Chapter 56: Chapter 55: Crowned mountains

[Near the crowned mountains]

Walking through the steppe near the mountain range that nearly a third of all dwarfes called their home, Darganth, Allaire and Jennia grew increasingly annoyed. Ever since they had passed the northernmost edge of the mountains, they had been forced onto the ground by bolts flying at them, prolonging their travel.

The first outpost that had aimed their ballista's at them had quickly paid for that mistake, with a single breath attack by Darganth reducing the small stronghold to a pile of debris.

The next few joined it in its fate, but once they went past these numerous and expendable encampments, the effort of constantly warding of the incoming attacks alone became greater than the annoyance that walking in a transformed state was. That was without even considering the effort that retaliating entailed, something that Darganth had no intention to stop doing.

Of course he initially tried to fly above the altitude that the bolts could reach, but he quickly noticed that he underestimated the level of craftsmanship that this worlds dwarfs had reached as well as overestimated how high of an altitude his current body could bear.

In the vast emptiness of space, mana would act even more unpredictable than on a planet and often form chaotic clusters in which one or more elements would go haywire. While these mana storms would rarely manage to reach a planets surface thanks to the mana there acting as a dampener. But desptie this there is at least one that comes into contact with a given planet at nearly any point in time, causing a near constant mana storm around planets.

Often called the great planetary wall, this phenomena's strength, attitude and size was influenced by many factors, but even at its weakest it prevented most beings below the mythical rank from passing through it. And currently it was far from such a point, with the lower edge hanging at barely thrice the height of the outer peaks of the mountain range.

This unfortunate interaction of factors lead to them being forced to walk south along the edge of the mountains, something they have been doing for the past two weeks. Luckily the fortifications also had a positive effect for them, with their powerful weapons keeping most beasts at bay. Like this the journey had been pretty easy and they were now nearing their destination.

On the horizon nearly straight in front of them thanks to the mountain range's curvature westwards, they saw the crowned mountains. These were seven mountains that stood out from the rest, with even the smallest of them being a good bit larger than the next best mountain. They stood in a partial circle and in combination with their surroundings they had some similarities to a crown, an attribute that gave them their names.

And with such a name and look it was no wonder that the dwarf's chose this place as grounds for the capital city of the mountain range. And with their species being less divided than humans and beastmen, having one kingdom ruling each of the large mountain ranges exuding the dragons peaks, there was little that kept the other dwarfs from flocking there.

This lead to the current mountain range, where this one city houses nearly eighty percent of all dwarfs living in it, at least according to Orynth. The rest of the mountains were mostly used as part of a layered defense of this city, with the curvature increasing the firepower that the nearby outposts can offer in case of an attack.

The remainder of the outposts mainly served to keep attackers out of the mountains where they could reach these forts far more easily than through the open field. This together with the strong beast presence in the steppe, for whom these bases also acted as a deterrent, made the only plausible route of attack the mountains east side where they are noticeably steeper.

All in all it can be said that this city is a marvel of defensive construction at a level that impressed even Darganth. Had it been build with the means that the dwarfs of Vunreon had, this could even pose a threat to some weaker gods.

While they were discussing which route through the chains of mountains surrounding the crowned mountains they should take, Jennia suddenly stopped.

Instantly putting more focus on their immediate surroundings to intercept any attacks, Darganth waited for a few seconds but no attack came.

“Do you sense that?” She asked him after a moment, prompting him to shake his head in denial.

Spreading his senses that he had previously focused on their immediate surroundings, he soon found the source of the mana spike Jennia was referring to. Letting mana flow through his eyes, he peered into that direction.

Soon he saw what caused these spikes when he lay eyes on the faint mass of mana in the unmistakable form of a hydra. Just as he noticed how weak its mana presence is compared to what a hydra in the second rank should have, even this faint presence was snuffed out.

Slightly shocked by the suddenness of it's presumed death, Darganth took a moment to find the bolt stuck in the hydras heart. The mana density inside it far surpassed that of the hydra's body, making its shaft easy to find. In contrast to that, the tip even reached close to the hydra's heart in mana density, hiding the extend to which the weapon penetrated the body nearly perfectly and nearly hiding it as the cause of death.

Though it quickly became more aparent due to the body's mana soon falling into a state of inactivity that was reminiscent of normal animals and other beings that haven't awoken their mana, contrasting the weapon itself. Though this also confirmed his speculation as once awoken, this state is only reached when a being dies.

“What's happening?” Allaire asked.

“A hydra just died.”

His statement caused both Jennia and Allaire to widen their eyes in shock. Before they could think about what what to do next, Darganth's hand snapped forwards and with nearly no delay they felt something fly over them.

With one glance backwards they could see the same bolt they had seen hundreds of times already, but the one stuck in the ground behind them carried a radically different feeling. And that didn't come just from the difference in mana it contained, holding nearly double that of those that were previously shot at them.

What mattered more was that while the mana in the previous ones all was inactive, this ones mana was active. Just like how this was the distinction between mana users and the rest, in objects this differentiated between enchanted or magical ones and normal ones.

And while the latter could hold mana by being infused with aura or being under the effect of a spell, only when holding either vastly more mana or mana of a higher quality would they exhibit a similar power to a weapon enchanted this way.

“Teleporting.” Darganth warned and instantly afterward all three vanished from their spot.

Arriving in the cover of a large stone formation a bit away from the fort, Darganth directed his focus on finding the source of the attacks while Jennia and Allaire remained alert for further attacks. Having its approximate location from the bolts trajectory, he could limit the area he searched and thus soon found his target.

Seeing the fortress build into the side of a mountain, he frowned. While its weapons weren't capable of punching through the nearly fifty meters of solid stone they used as cover, there weren't many other positives to their location. Between them and the fortress lay multiple kilometers of open ground, though luckily there were no others in range to aid in the attack. But the fortress was build at the entrance to one of the many smaller paths through the mountain that, while not large enough for an army, were large enough to warrant protection.

Finding no solution for how to get past it and with no idea why they were attacked, he instead chose to try and get a better estimate of the bolts capabilities. Telling Allaire and Jennia his plan and getting their agreement to use this situation to have a path further into the mountains, he made the decision that the fort had to be destroyed.

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The difficulty of even getting away without exhausting too much mana and the probability that they would warn the nearby forts made this the most viable path to take. So after a short moment to check his location, he teleported towards the hydra's corpse.

Taking advantage of the fact that the group attacking them was aiming at the general location they were last seen at, he quickly grabbed the bolt that had pierced through the hydra's back and roughly ripped it out. Taking a mere moment to study its enchantments, he quickly slowed time in the area between the fort and himself.

Normally he would have teleported back right away, but he was trying to draw as much attention as possible. Soon the first bolt flew at him, but his spell caused it to slow down considerably. Easily sidestepping the attack, Darganth watched attentively for the next projectile.

While he was distracting the garrison of the fort, Allaire and Jennia were rushing towards the mountains. Thanks to Darganth's distraction they had little trouble at first, though the hard part came once they reached the range of the teleportation blockers. Having previously not teleported to not trigger any possible detection mechanisms, they made it nearly a kilometer into their range before they were fired upon.

At this range the bolts reached them nearly instantaneously, though their low numbers allowed them to manage it. Either dodging or diverting the attacks, Jennia and Allaire continuously progressed towards the fortress.

This started to change once they reached within nineteen kilometers of the mountain when some ballista's that had been aiming at Darganth switched targets to them. By then they had crossed over a third of the distance where teleportation was blocked and thus the danger they posed started to grow.

With more and more attacks flying their way, their progress started to slow down considerably. Soon they were at the cusp of being completely suppressed, forcing them to act before this becomes the case.

Creating a shield by hardening the space before them, Jennia bought them enough time to create cover. Breaking open the ground beneath them, the two fell for multiple dozen meters.

Stabilizing their descend just as they were about to hit the ground, Jennia looked at the wall of the hole that faced their attackers with vigilance. With little delay Allaire also acted, pushing her aura into it and hardening it.

Silently waiting for a few seconds, they watched balista bolts were continuously fired through the ground, their point of impact slowly creeping further downwards. Only when the first bolt reached into their makeshift cover with half its length, having lost too much energy from being shot through the ground, did the sigh in relieve.

While there was still another one that reached the hole, it was the last one with the rest getting stuck in the ground. And with them still having about one third of the total depth as leeway, they stopped worrying.

With this Allaire sat down from exhaustion, while Jennia first pushed back against the teleportation restriction. As son as she freed the space of the magic tools influence, Darganth arrived before her with the balista bolt in hand.

“Everything alright?” He asked, receiving two positive replies.

“What now?” Allaire asked after a few seconds.

“We recover and then continue. While they are well build, they also have some major flaws. Their power is heavily concentrated on the tip, making it easy to influence them by aiming at the wooden shaft. This is especially pronounced as the two are separate parts that are only held together by two metal pins. While this modular design allows for different heads to be attached, it also leads to the aforementioned flaw.” Darganth explained.

Three hours later all three were back in top form and ready to attack the fortress. During this time they had shortly considered the idea of creating a tunnel underground, but upon investigation Darganth found a multitude of different sensor formations that would quickly detect them.

Thus they decided against wasting mana just to cover at most two more kilometers, especially when considering that there was a peak third rank in the fort. And while Darganth was confident in fighting him in his true form as he was nearly at the second order by now, dwarfs generally had a high earth and metal affinity which made them quite good at underground fighting while he would be restricted by his large size.

Thus they stuck to the first plan.

Each casting a flight spell on themselves, the quickly soared upwards. Just before they broke through the ground that they had closed back up after them, Darganth send out a strong wave of concussive force via a gravity spell.

As soon as the small pieced of dirt and stone had dispersed sufficiently, he used a psychic element spell to grab them with telekinesis and shoot them towards the defenders. The reason why he didn't use space magic for this was that its telekinesis was more powerful but also used more mana, and with its power not needed it was simply less efficient.

Soon afterward the projectiles impacted on their targets, with some of the stones even managing to shatter some of the balista's. But despite this the rest soon returned fire, though this time their projectiles had far less of an effect.

Around half of all bolts were diverted far off from their target with just a slight telekinetic push from Darganth, while the rest were rather easily stopped by Jennia and Allaire.

Fighting through the onslaught like this, the three of them took about ten minutes to reach the foot of the mountain where the fort stood. And while normally its high elevation would normally make the remaining distance even more difficult, this wasn't the case for Darganth.

Drawing on his mana and preparing all step he could in human form, he transformed back into his true form to unleash a devastating dragon's breath in the form of a beam. While not his destruction breath, this pure time element breath was enough to archive its purpose.

While nearing the wall, the beam instantly smashed through multiple barriers that sprang to life in an attempt to stop it. Only the last one fared slightly better, with the shimmering barrier holding up for a good two seconds before also failing.

Afterward Darganth moved his head slightly, dragging the beam across the entire length of the wall that wasn't covered by protrusions from the mountain. And while it had lost enough power through both the distance traveled and the barriers that the furthest parts of the wall were mostly unaffected, saved by the sharp power falloff the beam had, the rest wasn't as lucky.

Once the beam subsided the once pristine wall was in disrepair, large crack having formed and many parts having completely crumbled. The wood and metal balista's didn't fare any better, with rot and rust covering the weapons and with many having fallen apart. The dwarfs that manned these walls were nowhere to be seen, having been aged so much that their bodies have completely decomposed.

Under the shock of this development the rest of the garrison stopped firing, giving Darganth, Jennia and Allaire free reign to march up to the fort.

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