adbindia Chapter 156 : Chapter 156
Chapter 156 : Chapter 156
Chapter 156. Loyalty!
Two hours later, at the temporary military camp on the outskirts of Whiteport City.
More than a hundred soldiers stood in neat ranks on the drill field. These men were the finest picked from among several thousand troops, each one broad-shouldered and sturdy. Yet at this moment, every last one of them was standing there with his mouth hanging open, practically drooling.
What lay before them was not a pile of antiquated spears and iron swords, but rows upon rows of gleaming steel monstrosities.
This was what money smelled like.
Akash stood with his hands clasped behind his back, swaggering before the formation like a little boy showing off his new toys.
“Listen up!” Akash pointed at those crates. “Today we are not playing at anything half-hearted. Professor Logaris has emptied out his entire stockpile for this. If anyone lets me down, I will stuff him into a cannon barrel and fire him out!”
He strode up to one of the crates and kicked the lid open.
Inside were ten sets of full-body armor with exaggerated, imposing designs. This was old inventory Logaris had kept from his academy days: the Prototype Second-Generation Magitech Armor.
Even if it was only called a prototype, that thickness and that metallic sheen made it look like nothing less than a walking iron canister. The core crystal embedded in the chest shone with a brilliance that made one’s heart tighten, and beside it rested a brutal-looking Thunder Rifle.
“This is for the new recruits,” Akash explained. “It is a little heavy, and you will waddle like penguins when you run, but it can take a beating. Anything below the second tier might as well be scratching an itch.”
Then he pointed at several more crates nearby that looked even more advanced.
“The veterans will wear the third generation. That one has a powered assist system, so it can raise combat capability by a much larger margin. It also comes equipped with the Skyhawk Type-I Micro Sniper Cannon.”
At last, Akash patted the black, glossy armor he himself was wearing.
The Fourth-Generation Magitech Armor: Commander’s Limited Edition.
This thing was utterly outrageous. Two miniature magitech cannons were mounted directly on its shoulders, and the Mana Burst Gun in its hands could fire in rapid succession and in scattershot bursts. It even had a built-in hover spellwork that allowed the wearer to hang suspended in midair for a brief time.
“This is too lavish...” one of the new recruits muttered despite himself. “How much would a full set of this cost?”
“How much?” Akash’s ears were sharp enough to catch it, and he grinned. “Even if I sold you, I still would not have enough for a single screw. Enough nonsense. Put on the gear!”
...
At two in the afternoon, at Blackstone Fort.
This was the Tarassa family’s largest private stronghold outside the city, built atop a small hill. Easy to defend, difficult to assault. Rumor had it that a vast amount of scarce supplies the Tarassa family had amassed over the past few years was being stockpiled inside.
At this moment, the walls of the fortress were lined with private soldiers armed with heavy crossbows. Leading them was a bald man with a face full of brutish flesh, holding a broad saber in his hand as he shouted from behind the battlements.
“You down there, listen up! This is private territory!” the bald brute roared in a rasping voice. “We stay out of each other’s way! You want this fortress? Fine, bring money and ransom it! Otherwise, once I shut these gates, you little bastards can gnaw at them for a whole year and still never get inside!”
Beneath the wall, there was only silence.
A dozen or so iron cans stood there in a loose, scattered line, without any formation worth mentioning. They looked almost casual.
The foremost iron can lifted its head, and a red light flashed across the visor of its fully enclosed helmet.
That was Commander-in-Chief Akash. He could not even be bothered to reply. He even had the leisure to chat idly with his subordinates over the communication channel inside his helmet.
“You see that bald one? Loud fellow,” Akash’s voice rang through the channel. “Squad One, shoot that amplification device of his. He is too noisy.”
“Understood.”
Three veterans standing at the rear of the formation raised the micro sniper cannons in their hands.
The things looked like iron tubes covered all over with intricate magic patterns.
Hummm—
An extremely heavy, muffled vibration sounded.
Three blue beams split the air in an instant.
The bald man on the wall was still spraying spit as he shouted when he suddenly felt the weight in his hand lighten. He looked down and found that the broad saber in his hand was gone, leaving only the hilt behind.
Even more absurd was the lackey standing beside him holding a flag. Both man and flag had simply vanished. In that instant just now, it was as though some invisible beast had taken a bite out of him, vaporizing half his body on the spot.
The bald man froze.
He looked at the hilt in his hand, then at the shapeless mess beside him that no longer looked human at all, and his mind went utterly blank.
What in the world was that?
Before he could react, the iron cans below began to move.
“Brothers! For Her Highness the Princess! Loyalty!”
No one knew who was the first to shout it, but the new recruits in second-generation armor charged upward like madmen.
The private soldiers on the wall hurriedly loosed their arrows.
Clang! Clang! Clang!
Powerful crossbow bolts rained down in a storm. Those refined steel bolts, strong enough to punch straight through leather armor, struck the iron cans and did nothing but throw off a few sparks and ring with sharp metallic clinks.
They were utterly useless.
One recruit charging at the very front even took an arrow straight to the forehead. The shaft snapped on impact, yet he did not so much as sway. Instead, he ran even faster.
“That... that is impossible!” The bald man stared in terror. “Drop the logs! Crush them!”
Several enormous logs weighing hundreds of pounds came rumbling down.
This time they should be useful, should they not?
But the veterans in third-generation armor did not even bother to dodge. They raised their sniper cannons and fired two shots straight at the rolling logs.
BOOM!
Wood chips exploded everywhere.
Those massive logs were blasted into splinters midway down, and fragments rained from the sky like a storm of wooden shards.
At that moment, Akash moved.
A burst of blue flame erupted from the nozzles behind him, and his whole body shot straight into the air. Like an artillery shell, he soared over the wall, more than ten meters high, and crashed heavily onto the battlements.
THUD!
The instant he landed, the shockwave blasted seven or eight private soldiers all around him flying outward.
The two miniature magitech cannons on Akash’s shoulders began automatically locking onto targets.
Rat-tat-tat-tat—
Blue mana rounds poured out as though they cost nothing at all.
This was not a battle.
It was a slaughter.
The shields in those private soldiers’ hands were like paper. They could not hold for even a second.
By then, the new recruits below had also reached the top. They did not have the ability to fly, but somehow these lunatics simply climbed over one another in human ladders. Even while wearing nearly a hundred jin of iron armor, they still managed to scramble up the wall with both hands and feet.
“That one is mine! The bald one is mine!”
“Do not steal him! I saw that spearman first!”
“If anyone steals my kill, I will settle it with him!”
The battlements erupted into chaos and howls.
The bald leader looked at this pack of steel monsters with green light practically glowing from their eyes, and his entire mentality collapsed. Never in his life had he seen fighting like this.
This was a regular army?
They were even more like bandits than bandits were!
“I surrender! I am done fighting! I surrender!” The bald man threw away the hilt in his hand and dropped to his knees with a thud. “Do not kill me! I am just a hired hand!”
One of the fastest-charging recruits happened to reach him right then. He had already raised the butt of his Thunder Rifle, but the moment he saw the man kneeling, he stamped his foot in fury.
“How could you kneel already? Hold on a little longer! My bonus!”
The recruit looked utterly heartbroken, glaring at the bald man with deep resentment, as though reproaching him for failing to live up to expectations.
The bald man: “...”