Chapter 691: – Trouble in the Whistling Woods (4) |
Gawain and a dozen of his relatives were fighting against a large group of over forty hostile Greens.
House Asclepius’ mages outnumbered House Avalon’s at a rate of four to one, though there were more than just mages in the forest. Gawain’s family had sent over a hundred life users to the battle, each commanding around thirty clones.
The thousands of mindless minions fighting within the devastated woods weren’t individually impressive like Archibald’s. Even with their reinforced skeletons and boosted physiques, at least a handful were typically needed to put any pressure on an enemy mage.
The good news was that Machaon’s Greens didn’t have the option of escaping to the sky whenever they got swarmed, in some ways making House Avalon’s famous bloodline more dangerous at the lower grades. Gawain sadly didn’t possess it, but half of his current teammates did, jointly directing a battalion of nearly two hundred clones.
The two sides appeared fairly balanced at first – which Gawain was extremely thankful for. While their current ratios were quite representative of the overall sizes of the two armies, he understood how easily a person could end up singled out and eliminated in a messy fight like this. Unfortunately, his luck finally ran out when one of the enemy lieutenants decided to fly his way.
“Incoming Blue!” Gawain yelled to alert any of his allies that might have missed the newcomer.
The whizzing spells, crackling flames and booming explosions nearly drowned out his voice, though Gawain didn’t need to repeat his warning, since the powerful fire mage revealed his presence by unfolding his domain.
The Blue’s willpower didn’t feel too suffocating to a Green empowered by the Dance – especially when spread thin to affect so many people. Physically and magically, House Avalon’s mages were no weaker than true Blues, though the Masterful spell wasn’t quite enough for them to manifest proper domains of their own.
At most, Gawain and his allies could unleash weaker, short-lived bursts of willpower that certainly helped when timed properly, yet couldn’t bridge the vast gulf separating the two grades. They could still resist the enemy domain fairly well, but it slowed them down just enough to tip the scales of the battle.
Estimating that he could only fire three more attacks before having to pause and recharge, Gawain clicked his tongue. ‘Did it have to be a Blue with a fire affinity?’
The hellish inferno raging through the forest already made it harder for Gawain to absorb or circulate water mana. It didn’t affect his lightning affinity in any way, but Gawain had only adapted his old spells to be fuelled with acid instead of water. He hadn’t quite managed to develop any lightning spells after receiving the affinity-changing treasure from Percy. The last thing he needed was another domain that exacerbated the flames – as if Machaon’s hadn’t been problematic enough.
Thankfully, Gawain wasn’t in too much danger, since his role in this battle was a somewhat supportive one. He excelled at launching large projectiles from afar to cover his teammates. He could handle himself at close range if necessary, but he didn’t have to do that with so many clones standing between him and his opponents. The brainless thralls would just have to hold on without as much support for a few seconds.
The situation wasn’t ideal, yet there wasn’t much he could do to change it.
Gawain was quite fortunate that half of the enemy Blues who had initially descended to the ground had been forced to return to the sky to assist their superiors. Between Archibald’s minions attacking the weaker mages, and the unexpected success of his eleven generals in the aerial battlefield, their family was holding on relatively well against the Great House.
Galahad’s small victory wasn’t too shocking, as Gawain’s older half-brother had always been an overachiever. Galahad’s fame had previously been limited to just the Camelot province and their immediate neighbours, but the fellow acid mage had made enough of a splash in this battle that people would likely sing about him all across Remior in the years to come.
It was Elaine’s exploits that filled Gawain with fatherly pride, however. In just a couple of short decades, his little girl had grown into one of their family’s most powerful fighters, second only to his father.
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‘Well… third,’ he corrected himself upon remembering the other little monster.
It felt like only yesterday when he had escorted the two teens to Phoebe’s temple. The harebrained girl that had slept through her watch and nearly gotten all of them killed had now grown into a figure that House Avalon could rely on. Meanwhile, the Red-born boy who had struggled to hold his own against a single wood goblin was the same person who had caused this entire war and shaken the whole continent up.
Gawain’s memories of that year grew bitter as he watched the nostalgic forest burn to ashes all around him. Their family wouldn’t be exporting much whistling sap after the war, but they had bigger things to worry about than the loss of their province’s prized dessert.
Estimating that he had accumulated enough mana to resume fighting, Gawain coiled his whips around another broken tree, the wood sizzling under the corrosive touch of his mana as he prepared to shoot it toward the Blue. Their group was clearly on the losing side, but Gawain and his allies didn’t need to win – they just had to survive long enough for other battles to conclude in their family’s favour.
“Be careful up there, Elaine,” he whispered, clenching his fists. “Whatever happens, let’s not leave Owain without a father or sister today.”
***
Owain paused as he neared the border of the Whistling Woods, the sight of the hellish landscape making the blood freeze in his veins. Plumes of smoke mixed with the clouds to blacken the sky, painting a stark contrast against the backdrop of orange illuminating the area.
He couldn’t see the Greens fighting on the ground, but he couldn’t avert his gaze from the powerful mages hovering above the trees even if he wanted to. They crossed vast distances like meteors of flesh and mana, shooting giant spells at one another.
Most missed, exploding somewhere in the forest and possibly slaughtering entire groups of unlucky mages. A couple of attacks occasionally collided, creating flashes bright enough to sting Owain’s eyes, followed by thunderous shockwaves that reached his ears and made the pebbles by his feet jump up and down a few seconds later.
He had never seen so many Blues and Violets gathered in a single place – let alone fighting at full power. Scanning the combatants carefully, Owain spotted his sister surrounded by five enemies, the unmistakable shapes of her flailing tentacles cutting through the chaos.
Gritting his teeth, he mustered the courage to enter the forest.
Elaine and their father would kill him if they saw him here. Owain’s core was only at Yellow, and he didn’t even know the complete Dance because nobody in their family had been able to teach him the external flow for his affinity. Even figuring out the correct pattern for Circulation by himself had been a challenge.
Still, with a rare affinity and boosted by the Refined spell, Owain wasn’t much weaker than a regular Green. Less experienced? Sure. But what kind of man would he be if he cowered at home while his sister bled and died for him?
Carefully navigating around the areas where the wildfire burned fiercest or where he spotted Blues fighting, Owain searched for an opponent he could handle or a small battle that he could contribute in without getting killed.
No matter how cautious he was, he knew that he wouldn’t be perfectly safe. Hell, if he was fated to die here, one of the Violets’ stray spells might drop on his head at any moment, not leaving even his bones behind.
‘But that’s true of anyone, not just me. It’s no excuse to hide,’ he kept telling himself whenever he felt like heading back.
A few minutes later, he stumbled upon the first corpse. Having never seen one before, he was rattled, though he had come here expecting nothing less. Scrutinizing the bloodied remains, he recognized the face of one of his distant aunts, but he didn’t panic.
Owain had seen enough life clones to easily tell them apart from real people – even with their clothes and flesh burnt together into a crisp, and their bisected torsos face down in the mud.
‘It’s not Aunt Grelia,’ he reiterated, yet he struggled to keep his legs from shaking. ‘It’s basically a broken doll… and its guts are like stuffing.’
Falling to his knees with a muted thud, he barely managed to keep his breakfast in. Forcing himself to get up, he advanced through the woods, hoping to find fewer mangled relatives and more live ones in need of being rescued.
He wasn’t so lucky, though most of the corpses belonged to clones or enemies. He told himself that the rest were clones too, even though he knew that they weren’t. Many of the dead didn’t even possess the bloodline, but he could process his feelings later, when his family’s future was no longer on the line.
Once the shouts and explosions grew louder, Owain took a deep breath after the other, partly to calm himself down and partly to activate his most important spell. One might argue that he should have done that before entering the forest, but keeping Circulation running for more than forty minutes wasn’t easy, so Owain hadn’t wanted to waste it.
Faint, nearly imperceptible tattoos formed on his skin, drawing dozens of intersecting loops. His mana was transparent, so it would be difficult for an external observer to see how it was flowing within his channels without using Mana Sense.
Owain knew that the pattern for his affinity was far more bizarre than others. He had figuratively banged his head against the wall for years before realizing that he was supposed to manually reverse the direction of the flow every few seconds. If he didn’t, his mana would keep accelerating until he lost control of it entirely.
Ignoring the nuances of his spell, Owain focused his senses outwards, looking for a mana signature. He found a handful. Approaching carefully, he identified – to his great joy – a rather manageable group of six Greens. He guessed that only one of them was an ally, as their mana was far more potent and abundant than the five mages they were fighting against.
Fear and excitement surged through Owain’s chest in equal parts.
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