Chronicles of the True Wizard

Grim floated down, wearing the silk robes Felix had bought along with his mask, to the lobby where the war room was set up. He looked at the map and reviewed all of the preparations, then left the tower and headed over to float near the wall at the front. He found Noah, Amelia, Will, Benjamin and Kenneth standing atop the wall, side by side, looking out over the encroaching army. He floated over next to Noah and faced in the direction of the army as well, though he couldn't see nearly that far, so he was just standing in solidarity.

Noah begrudgingly nodded to Grim then looked back out over the army without saying a word.

Grim didn't have it in him to say, or write, anything himself so he just kept staring forwards. He just hoped that no one died, at least no one he knew, then he would feel awful and he knew Felix might end up blaming himself. Grim just had to overwhelmingly win the battle and minimize the casualties. No, he just had to do his best, then he would know there was nothing more he could have done. It wasn't even his city, or his people, but he was responsible for them, and he didn't resent that for a second.

The army slowly got into formation around their siege engines and moved everything into position. There were three hours left until the Kraken was released and neither side interrupted the silence. The army shuffled along and the people of Tri-Peak made final adjustments to their preparations. People moved into the bunkers, checked their ammunition and hugged their loved ones. The loudest noise across the entire battle field, was the sound of the rain pitter pattering across the stone in the city, the grass of the field and pinging off armor here and there.

Grim couldn't see the army, but he knew they too stood still, in near silence, because he could hear them. Grim's sight was short range, quickly becoming too blurry to rely on at anything further than a few hundred meters. His hearing though, was better than most creatures. He could hear the army standing before him as it breathed in and out, he could hear the heartbeat of those he considered friends, even if they didn't know his name. He could hear the occasional scrape and clang of someone adjusting their armor or dropping their weapon as the nerves got to them.

Grim wasn't a person. Grim didn't have a heart to sink or skin to crawl, but he had a soul, so he too experienced feeling, but they translated in a different way. While the heartbeats of those standing around him mounted and occasionally skipped a beat, while their skin tensed and hair rose, Grim's cover tightened and his pages stiffened. Across the entire field, both the defending and offending armies experienced the moment of silence before the battle. The moment that no one dared intentionally break. The moment that lasted three hours, before the unruly System itself shattered the silence.

Tutorial Announcement

The Final Boss has been released.

The seal on the prison holding the Legendary Kraken at bay has broken and the emperor of the sea has risen from the depths. The Kraken will remain for a period of 24 hours if engaged, before being resealed in it's prison. Defeating the boss will result in rewards to be given out at the end of the tutorial.

Good luck.

Though none of the message applied to them, most everyone read the last part and took it to heart, ‘good luck'. Grim didn't receive the screen like everyone else did, The System tried to deliver it to him but he was still skeptical of The System so he blocked it. He could however, hear everyone go silent as their hearts skipped a beat in unison, and knew.

The sounds of the army as it began it's approach towards the city echoed through the valley but was quickly drowned out by the sound of the rain as it began to pour. The army was not deterred however, they marched onwards with their siege machines in tow, moving at a glacial pace. The citizens of Tri-Peak were completely unfazed by the rain, some of them not even having noticed it as their entire town was immune to weather effects.

This was the first time the Desert Oasis upgrade was used on anything more than a drizzle, but it was always active with no apparent need to be recharged. Everyone but Grim who was watching the army, saw them disappear behind the curtain of rain that fell from the sky. Even the sounds of their approach were completely muffled by the torrential downpour making it almost seem like they had completely disappeared. Everyone knew they were there though, just beyond, making their way towards the city bringing the start of a war with them.

Unfortunately, the rain meant projectiles of all but the biggest and heaviest sizes were ineffective. Grim had hoped the battle would take place with clear skies so they could rain hell down upon their enemy in the form of arrows. As it was, there were a few meters outside the walls the rain couldn't touch, and Grim predicted it was in those few meters that the real battle would be fought. They continued to wait and watch and listen to try and catch any sign of the encroaching army.

The first sign though, was the extended tip of a tower piercing the veil of rain right in front of Grim. He didn't flinch and the soldiers down the wall to his left didn't hesitate. Two ballista bolts sunk into the left side of the tower, just beyond the wall of rain and the winches began to wind the rope taught. The tower tilted and caught on braces that were placed on it's side to keep it from falling. This was when Grim acted, he didn't know if anyone else knew what to do so he decided to get a morale boost early on.

He fired off, what Felix would have considered, a double size Fire Ball right at the brace and blew it right off the side of the structure. The tower crumpled as the side he hit splintered and snapped. The soldiers cheered but were cut short by two more ballista bolts firing off from the soldiers off to the right. They tilted a second tower onto it's brace and the siege casters on that side of the wall quickly acted, they knew what to do and fired off 3 Fire Balls to bring it down. No cheering followed though as a battering ram was rolled up the road.

It consisted of a large log suspended horizontally in what looked like a rolling house. The armored roof above it defending it from projectiles. On either side of the gates, four vehicles on wheels, who's purpose was unidentifiable, rolled up to the wall. In between the siege engines though, people marched in. Though they had formed a loose formation out in the field, they were clearly not an army as they all ran at a different pace and wore completely different equipment. The archers began firing through slits in the parapet then quickly rotated clockwise to reload and allow another to fire a shot, exactly as they were trained to do. This allowed the archer's to release an unrelenting volley of arrows upon the army below.

The casters used Force Bombs to throw people aside and try to disrupt the attack. The cannons and ballista focused on the structures, trying to take them down if at all possible. One of the structures on the left side of the gate was blown open by a turtle cannon to reveal a half dozen Mole-Ant corpses. Though only Will, Alan and Grim knew of them on top of the wall, everyone was taken aback by the abomination that was those animals. Grim's hope at this point, as grim as it may be, was that they could pile up enough corpses and rubble to make it impossible for their siege machines to reach the walls.

The casters and cannons focused on the structures and managed to take out another one boosting their morale, before the first trebuchet hit. It didn't hit anyone, just bouncing off the wall and causing little damage, but it literally shook the ground they stood upon and their confidence. Another large stone flew out of the rain and descended upon the wall, those standing under it froze. Grim dashed over as quickly as he could fly and cast a Mana Shield on an angle so the stone rolled back onto the army, taking almost 12,000 mana with it. At some point in the fight he wouldn't do that as it wasn't worth the mana but right now, keeping morale as high as possible was worth every point.

Unfortunately, he would also have to deal with the battering ram as it was now within a meter or so of it's target and no one else had managed to take it out themselves. Grim had a few options for the battering ram, he could stealthily block the blow making it seem like the gates were impenetrable for morale, but that would likely consume almost a hundred thousand mana due to the size of the tree. He could also blow off the wheels on one side, effectively stopping it, but there were many wheels.

Instead, he decided to get his hands dirty and dropped off of the wall in front of the gate. He stopped his descent when he was just a meter off the ground and zipped into the battering ram. As expected, the log was suspended by a dozen large ropes on either side. Grim cast a simple Mana Bolt, modified to be both larger and fly faster, right down the line of ropes, severing all but one of them. The log dropped and swung to the side, pinning soldiers to the side of the structure. Grim zipped back out of the structure as the remaining soldiers slashed and shot at him.

He floated back a top the wall with a few holes and a single cut in his robes, but having sustained no real damage. The enemy army's morale on the other hand, dropped slightly as one of their three battering rams was pulled back away from the gates as it was useless now. Grim had Will bellow out orders to stop attacking that battering ram, as it was a waste of resources and focus on the structures that could be holding Mole-Ants. Too late, Grim looked downwards to the left and spotted the soldiers dashing away from one of their own wheeled structures that reached the wall.

BOOM

The entire wall shook as the structure exploded leaving behind a large crater in the stone wall. Grim made sure to have the casters use Fire Bolt's at least once on each of the wheeled structures from now on to try and prematurely detonate them where possible. The Catapults and Trebuchet's all seemed to be in position now as a volley of projectiles descended upon the wall. Half of them collided with the wall itself, chipping the stone and leaving a small dent at worst. Four of them descended upon the wall directly, but this time people moved out of the way so Grim didn't need to save anyone. One had hit a turtle cannon directly, but it seemed to be undamaged so Grim thanked The System for that.

The other ten had fallen over the wall, seven of those were stones and caused damage to some buildings and road but three of them, were chunks of a log. When they struck, one side popped open and warriors jumped out ready to attack. The ground teams mobilized to meet and neutralize them as quickly as they could. Some from the walls were shuffled down the ramp behind them to be replaced by uninjured and fresh soldiers as the battle progressed.

The next surprise from the enemy was something Felix would have considered a war crime, as projectiles from catapults rained down and revealed a collection of corpses. The corpses were tied together with rope into a ball and were left to rot for at least weeks. Due to the rain, they were soaked through and they tended to explode on impact. They were completely disgusting and unfortunately the ground crew had the miserable job of gathering them together to burn.

Almost an hour into the battle, the rain subsided as the storm slowly moved to the north, revealing the enemy in slight disarray from lack of sight. They quickly adjusted though and their morale exploded as they screamed a war cry and charged the walls. They weren't really thinking about what they were doing as many of them arrived at the walls, swung and then shook their heads.

They were easy prey as the enemy commanders worked to corral their men back into a formation. Their jobs were to wait and assist the siege machines until such time as they could charge through the walls, not attack the walls directly. The soldiers moved back behind the series of portable walls they had set up. They were large four meter tall log walls with steel plates salvaged from old gear nailed to the front. They had braces on the back to hold them up and the enemy had arranged a dozen of them in a line to provide a safe place for their army to retreat to.

Everything on the wall was handled so Grim decided to aim for another morale boost as he shot through the air above the portable walls. He floated above the army, getting hit in the empty robe by a few arrows, and cast Force Bombs, one by one almost 5 seconds apart, right behind the barricades. They toppled, not quite like dominoes as they didn't topple each-other, but close to it as they fell in a line. The archers a top the wall seized the opportunity and released a volley of arrows at anyone who tried to pull the walls back up. They had ropes set up to do just that, but the wet ground just caused the walls to slip and slide instead of tilt.

Grim flew back over to the wall and saw, only because he was facing the back of the town, people flying over the walls on either side. He couldn't see how many were in the mountains around them, but as he had feared, there were people using hang gliders and parachutes to descend from the mountain peaks. He commanded the handful of archers manning the walls on either side to take aim and try to take them down, but they didn't manage to take them all out. They did manage to injure most though, which was valuable in it's own right.

Noah, who was mostly acting as the general giving orders where Grim couldn't yell, directed the ground crews to meet them. Grim made sure none of them would land near the bunkers and storage then turned back to the walls. He trusted the ground crew to take care of them, he had to, because he was needed here. The danger, of even one of them reaching the bunkers full of food, the injured and the innocent was catastrophic. The danger of just one of the siege engines breaching the wall was fatal to the entire battle.

Grim paid attention to them, spinning around occasionally to keep track of them as they fell. Noah also made sure each and every one of them was dealt with as he too, feared the worst for the non combatants. Grim continued to support where he felt he was most needed and expended mana where necessary. He had begun joining the siege casters in raining spells down upon the siege structures and they had collectively managed to take out a handful of ballista and a catapult.

As the rain continued to die down, the galleries and a ramp were deployed. The ramp was wheeled up the road in place of the battering ram as, on top of the ramp, the galleries and explosive carts were wheeled up to the height of the wall. Grim knew that if they couldn't deal with it soon, he would have to expend an absurd amount of mana himself. The cannons, both turtle and crafted, aimed at the supports and the flaming barrels were lifted atop the wall to be ready. The archers targeted the animals pulling the structure to slow it down and the casters targeted the explosive carts. They managed to explode a single cart and send another barreling back down, but there were still too many supports and the ramp was just a few meters back at this point.

Grim was about to fly down to deal with it when Henry ran up next to him with a barrel over his head and said, "Could I get a light?"

Grim didn't get the joke but he knew what to do, he cast a simple Fire Bolt onto the barrel and Henry lobbed it over onto the ramp. The archers had completely halted the ramps advance and a few soldiers joined Henry in throwing things onto the ramp. It was possible for someone to run all the way up the ramp and jump, but the archers were ready, the casters were ready, the melee fighters a top the wall were ready, and Grim was ready to send them flying. Though they were not aware of the specifics, no one dared run up the ramp.

Eventually, the cannons managed to take out the posts and the ramp collapsed creating a pile of debris that was more helpful than harmful to Tri-Peak. Unfortunately, that was when the first tunnel broke the surface behind the wall and a Mole-Ant barreled through. Behind it, a dozen soldiers followed and ran towards those supporting the wall. Benjamin directed three teams of five to collapse on them and had some of the archers who were resting slow them down. There were people standing at the base of the wall ready for a tunnel to breach the surface that dropped bear traps and caltrops into the hole.

The first team that made it through was slowly whittled down as another tried to follow them. That team was stopped short when bear traps tripped people and casters dropped Fire Balls down inside. No one else followed as the teams on the wall made sure to stop anyone from approaching the tunnel. Luckily for them, the tunnel slowly began to close up on itself due to Stone Giant's Living Stone, which apparently applied to everything, not just the wall. It would take almost an hour for it to seal, but it was better than nothing. . . . . .