Mage Tank-Chapter MTB5 Prologue (2)

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SYSTEM ADDENDUM ADDED BY USER NAME: [EMPRESS RONA LITTAE]

ADDENDUM NOTE: 2 minutes before Fortune’s Folly enters the battle of Krimsim.

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The time it took Lieutenant Nokomi to overcome the shock of her CO’s orders was miniscule, not because of any great stoicism on her part, but because Speed was her highest attribute. From the perspective of her students, Captain Iberto barged in, announced Nokomi’s immediate deployment, and then both she and her captain disappeared in a gust of wind.

Once Nokomi was out in the halls, she was limited to Captain Iberto’s more sedate pace. The man could only move so quickly, and they covered the half mile from Nokomi’s classroom to their destination in fifteen seconds. During those fifteen seconds, Captain Iberto dropped a lot of unwelcome news on his Lieutenant.

“Strap in, because I only have time to say all of this once,” said Captain Iberto. “Krimsim is currently under attack by a swarm of Avian-type mana monsters, Grade 12 and up. Last we heard, they number in the tens of thousands.”

“Tens of thousands, Captain?” asked Nokomi. She’d already finished swapping out of her formal uniform and into her Nullweave combat set.

“Consider that a conservative estimate. They’re being directed by an Alpha, Grade 33 or higher.” He glanced over to read Nokomi’s expression. “I need you to get your head around that fast, Lieutenant.”

“Yes, sir,” she said, shaking off her disbelief.

“Count Starion’s whereabouts are unknown, as is the rest of his party. Krimsim’s local Delve teams range from Level 1 to Level 14. Major Tavio of Seqaria is making a rapid approach, supported by two full parties of Level 16s. One is Captain Pio’s people, the other is a foreign group known as Fortune’s Folly. Heard of them?”

“Of course, sir,” said Nokomi. She’d referenced one of their Delves only a few minutes beforehand.

“Good. Folly’s group has a dimensionalist with some real gallop on his portals. He’ll be opening one here in the fort in about one minute. That portal will take you to a staging area. I’m unclear on where that is or what else is in there, other than it’s ‘safe enough.’” Captain Iberto shook his head. “Once you enter, a second portal will open directly ahead of you. That portal will take you to Krimsim. You will enter that portal the moment it appears, alongside everyone else we’ve scrambled.”

The pair came to a stop next to a stairwell to the fort’s lowest level. Below them was a reinforced bunker room containing the now-inactive portal that once led into Deijin’s Descent. A small crowd of harried officers were having similar conversations with other instructors from the fort, overseen by Colonel Moffis, the fort’s commander. Nokomi took it all in at a glance and realized they’d assembled every Gold Delver they had on-site, which was a grand total of five, all of whom had been brought on to teach the new batch of Delver candidates.

As soon as she’d had that thought, a new group of soldiers came rushing down the hall towards the stairwell. They were a party of Level 15s wearing specialist uniforms that marked them as artillery support. Nokomi assumed they’d been brought in from somewhere nearby. She didn’t know everyone coming and going at Fort Ruiz, but a full gold party was hard to miss.

Once the newcomers were within earshot, a major called the group to order and Colonel Moffis addressed the group.

The colonel pointed to the party of specialists. “Team One,” he said, then pointed at three of the instructors standing on the other side of the stairwell. “Team Two.” Then he pointed to Nokomi and the instructor next to her, a man who oversaw the fort’s training in Divine Magic. “Team Three. You should be briefed on the situation in Krimsim, so we’re skipping that and getting straight to your orders. They’re vague as shit. Get over it. Team One will enter Krimsim, take command of cannon control, and support as the situation demands. That’s it. Team One, down the stairs.”

The group of Level 15s quickly rushed down the stairwell towards the bunker.

“Team Two will rendezvous with local troops at the capitol building. Kill birds, defend civilians, don’t die. Team Two, down the stairs.”

As the second group hurried off, the colonel turned to Nokomi and her unexpected partner. “Team Three, your objective is to find Count Starion’s daughter, Ulia Starion, and keep her safe. Extract her back through the portal if possible. Lieutenant Lipol, use your divination to get Ulia’s location as soon as you enter Krimsim. Lieutenant Nokomi, use your stealth auras to infiltrate and keep both Lipol and the count’s daughter safe. Questions?”

Lipol stepped forward. “Do we have her last known location? It’ll make my work faster.”

“Her schedule has her at the Krimsim Delver Academy in the southwest quarter. School of Crafts, room 3, Mana Weaving Basics. She could be holed up there, or in the closest emergency shelter.” The colonel raised a brow, but neither Lipol nor Nokomi had anything else. “All right, time's up. Team Three, down the stairs.”

Captain Iberto joined Nokomi and Lipol as they descended. They stopped a little more than halfway down as the teams ahead of them waited on the portal to open. Iberto leaned in to speak quietly to the pair.

“Count Starion lost his son to the Creation Delve a few years ago,” said the captain. “You’re going to make sure he doesn’t lose his daughter as well.”

Nokomi gave the man a solemn nod in response, and Iberto wished them luck, then cleared out of the stairwell. Her new partner grunted.

“That foreign crew in Krimsim was Sayil Starion’s party through the Creation Delve,” said Lipol.

“Three of them were,” said Nokomi. “The other two were added later.”

“Hmm,” hummed Lipol. “You know a lot about them?”

“Only what I need to teach modern Delving tactics.”

Lipol looked like he was going to comment further, but a shout came from down the stairwell and the teams ahead of them started moving.

“Go! Go! Go!”

Nokomi ran down behind the other instructors and scrambled specialists. They moved through an open pair of heavily warded dark iron doors into the small, reinforced room beyond. Dead center was a portal leading to what looked like a field of rich soil. Nokomi only got a passing glance, but the portal’s edges were a perfect shade of black and created a light breeze as they sucked in the air around them. She’d never heard of anything quite like it.

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An unfamiliar captain was the one shouting, urgently waving them forward from beside the portal. Nokomi went in, given no time to think or second-guess the wisdom of running into an unfamiliar portal leading to an unknown location. When Nokomi emerged she was, in fact, in the middle of a field of soft, dark soil, contained on all sides by massive dark-grey walls. A short distance away, an enormous mana weave continually dumped out more of the dirt into a tall pile.

There were several lumbering golems shoveling and spreading the soil around the space, which Nokomi realized was indoors. She glanced up at the ceiling, two-hundred feet overhead, then out at the field stretching out for at least a half mile in every direction. Her mind immediately jumped to Delve architecture. There wasn’t a single support beam or load-bearing column in sight. The System was the only thing that could build something like this.

After analyzing the space, Nokomi’s senses alerted her to its other occupants. Large, bright red, scales, teeth, claws, and horns. Nokomi had never seen one before. In fact, she didn’t know whether anyone had ever seen one.

There was an entire horde of Dragons surrounding them.

The Littans had been ordered to wait for the arrival of a second portal, but the group came to a halt sooner than Nokomi expected, only a few dozen feet inside. Someone barked a few commands–the leader of the specialist group, Nokomi realized–and she processed the situation before anyone could do anything they’d regret. free𝑤ebnovel.com

“Belay that!” Nokomi shouted, moving forward to stand ahead of the team’s battle formation. This group wasn’t a traditional Delve team, having no captain to lead them, and Nokomi outranked the specialists. The artillerists stood down, but the tension remained.

Nokomi surveyed the Dragons again, observing that most were laying on their bellies. Only a few were even looking at the Littans, and those that did seemed to do so with casual indifference.

“Good,” came a somewhat sinister voice from above her. “I see that at least one of you possesses a survival instinct.”

Nokomi looked up to see a diminutive human floating above them and imperiously looking down at her. For a moment she interpreted the person as a child, but soon realized it was an adult man, just one who was very short. Three shields floated around him, each one as large as he was.

“This is a flight of red Dragons that will be providing your city with air support,” the man continued. “You will inform your cannoneers not to fire upon them, lest you wish to invite greater ruin than you already face.”

Nokomi bristled at the man’s tone, but decided this wasn’t the time to take offence. “Noted,” she said, then turned to the specialists to ensure they’d taken the message to heart. Their commander signed his acknowledgement.

Before anything else could be said, the second portal opened, and Nokomi ordered their group to keep moving. She activated two auras, making everyone close by invisible and silent, while also granting them a massive bonus to their stealth. Both still allowed them to perceive one another. The specialists led, and when Nokomi emerged from the portal behind them, she arrived in the midst of bedlam.

They were on top of Krimsim’s southern walls. Shapes filled the air, darting past at incredible speeds. They were so numerous that the entire area was cast in gloom like a storm loomed over the city. Behind her, an enormous cloud rose from what looked like a recent explosion with white and gold lightning arcing through it. The detonation had to have been massive, but the creature the cloud rose from was greater still. Nokomi’s eyes widened at the sight of the incredible four-legged beast, covered in a twisted forest. Then Nokomi quickly found the man who’d brought them here.

He was a half-mile distant, but Nokomi had excellent perception. She could make him out with little trouble. The armored figure had brightly colored wings and a matching boa, the signature look of the party leader for Fortune’s Folly. The man turned his head, and even though his face was hidden behind a full helm, Nokomi could feel his gaze fall upon them despite her auras. A shudder ran down her spine as she got the sensation that the platinum Delver was peering into her very soul.

After the briefest of glances, he opened another portal much closer to himself and another group of Littans emerged. They streaked through the sky to intercept a flock of building-sized birds rushing to defend the Alpha, each one shrouded in elemental energies. A flash blinded Nokomi as the lead Avian fired a sky-splitting bolt of lightning, and she turned her full attention back to Krimsim.

While she’d surveyed the area beyond the walls, her second instance of focus had been evaluating the city itself. She took everything in within a fraction of a second, and could already tell that the situation was even worse than they’d been told. What had been reported as tens of thousands of birds was at least a hundred thousand or more. While the majority of the swarm looked to be focusing on Delvers concentrated towards the city’s center, plenty of them were attacking the civilian population, piercing through thick walls and doors like they were made of paper. Homes and buildings throughout the city were being torn to pieces as the birds hunted.

The specialists immediately jumped off the wall, falling towards the city below. Nokomi glanced at Lipol, ready to suggest that they do the same, but the man was already casting his divination spell to locate the count’s daughter. She silently swore, but didn’t dare interrupt the man’s spell. They’d have to rely on her auras to go unnoticed.

The team of three instructors followed the specialists off the walls. Nokomi watched them fall, but one woman struck a bird as large as she was on her way down. The monster reflexively grappled with her, its beak pecking and ripping through the woman’s armor. Once she’d been struck, other birds seemed drawn to the violence, despite her invisibility. The monsters ripped one of the instructor’s legs away, and her screams of anguish were lost in the screeches and thunderous sounds of cannon fire. She disappeared into the flock soon after.

Nokomi grimaced and pulled her kusarigama from inventory, gripping the short handle of the bladed pick. A chain ran from the weapon, which she silently wrapped around her off hand. She kept it loose, giving her control over the heavy Madrin weight hanging from the chain, while allowing it to be thrown at a moment’s notice. She eyed the nearby birds warily, studying the numerous species of mana monsters.

Some of the avians had colorful plumage with cruel, jagged beaks. Others had feathers made of crystal and heads built like a lance for skewering their targets. One group had curved beaks for piercing and crushing, while another seemed to fade in and out of existence, their bodies hidden in clouds of shadow and poison. There were many more aside, but none had taken notice of them yet.

A nearby cannon fired off a gout of fire. It was hot enough to cause her armor to steam as what little moisture was on its surface boiled away. It caught a half dozen birds with its blast, but another dozen swept down to attack the weapon. It was already covered in scores and dents, and the birds attacked the weakened areas, tearing through the cannon’s armor. A reactive pulse of force erupted from the gun’s housing, launching the birds away, even as more swooped in.

The pulse flung the birds aside and one collided with Lipol, knocking the diviner down and interrupting his concentration. The mage wasn’t hurt, but the bird that crashed into him let out an ear-splitting squawk a moment before Nokomi’s pick skewered its brain. Lipol scowled at the dead creature as he started to climb back to his feet.

Then the man died.

All of the nearby birds descended on their location. Nokomi leveraged her invisibility, dodging and evading the blind search of their claws and beaks, but Lipol wasn’t so experienced. Nokomi tried to reach the man and escape off the walls, but she didn’t have the skill set of a defender. She got her arms around the fumbling mage’s waist, but a pair of birds collided with his chest at the same time. Their beaks sought out Lipol’s neck with uncanny accuracy, and with a savage strike from each, carved through all of his soft tissues.

Blood sprayed out onto Nokomi’ face and chest. She staggered back, avoiding the other avians who flocked and joined their brethren’s violence. Nokomi stared up in dread at the monsters as they gripped Lipol’s skull and tore his head from his body. Two of the avians briefly fought over their prize, until the larger bird won the contest and flew up into the sky. Part of Lipol’s spine was still attached, dangling and scattering fluid as the bird screamed through the sky and back toward the Alpha leading them.

Lipol’s headless corpse slumped to the ground.

Nokomi clenched her jaw. She’d lost her diviner, but she still had Ulia’s last known location. This wasn’t the first time she’d lost a party member, although the brutality of Lipol’s death still shook her.

She pushed those feelings down, spread her wings, and jumped off the wall into Krimsim.

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