83. A Twelve-Person Assault Team

A Twelve-Person Assault Team

“The tower is going to shoot at us with—”

CRACK-BOOM! CRACK-BOOM! CRACK-BOOM! CRACK-BOOM!

A colossal bolt of lightning tore through the sky with such violence that it staggered the weaker members of the group.

Its blinding light made the cloud-covered heavens brighter than the noon sun, and the shockwave of its passage blew away the rain within three hundred meters of the bolt itself.

It was spectacular and terrifying, with enough power to vaporize anyone in the group, including me.

And then, every few seconds, it happened again and again… without hitting anything nearby.

“What are they aiming at?” Chi Li amplified her voice with magic so we could hear her through the ringing left between thunderclaps. “Is the target even inside the city?”

“It is shooting down missiles,” Lia said in her usual level tone, somehow making herself heard over the thunder without raising her voice. “Fifty or sixty kilometers away. Sometimes above the clouds, sometimes below them.”

Cheng Rui’s eyes went wide. He glanced around carefully, far less discreetly than he probably thought, then started making exaggerated gestures to get my and Chi Li’s attention.

We both found his stupidity amusing.

That lasted until he spelled one word for us:

NUKES.

…Well, I could not exactly blame the people in charge for using nuclear weapons.

Not in this mess, as I had heard Zhao Mancheng mutter a few hours earlier.

It only meant we had to bring the tower down ourselves after the government ran out of missiles, but before they tried something equally destructive.

So, what did one bring to a wizard-tower party?

“I think we should skip the entrance and break into the upper levels directly,” I suggested when my Force Sense hit a wall and could not probe any farther. “Bypass whatever defenses and traps the bad guys set near the door and go straight for the important parts.”

After several hours of preparation, one last meal, and as much rest as possible, our twelve-person group crept close to the huge metal structure in the city center under whatever cover we could find.

The few monsters we saw, we avoided whenever possible, so the enemy commander would remain unaware of us for as long as we could manage.

Then Zhao Linshou, Chi Li, Zhao Mancheng, Zhou Xiaorui, Chen Jin, Josh, every survivor who had killed at least one fire demon and could reach us in time, and I encountered our first problem.

The tower had no windows, no other doors, and only one gate. It had no keyhole and no other visible way to open it from the outside.

“We may have to do that,” Chi Li agreed after casting several spells at the gate. “I cannot find any way to open it. To every detection spell I know, it looks like absolute nothingness.”

“Try it,” Zhao Mancheng said, his black eyes scanning everything in front of him and finding nothing. “No traps, no hidden switches or panels, no mechanisms at ground level, at least.”

Nobody else had any ideas beyond blowing everything up, but considering the sheer mass of the black structure, we would make no meaningful progress without nuclear weapons.

The Mavis monstrosity was as wide as a football field at its base, though its pyramid shape narrowed as it rose.

Even so, it was still far larger than any similar human structure and built from a solid black metal no one could identify.

Symbols the size of cars had been carved into its matte-black surface, each glowing with ominous, sickly crimson light, and every one of them was harder to understand than the last.

The higher I flew, the smaller those symbols became, so that every row on each face always held seventeen. As they glowed, they also swallowed the surrounding light, growing brighter and darker at the same time.

When I tried to read them, my eyes slid away on their own while stinging, because their shapes made no sense and their angles refused to agree with themselves.

When I reached two thirds of the tower’s height, the constant crackling of lightning struck me like a physical attack, pushing me back again and again.

The tower kept firing bolts at distant targets, and its top had turned red-hot from residual heat.

I realized there was no point climbing higher. The soldiers would die from the shockwaves and the heat.

So I chose a suitable-looking spot, drew back my left fist, and slammed it into the tower’s surface with everything I had.

It rang and trembled like a colossal gong, though the sound was barely audible outside.

Nothing else happened.

Then the backlash sent a spike through every nerve below my shoulder and knocked me out of the air like a cruise missile.

“Let’s not do that again,” I told the others after climbing out of the small crater I had made on landing. “The protection up there is too strong. I’d need a fifty-kilometer run-up and a giant battering ram to punch through.”

“Let us make that Plan D,” Chi Li replied, planting her four-meter staff into the ground. “I think the protection is weaker here. Weak enough to cut.”

She closed her eyes and leaned heavily on the staff, as if some invisible force pressed against her shoulders.

Maybe it did.

“Does Plan D come before or after desperately running away?” I flexed my left hand, trying to drive away the numbness.

Regeneration was repairing the damage, but some problems were more stubborn than others.

“After. Now hush. I am concentrating.”

Chi Li’s staff began as a rod of metal as black as the tower, but the longer she focused, the redder it became.

At the same time, mud, puddle water, even soil and stone formed a widening ring of frost around it. Everyone’s breath turned to white mist.

The instantly frozen area grew wider and wider, though thankfully it did not affect anything above the ground.

The tip of the staff grew brighter: dull red, then hot orange, then shining yellow, then blinding white, and then farther along the spectrum until it became a violet so harsh even I found it painful to look at.

A beam of violet light shot out. The air split and shook as if struck by lightning.

The wall of the tower hissed and bubbled like ice touched by molten metal.

A nearly white molten liquid seeped down and through the ground, leaving behind a widening hole as our resident witch melted deeper and deeper into the tower’s side.

After five full minutes of sustained output, the beam pierced through to the other side, cutting cleanly through fifty meters of wall.

Chi Li staggered backward. Her usually perfect red hair was soaked with sweat, half of it crystallized with ice. She pointed at the still-glowing tunnel and instantly pulled the heat out of it.

What remained was a passage wide enough for two people to walk through side by side.

“You… first…” my best friend panted, dropping onto the ground. “I need a minute… that was… brutal.”

One soldier jumped in, took a few steps, and then his boots began smoking.

“I thought you cooled it down,” he accused as he backed out, his shoes deforming.

“It is not heat,” I told him.

Then I rushed forward and tore the damaged boot off his leg.

“You… you crazy bitch!”

Well, I did not like him anyway, but that did not mean I was going to stand there and let him die.

Instead of explaining, I picked up a plank from nearby rubble and dropped the melting boot onto it.

“What is happening?” The smoking and blackening spread from the boot to the board, and the wood quickly burned down to ash.

“It looks like acid corrosion to me.” I warned everyone away from the deadly magic. “Except without, you know, actual acid. Things are being corroded without any corrosive material, and it spreads.”

“Wonderful.” Zhou Xiaorui shook his head in disgust. “So how are we supposed to get through?”

“You are not.” I tossed another plank straight into the passage. It began smoking as soon as it landed and turned to ash in less than half a minute. “Only four of us can survive going through there.”

“You cannot know that,” the same idiot protested, then turned to Zhao Mancheng. “She’s lying! She has to be lying! I gave up everything to come help!” Now he was actually shouting. “You can’t leave me behind, Captain. You can’t.”

“Shut up, Xiao Wei,” the tall man muttered.

“Anyone who cannot bounce bullets stays outside. Find good cover, reinforce defenses, and watch Cheng Rui’s back until he finishes setting up the weapon.”

Not everyone liked the arrangement.

But seriously, what else were we going to do?

At least so far, nobody had died.

With that thought, Chi Li, Zhao Mancheng, Zhao Linshou, and I slipped into the dark interior of the enemy fortress.