovered!” said one in both anger and in panic
“WE CAN SEE THAT!”
“what do we do!? there are too many of them!”
“all weaklings!! we can take them on, call for reinforcements tell them to begin the invasion! The underground tunnel is compromised quick!”
Most of them are using magical swords to fight and cast magic towards Sera’s Golem army, some of their strikes were true enough to slice through several Knight Golems in close proximity. Even though the Knight Golems were doing minimal damage to these Core Formation cultivators this small hits eventually managed to mount up.
In just over two hours of continous fighting in close quarters combat in the underground tunnel the enemy cultivators have already amassed deep cuts and bruises on their bodies even though the Knight Golems managed to sap half of their strength they are still very much combat effective.
“d-damn! We can’t go on like this we have to retreat, there is just too many of them! We can’t move properly in this place!”
“i agree!! everyone in formation fighting retreat!!”
Sera, although she nervously watched everything that happened she could not help but be a little proud of her achievement. After all pushing back these old cultivators are no simple task.
“haha, some invasion this has become” she grinned as she watched them make a methodical fighting retreat
She ordered the Golem Army to push forward in a pace that they would not have enough time to relax but not push them too hard. Afterall these are still Core Formation level cultivators who knew what kind of desperate power they could pull when cornered.
Meanwhile on the surface, the joint invasion of multiple third rate Sects has begun, luckily for the Metal Sect disciples they have already made ample preparations and have had drills ingrained to them in these past few months, even if they were nervous they knew they were more prepared and more well protected whithn the premises of the Metal City they have witnessed the armaments that are in place.
This is by design of Sera Hawke. In the past she thought of attacking first on the surface before the enemies gathered their forces but eventually changed the plan into luring the enemies to attack the Metal City first and retain the home ground advantage.
By now there should be over 300,000 Knight Golems on the surface ready to assist the disciples in defending the Metal Sect.
The disciples of the Metal Sect are obviously nervous, they ran away to this place as refugees to escape calamities such as this. As the saying goes out of the frying pan and into the fire.
But there is power in numbers, 100,000 Foundation Establishment level disciples are still quite a considerable force to be reckoned with. Even second rate Sects would not have so much Foundation Establishment level disciples especially after the crisis of the Dragon Veins in the entire Eastern Continent.
“ here they come! Brace yourselves!!”
The young Elders of the Sect has already made their minds up to follow their Matriarch Sera Hawke all the way wherever she leads them, despite not knowing much about her she has already shown how much capable she is when it came to making the Metal Sect flourish.
The enemies moved slowly but steadily, they are also aware and extremly wary of the great numbers of the Metal Sect. Despite looking down at them they still respected the damage that could be inflicted upon them if they are not careful, afte rall nobody really sticks their neck out at risk without profits.
The offensive against the Metal Sect was all in thought of getting a hold of the spiritual mines that even first rate Sect has become interested in although first rate Sects won’t throw away their reputation by forcefully taking something from a third rate Sect that does not mean that theothers won’t.
And this is the case for these third Rate Sects, they never truly cared at how the others would look at them by ganging up at the Metal Sect that recently lost it’s own Dragon Vein. All that mattered is how much the profit that would yield from this.
Led by around a hundred Core Formation level cultivators flying above the landbound disciples wearing thesame uniforms, the Sect leaders of this joint attack has decided to take a more cautious approach by erasing any if not all traces on which Sect is attacking the Metal Sect.
For all anyone looking knew it was the rogue cultivators attacking the Metal Sect again. Despite being Nascent Soul level experts they are still worried of other factions using this timing to claim the moral high ground into attacking them. At the end of the day any faction in the world still relies on their reputation to gain more disciples in order to flourish.
And they took this over cautious approach in order to cover all possible angles from the political side. Now infront of them are only prey and treasures ready for the taking. The higher ups of this invasion knew all too well that the defenders are former refugees and are ill trained to fight in a protracted war and expect them to crumble in just a few hours… but no plan survives first enemy contact.
Battered and bloodied the Core Formation cultivators were chased out of the tunnel their clothes are now rags mixed with sweat, blood and mud. The entire underground tunnel littered by Knight Golems over ten thousand of them before managing to exit the tunnel.
By the time the Core Formation cultivators exited the tunnel they finally prepared to unleash their magical techniques that was too dangerous for them to use underground. It did not take long to fill the tunnel with deadly bright lights as the Knight Golems forced their way out of the tunnel only to be melted into a puddle.
But alas after being hounded by thousands of Knight Golems the cultivators unfortunately has already accumulated critical mass of injuries it is during this time that Sera Hawke finally took the center stage on the front lines.
Inside Ashura she barreled through straight towards the enemies, despite being hit by enemy fire it did nothing but only slow her down. Ashura after all is one of her relatively most formidable weapon on the ground aside from that slow and clumsy giant mech.
The cultivators were of course surprised by this new enemy, for hours on end they were fighting Knight Golems and has been accustomed to fighting them. This sudden switch in strength really caught them off guard and was hit hard for it.
Ashura charged at them in an open embrace with it’s long tentacle like arms trying to give her enemies a big bear hug. But alas they are still Core Formation level cultivators and only managed to get two of them.
The unfortunate two cultivators that got caught in Ashura’s deadly embrace was quickly wrapped crushed by all of it’s 18 arms without even being able to scream.
The rest of the cultivators could not even lament at their comrades death because the rest of the Sentinels are also engaging them in combat, all this opportunity has been presented by Sera Hawke as she ran straight ahead to engage the enemies allowing the flood of Knight Golems to surround them.
Riot has been swingin it’s giant rod that shoots lightning stunning the opponents for a split second enough for Vulcan to get a lock on and get peppered by hypersonic bullets made of spiritual metal projectiles at the rate of 5,000 RPM.
While Torch Light charged at some stragglers swinging it’s plasma cutters at close range while firing magical flames at those who would turn it’s back against it. Those who force an escape were pounced by the multitudes of Knight Golems in the area slowing any escapee down enough for it to blast them with metal melting magical flames.
As Sera observed the surrounding she felt relived that finally the threat coming from the underground has been oblitirated. The corpses has been looted and one of the Knight Golems is tasked to deliver the bounty back to the Sect after all those loot are still from Core Formation level cultivators and might contain something good for Sera.
All this happening while Bellato led 100 Core Formation level experts from Sera’s private force in the Flying Fortress along with tens of thousands of Mechanized Jet Fighters dive bombing the enemies occupied in attacking the walls of the Metal City.