Chapter 61
Azek looked at the distant horizon.
He was standing on the town gate wall.
The wall was gradually expanding and surrounding the whole town.
Originally, only a 30-meter wall existed for watch purposes, but now it had started expanding on both sides with people working tirelessly.
All townspeople were busy helping the mages. When they had found out about the monster attack in the morning, the whole atmosphere became gloomy.
The elders suggested helping the mages to contribute even a little.
So the whole town came to help.
Lyana had been standing on the ground in the middle of the area outside town, working from morning with Emiliene.
The whole area was littered with vines, and the ground was dug up all over.
Azek had demonstrated the idea in detail yesterday, but she took a lot of time to understand and implement it even with Azek teaching her personally.
The sheer novelty broke her previous view about magic use. Azek had suggested using combustible wood element combined with a fire spell designed to go off with pressure.
The idea in writing was simple.
Pressure would create enough force to generate a light spark.
It would make the fire spell go off, and the combustible wood with excited mana would blow up with the fire spell.
But it was harder to pull off. The force calculation necessary to generate a spark gave her a hard time.
Azek took care of the mana connection and layered spells to make the mana go off. They just had to make fire magic circles and supply him with enough combustible wood.
But it had drained Lyana. And she wasn't someone who gave up easily. In the end, she mastered the device completely and worked with Emiliene nonstop since morning.
Azek only had to cast mana spells on the wood. They took care of the rest.
As expected of a hailed genius, Azek thought.
The monster army was advancing.
Their scouts constantly reported movement.
They would be here by noon.
Only three hours were left.
Vivian flicked her sword and continued giving instructions.
They had made three temporary fight zones to lure a small number of monsters and engage them in battle instead of direct confrontation.
The idea was proposed by Vivian, as knights were not capable of taking on multiple high-grade monsters. Their strength lay in taking on small low-grade monsters and holding off higher-grade ones.
To take maximum advantage of their numbers, they had made two camps on the far ends of both sides of the town wall.
Although the possibility of getting overrun by monsters was high, they had placed backup mages on the wall ends behind them to hold off the extra burden.
Doris walked, inspecting the whole situation.
Roughly two hours remained.
It was 9 am.
Lyana had finished with almost 700 meters of the area.
Some of the front-wave monsters started appearing.
Doris took a bold step and asked Lyana to experiment on them to test the magic traps' efficiency.
Mages were ready to take them on in case things went south.
One hour until the first wave arrived.
800 meters were covered while Lyana continuously made changes to existing traps to improve efficiency.
An alarm went off.
The mages in charge immediately took the students and retreated to the wall, which had now expanded considerably despite being crude.
Thud. Thud. Thud.
The first wave became visible on the horizon and advanced toward the town at an alarming speed.
The mages got ready.
More and more monsters kept appearing.
Cold sweat dripped down a young mage's face.
Lyana's face was pale.
The knights behind Vivian gripped their swords tightly.
The sheer number was overwhelming them in reality.
Azek slowly readied the multiple circles. Bullets danced in front of him.
His heartbeat was getting faster as the distance closed.
Will it work? These thoughts kept repeating in his mind.
Thud.
A high-grade monster made contact with a trap.
It was the start of landmine territory.
Boom!
An explosion went off, and its front limb exploded into pieces.
Boom! Boom! Boom!
Explosions continued going off.
The monsters had crossed almost the 100-meter boundary and were now advancing at a slower pace.
Half of them had become injured, and low-grade monsters died in droves.
Lyana looked astonished.
This was proving very effective.
Doris's voice resounded.
"Don't stand there daydreaming. Quickly take care of the injured monsters. We don't have enough traps to take care of all of them. And if they cross the 300-meter boundary, we will have to engage them directly. Get your facts straight."
His loud voice was heavy with a reality check.
Mages bombarded the injured monsters with long-range spells.
Azek continued shooting bullets with precision while writing another spell.
When the monsters advanced another 100 meters, Azek finished combining the traps.
When the monsters crossed the next 100 meters, explosions didn't go off.
They crossed it with relative ease, and their numbers kept increasing.
When the 500-meter boundary was crossed, Azek asked everyone to cover their ears with spells.
Booooom!
A loud explosion went off. Even with ears covered, some knights got dizzy.
A whole crater was formed in the ground, and shrapnel from the used traps made quick work of the incoming wave as well.
At first glance, nearly 60 monsters were wiped out.
There was silence on the battlefield.
Monsters had halted their progression.
Strange.
Doris wore a grim expression.
There was no possibility that monsters would stop attacking mindlessly.
There was a one-in-a-million chance that there was an intelligent monster influencing the others.
And this wasn't good news.
When the dust cloud settled and the view cleared,
they saw a small mouse-like creature in front of the wave.
The monsters had halted their progress.
And this wasn't a good news.