Chapter 398 – Assessing Threats
“We have to hold the walls. Let the tide of beasts break against our rocks. Those Realm Breaches must be Unstable Breaches to have spit out Demonic Beasts. All we need to do is hold until they exhaust themselves and once that happens, we can go out and clean up any Breaches still remaining. Just like any other beast wave.”
The speaker was Evelyn Mason, the A Rank Chairman of the Viridis Mage Association. Damion felt her stance on the best strategy for the approaching beast wave was short sided. After all, this crisis was far different than any beast wave in history. The members of the Viridis City Council disagreed with her assessment just as Damion did, but since most of them were not nobles, Mage Mason was casually dismissing their concerns.
As with any beast wave, the residents of a city were assigned areas of control, not dependent on their actual Rank. In Saung, it had seen B Rank knights with the authority to order around S Ranks that responded to the threat. In Viridis, there were plenty of A Rank mages to handle the different districts, but who was in overall command seemed to be up for some debate. One side said it was the city council, the other the Mage Association. And the two sides spent more time arguing about what to do than deploying people.
After arriving in Viridis, the Mage Association had dispersed the S Ranks as evenly as possible between the White Zones, but with four mages to split between three cities, not counting Mage Thresbane, it was an uneven split that saw Viridis keep both Mage Fletcher and Mage Levine. Mage Teft had been dispatched to Rubrum and Mage Strand to Argentum. On top of keeping two S Rank mages, the Mage Association also kept all of the A and B Rank Atlantis reinforcements for themselves, making Damion believe it would have been better if they had split themselves up ahead of time.
“Holding the walls won’t do us any good if the beast wave never ends. According to the live map, all the Realm Breaches are still out there. That doesn’t seem like Unstable Breaches to me,” Nicolo Locke, head of the Viridis City Council, countered.
“It would be suicide to send anyone out there to test each Breach,” Mage Mason told him. “Once the initial onslaught is through, then maybe we can send out a team to check a few of the Breaches. But no one would be able to get out there and back now.”
“Your indecisiveness has led us down the path of destruction once again. I say again, this is Viridis. The council has the final word in how we defend ourselves, not the Mage Association!”
“Fine, you want to be in charge, be in charge. But don’t blame the Mage Association when Viridis is wiped out through your incompetence!”
“This is not going well,” Mage Fletcher whispered to Damion as they watched the two sides arguing. “If this keeps up Viridis really will get wiped out because no one will be giving orders.”
Damion had been allowed in the command center for the Viridis defense since he was accompanied by two S Rank mages, and no one was about to tell them no. Now that he witnessed the debacle of politics at work in the defense of the city firsthand Damion felt he should just leave and go out and fight the Demonic Beasts on his own. However, he felt like he could at least aid the overall effort. He was, as far as he knew, the only one that could go out and determine the Rank and type of the Realm Breaches.
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“I would like to volunteer to scout the Realm Breaches,” Damion suddenly spoke up, causing Mage Fletcher and Mage Levine to look at him worriedly.
“And you are?” Mage Locke asked, not recognizing Damion.
“Damion Wells, B Rank.”
“The famous Mage Wells. How could I possibly send you out to look at the Realm Breaches. Mage Mason is right in that it is now too late to try and determine their strength and type.”
“You won’t be sending me, I’m volunteering. I can easily identify Realm Breaches and have no issues flying for long periods of time. Should I encounter anything that can threaten me, I’ll be sure to retreat right away.”
“Fine. Since you are volunteering, Mage Teft can’t blame me if something happens to you. Go, and good luck.”
Before Mage Levine or Mage Fletcher could protest or attempt to talk Damion out of going, he slipped through the crowded command center and was outside. Summoning his Ice Sword, he set off in the direction of the nearest set of Realm Breaches. It would take a few minutes at his top flying speed to get there, but he should still be able to get to the Realm Breaches and back before the first horde of Demonic Beasts reached the walls of Viridis.
As he flew through the city, Damion could not help but feel this White Zone was eerily similar to Argentum. Towering glass towers of residences and businesses. An elevated sidewalk spiderwebbing between buildings with the single car trams for mass transit running beneath. Though right now the city looked deserted. The trams were all stopped, shops were closed, and the only people insight were the ones on the perimeter wall, all the normal people having been sent down to hidden shelters to wait out the coming storm.
When Damion flew over the wall he heard a few people shouting at him, most likely wanting to know what he was doing or where he was going. He did not bother to listen and even if he did shout an answer back, it would do those defenders no good.
After a few minutes of flying, Damion passed over the beast wave. He was flying too high for True Sight to identify anything about them and if it was not for the fact that he had his tablet out, Damion would not have realized he was flying over them since when he looked down all he could see was a sea of brown dust.
When he arrived at the first Realm Breach he saw it was a B rank Unstable Breach, which bode well for the defense efforts. He marked the strength and type of the Breach on his map to alert the command center and then flew higher into the sky before anything coming out of the Breach could realize he was there.
A few minutes later he reached the next Breach, this one too was an Unstable Breach, however, it was only C Rank. After labeling it, he flew to three more Breaches. Two more B Rank Unstable Breaches and one A Rank, that he flew away from very quickly. So far, it was looking like the walls and the defensive cannons of the White Zone cities would be able to withstand the onslaught. After all, even Saung could hold out against A Rank Demonic Beasts, it was when creatures that were stronger than that attacked that the city walls had been breached.
Unfortunately, Damion was not able to mark a full dozen Realm Breaches as being A Rank and under. The next Breach he encountered was enormous. Much larger than any he had ever seen, and True Sight identified it as an S Rank Unstable Breach, which meant that even now it could be spewing S Rank Demonic Beasts across the countryside.
Damion pointed his Ice Sword towards Viridis and started flying as fast as he could. If there was one S Rank Breach, there were likely others. There was no longer a reason for him to keep flying around outside the city. He had confirmed that they would be facing S Rank threats, that was enough.