The Liberomancer [Isekai Progression LitRPG]

After several more uses of [Inferno], Lance flew back towards the portion of the wall over the gate, descending and disappearing from my line of sight. He had likely either run out of mana completely, or like me, was making sure he had enough of a reserve should the situation deteriorate further.

My Tyrant Arachnea chased the dryads where it could - when some of them broke off and tried to circle around it to strike at us, I would urge it to turn around and chase whichever group was nearest to the walls.

After that the dryads seemed to have wised up and realized that their only hope was to take it down. This was easier said than done given how the majority of them were deathly terrified of it. Despite them trying to put up a brave front at points, their formations tended to melt like butter the moment the Tyrant Arachnea drew too close to them.

Attempts were made to slowly whittle it down by some of the dryads, but it took them far longer than a properly organized military force would've.

In the end, though they did take it down, half of their forces were in disarray, over a thousand of them had been killed or wounded to the point that they could not fight, and it took them a while to pluck up the courage to regroup and begin to assault this side of the wall even with the Tyrant Arachnea gone.

After all, they didn't know if we had a second one.

If I had the skills [Second Summon - Rank Three] and [Recall Summon] I could've brought out it again, but I hadn't been able to find either of those skills in Chipker. If I did want to specialize as a summoner in the future, those kinds of skills would be essential.

Still, it wasn't like we were defenseless. Once they got close enough, [Grand Fireball] rained out over them, and those that survived that were few enough to be shot down by arrows.

The lack of blood seemed to have caused their normally hard skin to become brittle and flaky as the arrows were having far greater effect than they had previously, and upon realizing the futility of what they were doing the remaining dryads fell back.

The fighting on the other side of the wall lasted another hour, but at the end, when all was said and done, the enemy had been repelled.

At that point I felt so tired I thought I could just fall asleep right there on the wall. I tried to force myself to stay awake though - and it was only when it was three hours past noon and it looked like the enemy wasn't going to make a second attempt that I dared to leave to try to get some shut-eye.

Great Claw stood still. Nearly perfectly still - as if he were an actual tree.

He had been like this for several hours, standing motionless, not only conserving energy, but hoping to find something.

And suddenly, he felt it.

There!

He felt movement as something jumped over his feet, likely thinking of them as nothing more than tree roots.

And in a flash, he had caught what it was in his hands.

A rabbit - which he promptly beheaded and let the blood spill over onto his roots.

This had been one of the few morsels he had received in the past few days - but for a dryad his size, it was no different from a man being fed a single slice of bread after going hungry for three days.

This could not continue.

As it was, their recent assault upon the human city had failed. Their first attempt was essentially planned to have failed and had only been a fight to test the waters and gain information to plan the second; actual attempt to break through the walls. The second attempt, however, had failed almost as miserably as the first one did.

What else could they do now?

Retreating was not a viable option - though he knew that many of his brethren were considering it and wanted to run to seek greener pastures. But the wisdom of the ancestors had been passed to him through stories, and he had been attentive enough to listen. If they turned around, their enemies would realize how weak they were, and strike them down even as they fled. Given how malnourished some of them were, they could not advance much further as it was, and would find nothing but death beyond.

Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

No, it was do or die here - they needed to find a way into the city. Their last tactic had failed, what more could they do but throw themselves at the walls with all they had?

Around him, there were the occasional moans of pain as some of the ordinary dryads felt their bodies breaking apart without a source of fresh blood. They were not creatures of flesh and blood, but what kept them together still needed nourishment, and without it, they would slowly be chipped away until nothing of them remained.

All throughout this ordeal, no further inspiration from the shadow that had guided them here in the first place came. Many of them had searched for a trace of it, yet it had been fruitless. Now, they cursed the shadow as an evil omen - one which had left them in this situation with no further aide or advice.

In these situations, the dryads had their own methods of trying to reach out to the forces of nature - what humans and lizardmen would understand as spirits.

One among them would be chosen by lots, and would be thrown upon a bed of spears at sunset after they had been told the message the dryads wished to tell the spirits. If the dryad in question did not die by sunrise, they were considered a sinner and killed and the process repeated.

Despite having done this for the last three nights, no help at all had come from the spirits, shadow or not. It looked like the spirits had truly abandoned them.

As Great Claw ruminated upon this, a rain droplet hit his head. And another. And another.

As he gazed out at the Arconia, even though he did not know the name of the river, inspiration struck.

I barely even remembered what had happened after the fight was over, only that I was soon in the warm comfort of a bed.

I was woken up far too soon, at least, that's how it felt like - I looked out the window to see where the sun was to get a good idea what time it was, only to see the sky shrouded by a mantle of gray clouds.

It was raining. This was sort of good I guess - from the point of view of getting fresh water. Not that we had much of a problem with fresh water to begin with, but I saw people holding up pots, pans, and whatever to collect the rainwater, so at the very least if there wasn't a supply issue there was definitely a distribution issue.

It was to be expected though, now that the cold season had ended that we were going to be braced with a few weeks of intermittent showers. Libraria seemed to have seasons somewhat similar to those back on Earth, though I hadn't seen a proper autumn season and it looked like the trees just lost their leaves overnight. Additionally, though it had been cold, it had not snowed an inch and I had been told that it was rare to get snow at all, meaning I guessed that this was the tropical area of the world.

Still, that meant that eventually summer would be back after all this, even if we had to deal with the rain for now.

Which made sitting on the wall even more annoying. Umbrellas and rain coats were a thing in this world - but that didn't stop the other annoyances. Like how the stairs were muddy and wet and easy for people to slip on, or how water fell from any overhangs above onto your unsuspecting face if you weren't careful.

I had never liked the rain, even back on Earth, for these reasons.

But there was something else that worried me.

"Does the rain make fire elemental spells less effective?" I asked Drake. It seemed like a stupid question - and also one that I, a Master Liberomancer, probably should've known the answer to, but didn't.

"Not really," Drake said. "The initial cast, like with [Grand Fireball] goes through uninterrupted, and the immediate explosion afterwards is unimpeded, but the small flames afterwards might fizzle out." He looked up at the rain. "But it shouldn't matter, that last part is only a tiny fraction of what the spell does. Maybe some of them might survive a bit better - but it won't change much." He then turned towards me. "What about your skill though- with the spider and the fire?"

"I… I think the water would put it out," I said. The flames that coated the Tyrant Arachnea were not its own, it was just manipulating them and fanning them out. I couldn't be sure without trying, but I had a hunch that it would not work as well as it would otherwise.

From this distance, I could see a few of the dryads heading towards the walls. [Unobstructed Sight] was actually great in this context, because my vision would've been very badly impeded by the rain drops otherwise. With its help however, I could ignore their motion and obscuration completely.

Their movements were sluggish - I thought initially that the rain would've given them a slight advantage against us, but it also made the soil moist and extremely difficult to navigate. Dryads weren't the fastest creatures around to begin with, and with so many numbers the ground would've turned into a big pile of mud quite soon if they would've tried to assault the walls. They would be left stuck, unable to move, while we rained down projectiles upon them. "I'm more concerned about the rain for another reason," Drake admitted. "If we have another flood, it'll be a problem."

A good portion of the city was at sea level, and as such, flooding was not unheard of. It had been a decade since the last major flood - though Granny Qi had told me all about it and how the first floor of many people's houses at the time had been uninhabitable because of it. It was this thought that was worrying most people now.