Mountain of the Immortals

Your troops have engaged the enemy.

* * *

I focused on the word “engaged" and my sight was pulled down the mountainside to Dion, which was partly in flames, and then to the open sea, where an armada of ships bearing my father's guild insignia on their sails were being attacked by the vessels we’d sent through the portal.

* * *

Unit Name: Troop Transport Galley O

Fighters: 371/250

Average Level: 32

Morale: Desperate

* * *

The cannon volleys of our ships were causing mayhem for the enemy vessels and the troops they carried. Not only were most of them lightly equipped for nautical combat, since they were meant to be the last ones to reach Dion, but many of them didn’t even have a single cannon. Plus, they were populated way above their maximum capacity. As a result, each cannonball or magic missile killed dozens of enemies at once and spread fear through their ranks. It was no surprise that their morale had fallen to “Desperate”.

They could barely move to avoid the attacks, as the port ahead of them was filled with ships that were still offloading troops, and our ships continued to move in on them from behind.

"Let the Siege Constructs come,” I said, as I continued to watch the battle in the sea. “Our defenses will take care of them. Our troops should just focus on what they can actually kill."

Pretty soon, I started sending individual ships to attack those that were damaged but not completely destroyed. After a certain percentage of fighters were killed on the enemies' vessels, new options became available.

* * *

Do you wish your Attack Galley D to board the enemy Troop Transport Galley T and demand surrender?

Yes No

* * *

I chose “Yes” and our ship moved closer to the enemies until it eventually crashed into its side. Our warriors jumped onto the deck of the enemy vessel and made sure that all the enemy troops were either thrown overboard or disarmed and thrown into the lower levels of the boat. They then moved the ship away, and just like that, the vessel had now become ours.

Since this was a good tactic to essentially grow our own numbers while also removing vessels from the enemy, I ordered a few other boats to do the same. That was until the more heavily armed enemy ships were able to finally leave the port and turn around to counterattack.

My first priority in this battle was still winning without any casualties, which was exactly why I felt the need to observe what was happening. The moment I saw ships that might be a threat to my people, I ordered all of them to return through the portal.

Just to be extra safe about it, I also chose a couple of vessels we’d commandeered, and ordered our troops to abandon them. These ships now floated aimlessly in the waters, making the job of the enemy captains harder since they needed to maneuver around them, while also acting as a temporary shield until our people could escape.

Once I was sure that our ships had put a significant enough distance between them and the enemies, and were well on their way through the portal, I swapped views back to our town. Here, the enemy had almost reached us and I could now see flocks of flying troops coming toward us.

* * *

Unit Name: Aerial Spellcaster Unit C

Fighters: 20/20

Average Level: 31

Morale: Neutral

* * *

There were at least seven units of flying spellcasters. Some of them were riding magical items, though most of them were flying without the assistance of anything—perhaps it was an ability attached to their equipment. Those would need to be fought directly but the rest would be easier targets if we could somehow bring down their rides.

"Ares, I think I can handle dispatching units now," I said.

"Are you sure?"

"Yeah," I said with conviction. "Aphrodite, buff everyone and then each of you can take one of the four giants."

"Alright, but I’ll take the one here with you,” Aphrodite said, before starting to cast her buffs.

The catapults and magic cannon blasts were now a lot more frequent but our guild core's MP pool was still holding strong. By the time Aphrodite was done buffing all of us, the colossal siege golems were reaching our walls and the flying spellcasters had already initiated their attacks.

Two of these aerial units, along with a squadron of harpies, had launched their attacks close to the sky harbor, which was still hidden inside the cloud. I watched carefully to make sure that none of the enemies noticed it. I had given specific orders to all three units up there not to attack yet.

Despite the fact that the cloud itself was inside of our mana field, I didn't want our troops to give themselves away for such small fry. I knew that surprise strikes would land multiple critical hits so I wanted to keep them for something bigger. For this reason, I ordered archer units to attack the harpies, that were now sending metal feathers flying at our mana shield, and I ordered mages and crossbowmen to take down the flying spellcasters.

These proved to be my father's armies' fodder, as they weren’t particularly difficult to defeat but kept us busy until the larger aerial offenders reached us.

* * *

Unit Name: Dragon Unit F

Fighters: 1/1

Average Level: 46

Morale: Neutral

* * *

The dragons were all fully adult creatures, and there were at least two dozen of them moving against us. Luckily, during our preparations for this battle, we had accounted for enemies that neither I, with my extended knowledge of my father’s armies, nor our intelligence agents would have known of.

Apparently, father had been keeping dragons under his servitude without anyone knowing about it, whether by magical force or having actually bred them as fighting machines. What's more, the dragons seemed to be all different types. I couldn’t scan them yet, but it was fairly easy to guess what their elemental alignments might be from the color of their scales.

With this in mind, I attached two archer units to each flying beast and a spellcaster unit specific to an element the dragons would be weak to. For those that I wasn’t sure of, I would wait for them to crash into the dome and then unleash their fury on it in the form of their breath weapon.

Predictable in their wrath, one by one, the dragons crashed into the mana dome surrounding our town. They didn’t sustain significant damage, but neither were they able to penetrate it. After they recovered from their initial confusion, they steadied their talons on the now semi-translucent barrier and unleashed their destructive breathing skills. A selection of lava, ice crystals, fire, rocks, acid, and more catastrophic effects were thrown on our protective dome all at once.

It was at that time, when all dragons had landed on top of our city, that I activated the magic coils. Dozens of coils charged up and an ever-increasing buzz echoed all around us.

The sun was still in its first hour when the coils discharged simultaneously. It felt like it was the brightest day this world had ever seen. A couple of the dragons flew away, extremely wounded, and three of them were now sliding down the barrier stunned. Most of them took flight momentarily, surprised by the sudden strike.

I did notice one of the dragons, however, looked more like it enjoyed the attack rather than being damaged by it. I assumed it was probably immune to lightning damage, or judging by the brilliance surrounding its body, that it may even have absorbed the strike and become even more powerful now.

As I thought, the dragon let out a scream and a thick bolt of lightning flew from its mouth at the dome, dissipating over its whole surface. That one attack alone removed more than seventeen million MP from our MP pool. Seeing this, I selected that dragon unit and made it an exception to the thunder coils, so that they wouldn’t attack it—and charge it—again.

I managed it just in the nick of time. The moment I closed that menu, the coils discharged again. I waited for the dragon to move slightly to the north where the sky harbor was located. As soon as the beast was in range, I ordered all three of the units concealed there to attack it at once.

The creature was so surprised by the attack that it wasn’t able to dodge a single arrow that came at it. By the end of the first volley, its body looked like a pincushion, and its wings were torn and too tattered for it to maintain a steady flying course. The second volley that followed only a couple seconds later was enough to kill it outright. By the time it fell onto the dome, it was already dead. And, even better, none of its allies seemed to have any idea where it was attacked from. This meant I'd still be able to utilize the surprise factor of those units at least one more time.

Despite the thunder coils and our ranged units causing significant damage to our attackers, their numbers weren’t diminishing. On the contrary, it seemed that more aerial units were making flybys now. These weren’t intended to attack, but instead to drop warriors directly on the dome itself.

Many of them used devices to slowly float down onto the dome without being wounded by the fall, while others simply didn’t seem to care about hurting themselves. Since the dome was getting crowded and each of those enemies striking it took a small piece of our stored MP, I turned all of our mana generators to offensive mode.

Each of the forty generators flashed before sending a stream of mana at the first one we’d ever built. A stream of magic missiles the size of horses were launched into the air out of our dome, and struck the magical vessels carrying enemies above us. The same procedure was repeated roughly every ten seconds, just slightly slower than the strikes of the thunder coils.

The battle so far was proving to be significantly easier than I’d been hoping for, and for a moment I thought that all those “worried about not worrying enough” thoughts hadn’t been warranted at all.

But then a loud boom traveled along the whole length of our high walls, through every corner of our town, and down into the very core of mountain Olympus.

Before I had the chance to change my view, or even to understand what was happening, there was another loud boom—only this time it seemed like two sounds in rapid succession.

"You got a plan for these things, love?" Aphrodite asked, right as I switched my view to see another one of them striking the dome.

Another loud strike again sounded like two in close succession, and I realized it was because one of the golem's arms struck the dome slightly before the second. After zooming out a bit, I saw that the fourth one was about to hit the dome as well. Monsters and soldiers were now jumping down from the siege golems’ arms and hitting the mana field with everything they had.

Each strike cut a staggering ten billion MP from our pool. By the time the fourth siege construct hit the dome, our MP pool had fallen to a bit above two hundred billion MP. And as much as that sounded like a lot of zeros, I knew now that all it would take for us to lose our best defense was twenty more strikes from those constructs. Just five from each one before we would be completely annihilated.

The walls would probably withstand the strikes, but that wouldn’t matter much if all of those monsters and warriors suddenly fell on our heads. I’d been hoping I would only need to use the golden dragon heads as a final resort, and it looked now like there was no other choice. As fast as our defenses were, as strong as our mana dome was, and as brave as our citizens were, we were sorely outnumbered. If I let the giants hit us a few more times, which they definitely would do once the troops they were carrying had jumped off of them, I wouldn’t even have enough MP left to summon the dragon protector at all.

I quickly opened the list of available buildings and pulled my last trump card.

* * *

Name: Dragon Ghost Protector

Level: 6 (Maximum)

Description: The essence of Typhon, the one hundred-headed dragon, has been captured in the guild core and is available for use as long the core exists. By constructing one hundred golden dragon-head sculptures on the periphery of the city and hiding them inside the city walls, the ghost of the king of monsters can be unleashed upon anyone who dares attack the settlement. This defensive measure will cost 1,000,000,000 MP to activate, lasts for one hour, and can only be used once per week. During this time, each of the heads is able to breathe out its attacks and move around as far as its neck allows.

* * *

I focused on the cost of activating it and was prompted with another notification.

* * *

You are about to activate the Dragon Ghost Protector defensive sequence.

Do you wish to proceed?

Yes No

* * *

I opted for “Yes” and saw another chunk of MP removed from our mana pool. Nothing happened at first, leaving me to stare at our MP pool, which reflected the integrity of our mana barrier. The number wasn’t increasing any more. On the contrary, it was going down fast. The last four digits were too much of a blur to see and by the looks of it, we were losing around a million MP every few seconds just from the troops striking at our barrier.

"Did you do something?" Aphrodite asked, and I felt a nudge on my shoulder. "Look at that!"

I quickly closed the siege view and rubbed my eyes to force them to focus on what was happening. The sun had now fully risen and its rays shone down on our city—at least on the tall walls around it, where it was reflected back by the hundred dragon heads that had risen out from them on gigantic shiny-scaled necks. It looked as if the walls themselves had become sentient.

And the statues that had so far been mere decorations, were now the very personification of anger.