The match started without any suspense, despite being nervous Luon and the others got to work immediately. As they were constructing the underlying structures to set up another army of robots, Valerie had sent a bird as a messenger, attached to it was a letter.
Luon felt suspicious of this activity, why would she bother sending him this after the match had started? Thanatos suggested that she wanted to bait him out which seemed reasonable. However, he couldn’t help but consider that inside of the message or the bird itself was a bomb.
Luon’s imagination didn’t come true as after the bird drop the letter several meters away from him, it left immediately after it had done its duties. Cautiously, Luon arranged one of the robots to read the document and send the contents to him digitally. Even though there was no explosion, the parchment may have been laced with deadly poison.
Within seconds the content on the document was sent to his BMPU, as he read the document he began to frown. The message asked for Luon to attack her, and it said that she would make it as fair as possible.
‘Fair as possible? The easiest thing to do is actually be a human if you wanted to be fair,’ thought Luon as pondered on whether or not this was a trap. However, his worries were unnecessary, sure enough, Tyron who was sent scouting reported that Valerie’s base, which was positioned on a mountainside, had transformed into a giant fortress which can aesthetically relate to a demon king's castle from the perspective of the viewers.
‘Rather than a war, she wants us to do a raid?’ Thought Luon. It was quite the unique perspective she had, and Luon recalled that she wanted to make the match more memorable. It reminded Luon of those stage plays where the hero would attack the bad guy's castle to save the princess, only their target was both the bad person and the princess.
‘Do you think we should do it?’ Luon asked Thanatos.
“No matter what you’ll eventually have to attack it, the only way to win is to take out their commander or Crypt of Heroes. Surely she would be on guard of surprise attacks including ones that shatter walls, so you can’t cheat your way in. You should ask for your teammate's opinions though,” said Thanatos.
Luon then asked his team on the voice chat and ultimately decided to raid the base with Tyron and Gizmo as the rear guard, and Tyron with Luon as the Vanguard. Thomas was left behind to create a robotic army to ensure that their opponents don’t cheekily backstab them in the back after they leave the base.
“It sure is a big castle,” said Bendan as he looked up. The others nodded in response, Luon questions how many rooms could there possibly be? How long would it take to clear each room? The one thing he was less suspicious about was that Valerie was spending her resources to create the giant structure.
“Let’s go,” said Luon. Everyone nodded in response and the team advance through the large double doors and at this moment on, the war became a raid.
The castle was brightly lit in some areas while dark in others, it was akin to those horror shows or novels that took place in a creepy castle. Luon felt like a vampire could pop out of nowhere and scare the living daylights out of them.
Fortunately, it wasn’t difficult to get lost since there was only a singular path. Luon mentally plotted out the route they traveled through so far and found that there may be no crossroads at all. The terrain had them spiraling inwards.
Luon predicted that after they get to the center, there would be a staircase leading to an upper level, and the path would more than likely spiral outwards. It was rather straightforward, but he came to this conclusion since he found Valerie to a very straight-forward person with all the suggestions and statements she had made so far.
But he was wrong, although there were some minor skeletons keeping watch of the first floor the second one was no longer a castle. Instead, it made Luon think he was outside of it as a forest like a field appeared before his eyes.
One could still see the outer walls of the castle, but this map was filled with trees. At this point, Luon didn’t know where to go, he didn’t want to waste time exploring and wished that Valerie would have given him a hint. It was like getting started with a survival game with nothing but hands, only to find out that the game character can punch trees for materials.
Luon then felt presences nearby, a group of trees emerged from one direction and assaulted the group. Luon and the others quickly dealt with the trees before advancing towards where their opponents had come from. The towering treants continued to attack the group with their branches that were as thick as several cars mashed up with one another. As they evaded those troublesome ones, there were little ones that would try to mess around with their movement.
After a series of challenging fights, they managed to find the stairs to the next level, but before it was their opponent's dryad member from Harmonic forest. The green-skinned beauty shyly said, “W-w-welcomeee, I-I-I’m one of the four he-heavenly ge-generals-”
“Stop, let’s just fight,” said Luon as he could imagine what kind of setting that Valerie had arranged. The dryad breathe a moment of relief before she mustered her courage and said, “Well then, let’s fight!”
The ground shook, and the dryad rose several feet off the ground due to the help of a tree, she merges her body within its trunk, and its aura rose several times higher. Luon felt that the shy dryad was no longer there. Instead, an intimidating boss-like treant was.
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“Disperse!” said Luon as his teammates avoided the branches that acted like wild whips which devastated the surrounding forest.
Gizmo and Tyron attacked from a distance but found that normal bullets or arrows were unable to harm the tree with its immense regeneration rate. Instead, they began to convert their mana into fire elemental ones before launching it once again at the tree, this time it was effective as the tree was forced to swat down the fire.
Luon dodged the branches and with his swords, cut the branches that would have possibly harmed him. It was then he noticed that the degeneration sword which specialized in killing giants had a bonus effect against the giant tree.
Bendan, on the other hand, used his array cards to ignite explosions against the tree.
With their combined efforts they managed to deal significant damage against the tree when they were what they deem to be half-way done, the tree went berserk, its branches whipped even faster to the point where it breaks off from the tree and continues flying towards their direction.
“Play it safe!” said Luon as he continued to dodge the tree branches. The intense game of jump rope had turned into chaos. With no respect to its own life, it continued to act harshly as it suddenly detached over 15 different branches, sending them all flying at Bendan’s direction. Coming from multiple directions Bendan was unable to dodge them, he grits his teeth as he uses his sword to repel himself out of the situation using the first branch’s momentum.
But he didn’t come out unharmed, after being sent flying he was heavily damaged as he landed on the ground. He got up and positioned himself a little further away to heal his injuries. Bendan began to meditate after downing a potion and the giant tree who noticed that sent more branches flying towards his direction. Quickly Luon dove in front of Bendan and repelled each branch with his sword. This maneuver consumed a lot of stamina as Luon was quite tired by the end of it.
With it acting so wildly, Gizmo and Tyron continuous attacks, the tree soon fell before their team. The dryad who was one with the tree was also sent out of the match.
Although they would like to press on, they needed to temporary rest their injuries. Luon soon senses something approaching from where they came from and found a robot carrying several goods in a small moving stand behind him. Looking at the brand name, Luon felt relieved to see that Thomas had sent it to replenish their supplies. The four of them crowded around the robot and took the necessary supplies to continue onwards. To the audience, it reminded them of a scene of where people would sit down to eat at a portable ramen stand.
After replenishing their supplies the team advance onwards. Although, the forest zone was quite severe, and they felt like they wanted to rest some more, time was of the essence, the longer they stayed there, the harder it gets as their opponents Crypt of Heroes was continuously active.
The next floor was also a field type map. However, this time they knew where they were going. From a distance, the team saw a tower and from beneath the tower was an army of skeletons which were continuously rising.
Before their eyes was an army of skeletons and in the lead of the pack was the Oni, the main vanguard of their opponent's team.
Luon and the others became on guard, it wasn’t easy to deal with this kind of opponent especially since the opponent's Magician is behind them as well.
“We are the- uh, heavenly generals, yeah. Whatever! Let’s fight, hahaha!” said the Oni.
Luon felt the Oni reminded him of something as Bendan replied, “I’ll take you on! Show me your moves!”
The Oni smiled back, and the two began to engage in combat. The magician who heard his ally failing the opening line muttered to himself before casting fireballs at Luon’s group. To avoid these attacks, Gizmo, Tyron and Luon dived into the crowd of skeletons dealing as much damage as possible like if they legendary generals in a pile pathetically weak soldiers.
However, the fireballs didn’t stop, the man continued to shoot files in the same manner regardless of the skeletons, Luon used his Eye of Insight to find that his staff was able to consume the released mana that the skeletons had to produce more of them.
Luon needed to take out the opponent’s magician, and he needed to do it quickly before their numbers expanded to an unmanageable amount.
Luon managed to reach the base of the tower only to find that there was no entrance to it, and its surroundings were encased in a static field making it difficult to climb. Luon sudden realized that the magician must have used a flight spell to reach that high up.
Looking through his arsenal of goods he realized that he had no device that could help him fly that high besides the NG-Arms, and if Luon were to exhaust his fuel on his way up, he'd have no choice but to fight Valerie without it. That 14 levels could make a huge difference later on.
Luon gave it some more thought before he found a solution, Luon started to take off his shirt and seal its holes. Using his wind magic, he managed to pull himself up. The act garnered the attention of some young female audience members since any child that came from the Vortex Containers turn out aesthetically appealing, especially if they maintain their level of fitness.
After arriving at the top of the tower, the magician who was busy casting fireballs at Luon’s teammates noticed his arrival and shot a fireball over to him. Luon replied by equipping the armor from his transformation belt and easily beat the magician to death, freeing his team from the storm of fireballs.
With no more skeletons and fireballs, the rest of the members focused on eliminating the Oni which found the act to be cowardly. Luon knew how important time was, having cleared both the first floor and the second one he realized that the only member on their opponent's team left was Valerie and the Vice-Captain, who were both dragons.
After resting up once more, the team arrived on the final floor. On top of a throne Valerie imposingly sat, she said, “Welcome heroes from afar, I wonder if you have what it takes to claim this throne?”
Luon didn’t respond right away causing Valerie to feel like he wasn’t here for fun, he may even have some suspicions of her, but it was too late now. Valerie laughs as she said, “Come out, my last heavenly general.”
A man appeared out of nowhere, coated in black clothing he said, “I am the last heavenly general, come and taste my blade.”
It appeared to Luon that the dragonkin, Vice-captain, was well versed with swordsmanship from the stance he took.
Valerie then said, “It would be boring if it weren’t fair, my minions will deal with your friends.”
She waved her hand, and besides Luon, everyone else vanished and appeared in several areas nearby. Confused by the situation they were forced to fight waves of monsters.
Valerie nodded, and the Vice-Captain raised his sword, the raid like bosses he had faced before was nothing compared to the man in front of him.