A Brute's Tactic

Trckrr...

Ciemnosc parked his commanding vehicle a little outside the temporary base's perimeter, where he immediately saw a gap opening from a lot of students who were defiantly and sternly looking at the northeast but mostly to the north. Yet, to their surprise, Ciemnosc was the one to suddenly shout at them very lightly, but everyone got to hear and understand his words. "What are you doing there? All get back inside and keep quiet! No one is to move out no matter what!!"

“...?” The crowd looked at each other when hearing those words, they couldn’t help but feel questionable, but Ciemnosc had already stepped down his commanding vehicle and was already beginning to walk through the crowd and all the way to the large and main tents almost in the middle at a quick pace.

Step, step, step, step, step, step, step… step.

“... Ciemnosc? What is it? Why are the students told to lie down?” Missa saw Ciemnosc finally arrive from the outside and asked after giving a couple of steps towards him. With Ciemnosc himself already in front of them, she was asking him also without knowing why it seemed as if he didn’t want these students to get into a battle at all. And while the answer might be obvious, it was too shocking of a decision when having the first actual encounter happen at least to her mind’s ideas.

“There are 7 armored cars coming from the enemy. They are all from major organizations and number around 3,000. But those armored cars each have at least 1 cannon, and they completely ignored me, just went ahead towards the temporary base.” Ciemnosc quickly explained, not giving much more words about it and just beginning to check things as he went into the main tent which was in front of their large tent.

Missa and the rest of his team saw Ciemnosc hurrying around but not seemingly anxious or worried, simply with time pressing on his back. And he was just getting ready himself but not his troops, so she had to ask. “Are the students, we, not going to fight for you?”

Ciemnosc looked at Missa just as he was turning around, and his eyes set on her made her feel a bit more alive at this moment. With his slightly pale lips moving, he took out his Personal Token and flashed it at her. “You can’t, those cannons alone can destroy hundreds of thousands in just minutes if they have enough Inferior Powerful Stones, and the protective barriers would only be able to block some shots based on the number. They have no durability against pure energy.”

“Then are you going alone? What can we do? I am in the Conflagrate realm. Tell me how to help.” Missa gestured towards herself while Ciemnosc still looked at her. The latter then shook his head very slightly and quickly before elaborating. “Those things easily kill even a peak Conflagrate realm cultivator, keep everyone far behind the base’s perimeter, and make them all wait in their tents at the temporary base if possible in case a few shots escape me.”

“...?” Missa was left stunned and wordless as Ciemnosc turned around fully this time and walked away, tilting her head all the way to the left before waking up, therefore asking Ciemnosc with a light yell. “Are you going alone? Really?!”

“I am.” Ciemnosc’s soft words left his mouth and entered only his team’s ears. But Missa’s shout was heard by many, and without their communication devices, the word was already running all around. Yet, once again, by the time most students knew of Ciemnosc practically going all one-man army, he was already driving back towards the north from the temporary base and where everyone was also being walked with the leading students now receiving orders to follow through their communication devices.

Trckrr… trckrr trckrr trckrr…

From the distance, the students, including Ciemnosc’s team, saw the back of the really long commanding vehicle and could only grow more ‘? ? ?’ on their heads when they saw it suddenly stop just a few hundred meters away, parked laterally facing them in the middle of the snow and with snow already filling its sides but not its rooftop.

Meanwhile, Ciemnosc stepped down from his commanding vehicle once more. Just as everyone looked at him stop and give his back to them, from both his arms, they moved on to a stance where he was practically grabbing swords made out of air and imagination. But at the next moment, Ciemnosc’s hands were genuine with swords in his hands, and it wasn’t just any kind of pair of swords.

As they watched those thin swords appear in their Chief in Command’s hands, they were slowly lowered from his forearm to his hands being at waist level to his whole arms fully stretched out and a bit backwards. His body then suddenly moved forward, drifting into the snow and disappearing into it but leaving a very long and somewhat deepest trail behind as he went a little bit in circular fashions to the left and to the right.

Then came the image of tiny dots in the distance, snow being torn apart and sent to the sides. It was so much that even from so far away, the snow could be seen flying to the sides furiously and with uncertainty. And right behind those already fast-going armored cars, flying figures could be seen chasing behind and with a sort of tube or string attached from their waist to one of the armored cars; there were others who had theirs attached to other flying figures.

Seeing the enemy appear like this, even as the sight was comical at the very least, still showed the students what kind of force they were facing and, it didn’t seem as if the Conflagrate realm cultivators on the enemy side were being taken much into consideration. Everyone knew what the cannons on top of Ciemnosc’s commanding vehicle were and what they were supposedly capable of, but nobody had seen it, imagining it was already almost as bad as it could be real.

“Will he do it?” - “He isn’t running away, right?” - “What if he does run?” - “Nahh, he can’t! Not with the- things that have- that he has gone through, right?”

A little bit of turmoil began to appear within the students’ ranks. Only Ciemnosc’s team was looking with rapt attention at the figure making a snake of snow that was already several kilometers down.

“He went off?!” - “His trails are gone!” - “Is he hiding himself from the enemy then?” - “Let’s hope so, we are all trapped in the middle of all this shit…”

At that moment, Ciemnosc’s trails stopped, and many observed that his whole body was no longer visible, nor were there any more trails anywhere around while the ones left behind were getting covered by snow yet again. The entire atmosphere turned calmly silent as if only a bunch of students numbering the tens of thousands were just watching the panorama.

… … pum…

A long time passed before there was finally some movement other than rushing towards them from the enemy. But while the sound was incredibly known for the students as a whole a few survivors from previous missions immediately went into ‘traumatized mode’ the moment it sounded. And they all shouted, “Look OUT!” - “They are bombing us! Killing us!” - “Take c-co- fuck, cover!” - “Careful, careful!!”

Pum. Whistle- boom.

But they were suddenly left feeling aghast as they heard it again, yet not only much closer, almost in front of their noses, but also so much clear that everyone who was about to stupidly and dangerously panic and not all looked in the same direction!

All they saw, while falling completely silent, was the commanding vehicle’s middle cannon had already moved on its own and was aiming at the sky a little bit up, a trail of something having shot off following where it was aiming to. And while they were hearing a kind of whistling sound, as soon as they lifted their heads, they could see a smallish white, transparent and translucent, beautiful dot becoming bigger while another one which was already big enough went over to meet the one closing in head on!

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In the middle of the air, still several kilometers away from them, both ‘shells’ of pure energy met each other, as if by magic, and exploded into a beautiful ‘boom’ in the air. Watching it all go to waste, the enemy’s attempts at getting them, the students slowly came to process and hence, slowly came to become emboldened by the fact… that they were protected by their own enemy’s weapons!!

“It’s the Chief in Command, he saved us!” - “Hail the Genius of the Academy, hail!” - “We are saved, ohohoho, holy fuck!!” - “Everyone, don’t move! Stay in the temporary base!” - “The Chief in Command has ordered us to execute anyone on sight if it is endangering everybody else, maintain your own discipline or you’ll see!”

The quickly growing excited crowd was calmed down by the unsurprisingly fearful shouts of leading students and brand-new students as well. Before they might’ve taken it as a vanilla thing and that it was only to remind them that they should be careful and behave with discipline. But with Ciemnosc and his ways as of late, they all instead piped down immediately, knowing they were very well going to be ‘that’ if they continued on to fuck up; executed.

…trckrr, trckrr trckrr, trckrr trckrr, trckrr…

… Far away from the temporary base and the base itself, Ciemnosc was now lying just a few tens of kilometers away and awaiting as he lay on the snow, hidden deeply within it and in exactly a place where the enemy’s assaulting group would not be passing by and he could safely remain even if they were to have an Obsidiafying realm cultivator.

With his 400 meters long range Spirit Sense, Ciemnosc had it so easy just to hide from them. But they were also arranged too nearby each other and, if Ciemnosc wished it, he could just bombard them with his 3 cannons and be over with it with a few rounds of 6 shots each of his cannons with those little pieces of Inferior Powerful Stones.

But there were a total of 2 reasons he wasn’t doing so: number one was, the moment he did, all these armored cars were going to more accurately know where his commanding vehicle was and how close it was to the academy’s temporary base. So the moment he begins to bombard them, they will also bombard the academy back as a deterrence, which Ciemnosc wouldn’t mind going for if they were not his troops, but they are.

If anything, the only thing that he had the advantage of, as these enemies obviously had knowledge of his commanding vehicle, having seen it before but ignoring him. The process to reload a cannon was a lot of time for the little bit of steps that it has, which is just to replace the ashes of the previously used little piece of Inferior Powerful Stone from the cannon’s ‘stone magazine’, careful not to break anything nor to explode anything.

That would usually take quite a few seconds to do but, once Ciemnosc showed himself in the middle of their assault group, they would think he wasn’t there to operate his commanding vehicle to reload it when it had an automated reload system in truth.

Number two, because he wanted to. Though Ciemnosc could make the students get to do some stuff and try to do some stuff with the tools they don’t even really know how to use and get to fight in this battle - but he chose not to.

With such an opportunity presenting itself to him, not only to extremely stabilize his cultivation base, his foundation, but also to bathe himself in the blood, flesh, bones, and organs of the major organizations’ people… how could he ever deny such things to himself?!

Trckrr, trckrr trckrr, trckrr trckrr, trckrr…

“...” Ciemnosc lay in waiting, his right knee supporting most of his body weight with his right foot against the green ‘floor’ along with his abdominal muscles while his left knee was pressing against that ‘floor’. His right arm was up to his upper ribs’ level with his right-handed Mortal sword aiming to the surface slightly diagonally, and his left-handed Mortal sword aiming just a bit more than 90 degrees towards the ground by his left thigh kneeling on the floor.

The motors of the armored cars were at full work, a couple passing past his position a couple hundred meters away, there was still more than half remaining to pass Ciemnosc’s current position without knowing. But that was the end of it. Ciemnosc wasn’t planning to attack their rear, he wanted to first take a bite from their stomach!

There were only a few tens of enemy disciples and believers inside each of the armored cars. Not enough to complement the few thousand he saw back then, but the remaining force of this assault group was just on their way here and were moving fast for they didn’t want the armored cars to have all the fun on getting to kill and plunder the scaredy cats from that one ‘Rocaloi Academy’ to the west.

The motors of the armored cars, their Synergized Equatrend Mobilizers, and the smallest of components that each armored car had, as they passed by his position at a really great speed. Ciemnosc listened to it all with his eyes slowly closing, in tranquility, and as he was about to doze off and lose the most appropriate ambushing time to get as many as possible right away.

Stomp! FWUMP, whoosh- whiiistlee~... CRASH puh- CKRSHEERR.

Ciemnosc’s body suddenly flew out from the thick, tall, and white snow while the afternoon sun shone over the soon-to-become battlefield. His eyes were wide open as he impulsed shot his body at a rapid speed faster than even that of these armored cars’ maximum speed and had Mortal thin swords to cut through the air and cut through all resistance of his body with its ‘fly’ right into one of the armored cars’ co-drivers window in the middle of the group.

Ciemnosc’s sole of his right foot went through the glass like it wasn’t even as simple to go through as water, but even much more simply worse. His body, as if flying through time as well, went past the window with none of his body parts scratching any part of the armored car, except his right foot which directly came to strike in the end at the right side of the driver and immediately made bone-cracking noises to be heard and for the entire armored car to suddenly drift towards the left.

There was no co-driver as Ciemnosc’s left food arrived at the driver’s right shoulder. But by then, the driver’s whole stomach and crotch had been turned into a large image of blood about to explode towards any possible angle, and bones mixed in between all broken and about to spike out towards any possible angle as well.

Organs and flesh seemed to tear so much that they just became supplements for the driver’s blood to become even more in quantity and thickness. The driver’s whole body was already becoming pure blood that didn’t belong to a human body by its quantities and broken bones by the time his neck was turning into a tunnel that the destruction from below came to spread up to his head, his skull already showing cracks that went through the skin and even hair.

But without waiting for the whole body of the driver to turn into just a lot of blood and broken bones, Ciemnosc’s body went right past it with the car barely getting to move 2 cm forward from the moment that Ciemnosc rudely intruded into a car that wasn’t his own.

Pank! Crrrkkhh…

The driver’s side of the armored car was kicked open and away by Ciemnosc’s feet which were now drifting with a very small but semi circularly shaped ‘board’ on the snow for quite a few tens of meters with his thin Mortal swords being inserted into the ground flawlessly as if just going through warm butter.

The Mortal swords were, however, too sharp and powerful so Ciemnosc had to immediately switch drift with them as he faced their flat sides to where he was throwing himself by inertia, stopping his body quite fast thanks to the Mortal grade of the swords and not just using their edges.

“IT’S HIM!!” - “FUCK! Shoot him!!” - “No! Shoot their base, keep the cannons targeting their fucking hideout!” - “Avoid this motherfu- AAAH!”

Ciemnosc heard many voices shouting at each other, somewhat relying on each other’s Identification Tokens to speak a few words here and there, but that was not enough to hear each other out. Without waiting for them to fully coordinate, however. And as the entire assault group stopped in motion and directly began to semi surround him, he moved as he dashed towards the armored car that slightly drifted on the snow leftwards and entered right back into it!

Ckrsheeeeeerrrrr, ckrsheerr ckrsheerr, crreeshhk crreeshhk crreeshhk phhshk~.

As soon as Ciemnosc entered the armored car from which he left without a driver and even hit just one side of it so hard he directly broke all array formations and immobilized it, letting the Synergized Equatrend Mobilizers completely useless, leaving them lonely and with the need of someone to guide them; Ciemnosc began brandishing both his swords up and down in crescent motions to the left and right, cutting through so many bodies that he became lonely after just a few seconds.

“Huff, huff huff…” Neither being tired nor breathing too heavily, more than anything, Ciemnosc was feeling frustrated as the killing inside this armored car was just way too simple. He looked at the tons of limbs, skin lying around everywhere, even on the ceiling, and the bones that penetrated through the seats and the like a bit more before breathing deeply in through his nostrils and turning around.

Coming out of the armored car as if he was just coming out of a bus in the middle of a city, Ciemnosc simply put his left index, middle, and ring finger on the front of the armored car, as it suddenly disappeared. While it naturally had been sent to his Covert Space bags, that was only for the armored car; as all of the bloodiness and disgusting sight from within dropped to the snow as soon as the armored car was gone.

That was just one of the advantages that using one’s Spirit Sense cleverly and with all of one’s capabilities has. Though Ciemnosc just had to mean it inside his head, and not even ‘hard’ so to speak, Ciemnosc was Ciemnosc. And he was now getting surrounded by the armored cars… they were trying to make time for the other thousands of disciples and believers to arrive as he once again appeared out in the open and didn’t safeguard himself in the armored car he hijacked.

What was more… flying figures came to float down slowly towards him too.

…