As he slowly came out of his trance, he looked up at the shocked faces of those in the audience, hearing strains of whispered conversations, all of which hinged around the same thing. Sam was a true monster, even among the other strong members of the faction. Of course this was to be expected, as he was the leader of the entire faction, but his performance had been far beyond what anyone here could have dreamt of. They had all seen him fighting in the larger scale battles before, and they knew how devastating he was with his mace, but the fact that he was strong enough to utterly wipe out two hundred soldiers in a matter of minutes while not taking it seriously was a shock to the system for them, which was what Sam had intended. He took a deep breath and faced the other in the arena, about two thousand strong. He smiled at them, and then spoke.
“That was less than the strength of many of the lieutenants in the Legion. There are not enough of the captains to deal with them all at once meaning that you will have to find a way to take them out. Now that you have seen the strength that you will have to face, you will need to adapt to it.”
Rather than discourage the others, like he had expected, Sam saw that the people in the arena started to perk up, inspired by his words. He raised one hand, and expelled a large blast of his Anger’s Reach skill upwards, eliciting a cheer from the crowd.
“WE WILL NOT BOW DOWN BEFORE THE RAVENING HORDES OF THE LEGION! WE WILL STAND STRONG, FOR WE ARE THE ARBITERS OF JUSTICE!” Sam shouted as he did so, provoking an even more thunderous cheer from the crowd.
With that, he started towards the exit, picking up his mace on the way out. He had achieved his goal here, and he still had more of the city’s defenses to test. A few minutes later, he was standing outside of the central command center for the city’s defense shield. The existence of such a thing was new to him, as he had assumed that the structure was only the shield, and nothing more. However, it seemed that there was a bit more to it.
Eduardo had informed him of it earlier, and he had added it to the list of things to look for in his tour of the city’s defenses. As he walked towards the small building, he took in the faint beam of light that extended to the heavens. It was only visible from a short distance away, and it was almost invisible to the naked eye, but it became brighter when Sam used his Elemental Sight ability on it.
A few minutes later, he was entering the building, placing his palm against a scanner on the wall. It went green as it recognized him, and he entered the building. There was a single computer at the back, with a chair propped up in front of it. The names of everyone in the city, as well as their mana contributions, scrolled endlessly along the computer. There was also a section that was devoted to the maintenance of the shield, with an option to briefly flood it with mana if it even came near collapse. There had been no opportunity to do this as of now, but Sam suspected that the defenses would be sorely tested when the Legion came.
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He walked around the small room for a moment, studying the screen. He understood what it was for. It was a way to regulate the amount of mana that entered the shield at any one time. There was a number underneath the lists of names that said how much mana was contained in the shield at this moment. The number was completely full, meaning that there had been no major damages sustained recently.
Sam left the room, and closed the door behind him. He went towards the next of the defenses which were one of the mana cannon embankments that stood around the city. This one was made up of about fifty mana cannons, all arranged in a semicircular fashion. A few people hung around there, listening to someone explain how to use them. Quite a few people were willing to fight for the defense of the city,but did not want to risk their lives in melee combat. For them, the various artillery embankments around the city were perfect.
However, they received nowhere near the amount of essence that the melee fighters received. In this upcoming battle however, there would be so many enemies that it would hardly matter, as everyone would be raking in great tides of essence. That was, if they did not die first. If the rumors about the size of the army coming their way were true, then they were going to need every advantage that they could get and then some.
Sam listened for a moment to what the instructor had to say, and he formed a brief understanding of how the cannons worked. These ones were smaller versions of the giant mana cannon at the center of the city, and as result they could be powered by a single person rather than having to charge up over a period of hours. A single shot took about 2500 points of mana, meaning that almost anyone could fill one up in a matter of minutes. They could be filled up to a maximum of 10000 however, and that was up to the user themselves.
If they were a mage of some sort, then they would usually opt to increase the amount of mana being used, seeing as it would make the attack more powerful. When all fifty of these cannons were blasting away in sync, it would be quite an impressive sight, and Sam had seen them in action before. He knew just how effective they were. At the higher level of battles, with millions of total combatants, higher level fighters were still relevant, but unless they were akin to gods compared to their opponents, the impact that weaponry still had was immense.
Sam could put out a lot of damage, but he could not compete with even a single shot from the superior mana cannon in terms of raw output. He could do more damage over time, but it was still nice to have some aces in the hole.