Chapter 7
The war
It was the morning of the assault, there had been no word from the messengers sent to warn the royal knight so that ment the attack was going to happen. All the guilds had been summoning as many as their members as they could and forced them to come join the battle. They came mostly from the kingdom of heaven with several from the surrounding kingdoms. Most of them had travelled overnight and were exhausted. The allied forces amounted to over 6000 players along with another 500 mercenaries several guilds hired to ensure victory.
Even though the contribution would only go to the ones commissioned to the quest, it did not matter to the players since they had the opportunity to participate in such a large scale event.
The atmosphere was filled with excitement at the first massive, player involved war but at the same time it was a war between guilds. This battle was to be broadcasted around the world to help advertise Royal Road and help create a new genre of gaming television. It had been about 3 months since Unicorn corp. released the game and took the world by surprise. The number of people purchasing the capsule to play the new virtual reality game grew exponentially by the day; it was not a surprise that the media wanted to profit form the game as well. But until now they had only released tutorials and new updates with general affairs in several kingdoms. This would be a large scale battle where anyone could become famous and show off their skills, and the might of their guilds. Giving viewers a glimpse of the amazing world of Royal road.
Miyuki had sort of understood the situation from chatting with Hope, Prina and the twins. She wanted to find out more about their world it seemed they were technologically inferior to her dimension and that they were incapable of any sort of magic or have any magical equipment. Even though magic users were a very small portion of the population in Miyukis dimension she could not imagine a life without it. But she was happy here; even though she missed her reality, while she was here, Miyuki was free of the massive burden the Yotsuba family has placed on her. Also she was happy that her Onii-sama was free. But deep down she knew this wouldn’t last long, however far away she was she would never run away from her responsibilities and Tatsuya, he was bound to serve her.
By mid-day all the forces had made their platoons and began to march towards the city. When they were close to the walls they saw a horde of goblins in formation waiting outside the City gates on the grass lands. It seems they would take the challenge head on. The atmosphere slightly changed. There was over 5000 Goblins, goblin chiefs on elephants, goblin riders on cheeta’s and other unrecognisable beasts, Goblin knights on horses, their levels were in the mid to late 200s and the auroa they were giving off was terrifying. They were all in formation consisting of platoons each with 250 goblins.
However on the other side it was more of the Guild leaders and Captains leading the march with a sort of mesh of people behind them. There were 12 groups . 11 groups were each from a different guild and the last group consisted of players that didn’t want to join one of the guilds and was under Miyuki’s command.
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It was silent both sides awaited the other to make a move. 2 mages were up in the sky circling the battle field relaying the monsters positions. Flying was a skill that requires the second job advancement of a mage and they were very few mages over lvl200 in the game the fact that there was 2 mages flying was an amazing sight to behold for the users. A small smile grew on Miyuki after seeing the mages clumsy flying, this reminded her of the 9 schools competition. It looked like no side was going to make the first move so she decided to attack.
“Buff me please” she said that in a quiet voice and the priests began to buff her and the front line troops.
Other platoons saw this and began to do the same. The suspense was building to the point of explosion. Everyone wanted to fight but no one wanted to be the first to run in and die. Then suddenly a loud boom shocked everyone. Miyukis platoon was in the middle of the guilds and where Miyuki was standing a small crater was left and a dust cloud could be seen heading towards the goblins. It looked like a reckless suicidal attack. At the same time her sub captains Nana and leez had also vanished. They had become fairly famous throughout the expedition for being around Miyuki a lot and repairing any equipment for cheap prices. Moments later the twins appeared ontop of an elephant in the middle of the goblin army assassinating a goblin chieftain, after that they linked arms and a second later they had teleported to the next chieftain. Goblin chieftains where in the late 200 but had very low health and defence, the real difficulty in handling them is because of their high charisma and leadership they increase the moral and power of the goblins around them.
Meanwhile Miyuki reached the front line of the goblins and using inertia cancelling magic she shot up into the air. She had activated flying type magic and propelled herself into the goblins to distract the goblins while the twins take out one of their chieftains. As she raised into the air she casted several spells to radically increase the air pressure by lowering the temperature and convergence type magic over a target area. She directed her magic at several key points wherever she could see a group of goblin archers or goblin’s with ranged capabilities. The area of compressed atmosphere killed the one or two that were unfortunate to be in the target area but once she cancelled the magic a pressure explosion took out the surrounding goblin and monsters and knocking over a large portion of their troops. The surprise attack was successful but now the real battle began.
The Players were all looking at Miyuki with a dumfounded look of amazement; many of them did not know how she looked because she was wearing the mask the twins gave her. She looked like an angel of death raining hell over the enemy. In mere moments she crippled the enemies ability to attack long-range and her subordinates had taken out their commanders. Miyuki however was thinking
-MOVE you idiots, if they don’t keep up with the surprise attack the overwelming strength of the goblins would destroy them-
The goblins didn’t just stand there though they were mad and the Goblin Knights and Goblin riders with tremendous speed ran towards the allied forces and began cutting down and impaling the front line troops. Magical explosions arrows and the dead littered the battlefield. Miyuki knew that the fight would be broadcasted to the people of this world through various conversations, so she didn’t want to get too much attention even though she did such a showy attack to start the fight. But after that she had spent her time looking over the battlefield slaying anything harmful to her platoon by sniping with phonon masor. She could hit over 17 targets at a time now and most her shots severely weakened the high level goblins. Since phonon masor is an oscillation type magic no armour would normally affect it, but in this game they had something called magic resistance with lowers the damage against cause by magical attacks. That’s how Prina was able to defend against it in their duel.
Miyuki had failed, she was being broadcasted around the world and what caught many players and viewers’ attention was a high level masked wizard flying while firing a light show of lasers slaying many monsters.
“wow, Im a mage I wonder what level I will be able to fly”
“Can anyone teach me that laser skill?”
“This is EPIC”
Many comments filled up the forums and boards related to Royal Road. The battle showed the great wars you can be part of if you played the game and the amazing moves you can do. Flashy sword skills amazing magical attacks filled the viewers with hopes and dreams that they too could become heroes.
The battle raged on for 4 hours both sides seemed to be even. The goblins were higher level with very good dwarven made equipment but lacked magical and ranged supports so they couldn’t go on a rampage, meanwhile the allied forced were higher in numbers and had many healers and mages bombarding the battle field.
But there was a clear level difference, in both strength and army formation. The allied forced were not very organised many of the platoons had died at the hand of the herms guild and did not have the opportunity to build their communication and battle formation during battle. This was especial apparent with the healers often targeting the same player to heal subsequently leaving one to die, or how the front line warriors would leave some gaps to let through goblins that reaked havoc amongst the rear players. The goblins had a simple system , the strong lead the weak follow. They were attacking in waves the riders and knights would attack trying to pierce the defensive line then the goblins would try and get through these gaps. After a small assult the goblin riders and knights would retreat to avoid the ensuing magical explosions.
A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.
However there were several platoons that had good organisation and were able to hold their position inflicting heavy damage to the goblins, mainly Miyuki, Tryndameres and the herms guild. This was evedent because they were the only 3 platoons that had held their front line and had not been pushed back like the rest.
***
On the other side of the battlefield, the Royal Knight liam and his soldiers had began their attack. Unlike the players they were an organised army. During the week they had made several rams and when they saw that the patrols had left the northern side of the city to face the allied forces on the south they made their move. In 3 groups of 300 in an arrowhead formation each arrowhead had a ram leading and the force of the ram hitting the shabby wooden city wall created by goblins quickly came crashing into the ground. They continued their assault into the city. Cutting down the few goblins in their path and torching any buildings they passed. They were closing to the centre of the city but before they got there, they were ambushed by hundreds of goblins. They jumped off buildings with knives and swords not caring for anything like cockroaches. The vanguard of the Knights quickly got overwhelmed and pushed back. That did not last long and they went to a defensive formation and began repelling the goblins. They had to hold their ground because the warriors could not retreat further due to the torched houses behind them.
This put a smile on sir Liams face, things were getting intresting, he had been very bored in the past week being forced to lead unorganised and incompetent group of visitors to do a job the army could handle with ease if they sent te main army not just a small regiment. But faced with this large number of foes and seeing his troops stand up a fight like knights should he got his spirits back up. Lifting his sword and shouted “for the King” all his subordinates in the middle of the fight had renewed fighting spirit, this was the first time they saw the royal knight join the battle himself. His sword shone with a dim red colour and he rushed through his troops to the front and swung his sword down slicing through multiple enemies, he followed up by lifting his shield to shoulder height and smashing it into the rampaging goblins. A shockwave rippled throughout the goblins incapacitating many of them and killing over a dozen. The true might of a royal knight was frighting.
***
The noise of the raging battle above ground echoed through the underground city giving hope to the dwarfs. The loud noises though penetrated further underground through isolated caverns and deep crevasses eventually reaching the ear of a giant beast bathing in a pool of magma.
***
The situation above ground had begun to turn, most of the beast and horses had been killed and the high level knights and riders had a lot less mobility and damage on foot. Also fatigue had begun to hit both side but the goblins were affected more. Goblins have a smaller stature than humans with a height of about 140-160cm giving them small reach and less endurance but on the allied side they had healers and priests capable of replenishing stamina. Also they had a variety of races, the barbarians especially were monsters, they had been in battle for over 6 hours and did not show any signs of slowing down.
Miyuki had landed to take a break, she took out her sword and joined the front line waiting for her mana to regen, but from the looks of how things were progressing she believed that she would not need to resort in her larger scale magic’s. However there was one spell she had wished to try out, it was a spell that she was unfamiliar with but her rival Lina had used it once in a duel and she had wanted to try it out. Muspelheim, constructing the magical sequence would take some time and a lot of mana so Miyuki began the design subconsciously while pushing back the goblin assaults. She might be a mage but her stats could rival any of the warriors around her and since she reached level 200 she got even more stat gains from the bone tree staff making her a formidable close quarter’s combatant.
Miyuki had secretly decided to use Muspelheim as a distraction for half of her platoon to sneak off and rescue the dwarfs. Completing the side quest was important to Miyuki because she had decided to treat the residence of this game and people form this world as she would a person form her own.
The war continued to be broadcasted and there was an increasing fuss about the high level mage, she had been showing amazing high level spells and magical combat for hours but the suddenly she was in the front line parrying goblin strikes with her pure white mages staff and mercilessly cutting them down with a swing of her sword. Many had dreams of becoming a battle mage or a spell sword but found that path very difficult because they didn’t have enough skill points to make a good mage or a strong warrior. So this scene of someone who had achieved both made the jealous at this masked woman and glued to the screen to see what she would do next.
The leaders of the herms guild were happy with the progression of the war, their guild had brought the most players to this battle and would surly get the most contribution, they had been steadily destroying the goblin troops. Another thing they were hoping for was good coverage form the media but from what they were told Miyukis platoon was getting most of the attention because of her amazing skills and the large amount of beauties fighting with her. A close second was the crazy fighting of the barbarians. The organised slow advancement of the herms troops even though had done the most damage was not very interesting to the viewer’s so they didn’t get much coverage. One of the lieutenants of the herms guild decided to make a move after he herd these report multiple times, he was a high level fire mage and was in charge of bombarding the enemy, when he ran out of mana before he sat down to meditate he sent out a whisper
“take her out make sure no one notices ”
That was all he had to say and 3 shadowed figures slowly passed through the allied forced without anyone noticing. Even the broadcasters unless they had a skill that enabled them to see hidden enemies they were unaware of this turn of events. Bad rey noticed the order but he did not stop it, thinking; it’s a bit rash but necessary. The assassins had moved into position in the middle of Miyuki’s platoons and were looking at each other for the right time. They were planning to stab her and push her into the goblins making everyone think a goblin had got her.
The moment they were about to make a move a terrifying aura hit the battlefield many players froze from fear some even got a popup saying they were stunned the aura had affected both sides the same because the goblins stopped their attacks and took a few steps back. No one had known what had happened but the silence during that time sent a chill down most peoples back. The shrieking sound of a magic flying through the air exploding amongst the goblins brought back everyone to reality and the fight continued. To everyone’s knowledge nothing had changed even if they were scared of what happened they could do nothing about it so they turned their focus to the enemy in front of them.
Only the members of the herms guild had been aware of what happened. Their assassins had died and not only that their bodies had been dropped infront of the firemeage, they turned grey and slowly dissipated. Bad Rey took a small glance at Miyuki who seemed unaware of what happened and looked at her as a fearsome and troublesome foe that he would have to deal with.
The aura seemed to have affected the goblins a lot more since they have lost a lot of moral and their formations were falling apart. The war was going to be finished very soon.
***
The beast in the magma had moved in the area hundreds of years ago but in the last months Dwarven miners were too loud so he used his influence over weaker creatures to enslave them and make them quiet down. It was good for about a month but know it is louder than ever and he is MAD!
Authors Notes: im hungover so there is probably lots of mistakes