MoP: Ch. 169

---Third POV---

Unfortunately, no one cared about his opinion.

"Haha! Cross-tier kill on an advanced mage!"

"Canceling cast time, no honor at all!"

Some people rubbed their arms, still shaken.

"That woman's the alchemist mentioned in the intel, right? Her attack methods are way too nasty!"

He'd almost gotten a face full of poison sprayed from a vial hidden in her mouth.

One player shrugged.

"Better than us stripping clothes. That's just normal alchemy."

"Being cautious in a magic world makes sense. If it weren't for the sanity limit, I wouldn't even leave them underwear!"

"Exactly. Just don't let them escape by accident!"

Entering the city was only the first step.

After leaving behind the players assigned to guard the gate, the rest sprinted toward the town without stopping.

Time was limited. They had to do as much as possible.

"Charge!"

"For the trailer!"

"Hallelujah!"

"Let's go!"

"Shut that guy up!"

The new players didn't know how to keep quiet. Their commotion woke every sleeping villager in town.

Windows along the streets flew open. When the townsfolk saw the players' gleaming iron weapons and the muscular bodies honed from physical labor, they hurriedly slammed the windows shut again.

"What's going on?"

"Why are there still people attacking towns?"

"Hide and don't make a sound!"

Every three hundred years, a continent-wide magic tide swept across Aeltia, a complete reset for civilization. In the fifty years after the tide, people hunted remaining monsters and rebuilt society. In the next fifty years, factions fought endlessly, founding kingdoms and drawing borders, a time known as the Expansion Period.

Now should have been the most stable and prosperous era, a peaceful time for development.

So why were there still people breaking the rules and starting wars?

The townsfolk were terrified but didn't flee.

In Aeltia, self-preservation was carved into their very bones.

Thus, as the players advanced, aside from a few stray patrol squads they casually wiped out, they met almost no resistance.

---

Nary Town had two key locations. One was the barracks near the city edge, the other, the mayor's manor at the center.

The barracks were for defense against outsiders.

The mayor's manor, however, at least in peacetime, had defenses even stronger than the barracks.

Flames exploded above the manor, revealing a half-dome shield shimmering in the air.

The ground trembled faintly.

The head guard in charge of ground defenses stared at the flickering barrier, panic clear in his eyes.

He grabbed the messenger soldier who'd just returned, shouting furiously, "Where's the mayor?! The rebels are about to break through!"

The soldier shrank his neck.

"I've already sent word to the underground forces..."

"I said send the message to the mayor, the mayor!"

The guard commander cursed loudly.

"There's no time for procedure now!"

The enemy was practically at their doorstep. Who cared about rank or protocol anymore?

He roared, "What, do you want me to deliver the message myself?!"

Boom!

A firebomb exploded ten meters ahead, right on the protective barrier. The moon-white light of the shield flickered violently.

The commander's face grew darker.

The messenger tried to explain weakly, "The underground city's in chaos too. They say the sirens revolted..."

"What?!" The commander's eyes burned with fury. "Why wasn't I told something that important sooner?!"

That explained it. Why none of the bigwigs had shown up, even in such a crisis.

The messenger opened his mouth, but before he could speak, the commander shoved him aside in rage.

"Forget it. Can't count on the underground forces anymore!"

He tugged at his collar, his fingers trembling slightly. The more he thought about it, the more it all seemed premeditated.

"Men!"

The commander pointed toward the densely packed residential district on the right.

"Set your arrows alight. Fire into the civilian quarter!"

He didn't know who these rebels hiding in the shadows were, where they came from, or how many there were.

Nor how long their continuous ranged attacks with those fire-type magic weapons could last.

But to have reached this far, they must have infiltrated the gates ahead of time. Their numbers couldn't be large.

As long as he could rally the town's huge civilian population, these invaders would be trapped.

"Yes, sir!"

Flaming orange arrows swung in unison, then rained upward like a fiery storm.

In the distance, Bored, who'd been idly fiddling with his crossbow, raised an eyebrow.

"Knew they'd pull that trick!"

Burning Nary Town had been the players' first contingency plan.

He whistled sharply.

"Phew, pew pew!"

Halfway through their flight, the arrows suddenly struck a massive iron net, and all of them fell from the sky at once.

Bored shouted, "Gaeman!"

Gaeman bit his fingertip and drew glowing runes in the air before him.

At the same time, water seeped through the iron mesh, snuffing out the flames, then the whole net shot back toward the manor's protective barrier.

Crack!

The iron net, propelled by water-sphere explosions, slammed into the barrier with tremendous force. When the water orb detonated on impact, a thin crack appeared on the shield, then spread like a spiderweb.

The commander looked up, unable to believe his eyes.

"Sirens?!"

There were sirens helping the enemy?!

It was as if that realization flipped a switch.

The next second, the rebels, who'd been hiding behind cover and refusing to expose themselves, burst out all at once, charging toward the manor with battle cries.

"Kill them!!!"

"The turtle shell's down! Go, go!!"

"Charge!"

A horde of rebels the commander had never seen before appeared before him.

They carried swords, spears, axes, bows, and countless other weapons he couldn't even name.

They looked like magical tools, but there were too many of them, almost like they'd been mass-produced.

Some were even using wooden planks as shields.

The commander felt it was absurd.

"Are these people insane?!"

They had cover but weren't using it. Had they already run out of ranged weapons?

He immediately shouted, "Attack with everything you've got!"

Rebels without cover were nothing but moving targets, the perfect moment for a counterattack. But even under a hail of arrows, the rebels didn't slow down. They shouted in a language he couldn't understand, sprinting forward at full speed, falling one after another as their defenses failed.

Yet the ones behind didn't falter. They only sped up, charging ever closer to the wall.

The commander's eyes widened.

And when he saw one rebel's hand flare with white light, his grip on his sword went slack.

Clang!

The sound of the falling blade was lost in the chaos, but in the commander's mind, it exploded like thunder.

His eyes filled with terror.

"A mage?!"

The rebels were using mages as disposable shock troops?!

Without looking back, the commander roared, "Fall back!"

Mages used as cannon fodder... sirens aiding them... and the two missing mages from months ago.

It all connected.

The commander's heart pounded as he shouted at the top of his lungs, "They're the Watchers!"

However, it was too late.

The first wave of players, charging at full speed, had already broken through the defensive line, blasting open the city walls and rushing inside.

The archers' attacks were hindered, forcing them to draw their swords, but they were no match for the players at all.

They were easily scattered and routed.

The soldiers' screams echoed one after another.

"Wind Blade! Fireball! Water Shot! Even Spring's Blessing healing spells!"

"They really are Watchers!"

"By the Goddess of Spring, why is a clerk from Angel's Kiss in there?!"

"What terrifying power!"

"Damn it! Are these rebels not afraid of death?!"

The chaotic melee made friendly fire inevitable, and the players' attacks only grew fiercer.

They showed no mercy.

Maybe their combat techniques weren't refined, but they could always find ways to deal a thousand damage even if it cost them eight hundred of their own. The scent of blood quickly filled the air, and the players became even more excited.

"Hahaha! Two versus one, anyone else want some?!"

"You almost chopped me just now!"

"Where's the healer?! Heal me, heal me!"

"Fireball!"

Even with several arrows stuck in their bodies, wounds deep enough to expose bone, the players would still climb to their feet the moment the impact passed, shouting strange words in an unknown language, they pressed forward to attack again. Seeing those blood-smeared, twisted grins emerging from the darkness, the soldiers felt their hearts turn cold.

"They're mad. Every last one of them!"

They were just here to earn a living. No one had signed up to die fighting rebels.

Clang!

Someone dropped their weapon, backed away, and knelt on the ground with hands raised.

"Stop! We surrender!"

The guard captain, who had retreated into the corridor of a nearby building, saw this scene and burned with rage.

"Cowards!"

He took a deep breath, standing in the doorway, and shouted, "Fall back! They have no reinforcements! Once the situation in the underground city is handled, they're all dead men! No one is allowed to surrender! Get back here!"

Suddenly, a burst of bright light flared from the direction of the civilian district.

He turned, stunned, then hope flickered in his eyes.

"Fire? Is that firelight?"

Had the people hiding in their shells finally decided to strike?

The next second, a huge group of players carrying strange gear and weapons appeared.

His hopeful smile froze.

"The city gate... is breached?"

How did their reinforcements arrive so fast?

Thwip!

A crossbow bolt struck the doorframe just beside him.

His heart lurched in terror.

He quickly fled the wall that the rebels had taken.

"Hands up! Drop your weapons and you won't be killed!"

"Hey, Bored! We're here!"

"What? It's already over?"

"My homemade rocket launcher hasn't even been used yet."

The players who had been freezing in the cold wind by the gate finally arrived at the battlefield, only to see a group of town soldiers obediently kneeling in surrender.

Their smiles instantly fell flat.

Couldn't they have resisted just a bit longer, at least until everyone got to fight?

With no choice, they took over the gate duties again, tying up the surrendered prisoners.

The wounded players tended to their injuries.

Pfft!

Bored pulled an arrow from his right shoulder and healed himself with Holy Light.

As a competent jack-of-all-trades warrior, he knew how to handle his own logistics.

His mana bar read: [99 / 170].

"More than half left," he murmured softly.

Earlier, to break through the NPCs' barrage and minimize unnecessary casualties, he had overused Wind Wall to deflect incoming arrows. Looking back, it really hadn't been necessary. Players were ridiculously hard to kill. There was no need to go that far.

The soldiers standing on the outermost line were usually cannon fodder. What he should be doing was making sure he didn't waste too much of his own stamina and mana. Like the bunch kneeling in front of him now.

He casually reached out and checked their stats. The NPCs were all level 0, plain and simple civilians.

Any of the higher-level elite troops had already been taken away earlier by the guard captain.

He let out a long sigh of relief.

"Not much experience from this... Guess I'll just take it as a lesson learned."

He pulled a fruit from his in-game backpack. It looked like a blueberry, but was about the size of a peach, and swallowed it whole.

His mana began slowly regenerating, one point per second.

He tossed aside the broken arrow shaft.

"Good thing I managed to snag some royal rations from Garble."

In recent days, Garble had become a total celebrity at the Scarlet Casino.

Not only had the casino owner, wanting to show off, given him a pile of magical fruits and potions to rapidly boost his power, but generous sirens and wealthy VIPs had also been showering him with gifts.

The stuff he couldn't consume himself, he sold off to other players, and that became their war fund for this siege.

At that moment, CowardlySurvivor came running over and gave Bored a friendly elbow.

"Not bad! Thirty-man squad and you've already taken the first defensive line! Just look, there's more than thirty prisoners on the ground!"

Bored beamed with pride.

"Of course! Ordinary folks are easy."

The dizziness from blood loss was fading, and Bored picked his weapon back up.

"Alright, boys. Let's keep going!"

"You got it!"

"Charge!"

---

Underground city.

Tap-tap-tap.

A flurry of hurried footsteps shattered the silence.

The guard captain, drenched in sweat, rushed straight to the Redstone Auction Hall.

He ran all the way down to the second basement level, where he found the town mayor, Abel.

"Sir, bad news!"

The captain burst past the doormen in a panic, only to be stopped several meters away by Abel's personal guards.

Abel slowly shifted his gaze away from the projection in front of him, frowning as he examined the disheveled young man before him.

"You're one of the manor guards on duty today, aren't you? What are you doing here?"

"A group of Watcher rebels has arrived from outside! They've already taken the city gate. The manor's fallen!"

"What?!"

Abel's face turned pale, then flushed with anger.

"How many of them?"

"Many, at least a thousand! Their reinforcements keep coming in waves from outside the city!"

The captain stammered.

"Our earlier suspicions were right. The Watchers never left! They're still on the Frostwind Plains, maybe even near Nary Town!"

"I'm asking," Abel snapped, pointing furiously at him, "how many did they have before the attack? The city gate was intact. How could they possibly open it from the outside?"

"A bunch of fools! You can't even handle a few infiltrators who snuck into the city? And you, how did you end up fleeing from the enemy vanguard instead of reinforcing the gate, only to run all the way down here?"

The captain's lips trembled as he tried to explain, shrinking under Abel's glare.

"They... they attacked the manor first..."

"What?!"

"Please, let me finish!" the captain blurted out. "They had at least eighty, no, a hundred mages! Their power was overwhelming. We couldn't stand a chance!"

Abel's fury turned to disbelief as he looked to the soldiers who had followed in behind.

"Is that true?"

They nodded rapidly.

The darkness, the suddenness of the assault. They hadn't even gotten a clear look at how many there were.

But the sheer density of spells and the ferocity of their attack... There couldn't have been few of them.

One soldier recounted breathlessly, doing his best to describe the horror he'd felt.

"They've been planning this assault for at least a year, sir. I saw, I swear I saw one of the tavern clerks who started working at Angel's Kiss last year among them."