Sam’s presence began to make the soldiers anxious, so he went off to the next few artillery embankments. Most of the shorter range artillery were on the city walls, but a few of them were kept near the wall, so as to be able to hit enemies that were attacking the gates or some other part of the wall. They could only reach just over the edge, but seeing as weapons such as ballistas, or catapults for that matter, had a minimum range, the ones on the wall would be useless against enemies directly underneath them.
Sam finished his circuit of the artillery embankments, and made his way toward the newest addition to the city’s defenses, the Automaton Barracks. He had seen a few of the robots patrolling the streets in his time going around the city, and as far as he could tell, they were not seeing any action as of now. However, they seemed to make the townspeople feel a bit safer, seeing as they were all quite powerful. The strongest of the robots were actual F Rank beings, and as a result, they could function almost as well as Sam and his captains. They were still not quite there, especially compared to Sam, but they were a great boon. It would take quite a few of them working in sync to take out anything like one of the Legion commanders, but Sam was confident that they could do so.
As he surveyed the city, he was starting to become a bit more hopeful about their chances. The only thing that he was worried about was Hugo Mar. The man possessed power beyond anything else Sam had seen in this world so far, at least from actual natives to the planet. If he managed to get into the city, untold damage might ensue. He would have to make sure that did not happen.
It would come down to Sam to defeat the man, most likely, and he was unsure of how exactly he was meant to do such a thing. He had tried to beat him in Paris, and he had been utterly embarrassed by his lack of strength relative to the other man. Hugo Mar had tanked a blast that had leveled an entire city block, and had come out the other side strong enough to pursue Sam and his friends in their ship. The man had been able to bend the weather itself to his will in a small area, and Sam hadn't even seen the full extent of his power.
Sam quickly made his way towards the walls themselves. It was time for him to check out the final line of defense before the city itself. If the enemy somehow got past the city shields, and then reached the walls, they would be in for a tough time. The walls had been constantly upgraded over time, and now they were quite an imposing sight. Sam had been gone for most of the upgrades, away on his missions around the world, but now that he had the opportunity to get closer to them. He was finally able to see the differences.
The concrete walls were now coated in steel, and they had almost doubled in height and width. In addition, there was a moat of lava outside, actual red hot molten rock. Sam had no idea how such a thing kept running, but he had an idea. Mana. Everything seemed to run on that quintessential energy source, and this was likely no different. Still it evoked a feeling of childish glee in him. Like most boys, when he was younger, he had been obsessed with the natural wonders of the Earth, more specifically, the natural disasters. Lava was one of the most destructive substances on Earth, and it had always been an interest of his. Now that he suspected he could probably walk through it while only suffering superficial burns,he felt a little less enthused, but it would still be effective against weaker enemies.
Sam walked up onto the walls and surveyed the surrounding area, the final part of his little tour. The ground had been cleared long ago, in preparation for Salvar’s army all those weeks ago, and it was still completely open. Any enemies coming through there would be completely exposed, open to artillery fire and the like. In addition, heat wafted up from the lava moat around the wall. With the absurd amount of money that they possessed, the lava moat had been upgraded beyond anyone’s wildest dreams, and it was more like a river of lava.
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It was twenty feet wide, and the heat from it was so palpable that Sam could almost feel his skin reddening, even from almost sixty feet up. He suspected that if he had been a normal person, his skin would have been melting away by now from the sheer heat.
Satisfied with what he had seen, Sam took a circuit of the wall, inspecting the turrets. All of them looked vaguely medieval in origin, with ballistas standing next to miniature catapults. The various artillery pieces were powered by mana however, and they certainly had a bite to them.
Sam finally finished his circuit of the city a half hour later, coming back to where he had started. Now that he had gotten a better idea of what sort of defenses were available, his duty, as the strongest member of the faction, was to level up and get stronger. None of the captains would wonder where he had gone if he simply left, so he did just that.
Leaping off the wall, he cleared the lava moat with ease, landing on the hard packed earth outside. He waved at a stunned defender, and ran towards the forests in the far distance, where hopefully monsters lurked. As he ran, he put his helmet back on, which had been hanging off a hook on the back of his armor. Sam had been enjoying the main character look, but he knew that fighting without a helmet was the height of stupidity, no matter how stylish it made him look. He didn't have some sort of absurd anime plot armor where he could race through hordes of enemies without any sort of armor on, and still come out the other side unscathed.
Sam knew that he was far from invincible, no matter how his current circumstances made him feel about his strength. He was just surrounded by weaklings, which was not any sort of accurate depiction of his own strength. He would have been a god in terms of pre System standards, but compared to the Multiverse at large, he was nothing more than an ant, or more accurately, a bacterium. He was so insignificant that it was intensely humbling, far more than there had been even a capability of before the System had come.
Learning that the universe was nothing more than one of billions floating around in a larger Multiverse really did wonders’ for one’s perspective on life. Sensing that he was about to embark on another long internal jeremiad on his position within the universe and his role thereof, Sam started to meditate on his Dao instead. He barely made any progress, seeing as most of his attention was kept on running, but he was still able to make some headway, helped by his enhanced intelligence. Having over a hundred points in the stat allowed him to split up his brain functions somewhat, leaving one part for his basic functions, and another for his higher functions. For example, he could easily run while doing many other things at the same time, or in this case, one incredibly complicated thing like meditating on one of the concepts of the universe.
By the time that he reached the woods, it had already been an hour, meaning that the distance had been quite significant. That, or he had been slowing down so as to keep his Dao insights coming. In any case, as the foreboding woods loomed ahead, Sam snapped out of his reverie, instead focusing on his surroundings. There were no monsters nearby, as they had been severely culled by various apex predators over the last few weeks, but hopefully there would still be some of those aforementioned apex predators left for him to fight. His leveling speed was abysmal, at least by the standards that he held himself to, but there were benefits to fighting much stronger opponents than oneself, and he was sure that he could level up if he managed to get enough monster kills under his belt.