Wizard: Starting from the Skill Tree

They knew exactly which spots along the ramparts were most exposed to long-range attacks, knew how to use corpses and rubble as cover in the middle of a melee, knew when to hold and when to fall back.

On the battlefield, this kind of experience was far more solid than any flashy Combat Techniques.

Fire arrows filled the sky, slicing through the gloomy heavens like a rainstorm, dragging thick black smoke tails as they came crashing down toward the walls in a suffocating torrent.

The arrowheads were wrapped in grease-soaked burlap; as they flew they scraped violently against the air, shrieking with hundreds of piercing whistles.

The pre-arranged fire precautions on the walls were all activated at once. Soldiers shoved over rows of wooden barrels filled with fine sand from behind the crenellations. Damp river sand spilled out of the mouths, rushed along the pre-dug guide channels on the inner side of the wall, and quickly blanketed the entire walkway atop the ramparts.

Fire arrows drove into the wet sand with a sputtering thud; the flames were smothered under the grit, leaving only threads of acrid, scorched greenish smoke.

But plenty of fire arrows still cleared the sand barrier, biting into the wooden roofs of the towers and the wooden supports on the inner side of the wall. Several crates of reserve arrows were set alight; firelight painted a flickering dark red across the inner face of the ramparts. Soldiers immediately grabbed buckets and rushed over to douse the flames; some were blinded by choking smoke, tripped over sandbags, then scrambled back up to keep throwing water.

Outside the walls, the Rebel Army’s ground forces had already begun their charge.

Countless soldiers carrying scaling ladders and Siege Hammers surged out from the lines, a grey-brown tide crashing against the foot of the walls.

Their armor was a motley mix—some wore Standard Leather Armor seized from the Earl’s armory, others only crude homemade iron plates—but the soldiers in the front ranks all gripped fine Weapons freshly looted from the Cadwell Territory’s arsenals.

A massive Siege Hammer was being pushed forward by more than a hundred men, rolling inexorably toward the gate under the thunder of wooden wheels grinding against the ground.

The cast-iron plating on the hammer’s head gleamed with a ghostly chill in the rain; every impact made the bars behind the gate groan under the strain.

Up on the walls, the defenders’ trebuchets and ballistae opened fire in return.

Burning stone shot trailed thick black plumes across the sky and crashed down amid the Rebel Army’s assault formations, carving out one blazing crater after another.

The giant Crossbow Arrows launched by the ballistae screamed as they tore through the wind, punching through shield walls and pinning clumps of soldiers to the ground.

But the human wave of the Rebel Army showed no sign of slowing. The dead were dragged aside, gaps were instantly filled by those behind, and one scaling ladder after another hooked over the crenellations. Iron claws bit deep into the mortar joints, and Rebel soldiers, short knives clenched between their teeth, scrambled upward with hands and feet.

The defenders shoved over cauldrons of boiling oil from behind the battlements; scalding liquid cascaded down along the ladders. Screams and the stench of charred flesh erupted together; the soldiers clinging to the top rungs toppled backward with the ladders. Yet in the brief interval after that defensive volley, a second, a third scaling ladder had already been hooked from other sections of the parapet.

Arrows lashed back and forth across the ramparts like a torrential downpour; the air was thick with the mingled reek of blood, tar, and burning timber.

A layer of corpses had already piled up at the foot of the walls—Rebel soldiers and defenders alike.

By the time the siege dragged into the third day, thick heaps of bodies had formed all along Grey Rock City’s walls.

The chill early-winter wind carried the stench of blood into every corner of the city; even the old and the young hiding in the deepest cellars of the residential quarters could smell that stubborn tang of iron that refused to disperse.

The originally pale granite face of the outer walls had been scorched to a sooty black; arrows and Javelins were driven thick into the joints between the stones, so that from a distance the whole wall looked like some colossal hedgehog bristling with spines.

The iron hooks of the ladders had clawed at the crenelated stone again and again; in several places half a merlon had already collapsed. The defenders stuffed the gaps with broken masonry and sandbags, then braced them with round logs, barely keeping the line from breaking.

Across these three days, the Grayson Squad and other mixed adventurer detachments had rotated through more shifts than anyone could count.

Old Toby’s trap materials had long since run out. He began teaching the young soldiers how to improvise simple trip traps on the walls using broken tiles and iron caltrops.

Notches had already chipped into Grayson’s sword; after each shift he would sit on the stone steps along the inner side of the wall, grinding the blade over and over with a whetstone, then walk back to the battlements in silence.

After loosing arrow after arrow, the young squad member’s fingers were sliced bloody by the bowstring. Old Toby tore off a strip of bandage and wrapped them, the youth clenching his teeth to mutter thanks before nocking another shaft and drawing his Hunting Bow again.

No one noticed that throughout these three days, Duke had spent most of his time completely absent from anyone’s sight.

On the first night, after his shift ended, he quietly detached from the unit, melded into a breeze within the shadows of a ruined tower on the inner side of the wall, and rose to several hundred meters above Grey Rock City, hovering still beneath the clouds.

From his vantage, the entire city was like a lone island ringed by a grey-brown tide. The walls formed the edge of the island; the scattered torches in the streets within were the last stars on that land; and the dense clusters of Rebel Army tents outside fused into a boundless dark ocean.

He did not intervene in this war; he simply remained high above, watching in silence.

Ever since he had grasped the Life Rules, he had acquired an acutely sharp intuition for the flow of Life Force.

Ordinary currents of Life Force—grass and trees growing, beasts breathing, the body’s metabolism—appeared to his senses like countless fine rivulets, flowing slowly and naturally across the Earth.

But over these three days, he perceived a flow of Life Force that was utterly abnormal.

Each time someone fell on or beneath the walls, each time a trebuchet stone exploded amid the crowd, each time the Siege Hammer smashed into the gate and triggered a melee in the gateway, threads of extremely fine, emerald-green light would drift out from the bodies of the dead.

These filaments were completely invisible to ordinary eyesight or any Spiritual Power sense, but to his Life Rules vision they were clearly drawn by some unseen hand, all drifting in the same direction—toward the Rebel Army’s rear camp.

Duke frowned slightly, then adjusted his position along the path of those converging threads, silently gliding closer to the Rebel Army’s encampment.

His Wind Elementalization form was nearly transparent at that altitude, merging with the dim clouds; even if the soldiers below looked straight up, they would see nothing.

As he neared the camp, the filaments grew ever denser, the initial trickling strands merging into invisible emerald-green rivers of light, flowing from every corner of the battlefield toward a single point in the depths of the camp.

That spot was tightly guarded by concentric rings of tents and sentries, and a faint Energy Barrier shimmered around its perimeter.

Duke did not force his way through the barrier; he observed from afar.

Within the Energy Barrier, he saw a statue.

The statue itself was not large; compared with the towering divine idol he had seen beneath Count Cadwell’s manor, it was utterly insignificant, yet its form and facial contours were identical to that idol.

Two slowly turning Sapphires were set into the statue’s eye sockets; the glow within the Gemstones was brightening as more and more emerald Life Force surged into them.

Every life extinguished in this war—Rebel or defender—had its Life Force forcibly extracted by some ritual Energy and poured into this statue.

And deep within the camp behind the statue, Duke’s Spiritual Power caught an extremely subtle Energy signal.

That signal was wrapped in layer upon layer of deliberate Restrictions and camouflage; if he had not traced the flow of the Life Force filaments and repeatedly scanned the area, he would almost certainly have missed it.

Even so, Duke could only hazily gauge the opponent’s strength: a Level 3 Extraordinary, whose Energy intensity was incomparably higher than that of Lloyd, whom he had met in Stone Crown City.

He did not move any closer. This distance was already dangerous; one step farther, and the other party was very likely to notice him.