[Boom!]
A loud crash sent dust particles cascading down from above.
A building might have collapsed overhead—or perhaps some massive beast had stomped on it. But whatever it was, Fringilla knew full well that the battlefield above was not where she and the others belonged.
The moment the massive portal opened, Fringilla immediately used a smaller teleportation spell to bring herself, three vampires, and a unicorn into an underground cellar within the city.
The noble vampire's estate had been reduced to ashes the moment the Aen Elle Elves descended—but this cellar still offered temporary protection.
It wasn't that she didn't want to flee—she simply knew her mission wasn't over yet.
Bright emerald motes of light flared up beside Fringilla, startling the anxious vampires around her.
But the sorceress let out a long breath of relief.
Lann's voice came through the light, and Fringilla bowed respectfully to him. "Your Majesty."
"Take me to the location I had you scout. The plan proceeds."
No time for small talk. Fringilla nodded and cast another teleportation spell, bringing them to a corner of the city's edge.
[Boom!]
Before they could land, Lann had already raised a defense.
[Quen Sign – Active Shield – Quen Intensity – Quen Discharge]!
An elven soldier, who had seemingly been flung from nowhere, slammed against Lann's protective shield like a ragdoll. The force of the impact was instantly transmitted back into the elf's body, multiple layers of power tearing through him and shredding him to pieces.
Lann looked toward the direction the elf had flown from—only to see a squad of crossbowmen staring at him in shock. Beside them stood a very familiar-looking Fire Scorpion ballista.
Oh—so that elf had a bolt stuck in him?
[Blink]
Lann vanished and reappeared—untouched by even a drop of blood.
He turned back to where Fringilla had teleported in. What had once been a manor was now a field of rubble.
"Well?" he asked Fringilla Vigo, who was crouched and examining the ground.
"My apologies, Your Majesty. This place has already been destroyed," the sorceress replied with her head lowered. "The engraved arrays are no longer usable. But the magical materials stored here are still intact—we can use them shortly to support our spellcasting."
The mission Lann had given Fringilla was to distribute spellcasting aids and inscribe arrays throughout Golden Tower City.
Given the current chaos within Golden Tower City, it was likely that most of the buildings used to conceal arrays and magical materials had already been destroyed.
"Fortunately, we didn't put all our eggs in one basket," said Fringilla.
Teleportation magic triggered again, shifting their location in rapid succession.
After four transfers, they finally arrived at a manor that had yet to be touched by the fighting.
Lann nodded in satisfaction. If their luck had been bad enough for every array to be destroyed, things would've become much more troublesome very soon.
[Teleport]
Lann lightly tapped the ground. Sorceresses led by Tissaia instantly appeared around him. He raised a protective shield again, securing them safely inside.
"Everyone, begin."
…
The northern nobility had always looked down on sorcerers—and not without reason.
In a sense, sorcerers truly weren't suited for combat. They were more akin to scholars who studied magic than they were to warriors.
They studied how to harness chaotic energy, using it to expand into fields such as biology and physics, developing all kinds of magical applications. What people called "offensive spells" were often just incidental byproducts of this research, and only a minority of sorcerers ever seriously studied truly destructive magic.
Because such spells could easily backfire on the caster if poorly controlled.
Pampered and sheltered, most sorcerers never seriously trained in battle—so they often died in laughably absurd ways: stray arrows, or a knife in the back from an assassin.
But now, here and now, what had gathered was a group of well-prepared sorcerers—positioned deep within enemy territory, shielded by protection, and armed with ample casting materials and arrays supplying them with chaotic energy.
They began to cast their spells.
An Aen Elle elven legion commander suddenly felt a violent disturbance in the surrounding energy.
A portal burst open right beside him—but what came out wasn't a person. It was a massive boulder, barreling through the air with terrifying wind pressure!
The elven commander roared and narrowly escaped by casting a teleportation spell—but his entire escort squad wasn't so lucky. They were pulverized into bloody paste.
Furious, the elven commander scanned his surroundings—and sure enough, spotted a trebuchet atop a nearby city wall. The crew was busy reloading it with a fresh boulder, while a sorceress was chanting beside the projectile's flight path, opening yet another portal—aimed directly at him.
Sure enough, yet another portal opened right before his eyes.
Damn it! What kind of city is this? How can there be so many siege engines and sorcerers inside?! Why did we even come here in the first place?!
The stone launched moments ago from the trebuchet was powerful enough to level an entire building—and now, with the sorcerer's help, that force was transmitted through the portal without losing the slightest bit of momentum, hurtling straight toward him!
Shit! There's no way to dodge it!
The elven legion commander's eyes bulged with fury.
But in the very next instant, a bolt of lightning of terrifying intensity crashed down from the sky—piercing straight through the boulder and blasting it to pieces!
[BOOM!]
No, it wasn't just lightning anymore. It had solidified into a pillar of thunder! The brilliance was so intense it scorched the commander's eyes!
Yet before he could even feel relieved at having survived, another thunderbolt struck—this time, directly above his head.
[BOOM!]
He and his armor were reduced to ash. Not far away, the trebuchet and its crew met the same fate.
Within two breaths, the sky darkened with dense storm clouds. It was as if the sun had been devoured, not a sliver of light could break through. Twisting serpents of lightning slithered and tangled through the clouds, merging and growing, until the mass of energy became too great for the sky to contain—and then it fell.
[BOOOOM!]
More than twenty Northern sorcerers had gathered together, chanting their incantations like a sacred hymn. The arrays beneath them blazed with light no weaker than the thunder itself.
Each node of the array was embedded with at least ten magical gems!
And this was just one of many such arrays scattered throughout Golden Tower City. Even if the communication runes between them were destroyed, the raw materials alone were enough to link with the spell—becoming part of the storm raging in the sky.
This was a spell cast jointly by more than twenty high-ranking sorcerers—[Alzur's Thunderstorm]!
[BOOOOOOOM!!!!]
Thunderclouds blotted out the heavens, but beneath them, Golden Tower City glowed like midday.
…
Offshore, the skies were clear for kilometers around.
It was as if every cloud within a 20-league radius had been drawn toward that tiny patch above Golden Tower City.
Reflected in Eist's eyes was a flicker of lightning, and he couldn't help but sigh, "Beautiful."
...
The Alzur's Thunderstorm that enveloped the entirety of Golden Tower City did not halt the ongoing clash between Nilfgaard and the Aen Elle elves—instead, it pushed their battle into an even more frenzied state.
Because neither side had yet realized there was a third party involved.
Lann had been shielding his sorcerer group the entire time. Any approaching enemy was detected and eliminated by him swiftly, ensuring their presence remained unnoticed by either faction.
The Aen Elle, due to the existence of the Wild Hunt, had always held a certain understanding of the magical development of the Continent's humans. They knew that a spell of this magnitude would absolutely require thorough preparation, with multiple auxiliary magic circles inscribed in advance. There was no way outsiders could cast something like this within a city.
As for why someone would carve a city-destroying array into the heart of an actual city... well, it was easy enough to understand—those mad Dh'oine, such lowly races, might very well be too brainless to comprehend how uncontrollable this spell really is. Maybe they themselves didn't even know.
The Nilfgaardians, for their part, were even more alarmed. These elves had appeared out of thin air through a gigantic, unprecedented teleportation array. The Nilfgaardians had no idea where these elves came from—perhaps they didn't even know there were elves from other worlds.
But they did know that the elves of the Continent were once the rulers of all races, and that humans used to bow down before them!
And the human magical system of today was, in fact, cobbled together by early magi who stole knowledge from elven mages!
A spell of this level... surely only the hidden powers of the elven race could wield it. Were the elves planning to strike back at humanity now?
At this moment, one side was fighting to retrieve their kidnapped leader; the other, to protect their emperor under attack.
On one side stood an elven army that had developed independently in a pocket plane for over a millennium—an army still formidable despite dwindling resources, their power undiminished as they launched an interdimensional assault;
On the other, the Imperial Guard of Nilfgaard, the elite troops of a mighty empire that controlled half the Continent—supplied by a superpower and recognized as the peak of military strength in this age—fighting on home soil and absolutely unwilling to retreat.
…
"Wow," Lann said flatly. "Such intense slaughter. Such a brutal war."
Behind him, Tissaia's sorcerer group had begun to sweat profusely, their faces pale.
The lightning raining down from the sky had begun to narrow—what had once been thick pillars of thunder was now thinning into ordinary bolts.
"Stop," Lann said. "This wave has already wiped out over half the soldiers here. And those who survived this magical purge won't go down so easily to another round."
Those still alive after the storm were essentially the absolute elites—Aen Elle units led by sorcerers, composite Nilfgaardian units that included magic divisions, or troops directly under the Emperor's personal command.
Unless Lann's sorcerer group could unleash one more full-force blast—concentrating the energy that had just covered the entire city into a single, devastating strike—the scattered lightning from now on wouldn't be able to kill them anymore.
From this point forward, it would be pure head-on confrontation.
Lann flipped his left hand and pulled out a silver box, giving the command: "Ace, prepare for the all-out assault."
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