Blue Sky Chapter 37 (Patreon)

Chapter 37 Act 5: Blue

*Vwriiing!*

With a loud noise, I saw the catapult ‌bend backwards. It was still outside the effective attack range for arrows or magic, but catapults were an exception.

Its range was also multiplied by the fact that the catapult was located on the high ground compared to where the main battle was going to take place.

"Fire!"

With someone's shout as the signal, several hundred catapults and ballistae all shot their payload at once. The boulders which were doused in oil and lit up into a ball of flame in order to increase its lethality was truly a frightening threat to anyone.

The flaming boulders and gigantic arrows drew an elegant curve across the sky as they descended towards the enemy location.

"Run away!!"

"Argh, save me!"

Many shouts of fear and urgency rang out.

*Boom!*

The payloads which started to land on the ground made loud thuds as they destroyed everything around them.

The users who couldn't avoid it in time and the siege weapons such as siege towers all crumbled and fell. But there were large numbers of such siege weapons and personnel, plus they had predicted beforehand where our siege weapons would land our payload and they avoided many of those places ahead of time, so the actual number of users that had died from getting hit by a flaming boulder was actually not that much.

I could tell since the scoreboard placed in the sky above didn't have the enemy numbers reduced as much as I hoped.

And so after several rounds of such volleys were completed, the enemy forces that had been constantly only been attacked by us seemed to have now reached a range where they can fire back, as their catapults stopped and started lobbing large boulders at us back.

As catapulted boulders kept launching at each other on both sides, both encampments fell apart.

"Gosh... Gives me the shivers."

Katalina seemed fed up with the scenery, since she had already experienced siege attacks multiple times in the past as she shook her head while complaining.

Thankfully, there didn't seem to be any boulders falling towards the tower we were at, but the powerful catapulted boulders still showed its fearsome power by damaging parts of the castle walls heavily.

*Boom!*

One of the towers ‌next to ours was unluckily hit by one of the catapulted boulders, destroying half the tower with one blow. And of course, ‌the users inside the tower who couldn't escape the tower before the boulder landed were met with a game over screen.

While many long-range siege weaponry destroyed both areas within and outside of the castle walls, it seemed like the enemy forces finally arrived at the bow weaponry attack range. I saw several users wielding range attack weapons readying their arrows to attack. From ballistae to longbowmen. They used many types of arrows on the defensive side.

Of course, I saw several users who were not of the archer class also pull out their bows and arrows to aim their attack, but if I could I wouldn't have recommended them to do so since it didn't seem very effective to me.

"Aren't they being a bit too careless in where they place troops and squads just because it's still the outer wall?"

"Hoho, of course. You can't even imagine how difficult it is to just take care of only the guild members at this point. There's no time for the commander to bother worrying about small fries like mercenaries."

Katalina laughed as she replied to my complaints, as if she had some experience in being a leader in battle‌.

"So you're saying we're nothing but disposables right now?"

"You probably feel annoyed, but it can't be helped from their point of view. If you or I were in the same situation, we would have treated them the same, anyway."

"Tsk."

As she was right in what she was saying, I couldn't think of any ‌retort. With I felt slightly bitter in my mind, I watched the enemy's forward party, which had already reached very close to where we were.

"Well, the enemy's forward party is mostly compromised of mercenaries‌, though it's more apt to call the forward party a 'suicide squad'."

"That's what I'm saying. Now, they're reaching the range of my magic, so escort me while I prepare my AOE spell!"

"All right."

A few of the high level mercenaries that didn't have the patience to wait for the siege towers to arrive started climbing up the castle walls. They probably are confident in their power and skill to have the courage to go up to the castle wall like this, but it's a foolish act as there are many more forces on standby ready to fend them off. On top of that...

"Argh!!!"

To be slowly climbing up in a wide-open space where ranged specialists are on standby is basically the enemy goading the defender to attack and kill them.

Like a moth to a flame, mercenaries that are trying to brute force their way up die one after the other. But some ‌reached their way up the wall, perhaps because of great luck or great skill, though it is hard to tell.

"Hehe... I'll kill you!"

One mercenary that climbed all the way up pulled out swords in both of their hands and came at us. It's an Assassin. It definitely is difficult for ranged specialists to deal with Assassins who specialize in close range battles.

I didn't pull out my Excalibur and instead looked for an improvised weapon. But wait, what?

The weapons that are commonly left around everywhere were nowhere to be seen. Learning the lesson that I should prepare at least some supplementary weapon with me next time, I adapt a fighting stance with my bare two hands.

The enemy mercenary looked at me in disbelief and spoke in a mocking tone.

"Hah. What a cocky woman you are. You look like you're over level 600, but you're thinking of fighting with bare hands? Without even wearing knuckle gauntlets for fist-fighting style users? Hah! Don't make me laugh."

In Blue Sky, not only are you divided up according to what main class you choose to be, you are also divided among weapon types one can specialize in. Meaning that just because you are a knight, doesn't mean you always use one type of equipment. Therefore, there is a class that specializes in barehanded fist fighting as well. However, as the skills they use aren't particularly flashy or amazing looking, it meant ‌few players accept that specialization. But there definitely was a fist fighting style class.

However, their weapons weren't literally bare fists but gauntlets. They have a point when they called me out on merely pretending that I specialize in that class.

Saying nothing to his taunting, I flipped my fingers back and forth in a provoking gesture. I used this ‌taunt often in the past, and I presumed ‌it would work in England as well.

"Why you little!!"

Lucky. My taunt worked on him.

He dashed in right away, thinking he'd take me down easily, but his attacks were very telegraphed and seemed to be a singular, aimed attack. Meaning that it has a lot of gaps.

I lightly dodged to the side and as he gasped in surprise by my avoidance, I stepped behind him and struck the back of his neck. Sorry for this, but knights that don't have their heavy equipment equipped have as much dexterity and speed as Assassins. On top of that, if my stats are equal to his, then...

"Argh! That damage amount doesn't make sense. You're cheating! It has to be a bug...!"

The mercenary whined about this being a bug or a cheat, but it didn't matter whether he was going to report me, so I ‌followed up my attack by using my foot to directly kick his groin.

"Urrrgh..."

Although it was virtual, it seemed like he had a high sync rate with his capsule, since he fell over while holding his groin. Although I felt sorry as I was a man like him in the past, I won't be experiencing that kind of pain anymore‌. Even so, he was an enemy, so I walked up, grabbed his neck and twisted it with ease.

*Crack.*

It wasn't a clean break like those done in the movies, but since it's a technique that only depends on how much strength the user has, so the enemy mercenary was immediately declared to be 'Game Over'.

Although Capsules deliver a high sync rate of the pain you can feel in the game, it never sends a strong enough pain sensation that the users can ‌die from even if they died in the game, so there was no need to worry about them dying from the shock. But still, they probably are in deep psychological shock as they find themselves logged out from the game.

They ended up getting a Game Over by someone using their bare hands after all.

That's right. Logically, such a situation happening is completely unbelievable. When using bare hands, the amount of damage you can output is limited compared to when you're using an actual weapon.

However, that changes once you clear 2 prerequisites.

One of the two prerequisites is reaching 'Grand Master' in proficiency class, and the other is having over 1,000 in strength stat. Once you clear those two requirements, you can gain a new skill, which is a bare-handed fighting style called 'Pankration'.

You need to spend 5 minutes for a day each time you want to use this skill, but the skill makes it so that the weapon you were carrying previously has its damage power directly carried over to your bare hands. I thought it would be very useful if I were to get into a PvP battle, and now my hypothesis was correct by this test.

"Wow, that was a show and a half, Ellie!"

Katalina held her thumbs up and cheered, who had now finished preparing to cast her spell.

"Heh."

Compliments always make you feel good, doesn’t it? I smiled in a satisfying way.

"But what is that skill? It's the first time I'm seeing it. Can a mage learn it?"

"Mmh. Well, you need to complete two prerequisites of being a Grand Master and have 1,000 strength stat. The conditions are passive so you don't need to activate any quest for it though."

"Yikes... 1,000 in strength!?"

Katalina gasped in horror as it was a number that a mage would never even dream of reaching.

"Mages and Knights are different, so perhaps once you reach the 9th circle of magic and have at least 1,000 in intelligence stat, you may unlock some skill‌."

"Mmh. Well, you said it's purely depending on the stat. Let's see, oh, my intelligence stat is 994! If that's the case, I just need to level up 6 times and put it all in the intelligence stat, and reach the 9th circle of magic by raising my proficiency, huh?"

Mmmh... Well, easier said than done.

"How much proficiency in magic do you have left to reach the next level?"

"Mmh... I just need to fill in 2 blocks."

That meant that she had filled 98% of the whole proficiency level. As one would usually gain 1% in proficiency every 3 levels, she would end up reaching both the 1,000 stat and the 9th circle magic proficiency once she gains 6 levels.

"If you do well, we'll be able to check if that's the case before this battle even finishes."

"Yep! I'll do my best."

Just in time, I saw a siege tower heading towards our tower. Even with a single glance, I could tell there were quite a lot of users all gathered at the top of the siege tower.

"That looks like a pretty good target for you!"

I thought it would be a very fitting target for Katalina as she had just finished preparing the spell and only needed to fire it. I didn't know what magic she had prepared, but as the main element of magic she uses is fire, it would be most likely to be a fire type magic, and the siege tower which is constructed out of wood was the perfect target for it.

"It was my target long before, anyway."

Katalina had a frightening smile on her face as she exhumed a dark aura and aimed her magic towards the siege tower.

[Inferno]

It was a powerful spell. A high grade fire magic among the 7th circle AOE spells. While its destructive power doesn't reach the levels of the 8th circle single-target flame spell called Hellfire, there is nothing else among the other 7th circle spells that rivals in its area of effect. Of course, there is also the spell 'Fire Rain' in the 8th circle that has an even larger area of effect than Inferno, but it wouldn't be wise for Katalina to give away the truth that she's Merlin by casting that spell, so instead she chose a more 'mainstream' spell of Inferno instead.

Watching the mana erupt from Katalina's body and form into a raging river of flame in front of her was ‌awe-inspiring. It truly proved the saying that there is nothing better than casting magic out of all ‌skills you can activate in Blue Sky in terms of aesthetic brilliance.

The raging tidal wave of flames soon crashed directly onto the siege tower.

"Aaargh!!"

"Save me!!"

Screams of pain were heard from the enemy mercenaries that were being greedy in wanting to be the first in getting the most ‌experience points in this battle. They probably understood from a single glance that she was casting was an extremely powerful spell ‌from the majesty and scale of the flames that were flung at them.

On top of that, it’s a fire element spell‌. It's no wonder that the people standing inside of the wooden construction would be terrified.

Among the mercenaries, several of them jumped off the tower before the river of flame even reached the tower they were at. It seemed that there weren't enough ladders for all of them to climb down safely.

*Boom!*

Not long after, the Inferno spell directly crashed into the siege tower. Dozens of men were flung out by the explosion and seeing them realistically fly away by the rendition of the physics engine of the game made it look even more immersive.

However, the users who were the victims of these situations met with a cruel fate. Even though some of them didn't get flung away by the explosion, they still died one after another because of the continuous damage from being on fire.

"Ahh, it's too hot!!!"

"What the f̲u̲c̲k̲ are our mages doing?! Why aren't they using countermeasure magic!?"

Screams and shouts mixed into a chaotic mess. However, the battlefield is wide and there are still many enemies. Soon, the enemy side's mages put out the fire using their magic and they began to repair the siege tower.

"25 kills!"

Katalina made a v-shape with her fingers victoriously.

Although it was the special privilege that mages had gained through their character development, I was still feeling jealous. All I had at this moment was just 1 kill after all. But mages could only dish out those kinds of effective spell attacks when they were given the right amount of distance to their target. Soon the battlefield would be chaotic with people all around, so there's still a good chance that I'll end up with more kills than Katalina.

Aside from the particular place where we were, other parts of castle walls were already deep in melee battles. When I activated [Hawk's eye] and looked behind me, I saw a number of Chaos guild members all standing around looking bored and relaxed. Just as I thought, whether as allies or enemies, there were always some people that I didn’t particularly like. Although we were only contractually employed, how could they seriously just stand around joking and laughing when there was a battle going on?

But I shook off that thought in my mind. It was true that to them, we were just outsiders. Even the enemy army forces that clashed with us first were mostly made up of mercenaries. It just means that their league hadn’t begun yet. Once the battles have progressed quite a bit and the tension of the battle was at its peak, they would start to move in.

*Rumble... Ka-thoom!*

Yet another siege tower had arrived. With clamorous noise, the siege tower bridge landed its end on the castle wall.

"Waaaagh!"

Staring at the numerous mercenaries charging in as they let out a scream, I cracked my neck side to side and unsheathed my Excalibur.