The Path of Ascension 3: A LitRPG Adventure

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“Only take down half the ballistae and mana cannons. Leave everything else up on the walls.”

Not willing to double guess the city AI, he ordered half of the siege equipment to be brought down and stuffed into their fallback positions. He assumed that the AI intended to recall the second half down right before they retreated from the wall. It would be imbecilic to leave them for the attackers to take and then simply turn around after all.

A boulder slammed into the wall next to Matt again.

They just needed to weather the storm for now.

18

Eleven hours later, as the sun was rising over the horizon, the first wall crumbled in on itself. It was the western section, the one directly opposite from Matt’s position. The light coming from the east gave him a spectacular view of the destruction. The wall now had a slope where the rubble slid down, creating a natural ramp.

Matt wasn’t surprised. No one was. They had expected this for the last few hours. During the next two, the remaining walls fell one by one. They stopped bothering to have the earth mages reinforce them a while ago. They had since been commanded to conserve their mana and energy for this pivotal moment. Now, they would form smaller cliffs out of the rubble, so the attackers would have to slowly scale them instead of marching down an easy path. During that climb, they would be sitting ducks.

Detached stairs had been prepared on their side, to be attached if the defenders needed to sally out. They weren’t going to create a stairway for their enemies after all.

Around Matt, archers and mages stood shoulder to shoulder. The attackers probably wouldn’t bring siege towers this time, when they had easier options. There was always room for surprise though, so they kept the walls manned. Best case scenario, they would be left free to rain down fire on the attackers as they funneled through the breach, turning it into a potent kill zone.

As they expected, the enemy lines started to trudge forward in a steady procession. These looked like fresh troops to Matt, but he couldn’t be certain. The queendom had brought in a substantial number of reinforcements.

Formation after formation moved forward with shields raised high. They weathered the storm of arrows, spells, and siege equipment that the defenders rained down on them.

Matt was hoping to inflict enough casualties to force them into a retreat, but it was a futile ambition. This had all happened before. Only a handful of individual divisions had ever been broken, and only after being completely decimated.

There was no such luck this time.

The first formation was accompanied by skilled earth mages who shaped ramps out of the rubble. It was an oddly satisfying sight. The disorganized rubble shifted and formed clean, precise steps out of the jagged slope. They were a drop of order splashed into a city that had housed only chaos for days.

“Drop.”

At his command, the buckets of boiling pitch they had heated with mundane fires were pushed over. The boiling black liquid sloshed into the opening, and the attacker’s screams were brutally short. Matt saw people clutching their scalded flesh, and others trying to peel off the soaked clothes that clung to them and burned them.

Matt didn’t enjoy their pain or let it linger. At this point, he was too drained to feel much of anything.

“Fire!”

Every mage with a fire spell, including himself, launched their spells to ignite the black liquid. What was boiling before was now a raging fire.

For a moment, it was as if a new sun was born. Everyone but Matt flinched back from the flash and wash of heat. The heat didn’t penetrate his armor, but he felt the burst of the air as it rushed past.

He hoped the wall of flames would earn them a reprieve, but the invaders had clearly expected something of this nature. The earth below rumbled, and the fires were quickly put out as the stone shifted to swallow the pitch and flames.

The next wave of attackers marched up the fresh stone stairs like nothing had happened.

Matt messaged the first fallback position and its accompanying ranged positions and squadrons.

“Prepare for enemies.”

He was still launching [Fireball] after [Fireball] as quickly as his spirit allowed. He paused only to recharge a mana stone with 200 mana, so he could immediately drain it dry and start the process over again.

Their enemies constructed their own ramp to the ground, not deigning to traverse the makeshift cliffs once more. Their ramp was steeper than what was ideal, causing more than one attacker to slip and fall under the rain of arrows. He cast [Hail] for a moment, but the earth mages hastily created a roof, giving them cover from the onslaught of kingdom attacks.

With a quick check, Matt verified that his melee fighters were protecting the outer wall and the stairs leading to their positions. Good, that gave him some breathing room. He threw himself over the edge, and landed just behind the first fallback position. The men above should be able to keep the invaders from climbing the outer wall, or taking advantage of the stairs. He wanted to be in the thick of the action.

He was just in time. The attackers were racing forward with a deafening roar. Matt screamed back wordlessly.

Each side clashed with a cacophony of epic proportions. [Cracked Phantom Armor] dampened the noise to a tolerable level, but with his own scream rattling in his ears, it was difficult to tell.

Matt leaned slightly forward over the small fortification and smashed down on a head peeking toward him. His target vanished without a sound. He struck down a second, and then a third queendom soldier in rapid succession.

An ally two people over was pulled forward over the barricade. A warhammer was already descending right to where he would crash down.

Without a thought, Matt launched himself at the hammer wielder with a [Mage’s Retreat] empowered leap. He body-slammed the man in the back as an ax feebly attempted to cut into his armor from the side, only to propel him forward harder.

Standing over the man, Matt swung his longsword in vast sweeping arcs that left trails of blue from the mana charging his weapon. The pressure of the advancing forces pressed the front lines forward, but Matt stood his ground, sundering metal and flesh as if they were one and the same.

When a mere Tier 7 shield had the audacity to block his attack, he let loose his sword’s stored mana with a [Mana s***h]. The bright s***h arced out in a crescent moon that jettisoned the queendom fighter and their shield backward into the crowd.

That gave the fallen kingdom soldier that he stood over enough leeway to scramble to his feet, reach up, and be pulled back up to the fortification.

Matt looped his left arm backward, and was met with four outstretched hands that grabbed it and hauled him up as well.

“Don’t let yourselves be pulled over!”

The situation here seemed in hand for now. Matt took a moment to survey the battlefield and located his team. He ran over to join Conor in the clear area that had formed around him. Allies knew better than to willingly walk into the red glow of [Demon Zone]. Enemies that took their chances received a free teleportation ticket to the hospital, as did those who were forced forward by the endless march of the queendom.

Together, Matt and Connor culled the swaths of enemies who had no option but to move forward. Aster, Annie, and Liz also made sure to attack the enemies in the range of the skill, too. Every target hit was a chance to trigger the skill’s reflected attack, and strike everyone else in the zone, too. With the mages outside of the affected range, they didn’t have to worry about reflection damage. Nor did Conor.

It was a devastating combination, and it was how the small team had managed to repeatedly hold a siege tower on their own.

In a moment of clarity, Matt also realized that he should use his Concept, and he let it billow out around him. The enemies that came into range were dead in seconds, before they could meaningfully benefit, so there was no reason not to use the small amount of willpower that he had accumulated.

With that extra mana, Aster prowled to the front, just left of [Demon Zone]’s aura. There, she dug her paws into the ground and reached out with Winter’s Embrace. In a flash, the thicket of ice branched out, and the frontmost dozen attackers became tangled ice sculptures. They shattered as the occupants were whisked away. The embrace didn’t stop growing there. More and more people were forced into Aster’s chilling garden as her area of effect grew.