Chapter 173 - 170 - The Battle of Cordova III
There was a burst of air and sound and a large cartridge launched into the air, and at the highest height it burst, launching thousands of slender, needle-like stakes all over the plains.
One of the stakes bounced off the Smith's helmet and buried itself into the earth, and the ward formed.
[Spell Jamming Field]
[Enrage Monster]
[Define Territory]
Sadly, [Define Territory] proved futile. Had the Smith not lost access to his Classes, for [Shatter Magic] and [Spell Jamming] proved unable to block the vile Demon magic, he would have been able to define the entire battlefield as his workshop, and use his [Domain of the Smith] and [Domain of the Enchanter] to empower himself even further.
Even so, the demons all stumbled as the spells they had cast to buff themselves were jammed, and their tamed monster allies were enraged, and began attacking every creature around them indiscriminately.
Thus far, the battle had only involved the formation closest to the Smith, some thousand or so demons which had hastily formed ranks as he approached through the sky.
Now the chaos spread to the full Demon Army, all hundreds of thousands of them, as their monsters went wild.
Wyvern fire spewed everywhere, not quite incinerating the demons, but certainly burning them and wounding them terribly.
Unicorns dashed at incredibly speed, streaks of light trailing behind them as they gored demons and other monsters alike.
Steel Pangolins rolled up and accelerated like massive boulders of death, chaotically bouncing off one another and crushing anything in their path.
AWOOOOOO!
Dire wolf howls spread and overlapped, striking fear into all who heard it.
All except the Smith.
For he had suspected for some time that, on the fateful day when he admitted the secret of his second Class to his future wife and her parents, he had already fought and killed a demon before.
A demon that had somehow disconnected him from his Classes.
It had been a little hard to tell, given that he had no Combat Class to begin with, but the hearing damage he had suffered from his own flashbang had been proof.
His [Sound Resistance] Skill had been removed.
And so he had ensured that his Legendary Armor incorporated all manner of Resistances and Defenses, on the presumption that his Skills would be sealed.
Besides which, even without his [Stubbornness] Skill, he was a Smith and a Survivor; a Father and a Husband, fighting for his family and his country; and he was the son of two Brawlers.
The chaos of the battlefield suited him perfectly, for he was one against hundreds of thousands.
The Demons nearby all took out bows in unison, drew them back, and fired with inhuman accuracy. The arrows were so thick in the air that they blocked his view of the brightening dawn sky.
And yet…
The arrows swerved, falling anywhere but within a circle twenty yards across, with the Smith in the center.
[Arrowbane]
He put the tube away, and took a hammer from his belt.
In the Dungeon, one of his most useful enchantments had been [Heavy Blow], a Basic Earth Enchantment, the particular design of which was already optimized for use on hammers.
At the Intermediate and Advanced levels, the enchantment was still known as [Heavy Blow]. It was just stronger, and could accept more of a user's magic power to strike even harder without overloading, as his own Basic enchantment had against the Stone Golem at the end of the Dungeon.
At the Journeyman level, the enchantment's name changes to [Avalanche]. And true to its name, the force of such a strike is roughly equivalent to the entire force of an avalanche crashing down a mountainside concentrated into one blow.
At the Master level the name changes again, this time to [Tectonic Crush]. There exist on the surface of the earth tectonic plates, impossibly large masses of stone and earth that float on a sea of molten lava and metal over incredibly long periods of time. The continents move, and some of the edges of these plates push into each other, grinding each other down into the earth.
And yet, this is not the strongest such enchantment.
There is another.
It is not Secret Master level. It is Grand Master level.
There's no point in keeping it a secret. The enchantment is too strong for any War Hammer anyway. No material can withstand the use of the enchantment, not even Mountain Orichalcum Steel.
And yet, that is precisely the material of the hammer that the Smith took from his belt.
[Appraisal]: Mons-saturated Compressed Layered Mountain Orichalcum Steel Bastard War Hammer, Quality: Secret Master, Durability: 1009 (Oversmithed) (Reinforced), Enchantments: Meteor Strike—Grand Master (934), Sympathy—Secret Master (276)
It was by far the largest war hammer on his belt; the rest waited ready in his spatial storage, or his store rooms to be accessed by [Spatial Linking]. It was saturated with mons essence, an advanced aspect of earth tied not only to mountains, but celestial objects.
Occasionally, celestial objects fell from the heavens to the surface of the earth, and those objects were themselves made of earth, stone, metals, and so on.
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Even the smaller objects, accelerated to incredible speeds and striking with tremendous force, could wipe out cities.
Larger objects could wipe out entire kingdoms.
It was theorized that if the moon were to fall to the earth, it would destroy the entire world.
Even the Smith's hammer was not strong enough to use the [Meteor Strike] enchantment directly.
No, it was the Legendary Smith's brilliance as an Enchanter that made the weapon usable.
[Secret Master Mirror Enchantment: Sympathy]
Mirror is a tertiary advanced aspect of Metal and Light, embodying the arcane symbols of reflection and extension.
The [Heavy Blow] family of enchantments increases the force of a strike, but when force is concentrated on a tiny area, whether that's the edge of a blade or the face of a hammer, the strike gains the quality of piercing.
That is to say, the strike simply punches straight through whatever material it encounters.
Not ideal in a battlefield situation like this
The Legendary Smith's only combat-adjacent technique was [Hammer Strike].
There are hammers—ridiculous looking things—with giant, wide striking faces, but even those are at most a yard across.
The Smith faced hundreds of thousands of demons spread across miles of plains.
He needed not only the force of [Meteor Strike], he needed the widespread impact of a celestial object hundreds of yards across.
Hence, [Sympathy].
[Sympathy] magically spreads an effect across a wide area at the cost of the intensity of the effect.
On an enchanted forging hammer, this would enable a Smith to strike the entire surface of a piece of metal at once.
Or to strike metal objects clamped onto multiple anvils with a single blow, the blow being spread sympathetically across all of them.
Intensity of effect. Area of effect.
A defined territory.
In his [Domain], the Smith could have directly targeted each individual demon and struck down tens of thousands at a time.
Instead he had to settle for only a thousand, formed into ranks within a defined area.
For this first strike, he jammed his Greatshield into the yielding earth next to him and clasped the handle of the Bastard War Hammer in both hands, raising it over his head, and feeding it as much magic power as the hammer could withstand.
The demons, seeing the Smith strike at apparently nothing, foolishly let him swing.
[Technique: Hammer Strike]
[Meteor Strike]
[Sympathy]
BOOM
A tremendous quake raced through the earth. The rest of the buildings in Saint Alejandro's district collapsed. Fires started throughout the city, and partially undermined portions of the city walls finally failed. Water pipes throughout the plains tore and burst. Landslides were triggered in the mountains on the other side of the city, and the tremors were noted in kingdoms hundreds and thousands of miles away.
At the epicenter of the strike, the earth exploded. Shards of stone and clods of dirt accelerated to tremendous speed punched straight through demon and monster alike. Dust shot straight up into the sky, punching through various layers air until equilibrium was reached and the dust began to spread over the top, forming a cloud in the shape of a mushroom.
Every demon lost their balance and stumbled, and the Smith would have too, if he weren't buried up to his knees in the earth and reinforced by his armor and restored [Levitation] enchantment.
"Yes, we certainly will have to revisit the definition of Irregular," the Tower Wizard was heard to murmur at the sight of the devastation from the balcony.
James took a moment to check his hammer.
Durability unchanged. Enchantment stable. No stress fractures in the metal.
He grinned savagely.
The iron was hot, and it was time to strike.
He raised the hammer again. And again. And again.
Five more times he struck, for a total of six, before the demons finally got close enough that their spells would land even through the [Spell Jamming Field].
The vile demons cast a spell of poison and disease, and a sickening fog enveloped the Smith's former position.
He had already taken flight, and easily avoided the cowardly trick. He floated above the battle ground, and was preparing to strike again, when a demon leapt dozens of yards into the air and thrust a spear.
[Divine Lightspeed Haste] gave him forewarning even as the spear thrust directly at his heart. It was as though the successful strike, bypassing even his Greatshield, was preordained. As though the successful strike came first, and led to the thrust; a reversal of causality.
Tink.
The spearhead rebounded from his mythril armor chestpiece.
But the Smith's hands were full, and the Meteor Strike Hammer was inappropriate for a counter strike on a single demon.
He flew back, trying to open distance, but more and more demons wielding spears leapt into the air, all their strikes landing in the same way.
Arrows joined the spear strikes, and overwhelmed his [Arrowbane].
High in the air proved to be a killzone, rather than a safe refuge from the fighting.
[Blinding Flash]
[Resounding Thunderclap]
[Inviolate]
Stunned, the leaping demons fell, and the bowmen lost track of their target.
The Legendary Smith plummeted to the earth, avoiding more clouds of the the toxic fog, and swapped his Bastard War Hammer for another tube from his [Spatial Storage].
Fwump.
Another cartridge launched into the air, in a parabolic arc, until it reached the air above the largest remaining concentration of demons near the Smith.
He activated his Amulet of Ice Absorption.
[Fimbulwinter]
The Tower Wizard had warned him against the enchantment previously, and James had adjusted it. It would no longer spread death's cold grasp as far and wide as ambient mana allowed, forever, unstoppable.
No, now it had an off-switch.
And even if he died, Isabella knew how to deactivate it.
In the meantime, magical cold swept over the battlefield, slowing everyone, freezing some, and providing additional mana regeneration to the Smith with his Amulet.
Once his enemy, James had made Ice his ally.