“Were at the halfway point so stay vigilant.” Gizmo relayed over the team chat system.
It’s been over 15 minutes since the match started and Tyron was sent with a group of elves to scout out Luon’s region.
Tyron nodded, and his group slowly threaded through Luon’s terrain uncovering the fog as they go. Although they were slowly moving about their pace was still very fast compared to the humans centuries before. The average combat level of these archers was around level 35, and with their physical fitness, they can average about 10 km/hr.
The group that Tyron led was composed of 15 Elven Archers and 7 Elven Mages. The cost to produce these units had exhausted about 2/3rds of Gizmo generated resources so far.
Gizmo’s strategy is to do a long-range push to scout the battle potential of Luon’s forces. With the number of points generated so far, Luon could have already made 3 Gigantic monstrosities like ogres or trolls, but there was no sign any actions which made Gizmo suspicious since he knew that Luon had already scouted him out.
Tyron and the Elven Archers have range superiority and can quickly take down any lightly clothed units. Backed by the Elven Mages they were well defended with barrier magic, and they had the ability to immobilized large units – this group is a difficult opponent to stop.
However, it was still possible to beat this line up thus after Gizmo examines Luon’s set up he was prepared to counter it and do as much damage as he can with this group.
Gizmo sat on his chair examining the tabletop map for any signs of enemies as his troops began to venture into Luon’s territory.
Soon enough Gizmo began to encounter several scout drones which he was forced to shoot down giving Luon a general idea of where Gizmo was coming from.
Even though Luon knew about his general direction Gizmo was confident that this group could come out unscathed, not only were the elves great long range attackers they were also equipped with boots to accelerate the retreat process after scouting Luon out.
After about 3 more minutes the group had traversed about half of Luon’s uncharted territory when the Elven Archers had sensed something above them, they quickly armed themselves in preparations for an encounter.
Tyron who was in the front of the group had found the target before the Elven Archers had and he was already aiming his bow towards it.
It was several kilometers above their current location and was hovering with confidence as regular arrows cannot reach it, a helicopter flew directly above them.
However Tyron was not a regular archer, he was a fantastic archer from a famous tribe well known for its hunters, and one of their renowned abilities was an inherited skill to shoot a magical projectile at long distances after charging their mana.
Without a moment to lose Tyron charged his arrow applying mana causing it to emit an eerie, crimson electric charge. He let go of the amplified arrow, and it quickly shot through the sky. It moved like a meteorite as it accurately shattered the flight mechanism on the helicopter.
The helicopter recognizing the potential threat of Tyron’s arrow and the damage it had done to it didn’t retreat. Instead, it began to steer in the direction of where Tyron’s group was.
Like a sunken flying ship, it was determined to take the group down with it.
“Retreat it’s a Kamikaze attack!” Gizmo yelled in the intercoms after recognizing what Luon’s intentions were.
Quickly the group scattered from the explosion caused by the helicopter however as they did a volley of Qi Energy slashes came from deep within the forest decimating a quarter of the group.
Tyron and the group of elves who had managed to escape the explosion were shocked to find two Qi Cultivators, and Bendan had ambushed them when they were distracted. But they soon regain their senses as this attack was outside the range of their sight which should have cost them a lot of Qi energy thus disabling their ability to contest against Tyron’s group.
Gizmo who after realizing this gave the order for Tyron and the elves to chase after them.
As Tyron’s group quickly ascended the landscape after the direction of where Bendan’s attacks came from they encountered a series of deadly traps, significantly slowing the group’s advance.
By the time they reached the location of the attack, they were gone. Unfortunately, even with Tyron’s tracking ability, he was not able to find the direction of his target went as there were a series of vehicle tracks on the ground going in several different directions.
Tyron was exhausted, the traps were difficult to avoid and were devilishly placed to interconnect with one another, this had caused Tyron’s group to go down to half of what he was deployed with.
“Forget it, retreat, the helicopter, and those Qi cultivators should have cost them a lot of points, and since they exhausted a lot of energy, it should be awhile before they can re-engage. Come back, and we’ll do a final offensive push decimating their Crypt of Heroes.” Gizmo said as he began to summon a group of orcs armed with heavy shields to deal with the energy waves created by Qi Cultivators.
Tyron dissatisfyingly accepted the order, he had missed Brendan, and due to the traps, he had lost several minutes worth of resources.
The groups of elves began to retreat the same way they came avoiding any potential traps along the way.
Tyron quickly stopped his tracks halfway through the minefield of disaster as he promptly sensed something different about the bloody and smoky air around him.
He focused his eyes on the surroundings and quickly realized that the group had been enclosed. From a distance, Tyron could see many different figures armed with some shabby cloak hiding their appearances.
‘How can there be so many of them? Didn’t the cultivators cost tons of points?’ Tyron quickly thought as he began to figure a plan out of this situation.
What troubled him the most was that over half of these cloaked individuals clearly had old-fashioned gunpowder-based automatic rifles. With this lineup, it would be difficult to come out of this unharmed.
Tyron planned the retreat route and signaled Gizmo his plans. As he did, to add even more difficulty to the escape another helicopter hovered above the group lighting their surroundings and removing the shade from the trees – uncovering their location with light.
The group of cloaked men raised their rifles in the general direction of where the group was and fired.
Tyron had quickly placed his plan in motion, he had no time to rethink it. He had to act before the group was eliminated.
The elven mages were useless in this situation, if Luon had used energy rifles instead the barrier magic would have protected them but he had used physical projectiles, Tyron and his group had to dodge bullets and cross rough terrain using the surrounding trees as cover.
Tyron quickly reached the weakest part of the blockade eliminating the cloaked figures around him.
He was surprised to find that the cloaked figures were actually robots! There was no blood or gushes of oil it was a simple topple revealing their metallic figure.
All the sudden his sixth senses activated and he needed to get out of where he was right now.
The robots he had quickly killed with his bow began to churn releasing a devastating explosion.
Somehow Tyron had survived but was in the state of death, he laid on the ground staring blankly at the sky.
Several figures silently closed in on him, and with a click, it was all over.
Tyron was eliminated from the match.
…
“Wow I was dubious at first, but your plan worked as you expected it to.” Bendan who was tired after releasing a long distance qi attack said.
“Well if you think about it, although the reaction speed is much slower than actually having power soldiers – to face off Gizmo’s lineup as long as the pieces were arranged, a match like this can be easily handled by cheap robots,” Luon replied smugly.
At first, Luon was dissatisfied at how the catalog rated humans so lowly. Even if humans were weak, they were all unique in their own way. The properties and statistics of each human were different, but their knowledge was all consolidated. Every minute Luon was able to summon 20 regular humans all with their own individual thought processes.
A few minutes in the match Luon had summoned more than 40 humans, several power tools and a bunch of scraps to construct several helicopters and robots as well as weapons for them.
With the advancement of technology making helicopters and robots with specialized tools only took minutes to do. Of course, there was no time to test whether or not they function correctly but Luon using his BMPU appraisal skill to evaluate the construction process.
Although untested, the BMPU gave positive output stating that it practically picture perfect and he decided to roll with that decision.
When Tyron had invaded his territory by shooting the drone scouts, Luon had a rough idea of how fast they were traveling and how long their attack range was.
Luon also confirmed this once again by using a helicopter to hover about the general area.
Using this timing, he also got 2 Qi Cultivators which had cost about 7 minutes worth of points and Bendan to ambush and disorient the origin of the arrow attack. At the same time, he arranged the robots to stealthy place traps to allow Bendan to retreat safely.
There was no way to construct an AI for these robots in a couple minutes, so they were remotely controlled by the humans he had summoned.
The disadvantage to this was that the sensor built into the robot was fragile and the signal wasn’t that strong in the forest. So using another helicopter Luon lit the area the robots had to shoot towards after enclosing Tyron’s group in a circle, although inaccurate it still caused significant damage.
Luon had defeated Tyron at almost no cost at all, with the loss of several materials used for the helicopter and robots he was brimming with confidence as the overall value of his set up is now almost double if not triple of what Gizmo had left.
With the elimination of Tyron, Luon arranged his current army, Bendan and the other 2 Qi cultivators who recovered using Qi energy pills to walk into the unknown arrangement Gizmo had in store for him.
He had many points to play around with but who knows what was in-store for him.
Using this momentum, it was time to counter-attack.
