The Liberomancer [Isekai Progression LitRPG]

The day had finally come when the dryads were at our doorstep. The amorphous blemish on the horizon was now distinguished into tens of thousands of individual dryads.

My first thought was that they were even uglier now that I could actually see them up close. That drawing had been extremely generous as to how humanoid their faces looked - they were only vaguely human, looking as if someone had taken a club to a very crude model of a human head.

I also saw exactly how it was that they drank the blood of their victims. Their long, lanky arms were used to suspend their prey upside-down, and they would then slit their throats, lapping up the blood as it rained onto their faces. Some of them preferred to simply decapitate their prey, however, and then used their feet to lap up blood from the puddles on the ground - their 'roots' seemed to be able to absorb blood as easily as water.

[Unobstructed Sight] was actually more a burden in this scenario because I could see this horrifying sight in very nice detail even in the low illumination of the rising sun. I had to look away when I saw a kid as young as five years old about to be devoured.

If their goal was to terrorize us - I would be lying if I said it wasn't working.

I was also able to see the so-called dryad lords as they stood taller than their counterparts - other than their heights and some slight differences in the texture of their trunks I didn't notice that much special about them.

The dryad horde did not seem to really have much organization to it - the merchant caravan was far closer to a well-disciplined military group than these things, which looked like a collection of wild zebra or the like, standing and going wherever they pleased.

I couldn't identify anything resembling an overall leader who we might be able to potentially assassinate and get this whole thing over with quickly - but this also meant that they were poorly led and a strong coordinated attack was unlikely.

Zeke had been posted near the eastern end of the wall, while Lance was near the main gate leading into the city. I had been assigned to the western end which was commanded by Drake.

I would've preferred to be in some other place - I did not really like Drake and I had a feeling that this sentiment was mutual. He had given a half-hearted apology regarding his actions in the restaurant earlier, saying that he was drunk and hadn't been completely aware of what he was doing, when we were working together, but things were still frosty between us. Putting that aside I also didn't think he was as good a leader as Zeke.

The Rank Three Liberomancers were the main pillars of defense with Rank Two and Rank One Liberomancers supporting them with magic like [Greater Reach] which was a buffing spell that increased the range of someone's spells. Why couldn't we just have a bunch of people buff one individual and make them super strong? Because buffs of the same type overwrote each other, you could only have single buff for a certain thing. [Greater Reach] was Rank Two but there was a weaker version of the spell called [Lesser Reach], if someone cast [Lesser Reach] on a target and then also [Greater Reach], [Greater Reach] would overwrite the [Lesser Reach]'s boost, and you couldn't stack multiple [Greater Reach] spells on a single target from multiple people. You could however, cast [Alacrity] on top of it since that spell boosted Speed and not range, and was considered a different kind of buff.

It was a pity that buffing magic worked that way - because in this world the power of a single person could eclipse that of a thousand ordinary men, and if only that power could be magnified further. If we could all stack hundreds of buffs on Lance, I think we wouldn't even had needed to worry about the incoming army. The dryads had not made any moves yet - some isolated groups wandered near the walls only to be turned into smithereens by a [Grand Fireball].

Other than magic, we did also try using conventional weapons, but the dryad's skin was harder than even tree bark and ordinary arrows seemed to do little to nothing. There was a niche Rank Two skill called [Armor-Piercing Arrow] that could enchant up to ten arrows a day and greatly increase their penetration power and damage, but the buff only lasted for three minutes at maximum. The dryads had no obvious vital points where they could be hit to incapacitate them, so rather than using that kind of skill direct magic was more effective.

Drake approached me as I was watching the dryad horde off in the distance. "Master Liberomancer, there were a few things I wanted to speak to you about before we begin."

You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

He was wearing armor and had an elegant sword attached to his hip - if you ran out of mana, or just needed to buy yourself a few seconds, a weapon was extremely helpful. I had rented out a set of wooden lacquer armor from the palace (another perk of my new job) as well as a wooden staff with an iron shod tip. Plate armor would've been better for defense, but the thing was that I was not used to wearing it and it weighed so much that it would more likely than not cause me to collapse if I tried. I was after all, just a college student from Earth, not someone who had trained to fight since birth.

There was a spell called [Lighten Armor] that could reduce the effective weight of armor by half without affecting its durability, but its effect only lasted for an hour and it was Rank Two, meaning it would consume so much mana it was generally not worth using especially in a drawn-out siege like this. Someone very important like Drake could hire someone to assist him who could cast that spell on him so he didn't have to spend his own mana, but I didn't have that luxury. Making my armor lighter by casting [Lighten Armor] on me over and over was not something a Rank Two Liberomancer could be spared for. I also had a feeling that I wouldn't be able to tolerate even half of that armor's weight regardless. Much like with buffing magic, casts of [Lighten Armor] could not be stacked on top of each other to reduce the effective weight of armor even further. There was one other issue that I had to keep in mind. Just like back on Earth during medieval times, you could cover yourself in metal armor so thick you were basically invulnerable unless your enemy brought out a heavy bludgeoning weapon like a mace or war hammer. However, there was a drawback to turning yourself into a giant metal lobster in this world that didn't exist back on Earth in the Middle Ages - fire.

Many people basically had built-in flamethrowers that they could lob at you, and while you could protect yourself against that by having a high Resistance, that only reduced damage done directly from magical attacks. The heat of the impact could cause the metal to warm up to the point that it would weld to your skin, and your Resistance would not help you against that.

Granted, no one on the enemy side could shoot fire, but it was something to be wary of in case one day I managed to train myself to actually move while wearing a suit of armor. Not to mention, the dryads couldn't shoot fire, but there were people on our side who could. Friendly fire was not actually friendly - granted, I didn't think anyone would deliberately attack each other, but there could always be accidents.

Drake, unlike me, had clearly been groomed from birth to not only wear his set of plate armor, but to also run and possibly climb up ladders in it. I did not have that kind of strength - and I had to admit that despite any cold feelings I had towards him, his armor looked incredibly cool. A large amount of work had gone into it, and since it was lizardmen armor, there was also a tailpiece in the form of an iron covering that went over the top of his tail, still leaving it free to move as the underside was not covered save for the very tip. It looked exquisite enough to be a work of art rather than a battle piece, and probably cost far more than even a Rank Three grimoire to make.

As it was, the purpose of the armor, regardless of what it was made of, was to block any ranged attacks that might happen to come our way. We were well sheltered on the wall, with numerous points from where we could rain down spells while barely exposing ourselves, so I wasn't too overtly concerned with this.

Not to mention that in addition to the lower-ranked Liberomancers helping us, there were also normal soldiers who were ready to create a shield wall; a barrier that would encase us in case the enemy did reach the top of the walls somehow.

"Sure, what's going on?" I asked. Was there another situation that I'd have to mediate?

"I couldn't help but notice that you seem very tired," he said. "You look like you're about to doze off - is everything alright?"

"Yeah," I said. "Sorry, but I was up all night for a few days just to finish this grimoire - but it's worth it because I can use [Grand Fireball] now."

The difference in firepower between [Fireball] and [Grand Fireball] was enormous. [Fireball] could kill between six and twelve common soldiers depending on how closely they were standing near each other so long as one's Attack stat was high enough, while [Grand Fireball] was known to easily consume a hundred men or more and had five times the range of [Fireball]. Making Rank Three grimoires was much harder than Rank Two, but they were also correspondingly much more powerful as well.

A Rank Two spell consumed two points of mana to cast, while a Rank Three one consumed three points. Even though the cost of casting [Grand Fireball] was fifty percent higher, it more than made up for it with its results, not to mention that Rank Three Liberomancer generally had larger mana pools than Rank Two ones.

Rank Four [Inferno] was said to be able to kill a thousand or more men, and probably had a higher range than [Grand Fireball] as well.

Fire elemental spells in general had the advantage of having high, well, firepower - they were very good at attacking large groups of weak enemies. Conversely, their weakness was that the damage was hard to control and these spells were ill-suited for use in narrow places like city corridors because it was far too easy for innocent bystanders to be caught in the blast radius. Lightning and wind elemental spells were better at dealing damage precisely to a few targets, but conversely, would not do as well as fire elemental spells in a situation like this involving an open field.

Thank goodness that I had finally read that grimoire and learned [Grand Fireball] in the nick of time for this battle!

However, Drake had concerns beyond my very apparent fatigue.