Outrage of the Ancients

Normally, Temujin was not a fan of intricate or overly complicated plans. The more moving parts a stratagem had, the more likely it was that something unexpected would be enough to disrupt it, and the easier it was for someone else to stuff it up.

Simple plans were the way to go, plans that would be effective if they worked but ones whose consequences for failure were minimal.

Defeat in detail, overwhelming an enemy’s smaller detachments rather than facing their main strength head-on.

Feigned retreats, followed by a charge into the enemy’s disorganized formation as they gave chase.

Just … ambushes in general.

Simple, straightforward, easy to convey via subordinates who were often illiterate and had to memorize the orders in rhyme to make it easier to spot mistakes.

But that was under the normal set of circumstances. When he did not have several days to plan, zero enemy interference, and an abundance of information to work with.

So maybe, perhaps, he’d gotten slightly carried away, taking advantage of the situation to make small tweaks whenever he came up with an improvement until the final plan was a beautiful monstrosity that might have looked good on paper, but if he’d actually tried to go through with it, it’d only ever have been talked about as an example of what not to do, of how trying to be clever could easily be very, very stupid.

Therefore, he had scrapped the plan wholesale and started again, two days before the System would drop another mess in his lap.

It wound up similar to his first plan, just slimmed down and having the necessary allowances for something going wrong or improvisation when an unexpected opportunity presented itself. And alterations for whether they’d be facing elementals thrown together from the environment or animated effigies. Or just outright statues coming to life.

Either way, he’d have at least something prepared, no matter what showed up. Though, fighting any of those enemies would be tricky. Trying to kill the unliving wasn’t easy, even if it was as easy as, once again, smashing heads.

Several of his subordinates had gained the Skill [True Striking] after the undead battle, which allowed them to do a degree of damage even to foes immune to regular attacks, and would come in useful no matter what, but those were few and far between.

However, thankfully, modern technology covered for much of that weakness, which just left the waiting. Because somehow, knowing that the thing they were waiting for was coming, without a single lick of uncertainty as to whether or not it was truly coming, waiting with little to do but fret was … unpleasant.

Then, eventually, the world finally announced what was actually happening.

The Third Challenge, [The Waking of the Unliving], has now begun, giving life to objects that never should have had it.

…

Temujin stopped reading after the first couple of paragraphs. The challenge’s description didn’t help clarify; the line about no new undead rising wasn’t particularly helpful either, not in there here and now, and the countdown to the fourth challenge would only have mattered if it had been less than twenty-four hours. Which it wasn’t.

Plenty of time to beat all these statues back into scrap metal and rock dust. Starting with the biggest one.

Genghis Khan Equestrian Statue (animated monument) Level 45 Raid Boss

Well, wasn’t this going to make for a historic battle?

Temujin grinned. He’d make it one.

But also that settled the question of what this challenge was comprised of. Animated statues, no loose dirt would turn into deadly dust devils, no living sandstorms would haunt them, no mudslides that actively hated them would attempt to smother and pulverize his people. Good to know.

“Put away the flamethrowers, and make sure they’re safe,” Temujin ordered.

He was no stranger to weaponizing fire, but he also had great respect for how easily it could spread or go out of control. He’d once burned down a city simply by having his men capture the birds that nested within when they flew out to gather food and released them all again with burning fuses tied to them. A few hundred tiny fires had rapidly transformed into a titanic blaze and utterly obliterated the city.

So the idea of having multiple, rather exposed, tanks of some of the highest energy-density fuel humanity had ever found in the middle of his formation was rather concerning … though not as concerning as the foes he was facing.

Once again, in the middle of the steppe, they were surrounded, all the newly “spawned” monsters having been attracted by his presence, and placed around them in a circle.

However, he’d refined the strategy from last time. An “instant win button,” functionally, for the first section of the battle, called “high explosives and ridiculous Skills.”

Temujin started barking orders, which spread out all but at the speed of light, rippling through the “horde” of cars, tanks, and horses in an instant, warning everyone before one of the numerous sections of prepared ground detonated, huge gouts of flame and dirt exploding skywards before cascading back down to the ground, annihilating most of the regular walking statues that blocked their escape in that area. And with some help from the Mongolian air force and the bombs they dropped, they had a path out … an inferno filled with craters.

No problem.

Temujin activated [Inevitable Conclusion].

Despite the dramatic name, the Skill could only really instantly shuffle around formations while preventing any damage or deaths in the process. Good for a surprise moment … or for sending his army through the fiery breach the bombs had carved into his enemy.

Inevitably, most of his group would get through; the breach was large enough, and the vast majority of the casualties they likely would take would stem from the environment.

But the Skill didn’t care about any of this. Reality stuttered for a brief moment, and suddenly, the formations had separated, with the horde retreating at the fastest sustainable speed while the statues slowly trudged after them.

From here, the plan was actually rather simple.

The formation of the horde came apart, separating out into true military vehicles, the regular cars holding people armed with rifles, the horsemen, and Temujin himself.

From that point, they tore the enemy to pieces.

Some tried to isolate individual statues to identify weaknesses by catching them with uurgas, Mongolian lasso-equivalents, to be picked apart in a reasonably safe distance.

It was an action that should have torn the riders from their saddles and likely harmed the horses to boot, but these were no longer the beings bound by the limits of flesh and blood from his ancient conquests. They could haul around slabs or rock that weighed as much as horse and rider put together on relatively normal cord without ill effect.

Though they needn’t have bothered. The statues broke when they fell and stayed that way, proving that smashing them was a perfectly valid path to victory without providing any information on weaknesses and the such.

At the same time, the heavier military vehicles were used to shell the walking statues, drawing attention, while the more mobile forces did quick hit-and-run attacks, tearing into the mass of foes like a wolfpack nipping at a bison until it finally fell.

That would take care of the mundane enemies in due time. They were slow, and while they were tough, they weren’t durable enough to be immune to attacks.

In the meanwhile, Field Bosses and regular monsters with more exotic abilities would be taken down later once the chaff was gone.

And as for Temujin himself, well, he had something of a mirror match to fight. A forty-meter-tall homage to his conquests, built barely two decades before, turned into a deadly threat. A fight for the history books.

His horse began cantering forward as he jabbed his heels into its sides, then accelerated to a gallop as he drew his sword and roared a battle cry. A lesser statue threw itself at him but a simple yerk of the reins made his horse dance out of the way while his sword easily pulverized its head … leaving him staring down at a bent piece of metal that could no longer fulfill the function of “sword.”

He hurled the destroyed blade at a statue that looked like it’d get in the way soon enough, then drew a spare sword from his saddlebag. One of several. And then, he continued charging through the scant few foes who still stood in his way.

Wandering statues.

If he’d had to face them with his horde from centuries ago, they’d have had to run. And it’d have worked, too. Powerful and durable these things might be, they couldn’t catch up to horses even if said horses were traveling at a slow, sustainable pace.

From there, it’d have been a matter of winding roundabout ways to target them because melee combat would have been a losing proposition.

Pitfalls, artificially triggered avalanches, hell, a swinging log would have done the trick. Well-aimed cannons or catapults whenever there was enough time to set up siege engines, and it should have been doable.

Except with modern weaponry, all it took was someone with a weapon taking one second to aim, a second to make sure there was no one behind the weapon to be hurt by the exhaust, and then, the statues would be blown sky high.

Amazing.

But what was more amazing was the fact that Temujin himself could cause just as much damage with his hands alone.

His sword crushed the head of another monster, only bending this time, so he hacked it through the chest of a second before hurling it into the torso a third after it became too damaged to use.

And with that, he was through, facing his statue, the grand equestrian construct that looked nothing like him yet showcased just how venerated he still was, all these centuries later.

A circle was slowly forming around them, even unfeeling statues recognizing the gravity of the impending clash.

Two men charged at each other astride their steeds.

One, an elderly Mongolian atop a horse of flesh and blood, a long-handled sword in his hand.

The other, a forty-meter-tall mountain of forged steel, holding a massive weapon that looked like it could cleave mountains.

Temujin’s metallic counterpart brought his sword down in an overhead strike, aiming to crush both him and his steed into the ground, but he jerked on the reins of his horse, and it lurched between the massive columns that were the legs of the monument’s steed. He lashed out at the nearest leg and landed a strike, carving deep, but before he and his horse could get free, the metal monster’s leg clipped him.

It was a brief instant of him going airborne, a whinny of pain followed by a series of ugly crunches signaling the demise of his faithful steed, and then, Temujin hit the ground, rolling several times before coming to a stop.

He leaped to his feet and whirled around to glare at the monster, just in time to watch it hit the ground amidst a thunderous wave of noise. Temujin grinned. It seemed like the damage he’d done to the leg had been enough. But then, the statue of the rider rose to its feet to glare down at him. And lunged at him.

Temujin threw himself out of the way of another slash of the giant sword, then lashed out at the statue’s leg. His sword cut maybe a meter deep, then the blade snapped off, and a kick from the monster set him airborne once more.

Clutching his ribs, he got to his feet again and dodged the follow-up sword strike, swearing. Maybe he should have triggered [Moment of Glory] before attacking, and some more spare weapons carried on his person would likely not have gone amiss either.

Yet the past was the past, and couldn’t be changed by any force known to man, and the future came whether you wanted it to or not.

Temujin charged at the statue, aiming for its leg, as if about to make a futile effort to knock it over, and it responded just like he would have in its place, by shifting into a more stable stance.

So it was a damn good thing he was aiming between the legs.

He shifted his course at the last possible second to avoid an attack, and the few seconds it took the monster to realize he wasn’t going after its rear, he’d already reached the “dead” steel horse and the leg he’d hacked into earlier. The one that had completely broken off under its own weight and was now almost completely severed.

Behind him, he could already hear the pounding, earth-shaking, footsteps of the statue as it charged, but it was a little too slow. Temujin had already grabbed the metallic limb, and even as it was transforming under the effect of his [I Claim This Weapon], he whirled, triggering [Moment of Glory] as he did so.

No matter how great his physical strength was, ordinarily, attempting to wield a weapon this massive would have ended with him toppling over, it was simply too heavy for him to be able to keep his balance while throwing it around. Simple logic dictated that. But [Moment of Glory] temporarily put him above his limits. All his limits.

The giant statue was caught in the chest while it was in mid-stride, its momentum suddenly reversed, causing its feet to fly out from under it before it crashed to the ground, chest caved it, one leg bending the wrong way.

Temujin’s weapon had snapped in half in the process, leaving him clutching a stump that was rapidly transforming into a smaller cleaver that was still as long as he was tall.

And with that, he began to carve into his foe, dodging giant fists while aiming at the damaged leg until he’d managed to fully sever it, then started to remove the other limbs.

It took a long time, any other living being would have died ten minutes after he’d started rather than continuing to futilely struggle for almost an hour, but it died all the same. By then, the rest had already been taken care of.

Things had worked out, by and large. Minimal casualties, units that were going to become the elites of his horde, had been given the chance to duel Field Bosses to strengthen themselves, and he’d proven himself, but Temujin had to admit that fighting the Raid Boss himself had been a big mistake. He should have been coordinating the fight while taking out the strongest enemies on the frontlines himself, not dueling the biggest enemy on the field.

But the idea of dueling, well, himself had been too damn alluring, and he’d let himself be impulsive. Something he’d thought he’d outgrown decades ago, ignoring his long nap, that was.

It hadn’t cost him this time, and it rarely had in the past either, but he still shouldn’t have indulged himself.

Temujin leaned back and stared up at the sky, chuckling softly. That just went to show, just like you were never too young to gain wisdom, you never outgrew stupidity. Or impulsivity. Or any of the other foibles of youth.

With a sigh, he went back to staring straight ahead and started to walk over to where his horde was gathering again, listening to the voice of the System.

[Legendary Khan of Duality Lv. 65 -> Legendary Khan of Duality Lv. 67]

[Skill Boost gained]

[Skill gained: Dogs of War]