Chapter 161 — Focus Fire on That One...
Blade of Dawn · Page 1 of 3
The attack came out of nowhere, and no one could even process what kind of attack it was.
Even a seasoned mercenary—well-traveled, worldly, and having weathered assaults from all manner of fearsome warriors (and beasts)—would gape in blank bewilderment when a bursting fireball with not a trace of magical fluctuation smashed into his face. And that instant of bewilderment cost them control of the situation.
"Enemy attack!"
The mercenary captain in half-plate armor shrieked at the top of his lungs the instant it began, then activated his protective aura without a breath to spare, while his mercenary comrades, after less than half a beat of hesitation, wheeled toward the attackers—who had already emerged from the treeline.
A junior mercenary officer with knight rank was the first to see what the attackers looked like. He watched several soldiers in oddly styled light armor step out of the woods, equipped with strange, lopsided large arm-guards that looked like so much dead weight, still wearing their marching packs on the battlefield—they seemed utterly devoid of common sense or fighting ability, and he could not help but find it laughable. Those ostentatious arm-guards were all flash and no substance, good only for throwing off one's balance in close combat, and the packs on their backs were proof positive of inexperience: such things should have been shed before battle ever began!
What truly made him despise those strange soldiers, of course, was that he sensed not the slightest magical fluctuation from any of them.
Ordinary men, merely dressed up in odd gear—and they thought to fight the superhuman?
Still, recalling those two strange magical explosions earlier, the mercenary knight worried that casters might be lurking in the woods. He waved a hand and called to the few subordinates nearest him: "Charge them!"
Several subordinates obeyed on instinct, brandishing blades and rushing at those bizarre enemies at the forest's edge, while the other mercenaries likewise snapped into action, raising unnerving war cries as they met the attackers head-on.
But what happened next left everyone utterly dumbfounded.
One by one, the soldiers in their strange gear raised their left arms and aimed at the charging mercenaries as though firing hand crossbows. Then came a series of low, throbbing hums as searing beams tore through the air, and a relentless torrent of scorching rays punched through every warrior on the charge.
The junior knight watched in horror, wild notions exploding through his mind like fireworks: scorching rays? Mages? Mages in plate armor swinging longswords? A whole pack of mages in plate armor swinging longswords?!
He activated his protective aura faster than he ever had in his life, a hazy sheen of magical radiance rising over his skin—but just as he thought he could withstand the low-grade spells of those strange "plate-armored mages," a chorus of humming erupted from the woods, and a dozen red beams came screaming at his face.
Ray after scorching ray hammered into him. The knight's aura dissolved the first few beams into silence, but his heart was filled with nothing but terror, for he saw that those "mages" in plate armor needed neither pause nor incantation to cast—and he saw that the beams pouring from the woods were utterly unbroken!
A searing, gut-wrenching agony tore through his abdomen, and then his limbs were struck all at once. The junior mercenary officer—barely of low knight rank—collapsed in nearly scattered pieces, and before his thoughts winked out entirely, only one notion remained:
Mages... since when were they so cheap?