Next to Isaac, the soldier in charge of the missile launcher aimed at the giant skeleton and fired at him. Sparks ran all over its body as more and more people targeted it with explosives.

The massive bone structure crumbled like an avalanche. The skeletons on the ground ran away from the snow, but many had gotten buried in this giant grave. There wasn’t a trace left of the original skeleton wizard as his 206 real bones had scattered within the field of skulls, femurs and vertebrae. His blue cloak slowly drifted away from the explosions’ blast waves. Another cloaked wizard had died, but there were still nine more cursed wizards in Zephyr’s army.

“Seth’s injured. I need to go there and find him!” Isaac hurried down the tower’s ladder.

On another missile tower, the woman soldier immersed herself in the battle, trying to shatter as many skeletons as possible with her limited ammunition. As such, she didn’t notice the vibration coming from below the tower’s metal structure.

Despite the unsettling stillness barely interrupted by the echoes of fire at the gate and the distant footsteps from the soldiers underneath, she didn’t realize someone was climbing up the ladder behind her.

“Ahem.”

She turned around abruptly, her hair rising. “Who are you?!”

The woman had already unholstered her handgun.

“You are my ssslave,” the man in a soldier uniform said coldly.

“Huh? Stop that nonsense right now. What are you doing up here?” Her hands tightened around the metallic pistol grip.

The man with hooded eyes snickered, his forked tongue out. “Look into my eyes.”

She couldn’t resist glimpsing at their green glow. A sudden dizziness overtook her, and she almost fell down the tower as gravity seemed to have changed its course.

“Now, I want you to aim the missiles for me.” The snake humanoid had infiltrated the army.

“Huh?” Isaac noticed their two figures on the tower a bit farther away from the one he was climbing down.

He squinted his eyes. “Isn’t that…?”

“FIRE!” The snake man waved his arm to signal the hypnotized girl. The missile landed at the gate, yet it wasn’t aiming for the skeletons.

“What?!” Isaac stopped climbing. More than a hundred humans had been caught in this first explosion. The cursed man kept waving his arm forward, pointing where he wanted the explosives to land. The explosions continued, killing over a thousand soldiers. Isaac would have died had he been there.

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“NO!” He was too far away for a red magic beam. His hands cut against the two side rails while he fearlessly slid down the ladder.

The skeletons had entered Slitherland. Farther away, Zephyr was laughing with the reptoids. They didn’t even have to make a move. Snid had single-handedly changed the course of the battle. The Western Army had to shift into defence mode.

Closer to the gate, against a building’s wall, an arm poked out of a pile of scraps. The explosions hadn’t hit Seth, but bones and debris had fallen over him.

“I can finally breathe.” He stuck his head out. But he quickly realized he couldn’t get up. “My legs will not move, I can’t even sit straight, and I think some of my ribs are fractured.”

Isaac ran towards the other tower. He could hear the soldiers’ confusion as he passed by.

“What’s happening over there, by the gate?”

“We broke the barrier, but I can’t see anything else from over here.”

“Doesn’t something feel off?”

Isaac finally arrived. He had to climb up now. “I have to hurry!”

“Right there! Fire again!” The hypnotist was still up there. “Come on, hurry up! We only have thirteen misssssiles left!”

“Snid!” Isaac recognized him. He rushed at him with a red magic spear.

Snid turned away too late. He jumped back to avoid the sharp tip but made a false step above the void, off the platform.

“AH!” He screamed, annoyed.

Isaac almost went down with him, breaking his footing right over the edge. The woman got up as he looked down to find Snid’s corpse. “I thought he was locked away in the village. Did someone help him escape?”

He felt cold hands on his back. “Huh?”

-Push.

The hypnotized soldier threw him off the platform. A long drop awaited.

“Dammit!” Isaac looked down below. Snid had gotten caught by someone, a reptoid. It was the one who broke him out.

Without time to lose, Isaac made a red barrier under his feet. It reminded him of Christiana’s magic in the Snowrider faction, back in the Tremblay Guild. She could summon floating shields and walk on top of them.

High above the ground, Isaac found Snid again. The reptoid had jumped far away.

“They’re running towards the gate! I should chase after him. I need to get there to find Seth anyway.

“But how? I can’t run down there. There are people and skeletons everywhere.

“Wait… If I can make barriers under my feet, maybe I can run in the air just like Christiana!”

He tested his hypothesis, and it worked. He was stepping over floating red barriers. It didn’t cost much mana since he had a lot in store.

However, it wasn’t fast enough to catch up to a reptoid. Isaac was already a hundred meters behind the two. “What if I combine this with red magic beams? Couldn’t I throw myself further?”

Isaac brought his hands behind his back and shot out two red magic beams. The blast threw him forward. By making a platform under his feet, he was now gliding towards the gate.

“It’s working, I’m catching up!”