Chapter 57: Chapter 56: Fortress

[Dwarf fortress]

As soon as Darganth burst through the fortresses gate, all hell broke loose inside. Of the five third ranks that usually man it, one had been away since before the attack while another fell together with the wall.

The remaining ones tried but failed to keep the panic from spreading. Having given up on what they consider to be a useless endeavor, they prepared to attack Darganth as soon as he passed through the gate.

Thus he was faced with three full powered attacks from third ranks as soon as he breached the gate, forcing him to dodge into the air.

With these attacks evaded he took a moment to ensure the destruction of all balisa's by firing all kinds of magics at the remaining ones. With the third ranks as the only remaining dangers to him, he flew towards the third order one.

Arriving before the man with a single beat of his wings, Darganth attacked with his claws before his opponent could react. Only by conjuring his aura avatar did the man manage to escape unharmed, but even that only barely as his avatar still received four deep gashes on its chest.

Just as the other two wanted to join the fighting, Allaire and Jennia also reached the fortress and joined in on the attack. With Allaire taking the first order master magician by surprise and Jennia quickly overpowering the second order aura expert, both couldn't offer any assistance.

Cursing at this development, the dwarf dropped the crossbow he had been using and grabbed the warhammer strapped to his back. Leisurely hovering inside its chest with his weapon in hand, he waited for a moment till it fully formed inside the avatars hands.

As soon as the avatar was fully armed it jumped forwards while the man took a completely different stance.

This made Darganth frown as he could see that he was facing an experienced opponent who would use his own body to support the avatars actions. As the avatar is controlled independently from ones body, experienced users can use the threat of dismissing the avatar and attacking directly with their body to aid in the battle.

Having no better alternative, Darganth once again flew up to dodge the diagonal swing of the hammer. Letting it pass below him he dropped out of the sky while swinging towards his opponent.

This lead to both becoming locked in equal combat, with the aura avatar's superior strength and regeneration contesting against Darganth's skill and durable scales. For minutes this exchange continued, until Darganth managed to find an opening and bit towards the avatars left shoulder.

Hitting only empty air as his target had already moved backwards, he jumped backwards to escape the follow up strike.

This lead to the hammer instead impacting on the ground before him, the runes on its head glowing slightly and causing a shock wave far stronger than it should be. This caused the impact to send debris everywhere, showering the entire fortress with chunks of stone.

The soldiers that didn't manage to escape before were merciless cut down by these, with only a few lucky individuals that were far enough away coming out unharmed.

Even the wall's were damaged further by this, the now degraded stone simply giving in under the force that slammed into it. The wall's weren't designed to endure impacts from the inside in the first place, making large breaches open up along their length.

Seeing the desolation among his men, Darganth's opponent grimaced.

“I would say that maybe you will learn from this to not just attack, but I will ensure that this will be your last day. That's the least I have to do for ruining our plans.” Darganth taunted when he saw this.

“I fear so. But I only regret that even with their sacrifice you will reach the capital, just like that group of beasts before you, and not attacking you.” The dwarf answered.

“Why did you even do it? The forts further in the mountains should be far stronger that this small one.”

Hearing Darganth's question the man broke out into laughter, though his avatar remained alert.

“So even you dragons don't know yet, seems like we were better than I thought.” He said clearly joyful at it.

While saying those words he thought for a moment whether or not he should tell Darganth what was happening.

Coming to a conclusion rather quickly he said, “Because the rest would gladly let you through, they jump at every chance for a new fighter.”

For a moment this irritated Darganth, but he quickly pieced together what was happening. Frowning, he decided to ask his opponent for confirmation, hopeful that he was wrong.

“A civil war?”

“Yes, the capital against most of the dwarfs outside of it. But those fuckers have still most of the fortresses close by and thus keep us out.”

At this Darganth couldn't help but sigh, half from relieve and half from annoyance. While he was happy that they wouldn't have to change their plans to use the forges to create some equipment for Jennia and Allaire because of a single fortress commander, he didn't doubt that there would be other troubles instead.

Dwarfs were very intelligent, similar to most humanoids, but they didn't trust outsiders much and were very stubborn, traits that made them hard to deal with. This is also the reason why he didn't doubt that being attacked by one fort would have ruined their plan as no dwarf would trust them over one of their own.

He could already guess that whoever would set foot inside their city in the hopes of trading with them would first be recruited to help them deal with this rebellion. And with the popularity of the dwarf's weapons he didn't doubt that that would amass a sizable force.

While Darganth was thinking about this a silence descended inside the fortress. His opponent knew that Darganth still kept an eye on him while Jennia and Allaire had finished their respective fights.

Jennia had easily suppressed her foe despite being an order lower than him, mainly thanks to her superior physique.

Keeping him on the defensive with initial constant swings of her claws, she waited for him to make a mistake. When her opponent jumped back in an attempt to gain a bit of breathing room, she snapped towards him with her heads.

While he had started to use elemental manifestation, causing a mass of solid metal to flow across his body as if it were liquid, she disregarded it and bit towards him. While two of her head suffered some wounds from this exchange, she could see that her opponent's left arm was nearly entirely unusable.

Compared to that even the loss of two heads was negligible as while dragon-hydras couldn't temporarily regenerate two head in the place of a lost one, her heads would still heal rapidly. And with the connection between her brains it would not have any negative consequences.

Still, she would have had no access to the elemental control that these two heads were associated with until they regrew, making her happy at this result despite having carefully chosen the two most expendable elements. This weakness was also the reason why hydras were so low on the ranking of lesser dragons and dragon-hydras so high.

While both would mostly fight in a way that they regularly lost some heads, a hydra's weak body, for lesser dragon standards, that contrasted their strong necks meant that they had no alternative. A dragon-hydra on the other hand wasn't hit as hard from the loss of a few elements due to having more while also having a physical body comparable to other lesser dragons.

Now with her opponent wounded, Jennia stopped being cautious. Keeping the two wounded heads back and using another pair, she started a frontal assault. As support she started using her elemental control, earth and darkness from her wounded heads and space and time from the two heads she had used in neither attack.

With her two most powerful elements still available it didn't matter that she wasn't very trained with earth and darkness and her opponent quickly fell into a hopeless position. Ripping his left leg off completely, she didn't care that the metal covering his body managed to form a blade that sliced deep into her wind head.

While not completely cut through, this attack sunk deep enough to effectively kill the head. Feeling it being only connected via the bone, Jennia pulled the neck back to let it heal. Instead her darkness head filled the position, though it wouldn't have been necessary as her opponent could no longer walk.

With two more attacks she fished him off, having used the first to throw him off balance before following up with a concentrated pillar of flames at his position.

Looking around and finding Allaire having far more trouble, she was just about to intervene when Allaire motioned her to not do so. Listening, she instead made sure that Dargant remained in control of his fight before focusing on healing her head.

Allaire's opponent became meanwhile agitated from the dismissive attitude she was shown.

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“Not asking for help? Better not regret it later.” The woman said while sending another barrage of attacks at Jennia.

Just like those before this one didn't archive anything, but Allaire's follow up suffered the same fate.

“Why would I need help? You are only good at defending, so I just need to wait for one good hit.” She commented as another of her arrows hit one of the rocks hovering around her opponent without doing any damage.

“That's not going to happen.” The woman said, making a slight upwards motion with her outstretched hand.

Having already seen this move multiple time, Allaire easily jumped up before forming a solid light platform at the highest point. Below her the ground had broke up, with a multitude of stake like rocks with pointed ends growing diagonally out of the ground.

Landing back down on the flat side of the formation, Allaire tried to estimate her opponents remaining mana. Coming to the conclusion that, while she would win, a drawn out battle of attrition would take too long she stopped holding back and prepared to also use spells.

Letting go of the arrow that she had drawn back, she waited for a moment before punching out with her right. Having already seen this move, her opponent moved one of the rocks in anticipation of the aura strike while another intercepted the arrow.

To her shock the arrow started to glow as soon as it it hit the stone, instantly followed by about a dozen arrows made from pure light appearing all around it while the original one vanished with a glow.

Clasping her hands together which prompted the previously unused rocks to swarm between her and these arrows, the dwarf completely disregarded the other attack.

But instead of an aura strike flying out of Allaire's hand, a small flaming ball shot forward far faster than the woman could react. Impacting on her left shoulder, it exploded with enough force to throw her backwards.

Dashing after her, Allaire drew her sword and slashed forwards as soon as she passed the rocks the woman had previously used as a defense. Sending out a light blue arc whose edges crackled with lightning, she followed after it without hesitation. Just as the arc was about to reach the dust cloud her opponent's landing created, Allaire noticed the stones moving back towards their owner.

Confident in her head start, she ignored this and focused on where the lighting arc would hit her opponent. Seeing a flash of electricity before it vanished from having lost all its energy, she struck at the exact same spot just a moment later.

While she could feel her blade sink into something, she experienced far too much resistance for even a peak third rank aura users body, not to mention a mage. Just as she was about to jump back to avoid any counterattack, the smoke opened up enough that she could see that her blade had indeed found its mark.

Hearing the stones that the woman had been using as a defense falling to the ground, Allaire pulled back her sword that had struck the heart of her opponent. Dazed by what had happened, she absentmindedly shook the blood of her bladed before sheathing it again.

Thinking about how the dwarfs body seemed to have been harder than even most stones, she failed to find an answer.

Choosing to wait for Darganth to finish his fight and then ask him, she walked over to Jennia.

Soon they saw Darganth pausing for a few moments, clearly in thought, before turning back to his opponent with a grin.

“Well, that certainly makes it easier. Though I wonder, how long will they allow me to use their forges as payment for dealing with your fortress?”

Darganth's words caused the man to widen his eyes in shock, though he quickly started to smile.

“No idea, but I sincerely hope its enough.” The man said, hoping that maybe Darganth wouldn't fight against his comrades.

Resigning himself to his fate, he dismissed his aura avatar and slowly hovered to the ground. Feeling a spell forming below him, he made no attempt to dodge and was soon swallowed by the raging flames that sprung to life.

Only when he was sure that his opponent was dead did Darganth return to his human form. Slowly walking towards Jennia and Allaire, he let his gaze wander around the entire fortress to make sure that none of the remaining men tried to attack them.

“Fully healed yet?” He asked Jeenia in a caring tone.

“Yes, just stings a bit.” She replied.

“Then someone has to get pampered later, or?” He said, pressing his lips against hers.

Reciprocating the kiss, she was just about to jump up and clamp her legs around his hips when Allaire interrupted them.

“Let's wait till we have a room, alright?” She whispered into Jennia's ear, though loud enough that Darganth could hear.

“Fine.”

“Great, because I need our husband for something else. Do you have any idea what kind of magic my opponent had used?” She asked Darganth.

“Hm? Oh, a conceptual magic user, didn't expect that.” He mused.

“What's that?”

“A type of sorcery, one of the more powerful ones. While most of the others are mostly just different ways to use mana, resulting in mostly inferior systems when compared to the true elemental magic, conceptual magic is vastly different. As you know, each element has certain concepts associated with it, as well as multiple different aspects. Together these two dictate which physical form it takes, for example whether the earth element becomes sand or stone.

And while these concepts are all born from the elements, the concepts started gaining some form of separation from them due to most of them existing in multiple elements. This made it possible to access them directly, though they still need a physical form.

Thus a user of this type of magic would have to use an element that consist of that concept to give it form. What you fought was earth magic that was filled to the brim with the concept of toughness, making it loose much of the other concepts that make up the normal earth element.

Then there are special cases like destruction that, while making up a large part of the fire element, doesn't actually need to rely on it. But these independent concepts are a whole other matter that doesn't matter in this case.” Darganth explained.

“And how come that it seems to rare when I this much trouble with it?” Allaire asked.

“It's time consuming and not as powerful as you likely think. The woman that you fought had mana comparable to that of most second order's which is why she was that strong. Conceptual magic's strong point is that it is very specialized, making its popularity explode in the mythical rank and afterward.”

Just as Allaire was about to answer, Darganth interrupted her.

“Wait, we have guests. We'll talk about this later.” He said, turning to the fortresses gate.

At that moment a group consisting of mostly dwarfs teleported there, with only three other humanoids in their midst. As the dwarfs were mostly between 1,50 and 1,60 meter large, the three individuals towered over them.

Feeling the distinct presence of beasts from them, Darganth was already wondering what they were doing here when he noticed the faint dragon mana coming from the middle one, a humanoid woman that seemed to be the leader of the other two.

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