The Vice-captain stood up straight on her mount with a frown on her face, the thing Luon was mounted on disturbed their onslaught. With the number of resources that Team Ascension had at this point, there was no way to anticipate this being. It wasn’t enough to summon this thing if one were to include the orcs, boats, weapons, fishmen, and Inzektors into consideration.
However, after engaging in close quarters combat, she realized something off about the battlefield. The battle that they had moments ago was a stalemate causing her to think that their opponents were strong. But when she impaled them with charge attacks, she found an astonishing fact, she thought, ‘They’re too weak.’
With a swift stab from her spear or an arrow from a mermaid, their enemies fell in one blow, if anything their opponents numbered way more than them which made the battle last long. So how did it end up in a stalemate? The fishmen’s spear was laced with some kind of material that will glow when in contact with blood. The orcs on the surface which were able to see the light shot at the wounded members of Team Diva. It didn’t take a genius to know how to fire at moving lights.
And that was when she realized it, the orcs were the lowest tier type known as peons, the only way to differentiate between ranks among orcs was by their combat prowess, vitality, and the tattoos on their body which labeled them based on their strength. However, these orcs were tattooless which symbolized that they were the lowest tier warriors and fell from one simple strike, she hadn’t noticed this before because they were above water. Although peons were weak and had a pathetic amount of combat abilities, they could still demolish a Crypt Of Heroes quickly if there was a right amount of them.
The fishmen, on the other hand, was a basic light warrior type which costs a little bit more than the peon. They were fragile and weak. However, they were numerous. With the amount that Luon had with him, they were at least able to squeeze in one strike to wound their opponents.
The peons were armed with rifles to support the fact that they were physically weak, and the fishmen whose undying will manage to deal a blow to their foes caused these pathetic beings value to rise to the point where they were equivalent to these female warriors.
Realizing that Team Ascension went cheap on units, boats since they were handcrafted, and weapons since they were half-assedly made except for the rifle, the Vice-captain regrets the lack of scouting ability that their team had. It was no surprise that their opponents can summon this monstrosity.
Although it wasn’t as powerful as a Kraken, just one is already troublesome to deal with. Luon was mounted on a being that was a mix of a dragon and a giant toad, its name was Crogan. With powerful thick dragon scaled limbs, this amphibian beast looked like a salamander with gills and fins protruding out of some points. The primary weapons it used to hunt is prey besides the claws was the gigantic tongue that it had inherited from its frog genetics.
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[Crogan] [Rank: Unique] [Combat Level: 60] [Racial Skills: Draconic Might Minor, High Regeneration] [Active Skills: Tongue Attack] [From experimentation of done when researching genetics, this race was created in an attempt in tapping the potential of using draconic blood. Crogans are often used in the Aqua Kingdom as mounts.] |
Despite their disadvantage the Vice-captain didn’t show any negative signs on her face, she gallantly stood up straight on the dolphin as she asked, “Did you already eliminate Claire?”
Luon who had arrived beside Bendan looked down and thought, ‘Who’s Claire? I’m going to assume it’s the girl I just eliminated.’
With a deadpan face, Luon directed his sights to the Vice-captain along with Bendan as he showed interest in the conversation, Luon monotonically said, “Yes, I did.”
Luon tapped his mount with his hand as if petting it. Although, earlier it did reveal that it was able to eliminate them in one blow he didn’t care too much about it since it was so plainly obvious.
Luon turned to face Bendan to see his condition, however, found him still staring at the Vice-captain. His eyes followed Brendan’s line of sight, the view before him caused him to sigh. Luon didn’t pay attention to it carefully before, but due to the fierce fight earlier, her clothes, namely her skin tight bikini, was in a devastated state where it can barely maintain public decency.
Realizing the change on the battlefield she looked at her remaining team member, and they quickly retreated from the battlefield not letting Luon intercept them due to their distance.
Missing the chance to remove two soldiers the battle underwater resumed, Team Diva’s units were leaderless and quickly fell from Team Ascensions attacks.
After clearing up the remnants of Team Diva units the group pressed on to the island uninhibited. Once the group had arrived without any harm done, they noticed a particularly weird setting was created on the beach.
It was a stage, with metallic beams holding its structural design it looked very slick and slim, giving an air of professionalism in its plain design. As Luon and his team carefully advanced in front of the makeshift venue, several streams of gas came from several parts of the stage.
Luon yelled, “Careful! Gas attack!” Before he knew it his hand covered his mouth and he was trying to hold his breath. Their group had quickly done as instructed, several seconds had passed yet not a single reaction was made. Calmly removing his hand away from his mouth, Luon thought, ‘ It’s not poisonous?’
Before Luon could ponder about the possible effects of the gas attack, several sparkling fires erupted on the stage and soon after the remaining three members of Team Diva, including Janet, got on the stage and began to sing a song. Despite not having the ability to appreciate their beauty, their songs enraptured their whole group. The fishmen were happily dancing to the tune, and the orcs cheered while bellowing out nonsense. Bendan and Tyron were then caught up in the flow of things and started to cheer like those fanboys with glow sticks wearing some merchandise of their favorite idol group. Although, orcs, fishmen, and humans were all different races, through gestures, and songs, the communicative feeling can still be brought across.
The only one unaffected by this was Luon, he pondered about their opponent’s purpose of this act and concluded that they were just buying time. Since their Crypt of Heroes was just in front of them, their units would be spawned in an instant while Gizmo will have to take several minutes to arrive. Especially, since there were no boats, limiting the type of units they can purchase and delaying their time arrival due to lack of transportation which factors in what weight category the summoned units were. If each song took around 5 minutes to do, then depending on the number of songs sung, the flow of the battlefield would change.
This, in a sense, was the literal meaning of how words can change lives.
Realizing this Luon, being the party-pooping show wrecker he is, struck out an energy condensed slash at one of the crucial pillars holding up the venue causing it to crash upon the idol members. However, although their main jobs were idols, they were combatants who were greatly valued by the system, their quick reaction saved their lives as they landed several meters away from the venue and buried themselves in the sandy beach.
Janet got up and yelled at Luon, “What are you doing! Why did you destroy the stage?!”
Luon shrugged and said, “Right now we’re battling, it’s not surprising to receive an attack from an enemy right?”
“But isn’t there supposed to be an unannounced agreement to respectively lay down our arms for a monumental moment even during a war? There are many scenes like that written in history,” Janet retorted.
“Monumental moment? Do you mean when girls are singing and dancing something is monumental?” Luon questioned.
“Of course it is!” Janet shamelessly said.
Luon facepalmed from her reaction taking several seconds to regain his ability to remain calm. With a deadpan face, while pulling out his sword, he said, “Enough of your nonsense, just come at me.”
“Nonsense! Did you just call my songs NONSENSE?” Janet angrily said.
Luon didn’t bother replying as he didn’t want to add any more fuel to the fire that he had started. Instead, he began to focus on the battle ahead of him. Janet, however, took his silence as an agreement. She pulled out her sword despite her teacher telling her not to do so and said, “You and me, one on one right now! Unless your afraid that you can’t beat me by yourself.”
Luon nodded and told his allies to back off, creating a miniature ring between the two. The two got into their battle stances and slowly swirled around in a circle while slowly approaching each other. At this moment Janet asked, “Are you going to use NG-Arms?”
Luon while paying attention to her movement said, “I will if you do.”
“I won’t after all only with them off one can see the true difference in skill,” replied Janet.
It was at this moment they were only a few meters off from each other. Quickly Janet dashed giving a stab towards one of Luon’s weak points, and he parried it away without a bat of an eye. Janet display no signs of surprise, as a swordmaster one could see how well experienced another one had with an exchange of blows. The both of them could tell that they almost equally match. The reason they weren’t evenly match was that they both knew, that only one of them could come out on top.
A series of the continuous melody of swords sung out their battle, the orcs cheered at the violent clash of blades. War is one of their redeeming features.
Janet realized the situation was turning more difficult by the second. Although they were equally matched in manipulating the sword, girls were naturally weaker than boys due to their genetic differences.
‘Something has to change,’ she thought as she slowly began to implement sword skills in her attacks, catching Luon off-guard.
However, his keen senses managed to catch these minimal differences allowing him to survive so far. Seeing the attacks were ineffective Janet decided to settle it in one more attack. Taking a weird stance Luon backed off a bit, anticipating for her attack. It happened in an instant, it surpassed his ability to predict the trajectory. He could manage only react based on instincts to the attack.
“Illusionary Sword!” she politely echoed, her blade diverged, and Luon’s ability to predict its movements was shrouded by several different trajectories.
‘Which one is real?’ Luon thought, however, his body reacted faster. His hands responded before he knew it and blood flew all around from this clash. The result incited the numerous bystanders, this single clash caused a chain of reactions.
