25. A Low-Cost War of Attrition

A Low-Cost War of Attrition

Gargoyles, the favored scouts of the Mavis army, possessed several unique advantages.

These winged stone statues, given life through magic, were smaller even than children, and dark mason apprentices could summon them in great numbers. Their toughness and small size made them extremely difficult to destroy with projectiles, while their density allowed them to fly freely even under very poor natural weather conditions.

The newest versions of the gargoyles had been inscribed with magical patterns that allowed them to cast fireballs. Those patterns were also connected to the constructs’ rudimentary intelligence.

True, those fireballs had short range and relatively weak power. Against stronger infantry units, they were only useful as harassment. But in raids, these airborne firestarters were not to be underestimated.

When Mott’s hundredth scout was destroyed, he found himself thinking that perhaps the gargoyles ought to be enhanced with invisibility.

Even without magic, the locals’ weapons—made with iron and driven by fossil fuels—were reasonably effective against gargoyles within five hundred meters.

In the end, Mott was forced to hide the small constructs in trees or on rooftops in order to maintain a clear scouting view of the approaching army.

The fact that the locals possessed thousands of armored vehicles of various kinds did not surprise him. After all, if the civilians of this city owned hundreds of thousands of self-driving vehicles, why should it be strange for their military to possess armored ones?

What truly surprised Mott was that their scouting teams consisted entirely of infantry.

He had used weather magic to infuse the fog around the city with certain properties of lead, thereby blocking the cheapest and most common divination and communication spells. Unless the enemy possessed true scrying ability—which, without magic, seemed nearly impossible—such scouts should have been easy prey for heavy forces, taken apart one by one.

Ah, well.

It was not Mott’s duty to teach the enemy how to conduct their operations. He needed only make them die for his lord.

As the scouting continued, the enemy established dozens of forward bases approximately one kilometer from the fog’s edge, encircling the city. More and more supplies and troops were transported to those bases by flying vehicles with horizontal rotors.

It was like fighting the technological barbarians of the Great Ice Sea all over again, except this time the enemy had no magic.

Still, these people did not display the catastrophic arrogance that iron mages so often did. Their bases had proper walls, though relatively fragile ones, and were equipped with turrets bearing metal-launching weapons that could shoot gargoyles from the sky at range.

In the city center, hidden by fog, Mott directed his three dark masons as they completed the latest batch of crypts.

Necromancy, as a crucial part of Mavis magic, had been shaped by centuries upon centuries of folklore and tradition from many lands. Casting necromancy in darkness or underground was cheaper and easier.

Crypts echoed true tombs in function, but differed from them as well. When it came to rapidly creating low-level undead, they represented the best compromise between cost, construction difficulty, and effect.

Here there were one hundred and fifty thousand dead locals, plus another fifty thousand undead delivered through the original portals, most of which had now been destroyed. There were more than enough souls to draw into the crypts.

Inside the crypts, necromancy reversed the processes of entropy and death. It shaped new bodies for the souls from dust and air, then granted those bodies life by closing the gap between soul and false flesh.

Each crypt could produce a walking corpse in only a few seconds. With twenty crypts operating at once, Mott could raise an army in a very short time.

Many might sneer at the weakness and limitations of low-level walking dead…