Sword of Dawnbreaker

Chapter 275 - 274: One Shot to Decide the Outcome

These were mutation types never seen before—even in the Gondor wasteland seven hundred years ago, Gawain Cecil had never encountered such aberrations: they were four in total, their size almost two to three times that of ordinary aberrations. Their bodies were swollen, and at most of their joints, there were proliferating structures resembling bone spurs, and every bone spur was coursing with ominous black and red arcs of electricity. Particularly on their backs, the bone spurs protruding from their ribs formed structures that resembled parallel rails. As these four gigantic entities roared in chaotic ambiguity, the electric arcs on their spurs suddenly expanded. The next second, Gawain saw four massive bolts of lightning suddenly strike towards the city walls!

A form of attack never seen before, with an attack range beyond estimation.

Gawain was taken aback, but his body instinctively reacted. He infused his longsword with magic power, and the Sword of Pioneers burst forth with a dazzling white light. Then the longsword descended in quick succession. Two shockwaves intercepted two of the black-red lightning bolts, while not far from the middle of the wall, an arcane lightning suddenly lit up, tearing apart the third attack with a thunderous noise—that was from the direction where Kamel was stationed.

The fourth black-red lightning missed, striking beneath the city wall. With an explosive sound, a massive cloud of dust and rubble erupted from the base of the wall.

After this sudden strike, the four mutated aberrations did not continue unleashing lightning—likely because such an attack consumed significant energy, and they couldn’t use it continuously—the electric lights on the spurs behind them dimmed slightly. Then, these creatures stood up straight, their faceless heads facing the city walls, and a series of muddled roars emanated from within them. Behind them, the aberration army seemed stimulated by something and suddenly charged forward with overwhelming momentum.

Just as the reports mentioned, aberrations near these mutated creatures would mysteriously "enhance," with their aggression and speed seeing significant increases!

"Continue the catapult bombardment!" Sir Byron shouted loudly, "Grenadiers, keep throwing! Focus your attacks on those gigantic creatures!"

Explosions of various sizes began to erupt within the aberration army. The soldiers responsible for throwing crystal grenades were selected from various squads for their incredible arm strength, yet even so, it was difficult for them to throw grenades under the feet of those large creatures still far away—only the catapults had sufficient range—but after a volley of bombs, Gawain couldn’t help but frown.

The accuracy was too poor, and the rate of fire was too slow.

Dozens of bombs bloomed on the battlefield, all aiming as best as possible at those four mutated entities. However, the poor accuracy of the catapults caused every explosion to land far from those creatures. After one round of attacks, quite a number of ordinary aberrations were indeed blown to pieces, yet the truly dangerous enemies remained unscathed, still running freely on the battlefield.

"Keep throwing!"

The teams operating the catapults quickly tightened the winches and reloaded, knowing the catapult’s critical weakness—not only was the accuracy poor and the firing speed slow, their range was nearly fixed. Even by adjusting the winches and lever arms slightly, they couldn’t attack enemies approaching too close. Yet those aberrations... their speed was increasing under the influence of those giant entities, and it wouldn’t be long before they surpassed the closest range limit.

During the second wave of attack, finally, a crystal bomb hit its target, and one mutated large entity was struck firmly by the bomb. Accompanied by a spectacular explosion, foul blood and bone fragments splattered across the battlefield, while more creatures continued to close in on the wall.

The catapults ceased their attack; at this distance, they were no longer effective. The teams operating the catapults swiftly retreated from the outer towers to the city wall, unlocking the safeties on their heat-ray guns, readying themselves alongside the shooting squads to deal with monsters starting to scale the walls.

At this point, the number of creatures was already dwindling. The soldiers on the wall, armed with heat-ray guns and Melting Swords, were sufficient to handle them—if not for the presence of those remaining three large entities.

They had intelligence, at least some capacity for basic thoughts—this was the astonishing conclusion Gawain reached after brief observation.

Ordinary aberrations, when stimulated by magic or the scent of living humans, reacted almost reflexively, recklessly charging ahead, often even less cunning than wild beasts. Therefore, humans could always use tactics and traps to deal with them. Yet those large entities... just the fact that they hadn’t charged alongside the others was already an astonishing performance.

More crucially, they seemed able to control the ordinary aberrations used as cannon fodder—thanks to the presence of those four large entities, the aberration attacks split into two waves, with the second wave held back until now by those four monsters.

Crude manipulation, but even crude manipulation was a rudimentary form of tactics.

Gawain slightly raised his longsword, looking at the three mutated large enemies, preparing to personally deal with them.

This wave of assault could be defended against. Despite some unexpected variables, the power of the Cecil Combat Corps still firmly suppressed those creatures. Currently, the aberrations near the walls were perishing en masse under the concentrated attacks of crystal grenades and heat rays, with not a single enemy able to scale the walls. The soldiers hadn’t even needed to use the Melting Sword.

However, those mutated beings that seemed to have developed some intelligence were causing great unease—they must be eliminated quickly.

But just as Gawain was about to take action, the three mutated monsters began to move. They had already reached a spot very close to the city wall under the cover of cannon fodder, and at this moment, suddenly bent down together, with dense black-red arcs of electricity once again flickering around the bone spikes on their backs!

Kamel, responsible for guarding the midsection of the wall, immediately conjured a magic barrier to protect the wall under his feet while beginning to brew a powerful arcane magic. But before this attack could be unleashed, he suddenly felt a change in the surrounding magical power field, causing him to pause in astonishment.

The magical power field enveloping the wall, supported by the Magic Obelisk, suddenly accelerated its flow. Vast amounts of magic were converging toward a specific direction. Following his senses, Kamel looked over and saw that stubborn little girl, Rebecca, climbing to the top of the tallest tower, raising her magic wand high.

A fireball, almost as large as the city gate, was rapidly forming above this little girl—and it was still growing larger.

Even Gawain felt the astonishing flow of magic, and he turned his head in shock, cold sweat practically spurting out—what on earth was Rebecca doing?!

The fireball, as large as the city gate, had now taken shape. As it became filled with more magic power, it grew brighter, its color gradually shifting from scarlet to a yellowish-white. Below the fireball, Rebecca’s face was full of excitement. She was wrapped in a strange wide metal "belt" that was emitting striking magical brilliance. The magic wand in her hand burst forth with blinding radiance, like a torch ignited by the sun. Upon realizing she had finally conjured the largest fireball ever, Rebecca was as excited as a mischievous child about to be scolded by her ancestors, and she started yelling excitedly, "Ancestor! Look at what I made!!"

Gawain’s voice boomed across the field, "Throw it out fast!"

"Got it!" Rebecca shouted, then exerted all her strength to swing the magic wand in her hand—the fireball conjured by magic wasn’t very heavy, but the turbulent magical power field made her wand feel like it was magnetically stuck, making it incredibly difficult to swing. If it were a normal mage, they might have despaired at this point—a physically weak mage would have no chance of pushing that massive fireball out and would only end up getting shattered by a backfire from the severely overloaded magic. But was Rebecca a normal mage?

After attempting to push once without success, Rebecca abandoned her initial exertion, and instead used the strength she had when she passed the family trial by punching a wolf to death in three punches. With a "hiya," the fireball as big as the city gate floated slowly and erratically towards the battlefield under many terrified gazes.

Even the simple-minded monsters could sense the terrifying power from this fireball. The three mutated monsters, which initially intended to destroy the wall with a close-range strike, abruptly retracted their half-prepared lightning attacks and made a move that a normal aberration could never make—

They turned and ran.

Gawain was finally certain: these large mutated entities had thinking abilities.

At that moment, Rebecca’s super huge fireball had already descended onto the battlefield—it landed behind the three retreating mutated monsters. For the first second, it simply descended quietly, melting the surface like a red-hot iron ball dropped onto cheese, evaporating the surrounding monsters. But in the second second, its internally unstable magical energy finally erupted.

With an ear-deafening roar, a small mushroom cloud slowly rose in front of Cecil’s South Wall.

The remaining monsters on the battlefield were almost all turned to ash after this strike.

Watching the slowly rising mushroom cloud, a genuine smile appeared on Rebecca’s face. She suddenly felt that her "path of fireballs" might be quite a good path after all.

A well-made big fireball can protect everyone and bring miracles—

Then, the girl, her mental power drained by this one massive fireball, fell straight down just like that.

Meanwhile, on the wall, almost no one had recovered from the earth-shattering explosion just now.

Gawain had already seen Rebecca fall, but a shadow quickly darted up the tower beside him—it was Amber. With Amber there to look after her, he was relieved, and turned to look in the direction of the battlefield.

Suddenly, a grotesque and ugly claw appeared at the edge of the wall not far ahead. Under the eyes of many, the last surviving aberration of this battle finally climbed to the wall.

Though he didn’t know how it survived, Gawain knew it had been hacked to death by at least twenty people in a frenzy.