“Prince Stolas…?” Moloch saw the image in the war room. This new batch of arrivals worried him slightly.
“You know about him?” Qiu Yue had just entered a minute ago and was attempting to adjust herself to the current situation.
“He’s erm… you could say we shared a special bond…” Moloch did not know how to put the relationship between him and Stolas. Their interaction with each other had been brief before it was interrupted by that incident that made him lose it all.
“Oh my god, did you and him…?” Kraft gave an exaggerated stunned expression as if Moloch had just admitted to doing something taboo.
“What?! No!! He was my student!” Moloch tried to defend himself.
“You taught him the ways of the ‘cotton’ butt?” Qiu Yue decided to join in on the fun as well, and you could see a rare occasion of Moloch rolling his ‘cotton’ eyes upwards.
“Alright, alright, let’s stop with the teasing for now. Since you know him, how big of a threat does this Prince posed?” Kraft turned serious for a moment.
“A major one. The soldiers he has are at least level 50 and over. Those foot soldiers we fought were roughly level 15 and below. Well, maybe the occasional level 20s but that did not make much of a difference.”
“Ah yes, I totally forgot that you guys have levels for your power system. If I remember correctly, 10 levels seem to correspond roughly to 1 Grade. In other words, we’ve been fighting Grade 1s and 2s, and now they are coming out with Grade 5s and above. This could be hard for most of our cultivators.” Qiu Yue recalled that the Savants who helped her in the logistic supplies were high ranked elite adventurers too.
“You shouldn’t be so sure about it. In the Dungeon World, levels are there solely for the purpose to segregate the population and make people feel that their hard work and efforts have paid off. Unlike with your cultivation system, you can also level up simply by grinding for long enough. But that is for another day. Suffice to say the will be very strong.” Moloch nearly went into his tutoring mood and then refocused to check on the war table.
“They will decimate the clay statues easily, but that does not mean they won’t be a hassle. After which, we can recommend to Jin to send the normal cultivators in for the fight. It’s best to use them as fodder to slow down the advancement of the elites. Our revival works far better than theirs.” Moloch knew that Stolas had many more soldiers than the ones that were teleported. More would surely be coming, and the clay statues would prove to be rather useless against them. Might as well send the main force in so that the clay statues provide some sort of assistance.
“What about the Giant Clay statues? It seems like a waste to activate them if they fall too quickly.” Qiu Yue asked as she looked on the war table and saw the spanning long overarching clay dragon made similar to Dragoonball Y and their infamous Pandajilla fighting against it.
“You’re correct. It’s best we let those statues remain for now until the giants come out to play. They should be among our most effective tools to deal with those.” Moloch sounded like it was guaranteed that they would appear and it was just a matter of time.
“Alright, then I shall also keep the option of the phantom soldiers open. Seems a little too early to reveal one of our trump cards.” Qiu Yue replied, seeing that the battlefield had yet to be littered enough for Duke’s Wolte dungeon core to be efficiently used.
They then send their recommendation to Jin, and he obliged all too willingly. The System had informed him that the crowd was getting way too restless and some selfish, impatient people were demanding to start now.
“Well, you know the saying ‘the customer is king’. Let’s grant them their wish!” Jin smiled as he happily pressed the button in his admin Pandamonium account to activate the event’s opening.
In the meantime, the chemical gas attacks were over, and the Orc Artillery Company had fully switched to firing armour-piercing shells with the purpose of breaking the shield Stolas’ mages had conjured.
They pressured the mages so that they would be unable to influence the battle, yet if that was not enough, each team had their very own Goblin and Orc mage duo that would enchant the shells with their very own spells.
As a last resort option, they had some special inscriptions courtesy of Octofussy to maximise the penetration power of the artillery shells. A shame, they were very limited, and their captains had restricted their use since it was still too early in the battle. (Though some say it’s better to use now than not having the chance later if they were pushed back or need to retreat.)
Still, Prince Stolas showed no hesitation in taking the opportunity to rush at the forefront over the main sky bridge that separated the empty beachhead and the multiple floating platforms.
“Moloch! I’m sure you can hear me!! Come out and face me. You should know that such cheap tricks won’t stop my army from finding you!!!” Stolas bashed a clay statue’s head with his fist, however surprisingly the clay statue head didn’t crumble into dust bust exploded right in front of him.
Thankfully his magical cloak provided him with defensive properties that allowed him to lessen the blow. They couldn’t have known that these clay statues had magic runes with dual effects in it.
Moloch’s ‘punishment’ had forced Jespa to try and come up with ways to combine her runes, and she had succeeded. (And became prouder than ever seeing it live from the telecast) Now her Animate Dead all had a random magical effect within them.
From explosions to petrifying one into a stone, the amount of experimenting initially allowed Jespa to get rid of boredom. She had no idea that Moloch’s words were valid and regretted that she did not keep all the formulas she made. (Considering she had to make hundreds of them with no apprentices to aid her, it was too taxing to create and document.)
Unless one obliterated the runes directly, those products that Jespa made would take effect. Some strengthened the corresponding clay soldiers while others gave them additional abilities, but most caused more random harm to the enemy army.
“SHIT! Watch out. This one did not explode, but it sprayed out acid upon death!” One of his vanguards shouted out loud while another stated that his one left thorns wherever he was walking. Slowly Stolas realised that this entire battlefield was filled with moving booby traps. The only way to safely remove all of them was to use wide-area magic to wipe them out entirely.
“No wonder they haven’t deployed any real soldiers for this battlefield. Rather smart, but not witty enough to defeat Prince Stolas.” Duke Crocell thought to himself. He was relieved a Demon Prince was leading the way.
“Fall back! The mages and I will eliminate them all with magic. Once we remove those nuisances it will be up to you al-” A two-handed club swung down right at him, causing him to instinctively evade. Then he noticed one more silhouette diving down with a sword attack.
“Don’t fall back. Stay a bit and play with us.” Xiong Da smirked as Yue Han readjusted his dive attack and locked swords with the Prince. The soldiers that were near Prince Stolas saw the situation and wanted to help out, but they were suddenly occupied by the various groups of masked humans that were holding the exact same club and sword as the Pandawans.
That’s right, those groups of ‘humans’ were the very new squadmates which were offered exclusively to the Pandawans.
Qiu Yue was playing favourites by sending in a few Pandawans with their squads first. Their purpose should have been to engage the elite soldiers, but unknowingly this action managed to disrupt the Prince’s plans.
It also inadvertently increased the morale of the cultivators, by showing them that their strongest were fighting along with them in the frontlines. Treating the war table like a gigantic tablet, she was able to drag and drop the Pandawans to an exact location as if it was some flash teleport skill.
“Time to feel the might of the Pandarens.” Qiu Yue laughed with absolute delight.
