Chapter 177: Crazed Stones
Translator: imperfectluck Editor: imperfectluck
From the very start, I wasn’t worried about the Maple defense line’s battlefield, as I had made plenty of preparations there.
An organized squadron for the Four Elemental Swordcasters, the Borealis and its supporting new era battleships, and the various new inventions by our engineers for defending the castle. Imperceptibly, I had already acquired so much strength, and I left them all at Maple Castle. With them there, I believed that it would be quite difficult to break past the Maple defense line.
Okay, apart from the above, I also prepared plenty of other things, as the more trump cards one had, the better. The side that was able to keep his trump cards until the final moment would always have a much greater chance of victory.
‘The Maple Castle defense line isn’t allowed to fail.’ That was something I absolutely wouldn’t allow.
After all, that was the most critical location of this entire battle. If they failed, that meant that order and balance of power itself would collapse in the north, which could only result in the humans retreating towards the south and giving up the Northlands. In that case, even if we won here, it would still be an overall defeat where we could only struggle to survive and wait for the enemy to encircle us and defeat us at their leisure.
Of course, if there was some sort of unexpected sudden situation, such as some Evil God of Chaos risking his own demise to personally descend upon the mortal realm (the current Elemental Tide wouldn’t allow True Gods to descend, so any that dared to personally descend basically wouldn’t be able to return,) which would make it impossible to defend the Maple defense line.
If that type of situation occurred, I also gave them instructions to simply board the Borealis and escape as quickly as possible. If a veteran God of Chaos personally came out, then it would take another veteran God of Order to deal with him. If the Chaos side was willing to make such a sacrifice, the True Gods of Order would surely send out one or two cannon fodders to play the game of dying together in unison.
At the current moment, with the combat situation still unclear, the most difficult part was left up to us.
The Antuen defense army’s elimination of the remaining Beastmen squads was rather successful, as we easily recovered the enemy’s temporary battle camps outside the castle with our advantage in numbers and the Winged Tribes’ ambushes as protection. But right after that, we met with an obstacle – the Earth Elemental God Emordilorcan.
As the most ancient of the Four Elemental Gods, I knew that the Earth Elemental God Emordilorcan would be a ridiculous one, but I never expected how truly ridiculous he was.
As the lord of all earth elementals, his body wasn’t as large as I expected, nor did he have their strange features. He merely resembled an enormous stone giant, and he even appeared slightly smaller than the Wind Elemental God. But when he truly began fighting, he proved the old adage about how “fighting isn’t about how big you are, but how hard your fists are.”
As the Earth Elemental God roared, just one light swing of his fist would be able to crush a huge wind elemental. When a thundering Wind Elemental Lord came over to assist, he easily smashed it between his fingers, and when a floating battleship attacked him with its cannons while being covered by support fire from the floating castle, he jumped up and turned the floating castle into nothing but dust with a triple kick.
Anything below the power of an Elemental Lord, he could deal with using a single kick. As for the annoying Winged Tribes and tiny battleships, just the blast from his roar’s soundwaves were enough to crush them to pieces.
“Monk? This bastard’s actually a top-level Monk! How outrageous.”
Yep, Emordilorcan was doubtlessly an expert barehanded combat Master Monk. There were no rules saying that elementals weren’t able to practice martial arts, but rather the opposite, for the Earth Elemental God whose body was far harder than steel, his physical characteristics only vastly improved the explosiveness of those martial techniques. Just one shoulder press would easily crush many mountains, and if he tried to transmit his force through a mountain to a cow, I don’t know how the cow will end up, but the mountain would surely be eradicated.
Emordilorcan’s steps were steady and agile, and it was quite easy for him to make Camdian dizzy before suddenly ambushing the Wind Elemental God Camdian with a heavy blow.
Compared to the dexterous Emordilorcan, the gigantic Camdian actually seemed like a slow fatty that could only take blows without even a chance to get in any of his own. Camdian was a typical mage-type Elemental Lord, but the thunder he gathered was unable to lock on to any target, since he wasn’t even able to see his enemy Emordilorcan clearly, so how could he possibly hit him?
The ancient battle between elementals repeated itself in the modern day, but unfortunately, Camdian learned to his despair that while his own strength had indeed increased greatly, Emordilorcan had already changed his entire battling style, and Camdian was not even able to get a single hit in. This strange style caused the gap between Camdian and Emordilorcan to widen even further.
“Hurry, we don’t have much time left.”
Just by seeing the situation, I knew that it was impossible for Camdian to win, and even how long he could last was a problem. For such an old fox like Camdian, it was all too normal for him to run away if he couldn’t win, there was zero possibility at all of Camdian fighting to his death.
After hesitating for a moment, I still decided to send him a message.
“Hang in there, we’re currently closing the Earth Elemental Door, after it’s closed, Emordilorcan’s power will be reduced greatly, so that you can grab your chance to take your revenge. If you miss this opportunity, you’ll never defeat Emordilorcan for the rest of your life.”
In order for him to not retreat when he hadn’t been truly defeated yet, I could only give Camdian a strong motivation, and just as I expected, Camdian who had begun to cower worked up his courage again at hearing there was still a chance.
At this moment, under the cover of the chaotic battle, our knights were riding in the snow. Now, we had already entered the Earth Elementals’ Labyrinth, and our target was of course the currently opening dimensional door.
Our combat strategy had been clear from the start. The Wind Elementals and Winged Tribes and even the brave warriors (cannon fodder) that were rushing as the vanguard were merely a smokescreen to disguise our true motive.
Antuen’s defense army had been through too many long bitter battles, so it was heavily fatigued and injured with severe losses to their elite troops. Having them participate in this high-level battle between elementals would basically be akin to having them suicide, which was why I gave them the task of cleaning up the remaining roaming Beastmen squads, while I took the elites and rushed for the Earth Elemental dimensional door under cover of the battle between elementals to destroy the most critical strategic target.
If the Earth Elemental dimensional door was allowed to completely open, no matter what happened next in the combat situation, the side of Chaos would most likely have obtained enough strength to win overwhelmingly, and everything else that we did would be nothing more than mending the fence after losing the sheep, with irreversible damage having been done already.
“Hah!”
I shouted in a low voice and defeated the enemy in front of me with a single blow. This small earth elemental was barely worth mentioning, and didn’t even require my sword.
But the deeper we went into the Earth Elemental Labyrinth, the more tiny earth elementals that appeared. They were nothing more than token creatures generated by the Earth Elemental dimensional door, and they didn’t even have self-awareness, so spending time on them was pointless.
“Just how long are we going to have to kill these for?”
There were so many walls before us, and we kept hitting dead ends. Doubtlessly, the earth elementals had constructed this into an intricate maze during the interval between fighting with nothing else to do. Our target was naturally located in the deepest part of the labyrinth, and all the guardians that we passed on our way was evidence that my inference was correct.
“Underhanded mortals, my master has long since anticipated your plot. I’m the guardian of this door, the Earth Elemental Lord Alidos, don’t… Ahh!”
With Adam as the vanguard, everything was easy. This Alidos fellow didn’t even finish giving his speech before he instantly bit the dust. Alidos was the twelfth guardian that we met already; this was just like a dungeon-exploring game, with the mini-bosses coming at us one at a time. It was a pity that we received no experience from this, though.
Since Emordilorcan could return here at any moment, time was of the essence. That’s why I looked questioningly over towards Margaret. If my memory served me correctly, this Great Saint was the most skilled in time and space magic, so perhaps she would have some method to help us.
“Teleporting everyone to the central location of the labyrinth? Impossible, there’s not a single mage that can teleport people to an unknown location, and this type of irregular structure is the worst for teleportation. If there’s even the smallest miscalculation with the distance, we’d be teleported into the walls…”
Then could we only continue onwards one level at a time? We still had to listen to those large rocks and stone giants give their boring speeches? This was evidently not a good idea.
“Hah, I’m the Worm King Kasolai, don’t even imagine that you can pass the door that I guard…”
Okay, fine, I actually did want to hear this guy’s speech, since a large worm that was over a dozen meters long was quite a rare sight. But the SemiGod mage who seemed quite anxious evidently didn’t have the patience for that, since right after the self-styled Worm King crawled out of the dirt, he was sliced into seventeen pieces.
The Earth Elemental Door still hadn’t opened fully, so the only earth elementals and other earth attribute creatures that were able to come to this dimension were limited in power, but this definitely wasn’t their upper limits. We could take care of these guys easily, but just recalling back to that megaton rock who was currently beating up the Wind Elemental God while playing at triple kicks in midair, I knew that I definitely had zero chance of victory against the Earth Elemental God.
This was a race against time. If the Wind Elemental God decided to run off on his own, I didn’t have the ability to fool such a useful cannon fodder anymore.
“Glina…”
“It’s Clint!”
“Okay, Clint, it’s up to you now, we’re the demolition crew! You understand, right?”
From long ago, when I was stuck in an irritating maze in some video game, I had always imagined that if I met an underground labyrinth in real life, I would definitely use a different method to go through the maze.
“Goblin Engineers have an old saying: ‘Explosions are an art form,’ so allow me to witness your artistry. Come, give me a good explosion! Everyone get back, Clint, explode everything for me! We’re not going to take the door, we’re taking the window!”
Yep, I should have done this much earlier, the exit was right before us with only a thin wall in between, why did I need to circle around all over again instead of using a hammer to crash through the wall?
“I’m tired of these damned mazes, as well as all those maze designers with nothing better to do, why do I have to play such a slow pathfinding game with you? If there’s no path, just open one up through the wall, if there’s no staircase, I’ll just go right through the floor. Just watch, even if this maze has 999 floors, I’ll pierce through all of them with this one explosion!”
Clint’s comments just now as he gave me a huge thumbs-up and viciously pressed down on his explosives button were indicative that he agreed with my attitude, as expected of my relative.
“Boom!”
The rest was simple, as the Elemental Tide would show us the way. The closer we got to the Dimensional Door, the thicker the elements became, all we had to do was follow the trail.
“Boom!”
Yet another hole appeared in the wall before us. Using such a high-speed tactic to conquer the maze, all we had to do was continuously sweep away the broken stones, then jump down to the next floor. We were rapidly approaching the center of the maze. Judging by Margaret’s crystal ball that was aiding our pathfinding, we were close to our target.
“Tsk, let me do it, I promise we can go through three or four floors at once, it’ll be much quicker.”
The Goblin Engineer Jinya.Beyar saw how cool Clint was acting, and seemed to get jealous. He wanted to help out as well, but we prevented him from doing so.
“So you want all of us to be buried alive?”
At this, Jinya fell speechless.
After all, having Clint using explosives in the first place rather than Jinya who had even more powerful bombs at his disposal was doubtlessly because Clint was far more adept at precision. Clint wouldn’t bury us while opening up the path to the next floor.
Clint became more and more practiced with each explosion, causing less unnecessary broken rocks to be exploded with each one, so our progress kept increasing in pace.
“I’ve never thought you were so reliable before, good job!”
Just as I gave Clint a big thumbs-up as well, the entire ground began shaking violently.
“Boom!” “Boom!”
Continuous exploding sounds came from all around us as the ceiling began to drop dirt pieces, with one large piece almost hitting my face.
“I really can’t praise you… oh, it wasn’t you? Then who was it?”
“Roland, I’ll refrain from asking what these strange hand gestures mean, there’s a reaction of Godly energy right above us, let’s prepare.”
Margaret’s words immediately solved the puzzle for us. For a SemiGod mage like her, the Elemental Gods’ energy waves were just like bright lights in the darkness that were impossible to ignore.
At this moment, Camdian’s message suddenly arrived.
“Flesh allies of mine, my apologies… I hope that we still have a chance to work together again in the future.”
Should I say that guy was supposed to be nice after all? At the very least, he still passed along a message, but even though Emordilorcan and Camdian were both Ancient Elemental Gods that had just awakened from being sealed, Camdian wasn’t even able to last twenty minutes, how incredibly weak.
“It’s not that I’m weak, Emordilorcan’s just too strong.”
Okay then, this guy even remembered to add one more sentence to give himself an excuse.”
“Pound!”
The current booming sounds and trembles coming from above us told us that this was no time to be blaming Camdian, as the Earth Elemental God Emordilorcan was probably right above us already. Just recalling that figure who was brutally beating up the Wind Elemental God from earlier gave me a headache.
But we were already in the enemy’s home territory, and it was quite possible that Emordilorcan had abilities like “move through the earth” or “walk through walls,” so attempting to escape now would be impossible.
“Damn it, Adam!”
“Margaret, take everyone with you, your knowledge is needed there.”
It was great to be working with old partners. Margaret knew that this wasn’t the time for words, so she merely waved her staff and cast a few buffs on us as she nodded and took everyone on to the next floor beneath us.
Meanwhile, Adam and I drew our swords and prepared for that guy to come find us.
“Hey, how’s your strength these days, don’t be a dead weight here.”
“Hmph, do you see this sword in my hands? The Roland Sacred Sword, forged 14 times, enhanced to +7, with power that almost matches the 13 Godly Artifacts. Heh heh heh, take a good look at that rusty metal in your hands, it looks like it’s only Superior quality, with no enhancements. I’m your granddaddy, and the difference between us is like that of a pay-to-win player and a starving refugee player, who cares if your level is high, can you one-hit-KO everything in sight, if you can’t take it then come PK with me, your granddaddy will instantly defeat you.”
Adam didn’t even know how to respond to this. Every time they met a similar situation, Roland would always enter his crazed state and say all these incomprehensible things.
But since Adam also knew long beforehand that they would meet such a strong enemy, of course he would be prepared. So, he silently put away his cheap Superior quality sword, and shook out a shortsword from his sleeve, then suddenly infused it with the power of thunder and caused a one-meter long Lightsword to appear.
“A rechargeable Lightsword? That’s at least a legendary weapon, it must be famous in history, this Elven-style carving on it, is it Xiler’s Banshee’s Sword? So you were a pay-to-win player as well, why didn’t you bring this out earlier? Were you planning on using the trope of ‘I am not left-handed’?”
Adam lightly touched his sword’s tip, causing that clear crystal sword to seemingly become far more intimidating after it was infused with the fury of the wind. He felt quite fortunate that he was able to find a weapon which matched his characteristics.
“I gave the Sentiment of the Wind sword to Annie, but since I still needed to be on the battlefield, of course I would go find another sword. I don’t know this sword’s name, but it seems to fit me quite well. However, I ‘borrowed’ it from the Cloud Tower, which was an unseemly action, so it would be best to not let Margaret see this sword.”
Not only was it unseemly, in a certain personal mage tower in the Cloud Tower, the original owner was already howling in despair. And far before Adam even left, complaints about him had already filled the Truth Research Society’s desk. If it wasn’t for his connection to Margaret, Adam would have been blacklisted forever by the mages long ago.
“Oh, you as well, actually I profited quite a lot from Auland last time. That strong human kingdom truly accumulated so much after so many prosperous years, it would have been a waste to not take something from them.”
“Yep, yep, it’s just that even though they’re so rich, they’re really stingy, the last time I placed my sword on someone’s neck…”
Okay then, just as the two of them began focusing on exchanging stories about how they stole from others, the tardy guest of honor finally arrived.
“Boom!”
What came first was the violent shaking of the ground, followed by countless sharp stone spears that suddenly pierced through the earth.
“It’s here!”
The gigantic stone spears pierced through the floors with such force that the entire labyrinth shook from the impact, as that stone giant finally reached where we were.
And when the stone pillars from above were retracted, huge eyes filled with killing intent blocked the holes that the pillars made. That’s when we discovered that those “stone spears” had actually been part of his finger.
“Hmph, you’re actually using such a cliché scene from a horror movie? You think your granddaddy is afraid? No matter how strong the boss, aren’t they all just to drop equipment for the players? Come, have fun fighting with your granddaddy!”
At the same time, the silver Sacred Sword was currently letting off an abnormal silvery glow. With the silvery glow becoming tangible, the God Equipment Roland Sacred Sword was about to face its first enemy since its birth.