Ryku was chuffed, internally. Outwardly, he still maintained an aura of calm, but oh was he happy on the inside. With each passing moment, each passing task, and each passing conversation, Dalric opened to him.
His first impression was terrible, but it only required diligence to fix that. He had wrongfully assumed Dalric was a hidden master that would appreciate such a level of respect. Dalric definitely didn't. That was fine though, honestly Ryku preferred it that way. He had no problems bowing his head to a superior, but he still found the act needlessly stuffy. A relaxed master he could chat with was definitely more his style.
Now, he had the ultimate test before him. He'd been given a large group with little variation in skill sets and the objective of holding the Baron's men at bay until Dalric could attack them from behind. Simple enough.
He would do more.
Now was not the time to do just enough. He needed to make use of every opportunity given to him to prove he was worthy of being the man's student. If he could lead this group to a decisive victory before he arrived, he'd look brilliant. It would be some task to pull it off though.
He got a quick overview of everyone’s strengths and weaknesses and began planning around them.
Twelve defence, nine attack-melee, six attack-ranged, four support, and five auxiliary. Two of the support can make walls of ice and snow… let’s begin there. Use defenders to push through door, set up walls, empower them, get a foothold. Objective one, get a foothold. What next…
A few ideas rolled around, but without first making contact with the enemy they were all moot. He thought through some contingencies if he failed to get a foothold, but otherwise he’d wait until he completed objective one before committing to anything.
He shared his plan and contingencies with the group, the three lieutenants of sorts he selected liked the plan and that feeling rippled through the rest. That was good, no plan lived long in the hands of the disgruntled. He went over it a couple more times with the lieutenants to hammer out the pivot points, but then they heard the all important whistle.
Prep time was over.
----------------------------------------
“Fire!”
The order had been given. George raised his rifle and fired at the steel giant that came barreling through the gate. The roar of hundreds of rifles had a sweet sound to it, but unfortunately his bullet was not one of the ones that hit home. The likely draken had managed to dash out of the way.
Artor? Hector?
He fired his rifle twice more, missing twice more.
He didn’t remember the draken’s exact name, but as he tracked the armored beast between the onslaught of spells he felt that their builds were the same. Realistically, even if he didn’t feel that way, considering his size alone, there was no one else it could be.
George’s fourth shot finally hit, but his success didn’t bring satisfaction. Instead, an all together unnerving feeling tickled the back of his spine. He had never taken part in Hector’s beatings, but he had witnessed several. The draken had never been so quick. Even though both bullets and spells still made contact, the speed with which he darted side to side was ridiculous.
His fifth and sixth shots hit again, his seventh didn’t. That time not because of his target's speed, but rather the tickle had become a twitch.
He knew the front line would die. No one expected the draken to get his hands on some enchanted armor, but they did expect the slaves to steal the armor off Hiroto and his men. With that protection, reaching the first barricade was merely an eventuality.
The way they died, though. In less than a blink of his eye, all six men were bisected. Before he even processed that, the next squad faced the same fate. He’d heard Hector was a soldier before, but that didn’t explain what he just witnessed.
His eighth and ninth shot both missed.
He hadn’t noticed at first, but his hands were shaking. Something was wrong, something was deeply wrong.
His next three shots weren’t even close. While he fired his thirteenth, he watched a katana pierce through the back of a man’s eye socket. The shot obviously missed.
That’s not the draken.
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.
“The helmet is weak. Aim for the helmet!”
He heard the order and fired everything he had left. He didn’t know what he thought he’d accomplish, but maybe one would hit them in the eye. Maybe it would distract them. Maybe it would deter them from heading his way. Maybe he could still survive this.
He felt a hand on his shoulder, “Get yourself together! It’s just one slave—”
It was not just one. His squad leader’s head burst into chunks of meat and bone. His blood coated George’s face. The steel giant was just the first, behind them came a wave of steel soldiers.
Where did they come from? He didn’t have time to think. He didn’t even wipe his eyes before he reloaded his rifle, took his former squad leader’s, and fired both.
“Stop them!”
George emptied both magazines and replaced them with the last two he had. In every direction in front of him, men died by the second. None of the steel soldiers, only the baron’s. Be it sword, be it spell, the squads were eliminated one by one. Then two by two. Then four by four. The barricades were obliterated.
Soon, it would be his turn.
His fingers brushed the triggers.
Soon, it would be his turn.
A giant sword split a man from skull to hip no less than ten meters from him.
Soon, it would be his turn.
A bull ran by with two impaled men hanging from its horns.
Soon, it would be his turn.
The steel giant dashed in his direction.
Soon, it would be his turn.
He dropped the rifles and ran.
----------------------------------------
Dalric blazed a path through the barricades. Two others seemed to have a similar idea and joined up with him to take out the ahjerists. The first was the female draken and the second was a human he had only briefly spoken to.
Along their dash towards the back of the ranks, bullets stopped reaching them. In part, because they were running out. In part, because some were already fleeing. Mostly, because the human had surrounded them with a powerful barrier that blocked them all. If there was a barricade in their path, he’d opened it up a little to let their victims in, but otherwise they were completely shielded.
Dalric had never used or specialized in barriers like this, being a giant with near impenetrable skin made such a thing redundant, but he quickly realized he needed to study up on them. Thunderfield provided a potent barrier of its own, but his body wasn’t ready to really handle it. It could be a while before he could comfortably take its massive surge of power.
As they finally began to close in on the ahjerists, the ranks had practically already fallen apart. Ammo continued to run out and seeing a group of three effortlessly run through them likely caused many to abandon their station. The exit was so close after all.
The ahjerists held firm momentarily while they launched every spell in their arsenal. There was plenty of friendly-fire, but they didn’t seem to care. The trio weren’t slowed by their attempts however. Even when they eventually broke through the human’s barrier, the three merely split up and approached from separate angles.
Having failed in their last barrage, the ahjerists themselves turned and ran. It was a great many strides too late, but inevitably a few of them would still escape. The rest would taste cold metal.
Dalric leapt into their midst and let the blade do its work, rending life from flesh. He kept on guard in case someone tried to sneak in an attack, but the only thing that came were wayward spells. Nothing stopped him and the others from systematically culling the ahjerists.
After a handful of more minutes, the battle ended. Every single guard was either dead or had fled with their entire being. Dalric noticed that whoever was giving out commands had made their escape much sooner than the rest, but he let that be. This battle was won, but there was another raging somewhere through these halls.
He gathered the fifteen survivors and relayed his plan, “You seven with me, the rest of you retrieve the fallen and go back below and rest.” Only the seven came out relatively unscathed, the others had varying degrees of injuries, “Don’t try to go up there and don’t try to follow us. I don’t want to come back to any of you missing or dead. You understand? We’ve done the hard part already, just follow the plan and we’ll all be free in a matter of hours.”
He could tell by the look in some of their eyes that they wanted to continue fighting. One kept peeking at the stairs like he wanted to make a break for it. There was no point to either, they had genuinely finished the hardest part. Assuming Ryku didn’t royally mess up on the other side, all that was left was a rout. There was no need to do anything foolish.
Thankfully, his authority was stable enough that they didn’t contest the order. All eight of them obediently trudged back towards the stairs leading down.
“Alright, let’s go.”
They knew what direction the other staircase was in and they could see a path that likely led there, but if it was a similar layout to the junction this staircase led to it wouldn't lead them behind the barricades. For that, they'd need to look for another path.
It took a couple minutes of fanning out and probing multiple doors before they finally found the path they were looking for. Ryku was spot on with his statement about this being the main base. Unlike the other layers, the floors were tiled, the walls were smoothed and painted over, the light fixtures were more common, there were a host of different rooms for different functions, and judging by how long some of the halls were, it was the largest layer.
When they finally arrived at the second battlefield, Dalric halted his group. There were a lot of ways he saw it potentially going, things could have gone terribly wrong or miraculously right. This, however, was definitely not one of them.