Chapter 312: Chapter 310 – Tier 3 Trial Part 6.

‘They are susceptible to flames at least…’

Roland had decided to face the small army of Lumberlings that had replaced the Kindlings that were in the first trial. The only flames coming from these wooden puppets were the ones that he had fashioned himself. By foregoing the old strategy of placing mines everywhere and spending days crafting explosive arrows he was able to be a boss-level threat out on the field.

First of all, he saved a lot of time by not needing to bumble around the settlement and just staying in the throne chamber. There like a proper lord, he could give out orders by clicking the interactive menu while previously he even visited all the buildings to see what they were for. All the resources were now allocated and his city was growing just like before but with his spare time, he was able to gather more iron and actually prepare a better set of armor for himself.

Thanks to it he was able to blast the approaching enemies with a cone of flames that were quite potent. This battle allowed him to confirm one theory, the enemies didn’t really care that much about the base if he was out of it. The moment he went in front of the walls the enemy switched their tactic. Instead of trying to conquer the fort, they decided to kill the lord first.

These puppet soldiers were quite weak. The vast majority of them were on the levels of his own soldiers that were comparable to the level nine or ten monsters in the Albrook dungeon. Their approach also wasn’t different as they tried to swarm him from the front and this was the worst possible tactic against a magic user like him.

All of the attackers were blasted by aoe-type spells. Killing ten of the puppets at once was as easy as throwing a flame blast into their group. With the difference in stats, there was no way of them surviving the spreading magical flames. However, they still posed a threat, considering that his armor was only made of steel, the more he used the more the runes continued to deteriorate.

‘Fighting out on an open field is different than in a dungeon but… it isn’t necessarily more difficult.’

As a couple of arrows were bounced away by the magical shield that was around his body another group of around twenty soldiers attacked him from all sides. Before they could get to him, however, the earth under their feet started becoming soft. The sprint was interrupted by an area of effect that turned everything around him into a pool of mud. With them all being stuck he just needed to harden the ground back and blast away with a torrent of flames to finish them off.

This was one of the bonuses of fighting alone. He did not need to worry about hitting his own men, the archers behind the fort gave him some support as well. Roland just needed to point out with his hand to generate a magical blast, the tight-knit formations were a detriment to fighting him and it was impossible for them to get into close range. Fighting from outside was also not possible as his mana shield could not be pierced by the flimsy arrows shot by low-tier 2 archers.

Nevertheless, after getting rid of around a hundred of the wooden soldiers his armor started becoming undone. The metal that he made it from could not handle the constant use of spells and had burned right through it. Luckily to counter this effect he had one new very helpful skill.

Rapid Machine Reassembly was activated on the armor he was wearing. The holes that had been created by the magical symbols started to get filled back by more steel. For some reason, this skill worked not only on golems but also on runic armor like this. He had no idea how it created more steel out of nothing but it didn’t matter. With the armor mended back into its original state he could take care of the next batch of soldiers without much of a problem which only left their commander.

This time around there was no challenge as their leader just charged along with their troops at Roland. Perhaps if he had noticed the danger beforehand he could have offered a better fight but after suffering so many deaths the enemy troops' morale was too low. It didn’t help that their leader wasn’t equipped with any magic-countering items. Even a simple mana shield necklace could have given him some options during the last confrontation.

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