Polymath Redux – PROJECT: Hellgate (2/7)
Chapter XXV
After leaving the Baliazoural Empire’s capital, Morgana’s carriage was taken directly to the place the weapons were supposed to be delivered. Taking advantage of Sleipnir’s speed they were able to get to their destination in less than 6 hours. Upon arrival the view of half destroyed warehouses were on full display; however there were no signs of an actual struggle, but a one-sided victory.
“Wow, what happened here?”
Yda asked as she peered out of the carriage. Inside the warehouses were stacks and stacks of weapons, too numerous to even start estimating how many were in there. Perhaps half a million to a million would be an appropriate guess by a first glance.
“Yda, stay here for a moment.”
Morgana instructed as she left the carriage. The most glaring problem was how to transport the massive number of weapons to Solaris and the solution was simple, the power of [Alchemy]. Though Morgana only had access to 10% of the power that Mordred was capable, that wasn’t a problem as there was one particular skill.
In [Hellgana] each class had one ‘ultimate’ skill. For the mage it was [Gravity Well], for the [alchemist] it was a skill known as [Hyper-dimension Pocket] and as the skill name implied, it was literally a dimensional pocket that allowed the user to temporarily carry an unlimited amount of goods up to and including other players. For this reason it was debated to be the single most powerful skill in the game. A single high level alchemist would be able to store hundreds of players for a massive surprise attack on an enemy player’s castle out of nowhere.
Of course Morgana was only able to access 10% of that power, but 10% of infinity is still infinity thus there was actually no restriction for this particular skill except one, that was the duration on the skill. The duration was 10 in-game days which would mean it would be shortened to a single day for the doppelganger. However this was enough time for Morgana to return to the stolen goods back to the capital.
A large blue magic circle was drawn in the sky as it slowly descended and engulfed all of the weapons stored in the warehouses. Afterwards Morgana returned to the carriage as though nothing had happened. She knocked on the carriage walls to signal Grimal to resume their return to the capital. Of course Yda couldn’t take it as blatantly unfazed as her mistress did and had to ask.
“Umm… Mistress? What was that just now?”
Morgana explained with a smile.
“[Hyper-dimension pocket], a skill that allows me to temporarily store an infinite number of items in a small ‘pocket’. Sorry Yda but please don’t talk to me for the duration of the trip home as it would break my concentration.”
While it was a simple binary system back in the game, everything had changed to fit reality more smoothly when they had come to this new world. It would take actual concentration for Morgana to store all those weapons inside her pocket and it would be disastrous if all of those weapons were expelled right now.
Yda nodded as they continued on their trip back home. Using the shadow horse, Sleipnir it wouldn’t take more than a few hours at best.
…
Just outside the Grand Cathedral of Xagon, many thousands of people were gathered for a single event. They all had one thing in common; it was their hatred of the ‘demons’ that plagued their ever beautiful city that was soaked in the warmth of the sun; their god.
The leader of this group of hyper racist humans was the Grand Cardinal; however he did not show himself personally because that would cause problems for the Wayfarer Council. Instead a proxy was used. One of the Grand Cardinal Lazzaro Zeder’s powers was the ability to temporarily take control of a single person using his ‘shadow agent’; a person would be infused by the shadow and bound to do the Grand Cardinal’s bidding.
The mind controlled person slavishly walked up to a small podium and started to shout.
“Today is the day we get rid of all these pesky Demons!”
Following that line the crowd grew excited and started to shout back in spirit.
“We will cleanse this town of their filth! We will take back the land that should rightfully be ours!”
Though the demons did indeed live in this city, they were often treated as second class citizens and weren’t even allowed to own land, so why this person was saying things like ‘take back our land’ was a true mystery. However due to that line the hype in everyone’s spirit had intensified greatly and even more roaring could be heard from a great distance down the street.
There were many onlookers; those that decided not to join in with this fanatical bunch but they also did nothing to stop them. Most of the citizens in Solaris didn’t really care what was happening with the demon, whether they lived or died didn’t affect them at all, thus they took no action.
“For too long have we had to tolerate the existence of those monsters! Now we will purge them all! Who’s with me?!”
A deafening cheer was resounded back to the leader.
“Then everyone take your weapons! Let’s bring the fight to those disgusting bastards!”
Even more cheering followed. Watching from behind the shadows were two men, Sven Serus and Lazzaro Zeder; of course they were. It was the Grand Cardinal that was putting up this theatrics in the first place.
“So you’ve mixed some of your ‘shadow agents’ amongst them?”
Sven asked.
“Yes, if that little girl, Morialia really does exist then we’ll be able to catch her. Or at the very least, verify her existence. If she really is as powerful as Casec said she was then even I can’t go ignoring her for too long.”
The Grand Cardinal answered.
“Are you sure this will work? I know Casec said she was just a little girl, but it’s way too odd for that to be true. Most likely she’s hiding something, perhaps she’s an immortal and only has the look of a little girl, or she’s using some appearance changing magic.”
Sven was skeptical on whether this would actually work; the Grand Cardinal being too rash about this. What if Morialia didn’t really care about the demons? What if she didn’t want herself to be shown? What if she had access to identification prevention magic? ‘What if’, there were too many unknowns and variables but the Grand Cardinal was too stubborn and proud to admit that there was a being stronger than him.
It was because of those traits that Sven didn’t really stop him and merely watched. Whatever happened next would be the Grand Cardinal’s problem and he even thought that it might make a fairly decent show.
As the amassed audience of hyper racists were about to launch their final purge on the unsuspecting demons residing in the city something else had happened that made the entire city come to a grinding halt.
Though it was still supposed to be high noon the sky had been covered in darkness as though the night had suddenly decided to take over. The sky had started to bleed as it was dyed over in a flash of an intimidating red glow and through the darkened clouds black lightning arced across. Some of the lightning even strayed down onto the ground, massive damage was done but there was fortunately no casualties as of yet.
Miasma filled winds started to blow throughout the city. An ominous humming could be heard as the dirty tempest ‘cleansed’ the town in darkness. Faint humming of the angels of death brought dread and awe to the hearts of all the citizens down below as though it was singing the song of their requiem. A terrible shiver overcame every resident, even the ‘sun’ king himself stared out of his palace and to the darkened sky with fear.
…
“What… is this? What is all this?!”
The king rushed to the veranda to have a closer look at what was going on with the sky. Lucian Zandora and Mikhail Anton joined the king to gaze up at the abyss that swallowed their skies; none of them could explain this dreary phenomenon.
“Alchemists! You there, bring me the Chief of the Royal Alchemy Commission!”
The king ordered one of his guards that were standing by. The king hoped that at least his Royal Alchemists could explain this situation to them and how to deal with it effectively.
After a few minutes a young woman with disheveled blonde ponytail and wearing equally lazy white lab coat rushed in. She pushed up her large circular glasses as she introduced herself to the king.
“You have summoned me, your majesty?”
Del Granate, the Head of the Royal Alchemy Commission, she was also known to be a prodigy amongst researchers and alchemists. If there was anything that was unknown, Del was the person that you had to go to for the answers. But even for such a talented young woman this was a little out of her league. When the king asked her ‘what was going on’ she could only return a blank stare as she replied ‘I don’t know’. The words the king didn’t want to hear in this situation the most.
Before they could even begin to continue discussing what they were going to do next something else had shown itself. Just beyond the outskirts of the city, a bright silver pillar of light could be seen connecting the land and sky. It was obviously some kind of sign that something would happen and happen it did.
The words that could best describe the next series of events were as such.
‘Hellfire’. ‘Burn’. ‘Nation’. ‘Legion’. ‘Destroy’. ‘Annihilate’.
Those were the words spoken by the black skeleton warrior. However events had progressed way too fast, this wasn’t even at the level of a ‘warning’ but just the enemy leading them by the nose as the city was rapidly plunged into what could be aptly described as the ‘apocalypse’.
Great balls of flame rained from the skies, causing massive damage to their city below. Who knows how many people were dying just by the impact of the explosion alone? But of course that was just the beginning of it. Out from craters caused by the balls of hellfire came the undead.
Skeleton warriors covered in an inferno, flame elementals, hellhounds, flame worms, all manner of hellish beasts started to emerge from them. Of course even that wasn’t enough as in the skies skeletal dragons could be seen flying about and terrorizing the place.
“Go! Protect the citizens and clear out the undead!”
The king frantically ordered the entirety of his Royal Knight Commission and Royal Alchemy Commission. They all looked back hesitantly, they were the king’s guards after all, but after seeing this display of mass destruction they couldn’t do much but obey the king’s will. Lucian Zandora and Mikhail Anton also left to call upon their own personal guards to help out with the dealing of the monsters.
Soon the throne room was a devoid of life except for the king. He continued to stare down at the chaos that had taken over his city; his country; his home. He slammed his hands against the stone railings as he felt powerless to help the people down there. Right this instant he wished to go down and help them personally but he knew that it was necessary for him to stay here and make the decisions as he continued observe.
As if to ease his heart a little he saw a small feminine figure off in the distance that was valiantly crushing the monsters left and right. Red hair and red sword, she was not a knight of Xagontetia, thus it was more likely that she was an extremely skilled adventurer.
She continued to cut down monsters as if they were just paper and even the king himself started cheering her on.
…
“Everyone grab a weapon and fight!”
The bells sounding the start of a war were being rang all across the watchtowers stationed on the city walls. The soldiers all complied with the orders as they saw the fire falling from the skies and monsters emerging. However there was one slight problem, it was that their weapons and armor were dulled from overuse in training and in the field and the next batch of weapons had yet to arrive.
Desperately the soldiers continued to fight but the monsters were far too strong for their level and especially with dulled swords/spears/bows it wasn’t as effective as they could be. The only people who were truly effective in this fight were either magicians or clerics with their elemental or holy attributes.
When they had the chance, some of the clerics had tried placing minor holy enchantments on the swords and it worked to some degree but even that wasn’t enough.
“Argh! What is this?! We’ve only joined the military and we’re having an all out war in the middle of the city?!”
Ash cried out as he continued to smash the flaming skeletons around them. Since his class was [magician] he was one of the few soldiers able to deal with them but even then with the numbers that kept spawning it was obvious that his mana reserves wouldn’t last that long.
“Aye, this is a bit too much excitement for me too! This is just like the time I was fighting that dragon that one time. It had a nasty breath!”
Padan roared as he clobbered more monsters that came his way with his mace. Since his weapon was a mace and usually reserved for blunt force attacks the dullness didn’t affect it too much, but of course there were signs of being overstrained and would eventually break after a few more swings.
“Shut up both of you! I can’t concentrate!”
Caroline screamed as she healed and enchanted her ally’s weapon. Her class was [cleric] which did well against the undead type monsters but against other elemental beings she wasn’t as effective.
“It’s alright, we’ll get through this.”
Mordred(doppelganger) tried to raise the morale of his teammates, however it wasn’t his teammates that were suffering from a lack of morale but the other soldiers who weren’t as talented. The low quality weapons really showed their dragging weight as the battle was being skewered in the favor of the invading monsters, but soon that would change.
Morgana would be arriving with a full batch of highly enchanted weapons that would be extremely effective against these monsters. It was only a matter of time and during that time Mordred tried to reduce the number of casualties as much as possible.
The soldiers were spread across the city to protect the civilians as well with Mordred’s team charging into a thick group of enemies. Out of the new recruits this team was known to be the ‘best’ and they had really shown their expertise and prowess by being able to last this long against the ultimate skill, [Hellgate]. Mordred was even slightly impressed.
However once they cleared the batch of monsters a skeleton dragon descended from the sky. It glared at them powerfully with its ruby glow for eyes.
“Oi old man, you said you fought a dragon before right?”
Ash asked as he started stepping backwards.
“It~ might have been a bit smaller than this one…”
Padan replied as he also tried to back away. The dragon was about to lunge at them bearing its fangs but was suddenly stomped on by the appearance of a red knight; the adventurer Irina had come and crushed the skeleton dragon with a single kick.
“Wow…”
Caroline couldn’t hold in her amazement. The red knight shot them all a look before jumping off to slay even more monsters.
“Come on guys! We can’t lose to an adventurer, let’s go!”
Padan shout out as he dived into a mob of monsters with an almost berserker like glee.
“Didn’t he used to be an adventurer as well?”
Ash asked, but shook his head as he registered that Padan had a point. Even if he had just been a fresh recruit he too had pride as a soldier and jumped into the fray. Mordred shrugged and also joined without another word, leaving Caroline behind.
“You guys don’t leave me here! You need me to heal you and stuff!”
Rebirth Online World 