[MA] 165. Like a Phoenix Feather (Patreon)

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[A/N: 1/3 chapters this week. Next one on Thursday.]

The dark barrier faded over a few seconds while the dark purple frame turned to a lighter shade.

For the past days, Shen wondered if the preparations were necessary—if the Rift War was actually real. When he had been in the rift, the D-ranks hadn't appeared until he destroyed the violet gravity ball. What if the gnolls kept to themselves unless invaded?

When the barrier disappeared, and he saw the other side, he found he had been right to ask for help.

A wall of thousands of black tower shields awaited right on the other side of the portal, only a dozen yards away from it. Each shield was seven feet tall and four wide and touched the ones beside it.

The gnolls behind the shields all stepped ahead in unison as soon as the blockade was lifted.

They were coming for Earth.

A quick jump let Shen see a couple dozen lines like that. Around twenty thousand war tanks followed. The gnoll version was as big as Earth's, but that's where the similarities ended. They were round, floated a couple feet above the ground, and had three short, thin barrel guns equidistant around them. They were black like the shields, and Shen estimated at least part of the shields had been made using the tanks that had been destroyed when he destroyed the gravity ball and caused it to explode.

The enemy's armored flying vehicles were small black metal balls that could only be manned by a single crouching gnoll. They had excellent maneuverability and were surrounded by spikes that could shoot in any direction. Five hundred of them hovered about the tanks, evenly spaced between each other.

Fifty monoliths were evenly spaced among the tanks, protected by the armored vehicles and three gnolls each. These gnolls didn't have black armor like the others, and Shen recalled that the only troops with mismatched equipment he had seen had been when the D-ranks came for him.

That made it one hundred and fifty D-ranks; where were the rest?

The regular gnoll troops followed, both on foot or mounting worgs. A thousand wyverns flew above them, each ridden by a single gnoll.

The eight dark violet balls came last, each protected by ten D-ranks.

The gnolls' strategy was obvious, simple, and effective: they would use the defensive lines and armored vehicles to gain ground. All that remained was to see how effective the shields and armor were against Earth's destructive power.

As if on cue, Shen felt a tank's shell go right beside his head, making his clothes swing with the displaced air.

Earth had opened fire.

A salvo of machine gun bullets, heavy shells, rockets, and missiles flew toward the gnolls from the ground and the air. At the same time, thousands of drones took flight and flew straight at the portal, hoping to gain air superiority on the other side.

Shen watched the projectiles expectantly.

System-bought E+ equipment couldn't resist that level of concentrated firepower. E+ resistance enchantments were slightly better than the E+ resistance stat and thus were vulnerable to high caliber guns. Yet, the question remained about whether the gnolls had better stuff than what could be found in the system store.

They did.

The shields lit in purple light and did resist one to two projectiles each. They were significantly better than what Earth had access to. Did it have to do with rifts, or was system equipment simply subpar?

Whatever the case, stopping a single rocket wasn't enough to survive when the air was filled with many more.

The heavy fire cut through the gnoll front lines like a phoenix feather going through a block of ice. They couldn't deal with the rain of death at all. Thousands died during the first attack alone.

Killing them was satisfactory, but Earth needed to deal with more than shield-bearing foot troops. Therefore, many missiles and artillery shells targeted the armored vehicles instead.

Those didn't light with purple defensive fire, but they didn't need to. The shells were utterly ignored, while the missiles only dented their armor. A heavy dent, to be sure, but Shen estimated it would take ten to twenty missiles to deal with each tank. Unfortunately, his war camp didn't have enough missiles to destroy twenty thousand tanks.

The Guardians and their magic would have to deal with the tanks in person.

The projectiles targeting the wyverns just missed—magic was undoubtedly involved. The ones targeting the monoliths and violet orbs were blocked by the D-ranks; a swing of their weapon or a single spell was enough to protect the objects.

More missiles and shells targeted the regular gnoll troops. Those found mixed results; some killed dozens of enemies while others were countered by magic. The latter either fell harmlessly on the ground or changed their direction and flew above all enemy troops until they exploded away from the gnolls.

An unexpected good news came when the flying vehicles were pushed away by the missiles. The explosions bypassed whatever magic held it aloft and made it move—a lot. The vehicles shot through the air like thrown balls.

Even as Shen analyzed the attack, Earth kept firing.

The drones also found mixed results. Some were shot down by laser-like rays, spells, arrows, bolts, or throwing weapons. Others reached the other side and started sending the aerial images Earth wanted. Many carried their own missiles and tried to shoot at specific targets. Some of them focused fire on a particular tank, and Shen's estimate was proven right when thirteen rockets disabled a gnoll tank.

The smoke threatened to block Earth's vision, making it harder for human technology to target the enemy. It had been expected, though, and they knew how to deal with that. Mages in helicopters cleared the air with spells. The gnolls cleared their skies, too, presumably because they would rather lose men than vision.

And lose men they did.

Thousands died by the minute. The tower shields' front lines disintegrated into bits of metal, meat, and blood an instant before they turned into light. Then, Earth started focusing on armored vehicles. The floating tanks also just turned into light once they took enough damage.

The gnolls never stopped advancing.

Shen had gotten a lot of missiles in eight days, but not enough to destroy twenty thousand tanks before they could go through the portal. Only two thousand had fallen when the tanks were about to reach the portal line, though he estimated that at least thirty thousand gnoll foot troops had been killed by then.

Earth's brightest military commanders and Shen had disagreed on where to engage the enemy with Guardians. Most of the former insisted on stopping the enemy on the portal. They didn't want to give the enemy any chance to escape and spread chaos on Earth.

However, Shen and a few others had been adamant it was better to give the gnolls some ground on Earth so humanity could attack from all sides and with some other weaponry. It would make their last recourse, the atomic bomb, easier to deploy. Moreover, the death toll to stop the gnolls on the portal would be too big to be doable.

Shen had won in the end, if for no other reason than the generals concluding Earth troops would run away if told to become a meat wall at the portal.

Earth had created a perimeter around the portal from all sides. On the back, the portal was filled with light purple energy. Anything that touched it disintegrated, be it living matter or not, so they couldn't attack from there. Therefore, the war tanks and humvees kept rotating to swap positions. That way, the ones who had spent their ammo could resupply more calmy while the enemy was kept under fire by the newcomers.

The attack helicopters did something similar, though the ones with spent magazines and empty rocket launchers had to go further away from the portal to resupply. A few jet fighters also flew away to get new missiles but most held their fire to protect the bombers that would soon rain bombs on the enemy.

The first gnoll tank went through the portal—and was smitten down by heavenly light.

A white beam of pure plasma from the sky straight into the tank. It was so hot it distorted the air around it, yet the tank resisted—for ten seconds. Its armor was good but not perfect, and soon the thing fell to the ground with a big hole in the middle, then turned into light.

The light then disappeared, and a couple seconds later, it reappeared over a new invading tank—together with dozens of other such lights. One hundred beams kept coming, constantly destroying the tanks.

Shen turned back to see one hundred black crystals as large as a truck floating above his troops. They were surrounded by smaller white crystals rotating around their midsection, and a Guardian floated cross-legged in front of each of them, holding a small crystal ball in their hands. They pointed the balls at the tanks, and the crystals shone with black light while the white beams formed in the heavens to fall on their enemies.

Marzia's gifts, Shen guessed.

Earth's bombers flew above the incoming tanks. They had agreed to use that tactic only if things looked safe, and they did—the planes soared high enough that the magic beams only materialized below them. The dozens of planes flew in a line over the portal and rained their bombs on the enemy. Bomber after bomber dropped their charges on the tanks. Individually, each bomb was too weak to destroy the tanks, but with enough of them, they would succeed. Even if they didn't, damaging the enemy would already help the Guardians tasked with bringing the tanks down.

Unfortunately, at long last, the enemy opened fire.

Once they stepped a few yards inside Earth, the gnolls' tanks shot balls of white plasma against Earth's tanks. Each ball was surrounded by golden lightning. Even if humanity's armor ended up resisting the incoming explosion, Shen didn't believe the tech would remain functional after the lightning went through it.

Fortunately, he had thought of that, and a Guardian on each humvee stepped up to the occasion. They had trained extensively on a simple thing: throwing earth magic on quickly moving targets.

The plasma balls didn't have homing functions, and soon enough, big chunks of Earth rose from the ground to hit them head-on. The enemy projectiles exploded harmlessly in mid-air.

Earth kept firing. The enemy kept dying. Although humanity prioritized the tanks, plenty of projectiles still found purchase on the regular gnolls. The enemy had soon lost over sixty thousand troops.

But finally, the first armored flying vehicle went past the portal, and with it came humanity's first genuine hurdle—or so it looked at first.

Each metal ball was surrounded by fifty-three spikes, and they all shot homing laser-like projectiles at once. They weren't as fast as light, but they were supersonic enough to make it impossible for the clunky human machinery to dodge.

Some rays pierced helicopters and killed pilots, but most focused on the rain of bombs coming from above. The bombs exploded much before they could find the enemy. The bombers became useless, and helicopters started falling to the ground.

The jet fighters were supposed to only protect the bombers, which weren't endangered, but they received different orders then. They shot their missiles at the metal balls. The enemy flying vehicles were thrown back through the portal, and the bombers became effective once more.

The gnoll tanks kept coming and shooting, and some Guardians missed their spells. Bullets and less solid spells didn't make the plasma balls explode. A few plasma balls still hit their targets now and then.

The plasma exploded mightily, turning tanks into molten metal at once. The heat released by the explosion was so great that half of each tank nearby was also almost molten, and the distorted barrels became unusable. A tank was about to shoot when it happened, and the shell exploded on the barrel, killing the people inside.

The men on the nearby humvees died a painful death, cooked alive, commoners and Guardians alike. The humvees themselves were thrown a dozen yards back from the sheer pressure of the explosion.

The smell of metal and blood filled the air. The sound of explosions was deafening. Death was aplenty.

Shen watched everything impassively.

He was saving his power and energy to deal with the enemy D-ranks.

Despite their small success, the gnolls' tanks were constantly destroyed by heavenly beams and explosions. They advanced regardless until they formed a protective semicircle in front of the portal.

Almost eighty thousand gnolls had died by then.

The monoliths had slowed their pace inside the rift, but once the semicircle was formed, one of them moved the last yards to cross over.

Some jet fighters and artillery were ordered to focus fire on the monoliths, but D-rank spells made short work of Earth's projectiles.

The monoliths were one hundred feet tall, made of obsidian, had violet lines, and floated slightly above the ground. The D-ranks stood close to the monoliths without trouble, but the E-rank gnolls pulling the things stayed dozens of yards away. They pulled the monoliths using thick black metal chains.

When the big war machine entered Earth, Shen felt it take Zephyr away from him. It succeeded in parts; it would stop him from using Zephyr-powered qi but the Concept would still be part of his aura. Or so should things be if Shen didn't have a very simple plan to deal with that.

He willed his aura to counter the monolith's effect.

Back in the rift, even after he had developed his aura, he had felt the monoliths taking his secondary Concepts from him but hadn't acted on it. He had been lost in the carnage and didn't know his aura well enough—and it didn't protect him on its own. Now, however, it took only a twist of his will for his Path to fight the monolith's influence inside his aura.

The monolith was strong. Its influence still invaded his aura—up to fifty yards away from him.

Then, it stopped, and Shen felt his connection to Zephyr return fully to him.

That was the most significant victory of the war yet; it would let him fight with his full power anywhere.

But the gnolls had much more to show still. The moment the monolith entered Earth, a thousand white cubes came from the rift's skies and crossed the portal. And finally, at the same time, the D-ranks appeared.

Hundreds of them appeared from the portal's edges and poured into the world.

When they stepped on Earth, they looked around as if searching for something, then turned to Shen and ran straight at him.

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