A heavy, bone-chilling hum spread its wings in the skies, then crashed down upon the sinful earth, signaling that the world would never be the same again.
It raced through hundreds of stone traps, moats, stakes, the local version of barbed wire, bushes, and huge hunting pits.
Twisting and turning, it rose along the walls and filled the hearts of the defenders with a deep and unfathomable restlessness. An itch that, no matter how much one scratched, could not be soothed.
One wanted to rip out one's heart and stuff one's ears to escape this feeling. But it continued to grow.
Dozens of horn players from the enemy army synchronously continued their grim task, filling the air with their repellent music. Their goal was to instill terror in the hearts of their foes, and they were quite successful in their task.
As the enemy army approached closer, the hellish chorus was joined by the booming of hundreds of drums.
Musicians walking between the orderly ranks of ashigaru and samurai methodically beat their instruments, marking and controlling the step of this nightmarish creature of a thousand arms and legs.
"Ah, we'll have a grand time, I swear by Amaterasu!" chuckled Jun gleefully, eagerly gazing at the enemy ranks stretching out in all directions. "This battle will be legendary!"
There were so many opponents that they flowed around the fortress on the sides to occupy their allotted space.
Now, no one had any doubts that in this direction, the daimyo of Higatsudo had decided to concentrate his main strike, gathering here an army of overwhelming power.
Stas had read somewhere that for a successful siege, the attackers should have a threefold advantage, as defending is much easier than attacking under a hail of arrows and all that the defenders would unleash.
Obviously, Higatsudo also knew about such a ratio, but they decided to play it safe, so they ensured not just a threefold, but at least a fivefold advantage.
And it had to be understood that in addition to the thousands and thousands of ordinary ashigaru, there were also thousands of samurai.
The icing on the cake was those who particularly stood out even against the backdrop of this endless human mass. The blue garments of the Mizuno were easily distinguishable from a great distance.
"Hey, disciples," Jun's ironic voice made the bewildered students flinch and somewhat recover from the dreadful sight. Involuntarily, they remembered that all was not yet over and, at least, they possessed the superior position.
But the other warriors standing on the walls didn't always have their own "Juns," so the overall mood remained quite depressed.
"Don't look there, you fools," snorted the sensei after making sure they were listening. "All this driven crowd of people is, of course, all well and good, but we're interested in the real masters of this battle. And they have to be sought way over there." Following the master's finger, the trio's gaze settled on one of the distant hills, where a small group of people stood still.
Just one look at them was enough for Stas's heart to freeze.
He had already seen these lavish, rich costumes, artifact armors, and expensive weapons.
If he counted correctly, there were about twenty supreme warmasters of Mizuno or their allied clans on the hill.
Right now, these human monsters were smiling relaxedly, pointing fingers at the fortress and discussing something.
Ordyntsev involuntarily swallowed his suddenly viscous saliva.
Stas had seen what supremes were capable of, even during fleeting battles.
Not long ago, he had fought a man who had approached this rank. After that battle, the battlefield would remain a barren wasteland for many years, so strongly did water and earth techniques root out all possible life.
Now, only a patch of land separated them from two dozen supremes who were preparing to strike them down right now.
Was it only Stas who thought this smacked of madness?!
Finally, without approaching the walls closely, the Higatsudo army halted its advance.
Since most of the ashigaru were armed with spears, the fluttering of the sharp tips began to dazzle the eyes.
After a couple of seconds, a richly dressed samurai on horseback rode forward. Without slowing down, he leisurely moved toward the walls. All this happened in tense silence.
The "musicians" stopped, for which Stas was very grateful.
"Warriors of Rashta!" shouted the negotiator. "There's no point in dying today! Your daimyo made a mistake and sent too few fighters to defend this fortress. Leave and relinquish the fortifications, and we promise not to pursue you today! Or stay and die! There's no third option."
"Sensei, please explain, what's the point of us staying in this grave?" Eiji whispered feverishly while something was shouted back to the Higatsudo messenger from the walls. "If the supremes of Mizuno strike us now, that's the end! They will cover us all at once!"
A powerful slap nearly knocked Eiji off the wall. Only the fact that the sensei grabbed his clothes on the back saved the student from a rapid fall down.
"Stop panicking, or you won't even live to see the battle," Jun advised calmly. Eiji clearly came to his senses and now didn't know how to comport himself. "As for your question, I'll explain something to you."
At that time, the messenger, furiously whipping his horse, galloped toward the dispersed ranks of ashigaru.
"We warmasters are accustomed to samurai always being weaker than us," Jun said mockingly as he surveyed his students, then turned his gaze toward the hill.
"In some ways, we're even right. Samurai have renounced elemental techniques, focusing only on a couple of aspects of the art of prana. In a direct confrontation, an ordinary samurai versus an ordinary warmaster, the former will most likely be defeated. But samurai can still surprise warmasters unpleasantly."
At that moment, a wave passed through the enemy army. Like at a giant disco, the warriors raised the hand not occupied with a spear or other weapon and began to chant one single word.
At first, they were out of rhythm, but gradually, this word became clearer and clearer in the air.
Death! Death! DEATH!
"First, it's their numbers," Jun began to list, fearlessly watching as, obeying commands, thousands of ashigaru, samurai, and warmasters spread out, freeing the empty space between the hill with the supremes and the fortress.
"Samurai have always been more numerous than warmasters. Secondly, don't think all samurai are weaklings. Among them, you can sometimes meet so-called blade masters. And these guys can pose some danger even to supremes if they are allowed to get too close."
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Stas, who was listening attentively to the sensei's explanations, shuddered. He received the sensations of Leviathan, who sensed an incredible release of prana over the hill with the supremes.
Such volumes of this mystical energy were being processed there that an ordinary person simply could not survive in such an energetically active space.
The released prana involuntarily rose upward, and because of this, visible weather changes began.
And since all of the supremes had affinity with the water element, which they were using at the moment, the skies rapidly darkened, filling with swirling clouds, and after a couple of minutes, lightning began to crackle among them, and thunder rolled across the ground.
It happened with such swiftness that it was unsettling, a surreal deviation from the natural order. It seemed like watching some sort of time-lapse film. The kind where a camera is set to observe the sky and then played back at an accelerated speed.
Black clouds spread in all directions, plunging the surrounding world into darkness.
And as if that wasn't enough, the first drops fell on Stas's armor, which very quickly grew into an incessant hammering torrent of tight streams of rain.
The rain itself was piercingly cold.
Water fell with such fury that it seemed to be a special technique of the Mizuno, but fortunately, they were not capable of doing such a thing.
Yes, they could create rain, but reaching the clouds and creating techniques there was beyond them.
But the consequences of the Mizuno strike didn't end there.
If you arrogantly kick nature in the stomach, don't be surprised when it starts to retaliate.
With each passing second, the surrounding air began to behave more and more strangely. The wind, absent at the beginning of the battle, now blew at a furious speed, constantly changing direction.
And since it was filled with rain, no one even tried to dodge the tight streams of water – everyone had long been soaked through.
"Good old Mizuno!" roared Jun in delight, overpowering the howl of a real storm. "They just can't do without showing off. But, demons take me, how beautiful it is!"
And at that moment, Stas, surprisingly, agreed with his sensei. It was beautiful. Terrifying, but beautiful.
The heavens raged, cursing everyone around with unceasing thunder and lightning. In a couple of places, the clouds began to twist into forming tornadoes.
From the walls of the fortress, the incoming water cascaded in whole waves, and the soldiers of Higatsudo were all but drowning in mud and aimlessly flowing streams.
The supremes clearly hadn't thought about what their own army would have to endure.
And it was at that exact second that the strongest warmasters of Mizuno finished creating and saturating their techniques with prana.
To his shame, Ordyntsev had only heard of the joint creation of powerful techniques. It was a very unpopular art that was fundamentally contrary to the individualistic nature of warmasters.
In it, one or more warmasters formed the templates of future supreme techniques, which others then saturated with prana.
A very slow but devastating art of destroying cities, or, in this case, fortresses.
From the mud, a thick wall of water literally shot out, which began to densify and expand, stretching both upwards and sideways.
The problem with controlling such powerful techniques is that the dense concentration of prana critically complicates control over it. Therefore, even if you're a supreme, you won't be able to handle overly complex structures.
But the supremes still tried to squeeze something even more frightening out of the gigantic tsunami rushing toward the fortress.
From time to time, some movement appeared in the wall of water, smoothly transforming into snarling faces of mythical animals. The maws of dragons, horned frogs, and toothy dogs – all that the local mythology offered.
And a few hundred meters from the walls, the tsunami began to expand sideways, enveloping the fortress on the sides.
"And now, kids, it's our turn," Jun cut himself off, narrowing his eyes. All this time, he had not only been chattering but had also been saturating the earth with his prana, preparing his own response. The other supremes of Sumada were busy with the same thing.
"Earth Technique! Giant Breakwater!" shouted Jun, clenching his fists and activating the technique.
The very moment, the earth exploded along the entire length of the fortress walls, sending sharp peaks of rocks skyward.
The Sumada supremes attacked the approaching water as if with the planet itself – so much earth rose upwards.
As if a tectonic plate suddenly decided to breathe fresh air and raised one of its sides from the magma.
Of course, it was self-deception, but when you witness a clash of elements of such magnitude, your overwhelmed mind starts to offer up some rather odd associations.
"They clashed. Wave and stone,
Poetry and prose, ice and flame."
Ordyntsev frankly didn't like poetry. His materialistic mindset prevented him from properly appreciating such sublime things.
Nevertheless, at that moment, those lines were the first that came to mind.
Due to the gusts of wind and pelting rain, it was difficult to see the details, but given the scale of what was happening, there was no point in them.
It seemed that the elements had come to life and were now fighting hand to hand.
Water and stone clashed on the ground, pressing against each other with mass, delivering unexpected blows, and trying to break through the opponent's weak spots.
It was like the most complex chess game, which was conducted at once in several planes, and the pieces were moved by burning swords.
Master Jun completely disappeared from this world. His frozen body was propped up by apprentices so that he wouldn't fall from the wind, while his consciousness was over there – in the whirlwind of water and rubble, capable of flaying skin and flesh from a person in seconds.
Perhaps someone might get the impression that the hundreds of meters occupied by waves and stone in their struggle is not so much.
After all, some techniques of supreme warmasters inflicted damage over many kilometers, depriving their enemies of even a ghost of hope for survival.
But it was only necessary to look up, and all questions disappeared.
Although the elements fought on a relatively small area, they involuntarily grew upward, trying to "jump over" the enemy and crash down.
The mixture had long since exceeded the height of the walls, now towering as an unimaginable colossus over the pathetic mortals.
But raw power remains raw power.
Two dozen supreme warmasters against only seven – that's very disheartening math.
CRACK!
More and more cracks began to appear on the stone walls of the Sumada techniques. Through them, thick streams of water broke through, widening the breaches and creating new fissures.
Chunks of rock broke off with a crash and, carried by the water, fell to the ground, only to begin rolling toward the fortress walls the next moment.
At some point, the battered and losing earth element simply gave up, scattering into pieces and letting the forming unstoppable fist of liquid through.
Watching the water rise above their heads and rush towards them with increasing speed, some of the ashigaru and warmasters, unable to bear it, took to their heels.
Moreover, even some samurai turned around and, stumbling with contorted faces, tried to escape the inevitable death.
They didn't understand that the mass of water was moving at such a speed that, breaking through the walls of the fortress, it would catch up with them in just a few seconds, no matter how fast they ran.
Ordyntsev himself, at that time, calmly, as much as possible, watched the approaching death.
In the face of such a difference in strength, all a person can do is meet their end with dignity.
And the second reason that didn't make him scream to save his life was the hope that their sensei wasn't a damned senile and had some sort of plan.
And fortunately, Ordyntsev was right.
The brightest flash literally burned into the retina glowing mystical runes that hung in the air and blocked the crashing water strike.
Wherever water tried to breach the fortress, energy barriers formed out of nowhere, obstructing the techniques of warmasters.
From these collisions, formidable air blasts spread, causing the warriors on the walls to grab at anything they could, lest they be hurled down to the base. And given the slippery nature of the water-covered surfaces, numerous bodies, screaming, were carried away into the churning element.
The warmasters and samurai had it easier because they could stick to the surfaces.
"Yes, baby!" Master Jun finally came to after the breakdown of the technique, and now, clinging to a stone, he outlined with his arms the barrier, clearly visible through the rain, surrounding the entire territory of the fortress. "Third! That's where samurai are strong! These bastards literally subdued or bribed almost all rune masters. Artifact swords, protection of their fortresses, armor, and much more. That's the power of samurai!"
And Stas was inclined to agree with the sensei's words. Take, for instance, those shackles that had captured Jishin. As Stas later learned, they were issued to the Sansa by the daimyo's son.
"Does every samurai fortress have such protection?" Mei exclaimed in disbelief. "Are they all impregnable?! How is that even possible?!"
Right now, she was watching as the water element unsuccessfully tried to break through the fortress's shields. Titanic waves crashed against the defense but were never able to break through. Moreover, after such collisions, part of the water flowed down, losing the prana that controlled it.
Weakened by the confrontation with the Sumada, the Mizuno attack was now unable to overwhelm the fortress's defense.
"Don't talk nonsense, student," laughed Jun, who clearly, despite the gravity of the situation, was in an excellent mood. "Protection like this can be found only at a few fortresses throughout the world! That's exactly why Higatsudo brought so many troops here! If they can't pry us out of here, they'll never feel safe while advancing - because we could hit them in the back!"
Suddenly, the sensei stopped smiling.
"Alright, my little students, now it's your turn. We, the supremes, will do everything to hinder the supremes of Mizuno from weakening the fortress's defense, so everything else falls on your shoulders. Good luck!" With these words, Jun dashed somewhere towards the keep in one mighty leap.
Stas turned and looked through the crenellations of the walls. Realizing that the supremes hadn't managed with one blow, the enemy army was regrouping, preparing for the assault.
It would soon get hot.