Book 3: Chapter 24
Many of the people in the group, especially those closest to him, just stared on in shock and fear. He couldn’t blame them, he had a dozen powerful and scary looking creatures at his back. With a thought he sent them out to surround the group, the moment people saw this a few tried to run.
“Dumb move.” He didn’t even move, but one of his hounds sprinted to the people fleeing at the same time one of his eagles flew after them. Within seconds all those from the small group who had run were either torn into flaming pieces or blasted with lightning. Just like that 10 people died and he hadn’t done a thing.
For killing your first enemy 500 Event points awarded.
For being the first person to kill an enemy 5,000 Event points awarded.
For being the first person to kill an enemy in their own territory 5,000 Event points awarded.
There was a few more after this which he ignored, needing to concentrate on the here and now. He liked that he was getting all these firsts though, it showed that in this war he was the one making the first move.
“I have some questions if you would be so kind to answer them. The first is…”
“No.”
He was interrupted mid sentence which he was not impressed with. Looking at who spoke he saw six people walking towards him through the crowd. They were the ones at middle E grade and if he was to make a wild guess, the ones leading this group. He also got the feeling that they knew more than anyone else here and that they would happily die in the event before telling him anything.
“Fine, others will talk when you are dead.” He had planned to kill them all anyway, this just sped up the process a little.
From one second to the next his summons went from standing guard to attacking everyone closest to them. Although everyone here was E grade, there was a big difference from being early E grade compared to peak E grade. His summons had enough power to kill a D grade and these people could do nothing when faced with their strength, even if they all fought back they would have a lot of difficulty taking out all of his summons.
Shaun did not stand idle while his summons attacks, at the same moment they had went for the kill, so did he. He closed the distance between where he stood and six people that had interrupted him in a moment. He had both swords out and killed two of them before they had a chance to react. One of them used a spell to produce a barrier between him and those still standing but it was nothing.
Smashing through the shield was like tearing a piece of paper, once he was through he slashed with his sword, letting out a fire strike that incinerated two more of the six as well as a large amount of the group behind them. He hadn’t meant to kill so many with his attack though, being so used to fighting stronger enemies had changed his perception of how powerful his attacks were. If he ever wanted to keep people alive to question, he needed to pull back a little on his attacks.
With only two people left of the main group of six he summoned a dozen of his elemental blades, all made with lightning, and had them surround these last two people, all of them were a mere inch from their skin, three spun around each of their neck and three more aimed at disposable limbs.
“Are you sure you didn’t want to talk?” While he spoke he gave the command to his summons to pull back and go back to guarding the large group. He had several notifications waiting for him and through his echo he felt that there was less than 1000 people now left alive, all others had been killed and their bodies gone.
“You really are a monster.” He had left the man who had said no earlier alive, but now instead of confidence and arrogance he looked broken and defeated.
“I am strong, much stronger than you, anyway. That doesn’t make me a monster, it just makes you weak.” Shaun was aiming to break the man so that he would speak to him and give up whatever information he knew. “Want to answer my questions now?”
There was now only silence from the group. Once he called off his summons the fighting stopped. In seconds he had killed more than half of this group, everyone knew that there was no way they would win the fight, he hadn’t even gone all out.
“We know we outnumber your side by 5 to 1, nearly every settlement joined us and on average our people are stronger than yours. You can’t win this war. It doesn’t matter how strong you are, you won’t be able to kill everyone before we wear you down and kill you. Is that what you wanted to know?”
If this guy was telling the truth then he now knew numbers and he already knew that they hadn’t claimed the outer fortress yet. He could torture the guy to make sure he wasn’t lying but that wasn’t really his style. “Thank you for cooperating.”
With a thought he sent 10 of his mirror blades rushing through the crowd and when he had covered as much area as he could he blew them all up turning the area into a storm of lightning. From one moment to the next he had killed nearly all the remaining people from this army, with a final thought his eagles finished off the rest.
For killing over 2,000 enemy in their own territory 3,000 Event points awarded.
……………………………………………………………………………
For killing an opposing teams army 2,000 Event points awarded.
For killing an opposing teams army single handedly 10,000 Event points awarded.
For winning the first fight within the event 12,000 Event points awarded.
There was a few more notifications in there but he mostly skimmed them. They mostly just said what he already knew, he killed lots of people and won the fight on his own. It had been a ridiculously easy fight and it bode well for what was to come. He did like that the bodies of those he killed didn’t stay around, they simply disappeared the moment they died. There were signs that a fight had occurred, mostly from his own skills, but he didn’t particularly care that there were traces of him being here left behind.
Shaun Clermont: The Patheon has not yet claimed the outer fortress, have killed one of their armies and you should see more points available to spend. Move our army quicker to get to the outer fortress so we can push into their side. Was told they outnumber us around 5 to 1. Not confirmed but sounds reasonable.
While he waited for replies, which he was actually going to read through, he pulled back all of his summons and drew the mana back into his body. It didn’t take long for replies to come through, with them he had several people voice their opinions.
Vivenne Grace: Agreed, we need to push while we have the advantage. How big was the army and what was their strength like? We hold off upgrading any of our positions until we know when and where we will be fighting The Pantheon with our own armies.
Joshua Philps: If we push our own armies we should make it to the outer fortresses within the next few days. They will need rest before we push further, we can send our strongest strike teams ahead now. If we don’t expect The Pantheon to hit us in our own territory we can spread ourselves further.
Li Al Sal: Shaun, what is your next move?
He read through the messages and considered what he should do next. He could either guard the area between the central and outer fortress, stopping them from gaining ground or he could cause some chaos at one of their central fortress and see who came running, effectively killing off more of The Pantheons team while hopefully stopping their approach.
Shaun Clermont: Over 2,000 in the army, most at early E grade. All dead in seconds. I will move in to one of their central fortresses, see what trouble I can cause.
After a bit more back and forth it was agreed that they would push forward quickly. There was some hesitation with letting him move further into enemy territory without any back up but in the end they let him do what he wanted. They only asked that he not die, which he scoffed at, he had no plans on dying in this event.
Continuing on in his travels, he didn’t head directly to the central fortress, instead he scouted out the area that separated the outer and central fortresses to see if he could find any more armies to kill off. Like with his own side, sending groups ahead and gaining control of the positions was a top priority, the biggest difference being that on his side they could rely on him to move quickly, find everything they needed and report positions back for others to control.
This removed a lot of the time needed to search for what they needed. Without him they would have had to spend a lot more time searching, probably more time than The Pantheon as there was significantly less of them. The only reason they were so far ahead of the Pantheon was because of him, but even if they managed to take the lead this early, keeping it would be much harder.
They couldn’t half commit to a plan, every body counted as with such an imbalance in sides they would need to have a majority of their people used if they had any chance of success in the event. Over the next 6 hours he managed to find two more armies, both were roughly the same size as the first and none were particularly strong. He didn’t bother with questioning anyone though, they were just sent out to search for positions, using the weak with a few people in power to hopefully come across the fortresses they needed.
With the amount of people out searching, he concluded that the central fortress on this side were claimed and that a good amount of their people had made it to the middle of their side. At this point all these people were just giving him points, they proved to be no challenge and all it was doing was increasing the gap between him and everyone else on the leaderboard. It was also giving his side more points to use early on, another thing that would help to bridge the gap caused by having less people fighting for him.
The closer he got to the first central fortress the more people he came across. Rather than armies though they were small groups that were keeping look out for something as they weren’t moving much but scanning the surroundings.
After killing three of their small armies they now knew that he was here and killing them off. These groups of people were probably meant to report back anything they saw, even if it meant losing their lives in the event.
He did consider killing them all off before he got to the fortress, rather than do this though he just shifted higher into the air and blended into the wind so that no one would see his approach. He would rather surprise the unsuspecting people in the fortress than give them time to prepare. If he had any hope of claiming a fortress out from under them, even if for a moment, surprise had to be on his side.
When he finally made it to the central fortress he was pleased with what he saw. There was a lot of people inside of it, easily over 100,000, but most seemed to be exhausted and outside of a few key pockets of people, most were in the early to mid E grade. Some though were stronger, reaching just above the middle E grade, this was rare though.
From the general feel of the people within, they had no idea he was here. Even floating directly above the fortress they had no idea that an enemy was in their midst. The only thing he had left to do was decide how he wanted to make his entrance.